The Cat Who Liked Opera

A guest blog by Dragon Dave’s Wife

Dragon Dave’s blogs on his dogs reminded me of the pets I had while growing up.  Along with the family dog, we always kept a cat or two around the house.  During my high school years, two kittens came to live with us, one for me and one for my sister.  These kittens were sisters like us, and each had their own personality.  One would run off and hide when company arrived.  This scaredy cat was named Heidi.  She was my sister’s cat; she was white with gray spots and a gray tail.

Unlike her sister, my cat welcomed guests.  In fact, she expected not only to be petted, but for each guest to give her some of whatever food was being served. She was named Polly Anna.  She was a sweet, tiger-striped tabby with a white chest and four white socks, only one of her socks had a hole in it and a gray toe poked out of it.  Her name was often shortened to Polly Cat or Polly.  She usually let me pick her up and carry her about, but she always put her paws on my shoulders and dug her claws in, to make sure she was safe.  She refused to be babied, carried around upside down, or on her back.  I still can feel the pinpricks of her claws on my shoulders.  

Polly taught me how to speak Cat, and I can still get a cat to look at me with a few well-chosen sounds.  As with most cats, Polly had her own vocabulary of different sounds, from happy purrs, greeting miats, to demanding meows that sounded like "Now!"  She made a particular cry when she brought me presents.  Usually, these consisted of items like corn husks, green beans, twigs, and small plants, but occasionally she brought me the odd mouse.  Polly proved a good hunter, adept at catching mice in the barn and the occasional bird, although she never caught the pheasant that she stalked in the field behind the house.

At night, I took her to my room and she slept at the end of my water bed.  (She was a great foot warmer).  Some nights she refused to settle down and go to sleep, but sat at my door and asked to be let out into the living room.  I eventually realized that those were the nights my parents watched the operas on the local public broadcasting channel.  So when I opened the door, Polly would proceed to the couch and curl up to enjoy the music, not returning until after the music died away.  I believe her favorite opera was "Der Fledermaus."  

When I left for college she stayed at home with my parents, but when I returned for vacations or short visits, she was usually the first to greet me, sitting on the shelf by the door as if waiting for me.  We always enjoyed our time together.  Polly got lap time and tidbits from the table.  I got her love.  For seventeen wonderful years, she enjoyed a life full of laps, petting, table scraps, hunting, and, of course, the opera.

Dragon Dave’s Wife

On Rescuing Dogs: Part 2

One evening, my mother returned home from the school she worked at with a small, black puppy.  This one had a more delicate bone structure; she looked frail and anemic in comparison to the dense, compact musculature of my former dog Sport.   My mother told me she was a Cockapoo, a cross breed of Cocker Spaniel and Poodle.  The family of one of the students needed to give away puppies, as their dog’s pregnancy had been unexpected.  My father took some convincing, but he acquiesced, and I named our new dog Lucky. 

After our experience with Sport, Lucky stayed in the house.  We made a small bed for her in the dining room, and put up barriers so she couldn’t wander the house unobserved.  She wasn’t as boisterous and excitable as Sport, and our play took on a more gentle quality.  Most of the time this occurred in our living room.  If I took her outside to play, she never left my sight.

After awhile, we moved closer to the school my mother worked at.  A six-foot-high concrete fence enclosed the back yard of the house we rented, so Lucky could enjoy the outdoors unobserved.  After awhile my mother brought home another dog, a little white mutt that my mother named Tiny, and he provided company for Lucky during the day while my mother worked and I attended school.  But then the owners decided to sell our house, and we had to move again.

As my father didn’t receive much retirement pay, and much of what he had saved over his life he had lost when we had left a condominium complex, our options for housing were limited.  The new church we attended allowed us to move into the house on their property, another old parsonage that they used as a fellowship hall.  So we moved there, and my parents often invited people over after the Sunday and Wednesday evening services.  While my mother and I spent the days at school, my father watched Lucky and Tiny.  He could let them outside if he chose, as six-foot-high concrete walls extended along the sides and the back of our yard, and the front was lined with a waist-high wire fence.  At night, they could sleep in Sport’s old house, which offered room to spare for the smaller dogs.  Or, when the weather grew chilly, they could spend the night inside.

