Whatever anyone says, it’s not true that my father hated cats. He told me himself that he liked cats, and dogs too, for that matter, so long as they lived with someone else.  The problem was this: my mother loves cats, and my father wasn’t good at saying no to my mother.

        Over the years, our family has had lots of cats, one after another, up to five at a time. To be honest, I have to admit it was Dad who brought most of them home. He found Mickey, just a little kitten, meowing in the doorway of the donut shop during a torrential rainstorm. He bought Tiny for five dollars, and threw in a box of donuts too, because he felt bad for the poor family who couldn’t afford to keep  him. Suzy snuck into my brother Kevin’s hockey bag one winter night after practice, and Dad said we could keep her. And when Freddy Brown fell out of a third floor window of a nearby apartment building, and we feared kitten abuse, Dad said we could offer him asylum.

        Dad was soft-hearted, and conscientious too. Most of his life, he worked at least six days a week, making donuts. He usually worked nights, coming home between seven and nine in the morning. Getting by on two naps a day, he never got enough sleep, but in the morning, the first thing he’d do when he came in from work was to feed the cats. They’d rub against his legs and purr while he dumped out whatever food they’d left in their dish, cleaned it, refilled it with fresh food, and gave them fresh water. Then he’d make himself breakfast, and settle down with the sports page as he ate his cereal and toast.

        The cats loved Dad. They’d often jump up to sit next to him on the couch. I can remember him absently petting a cat while he watched a television program. When I was little, he even used to let them jump into bed with him, although the incident with Sooge ended that. At the time, Dad had an ingrown nail on his big toe, which had become infected. After cutting away part of his nail, the doctor advised soaking the toe several times a day, and he prescribed an antibiotic. With the toe still swollen and very tender, Dad went in for a nap, and Sooge settled by his feet, as he often did. In his sleep, Dad shifted his sore foot off the edge of the bed, which had the unfortunate result of nudging Sooge over the edge too. The cat frantically grabbed for a foothold. Dad woke shouting in pain with a fifteen-pound cat hanging by one claw from his infected toe.

        Afterwards, Dad was understandably reluctant to let a cat in the bedroom with him.

        It wasn’t necessarily those big events, but instead the little day-to-day occurrences that drove a wedge between Dad and the cats. After his first nap, my father generally made himself a sandwich for lunch, but before he got to eat, he was often called away by some of the shenanigans of his five children. By the time he had settled whatever argument we’d got into, or found out what caused the loud clatter this time, one cat or another often had stolen the ham from his sandwich. We’d know, because we’d hear him when he went back to the kitchen: “For crying out loud!”

        When Dad got up to get ready to go to work, he’d come half-way down the stairs, still in his pajamas with bare feet, and call to my mother, “Evie, do I have any clean socks?”

        She’d answer, “They’re in your sock drawer, Jackie.”

        “Good,” he’d say as he went back upstairs. But within moments, we’d often hear him again:  “For crying out loud!” Our cats were prone to vomiting, and they had an uncanny knack for having just thrown up wherever my father’s bare foot landed.

        As we kids got older and went off to college or moved out, my mother replaced us with cats. Dad grumbled about them, all the while feeding them, taking them to the vet as needed, and allowing new ones into the house whenever my mother felt an urgent need for another cat.

        They got Charlie, a timid orange tabby, from a pet store. One time, when my visiting grandfather accidentally locked himself out of our house, he rapped at the living room window to get our attention. Charlie, who’d been sitting on the back of the couch looking out the window, recoiled in terror and hid under the couch for the rest of the day. Another time, my brother John, home for Christmas from the conservatory he attended in the Netherlands, composed a song in six-part harmony for Charlie. The libretto was simple: “Charles, Charles, Charles, Charles, Charles!” We each learned a part, and then gathered around the organ to sing to the cat, and we’re none of us bad singers. Charlie heard the first chord and bolted. He again spent the remainder of the day under the couch. My brothers and I began to call him “the little chicken,” which made my mother indignant. She said he wasn’t a chicken; he was just sensitive.

        What bothered my father more than the cat’s timidity, though, were his grooming habits. “What’s the matter with that cat?” Dad would say. “He’s always licking his behind!” When my parents took Charlie to be checked, the vet didn’t find any problem. Nonetheless, Charlie continued to spend large amounts of time grooming his rear.

