RantMOM is about to hit a major birthday. Elections are upon us and RantWoman hopes to be relieved of the call to attend to the doings of a certain southern CO Congresswoman. The weather is shifting and RantWoman's mind is prone for various reasons this time of year to wander among various moments of her life. And frankly, RantWoman needs a break from her YouTube diet.
With that in mind, RantWoman here reprints an item from the summer 2022 Newsling of the WA Council of the Blind.
Mr. Tuxedo
May 2022
Mr. Tuxedo
is not the cat’s real name, but in the age of internet verification questions
even one’s childhood cat has to have an internet name. Plus the name sort of
fitsthe tumultuous life of a feline
artiste.
Possibly unusual origins
Mr. Tuxedo
was a typical tuxedo cat, all black except for a white bib and four white paws.
Mr. Tuxedo’s mother belonged to our neighbors Bill and Marty. Bill and Marty
had two upstairs bedrooms, but I am pretty sure they only slept in one. The
layout of their house paralleled ours, two of three houses built on S. Main St.
in what at the time was the small town of Gunnison CO.
The Seduction
Bill and
Marty had a fenced yard. My parents had turned one of three attics in our house
into a playroom that looked down into Bill and Marty’s yard. Bill and Marty’s
cat had kittens. My younger sister especially fell in love with the kittens. I
was already a sophisticated first grader and did not have nearly as much time
for falling in love with kittens as my sister did.
The Conquest
It was not
going to be a slam dunk that a kitten would come live with us. My mother grew
up on a farm and except for one white cat at a time, cats did not live indoors.
Mom was afraid of spraying and “messes.” She was afraid of the work a cat would
require. She probably was not ready to rely on three young kids to handle cat
care. My sister pleaded and pleaded and finally Mr. Tuxedo came to live with
us.
Very modest circumstances
Mr. Tuxedo
was assigned a sleeping space with old slightly ragged terry cloth towels on
the floor of the kitchen pantry, under the lowest shelf. I do not remember too many kitten adventures,
but there must have been some: I definitely remember that only paper ornaments
and other unbreakable decorations ever got hung on the lowest branches of our
Christmas trees.
Even more ostentatious attire and
toddler ballroom dancing
Mr. Tuxedo
and my sister bonded deeply. Mr. Tuxedo looked perfectly fabulous in his
natural attire but he tolerated being dressed in doll clothes and hauled around
in my sister’s doll buggy. He let my sister dance around holding his front paws
and expecting him to work his back legs. He granted me no such intimacies: in
case I wasn’t old enough to figure out on my own not to try anything so
intrusive, he had no qualms about making opinions known with a few scratches.
The lure of nature
Mr. Tuxedo
was always an indoor outdoor cat. Even though we lived on S Main St. that was
less fraught with dangers than it would be today. One summer someone in the city thought it
would be lovely to have trout in the irrigation ditches that ran along the
curbs. There was a lumber yard a couple blocks south of us. I am pretty sure
Mr. Tuxedo roamed at least as far as the lumber yard. One cold winter night, he
even brought home a baby skunk, one of those awkward interspecies
communications moments where the cat wants the human joyously to receive a gift
or maybe to learn to hunt it and the human, um, really doesn’t.
The Lord of the House
Mr. Tuxedo
was never allowed upstairs where our bedrooms were but he was definitely
allowed on the living room couch. He was not shy about wanting to exercise this
privilege. One time the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir came to town to
do a workshop at the college where my dad taught music. This distinguished
musician came to our house for some kind of a reception and happened to sit in
what Mr. Tuxedo considered his spot on the couch. At one point, Mr. Tuxedo strode into the room
with all the self-possession that great conductors display on their way to the
podium. The great conductor was gracious enough that he probably would have
moved over, but for his insolence Mr. Tuxedo got summarily banished to the
pantry for the rest of the evening.
The Lunch menu
Our
neighbors on the other side were a somewhat older couple. A daughter with some
kind of disability and a grandson somewhat older than me lived with them.
Neighborly relations did okay when there were flowers to talk about, but the
household always seemed stressed. One of their great pleasures was a
hummingbird feeder. Even in the coldest winter days, the red liquid drew birds,
or as Mr. Tuxedo viewed things, lunch.
A tragic and agonizing death
Mr.
Tuxedo’s appetite and hunting prowess did not exactly help neighborly relations
and probably contributed to Mr. Tuxedo’s shortened lifespan and agonizing death
of suspected poisoning. Sometimes though a life has to be celebrated for what
was rather than what wasn’t: Mr. Tuxedo probably would have had to go live
somewhere else anyway because he left this world the summer my family moved to
MT.
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