Not long after we moved into that house, my father began paying more visits to the hospital.  At first these were short stays, lasting only a few days.  But gradually they grew longer, until it seemed as if he would never leave.  As his health deteriorated, the hospital might change, but the fact that he resided there did not.  After days spent at school, my mother and I spent our afternoons and evenings at the hospital, wanting to be with him as much as we could.  We ate meals in the cafeteria or from snack machines, and slept on the faux leather couches in the waiting room.  What time we spent at home shrank to little more than morning visits to shower, change clothes, and feed Lucky and Tiny.  Then we left again to begin our days.

Lucky might have been built smaller and more delicately than Sport, but she was no less intelligent.  Several mornings we arrived home to find her scampering toward us across the church parking lot.  One church member added more wire to the fence, hoping to prevent her from squeezing her narrow frame through any gaps.  But somehow, she still escaped.  On one of our quick morning visits, I looked out the front window and spied her climbing the fence.  By the time I ran outside, she had made it to the top and leapt to the asphalt of the parking lot.  She wagged her tail as I opened the gate and ordered her back inside. 

Perhaps we should have considered finding new homes for her and Tiny, as we couldn’t offer them a real home life at that time.  Perhaps that was what Lucky sought.  Or perhaps she merely yearned to explore the world beyond her yard.  All I know is that one morning we returned home and she wasn’t inside our yard, or wandering the church property.  I searched the streets of our neighborhood, and later, when our schedule allowed, my mother and I visited the local pound.  But I never saw Lucky again.

I can only hope that someone took Lucky in, and gave her the love and attention that she deserved.

Dragon Dave

On Rescuing Dogs: Part 1

One day when I was young, my father parked the family car outside a shopping center.  But before we could go inside, suddenly a cute little black puppy wandered up to us.  My father claimed that he had seen people pull up, open their car door, drop the dog onto the parking lot, and drive away.  All I remember is that we didn’t go shopping that day.  Instead, we brought the puppy inside the car with us, and returned home. 

I named this new addition to our family Sport.  He was a German Shepherd, or at least a mix with strong German Shepherd traits.  He was only a few weeks old, and I could easily hold him in my hands, but my father promised that Sport would grow with time. 

While my parents might have rescued Sport, that did not mean that they would allow him inside our house.  At that time, we lived next door to the church we attended.  On the other side of us lay the parsonage, which had replaced our small house as the pastor’s residence at some point in the past.  Behind us lay a trailer park, where retirees spent their waning years inside large metal canisters on wheels.  Bordering the rear of our property was a waist-level picket fence.  Between our house and the new parsonage extended a six-foot-high concrete wall.  But only a concrete walkway separated our house on the other side from the church, and no fence lined the front of our property.  So my father purchased a metal chain, anchored it in the ground, and built a little wooden house.  That became Sport’s home, and I would go outside and play with him, and throw the ball to him, and let him chase me (at least to the end of his chain). 

This addition to our family did not sit well with a retired couple in the trailer park.  My father fielded several conversations with the man who lived in the trailer directly behind us, a gleaming silver contraption that looked more like the rear end of a bus than a proper home.  The old man complained that Sport barked too much.  From what my father told my mother and I, the old man suggested that my father must find some way to silence our dog.  Or he would.

Sport grew with time, and he sprang up every time I entered the back yard.  We would play together in the afternoons, enjoying each other’s company.  But then, one afternoon, my father noticed that Sport was vomiting white foam.  As Sport barked and leapt toward me, at the length of his chain, my father held me back, and ordered me to keep away from him while he made a telephone call.  After awhile, men in uniforms arrived.  They unhooked Sport from his chain, and led him away.  I couldn’t help but notice, as they pulled him past, the confusion and pleading in Sport’s eyes.  But they wouldn’t let me to pet him, or hold him one last time.  Then they took him away, and I never saw him again.

I don’t know if the animal authorities ever discovered why Sport vomited white foam.  At the time, the disease Rabies was mentioned, but my father also quietly said that he suspected the old man living in the trailer behind us might have thrown some poisoned food over the fence.  Lacking evidence, it's impossible to blame him, or any other factor.  Modern science (or at least a quick internet search) suggests that Sport might have simply drank his water too fast, or eaten some grass or dirt.  So perhaps he didn't have Rabies.  But maybe the threat of Rabies was too strong back then for the authorities to take a chance.  

All I remember is that the old man complained, and later, that Sport inexplicably vomited white foam.  All I know is that a little boy never saw his dog again.

Dragon Dave

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