        “For crying out loud!” my father said one day after bringing in the mail. “There’s a postcard for the damn cat.”

        “Which cat?” my mother asked.

        “It’s a notice from the vet to take the damn cat for more shots, and they  addressed it to Charlie Lydon!”

        “What’s the matter with that?” my mother asked.

        “He’s not a Lydon! He’s a cat!”

        “Of course he’s a Lydon!” my mother protested.

        “He’s a cat! He can’t have my last name!” Dad said.

         “When I married you, I took your name, and I’m his mother!” Mum announced.

        “Well, I’m not his father!” Dad said.

        But Dad went on taking care of the cats anyway. One morning, when he grabbed  the cat food dish he found one of his own socks, with holes chewed into it, and smeared all over with canned cat food. Dad picked it up between his thumb and forefinger. “What the hell?” Most of the waiting cats looked up at him, but Charlie turned tail and ran. He dashed for the parlor, my father fast after him waving the half-eaten sock. Charlie, who had by this time grown too big to fit under the couch, hid behind it. My father peered at him cowering there, and let out a roar. Charlie made a rush for the stairs, and my father intercepted, still waving the sock. Then Charlie ran behind the organ and wouldn’t come out.

        My mother, who had come downstairs on the tail end of this, began to scold my father. “Don’t tease the cats, Jackie!  You’ll make them nervous!”

        “Make them nervous!  Look at this, Evie! He ate my sock!” my father exclaimed, waving the evidence at her.

        “Throw that smelly thing away! You shouldn’t leave your socks around, Jack.” Mum sniffed, and then she began to hedge.  “Anyway, how do you know it was poor little Charlie who did it?”

        “He’s the only one of them who acted guilty!”

        This was only the beginning. Daily, if not more often, socks appeared in the cat food bowl. Usually they were my father’s, but sometimes it was one of my brothers’ socks,  my mother’s, or even mine when I visited. Day after day, my father would chase Charlie through the house, waving the undigested remains of a sock, while Charlie ran like the devil. Once, Dad caught Charlie in the act, dragging a white sock between his legs. After my mother discovered Charlie stealing her pretty new scarf that matched her new winter coat, even she was convinced of his culpability. She decided to buy Charlie a pair of socks, on the theory that if he had socks to call his own, he’d stop stealing everyone else’s, but he ignored his own socks and continued his sleight of paw game with ours. It got expensive, because Dad would find chewed up socks in the cat food almost daily, and Charlie usually stole only one of a pair. What’s worse, he never showed a lick of remorse.

          After weeks of sock theft and vandalism, abruptly, and for no apparent reason, Charlie stopped. No more sock remnants appeared in the cat food bowl. We were afraid he was trying to trick us, and we left our socks in very provocative places to test him, but he didn’t give them even a nibble. After a while, we realized that our socks were once again safe, and things quieted down, at least until the incidents involving the black cat.

        The black cat was a neighborhood stray who began appearing regularly at our living room windows which opened onto our long side porch. He’d peer in at us, and that transformed the little chicken Charlie into a tiger. Not only did he stand his ground and growl at the black cat; he actually begin to patrol, pacing from window to window, even when the black cat was nowhere in sight.

        One night, my mother, who was home alone, nodded off to sleep on the couch while watching television. She was rudely awakened by the sound of glass breaking behind her. Fearful of burglars, she switched off the lamp and began crawling across the floor towards the phone so she could call the police. Then she heard Charlie let out a long, low, fierce meow.

        “Oh, my God!” she gasped. “They’ve got the cat!”  She jumped up, ready to do battle to defend her pet. And there, through the broken window, she saw Charlie, arching his back and howling at the black cat, who sat on our porch, not looking in the least bothered. Mum realized that it was not a burglar breaking in, but rather Charlie jumping through a closed window, breaking out.

        From that night, Charlie’s vigilance increased. He began to pace all night long, every night. He cracked another window and jumped through a window screen. And my mother, deciding that the only solution was to make the black cat keep away, also began to stay up all night, pacing, watching for that cat, and running out on the porch to stomp her feet and scare him away should he dare to show his face. One night when I was visiting, my mother shouted that the black cat was on the porch, and I ran out in bare feet to chase it. I suffered a splinter, but I was lucky: it was a skunk that ran away.

