Another Mark story from our Smith Valley days...Alley Cat had just delivered another litter of kittens. We found that beer cases--the old-fashioned kind that the glass bottles came in--made great cat-having-kittens boxes. You can close the cat up with her kittens, pick up the box by the handles, and carry them anywhere. (But take the dividers out first...those tend to be uncomfortable for the cat!) That day, Alley Cat was on our concrete back porch in her beer case cat house nursing her kitties.
Our Uncle Carl, Aunt Marie, and cousins Steve, Jimmy, and Danny Joe had just arrived with their dachshund. As dogs will, the dachshund went over to the beer case and stuck his head in to check out the kittens. Our dog Rebel was very protective of the kittens and didn't like that other dog checking them out. He lunged at my cousins' dog and attacked him.
We knew the little dachshund wouldn't stand a chance against Rebel, who was a fairly large dog. Rebel had one big weakness--he was petrified of gunshots and firecrackers. My little brother Mark ran into the house and grabbed a firecracker and a lighter. He ran back out, lit the firecracker and threw it onto the concrete porch in an attempt to break up the dog fight. My dad poured that porch, so it wasn't exactly level. The firecracker rolled directly under our other cat's butt and KABLOOEY! It couldn't have been timed any better.
Fru-Fru (yep, that was the cat's name) went straight up into the air about five feet. All four legs were stretched out and up. Every hair on that cat was standing on end, and she really did look like the illustration to the left. As Fru-Fru was in the air, she let out this horrible wail. And at the same moment, Mark said, "Sorry, cat!""Sorry, cat"??? That's all he could come up with after nearly blowing the poor feline's rectum to smithereens with a firecracker? You know, that cat seemed to hang in the air forever. But as soon as that cat's paws hit the ground, it was off like a streak of lightning. We didn't see that cat again for several days.
I bet I have some "toothpaste" that would've healed that cat pretty darned fast.
7 comments:
Remember the weekend we were gone and Scott W came into our garage and had thrown at least one of the kittens down on the floor over and over until the poor thing had brain damage? We found the poor thing stuffed in a carton of Falstaff. He was still alive, but never quite right.
And the W's eventually adopted that kitten. He was never quite right after that. I suppose that was a better fate than many of the kittens who were either caught their heads in the glider or were found too late underneath the tire of a car.
It's funny now how those kinds of things were just part of life back then. We would be upset, but it was just part of growing up in the country.
Wasn't it Fru Fru that we "buried" out in the corn field with a statue of the Virgin Mary that dad plowed up the next spring? (The statue, not the cat.
I don't remember either cat dying, but as you know, I'm not a cat-lover either. I do remember how you used to literally squeeze the poop out of Alley Cat when you were a very little girl.
I don't mean that Mark killed Fru Fru with the firecracker, but we had some animal, and I'm pretty sure it was a cat that we buried in the corn field and we placed a large Virgin Mary on the grave site.
If I remember right, Alley Cat just ran off one day and never came back. She would leave for several days, but at one point she just never came back.
The worst event was Snoopy. I still remember how we were all going to have to get rabies shots unless we found him. Everyone in the neighborhood looked for 3 or 4 days and Hardin had gone off to work and then decided he couldn't. I turned around to help us look and someone found him in a field just south of Harry F's house. I think Hardin had to shoot him, but dad had to take his head (only) to the hospital for testing for rabies.
Luckily he didn't have rabies or we would have all have had to have the shots, which at that time were administered in the belly.
I was the one to give Hardin the order to shoot. That one about killed me.
I remember that both Hardin and dad were pretty upset over that whole event.
getting back to the firecracker event. I should have been hailed a hero for trying to keep the peace thru non-lethal methods, after all I couldn't get my hands on a stungun, anyway if your going to make an omlet you have to break a few eggs. errr sorry chickens
Well, you saved the life of a dog, but at the expense of a cat's behind.
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