ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: MONTY S. LEITCH
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
WHEN PEOPLE ask me if I have children, I answer, "No, but I have a cat. A very needy cat."
It's the perfect opening for a long and hilarious story, involving Good Samaritans, dumpsters, veterinarians, buttons, cat ophthalmologists, plastic surgery, and considerable financial outlay - if anybody's interested. Or, it's the end of the conversation, if they're not.
Have you ever noticed how no one else's pet is nearly as interesting as your own? I wonder if the same is true for children? If those folks who talk endlessly about their own children enjoy, as much, the stories others tell of theirs?
A niece, who also has cats instead of children, wrote me recently: "The kitten that we found last weekend now calls our house a home. After Minnie died last winter, we swore off strays, but when one comes to you hurt, it is kind of hard to say `no.'''
Also, the kitten wandered in between hurricanes: soon after Fran had battered the coast and just before Hortense turned herself northeast. Nothing looks sadder or needier than a wet cat.
"When we took her to the vet," my niece continued, "we found out that it was worse than we thought."
Big surprise.
"She had two big cuts on her stomach and has developed a hernia where a tooth went in. She is still having seizures ... ''
Seizures? Well, I suppose if my cat can have plastic surgery, her cat can most assuredly have seizures.
"It almost looks as though she is having a bad dream and is fighting the other cat still. The vet took some blood, and is doing tests on it today."
A very long time ago, a kitten wandered onto the front porch here and the Man of the House took pity upon her. He named her Terpsichore, after the Muse of the dance, and told her she could sleep on his porch whenever she wanted to.
In the middle of one night, he heard a terrible noise out there: desperate screaming, banging about, the miserable sounds of a losing struggle. When he investigated, he discovered that an owl had split open poor Terpsichore from one end to the other. She never danced again, and it was a very long time before he had another cat.
Of course, my niece named her new cat Fran. What else would you name a cat who'd wandered in during that storm?
"Fran is doing much better this weekend," she wrote me, a couple of days later. "She has rested a lot and played even more. She has only had small seizures, and we have been able to talk and love her out of them. Hopefully, they were only nightmares or due to her cuts and hernias, which are all healing nicely on their own!"
My cat has asthma. My niece's cat is probably epileptic.
Perhaps I should say "My niece's new cat is probably epileptic." Because she signed this note "Margaret, Dan'l, Stormie, Kitty Wampus, BB, WT, Buddy and Fran."
I know who Margaret and Dan'l are: They are the human residents. And I know, now, about Fran. But what of all those others? Cats, too?
Cats! What would they do with children, if they had them? Could anybody stand a conversation with them?
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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