         “Do you see how tired your mother is?” Dad would ask. “That black cat is ruining her health. She can’t get any sleep!” Out of love for my mother, my father began to hate that black cat, and he threw himself into it with passion.

        He hid pitchers of water to throw at the black cat near windows on the first floor. He even threaded the garden hose through the porch railing, up along a downspout, and onto a second floor porch so that he could get the black cat from above, if need be.

        The climactic incident occurred on a night when none of us kids was there, but I’ve pieced together an account from what my parents later told me.

        Now my father was always a sound sleeper when he had the chance, and he should have been able to get a good night’s sleep that Saturday night, because he didn’t have to go to work again until late Sunday night. My mother, in her distress over Charlie, insisted on sleeping in the living room on the couch, and my father obligingly spread cushions for himself on the living room floor and settled down to sleep. During the night, my mother  heard a noise. 

        “Jack!” she called. “Wake up! The black cat is in the driveway under your car!”

        “What?” my father asked groggily.

        “Jackie, quick! It’s the black cat, and he’s under your car!” She said it with urgency, and, mind you, they had been living in a state of emergency preparedness for some weeks. (And my father was never at his best when he was half-asleep.)

        “I’ll get him,” Dad said, jumping up. It was summer, and he was wearing only his undershorts. In normal times, he was a very modest man. But this time, my father, in a half-asleep frenzy, ran off in his undershorts to do battle with the black cat. Dashing to the kitchen, he opened a cupboard and grabbed the first weapon he laid a hand on. It happened to be a can of beets, which was very strange, because we never ate beets. But so armed, he ran onto the porch, down the stairs, and crouched by the front of the car. It being dark, and the cat, if he was indeed there, being black anyway, Dad couldn’t see much of anything. But he had to do something, so he threw the can of beets under the car. He never saw what it was that ran away, but he later said there were two of them. A cautious man, my father ran to the back of the car, picked up the can of beets, and sent it flying to the front again. And so on. After several pitches, he woke up enough to realize he wasn’t wearing his pants, and he sprinted back inside.

        “Did you get him, Jack?”

        “I’m getting my pants!” Dad said as he ran upstairs. A minute later, he ran back down. “I’m getting that damned black cat this time!” he vowed, and he ran out the front door, still barefoot and shirtless, but at least wearing pants. Commandeering a garden hose, he aimed under the car, but in all the excitement, instead hit the bumper. The spray splashed back and soaked his pants. He decided to throw the can of beets instead, but he  couldn’t find it in the dark, so he gave up the fight and came in. It wasn’t until the next morning, when my parents were leaving for church, that he was able to retrieve the can of beets. The neighbor, who was also leaving for church, asked Dad if he had heard the racket in the middle of  the night. She wondered if it had been caused by teenaged pranksters, or maybe prowlers. Dad remained non-committal, but my mother favored the prowlers theory.

        On a subsequent visit to my parents, I was looking in the cupboard for a can of soup when I happened upon a badly dented can of beets.

        “Why do we have a can of beets?” I asked. “And what happened to it?”

        “It was the night we had prowlers,” my mother said, warming up to tell the story.

        My father didn’t even look up from the Sunday sports page. “Don’t ask,” he said. “I’m going to paint over the windows so you can’t see in or out, and maybe then, those damn cats will leave me alone!”

Biographical Note: Kate Lydon is a storyteller, writer and editor who at times hires out as an adjunct professor. She grew up along the rocky coast of Massachusetts, but has lived most of her life amid the trees of Pennsylvania.   Daughter of a man who made the best donuts in the world and a woman who acted out Macbeth and read poetry for her children, Kate is the oldest of five, and thus is prone to giving advice. However, her husband, two children, two cats and one dog, independent souls all, pay scant attention, and so she writes. Kate’s satirical murder mystery, Off Center, is now available through Amazon’s Kindle Store. She is currently working on another novel, as well as a book of stories about visiting her grandparents Papa and Eva.  See the Author Index for Prose L-Z  and the Author Index for Poetry for more of  Kate's writing.