This afternoon, I will return to Starkville after spending my break between the end of summer school and the start of fall classes at my friend’s home in rural Pickens County, Alabama.
It has been a good break. In two weeks, I’ve grown accustomed to sitting on the seat of a tractor and the fields around Joy’s place, all freshly bush-hogged, display my handiwork. I also took out an old fence line, weeded flower beds, trimmed some trees and performed a multitude of other duties during my time here.
In the afternoons, we retired to her front porch and watched the world go by, at least the part of the world that came rumbling down the stretch of dirt road in front of her little cottage, each car or truck trailing a fog of orange Alabama dust in its wake. I told Joy that if I lived here, I believe I’d just buy an orange vehicle and be done with it. A car-wash in this part of the world lasts only until the key hits the ignition.
I have been blissfully unaware of the “news’’ of the world, mainly because the TV hasn’t been on since I arrived. But, of course, the real news – the kind that really has some actual bearing on a person’s life – hardly comes via the airwaves anyway.
So if you were to ask me what the news has been here, I would say that it’s been a quiet couple of weeks. Probably the biggest development during my stay here has been the Redistribution of the Cat Population. I’m guessing this wasn’t covered on Fox News or CNN, so this is probably the first you have heard about it.
This is probably not big news to most folks, I realize, but it’s a major development for Elsie Price, who I am sure is happy to be rid of the Flying Cat population at her house.
I realize that this all warrants some explanation.
When Joy relocated from Jackson to the family property here in Alabama, she brought with her a couple of house cats – Bella and Lacey. At first, Joy and the cats moved in with Elsie, Joy’s mom. Each day, Joy would get up and go a few hundred yards down the dirt road to make ready her little cottage, which was once occupied by her aunt. She worked all day at the cottage, returning to her mom’s home in the evenings.
Bella and Lacey are sisters from the same litter, Joy says. I suspect it would be more accurate to call them half-sisters. Bella is jet black with just a spot of white fur on her chest and belly. Lacey is a Siamese of some sort, white with a blend of beige, tan and brown with four white feet that Joy calls “her snowshoes.’’ The striking difference in their appearance suggests different fathers.
Joy says that a female cat can be impregnated by multiple males and deliver the babies in the same litter, you know, sorta like what happens on “Jersey Shore’’ every week.
Anyway, Bella and Lacey settled in at her mom’s house. Because Joy is an independent contractor – a project engineer who specializes in nuclear power – and often is away on business for a month or two at a time, it made sense that Bella and Lacey would make her mom’s house their permanent residence.
But a couple of developments began to complicate matters.
First, Joy’s mom already has two cats – Tiger and Bama. They are strictly outdoor cats and presented no problem at first. But soon, Lacey and Bella began to notice that, although outdoor living lacked certain conveniences – upholstered furniture and air-conditioning to name two – Bama and Tiger seemed to have a pretty interesting life. Ultimately, Lacy and Bella were able to convince Joy’s mom to let them go outside from time to time. But as the weeks went by, the two cats began to like it so much that it was difficult to get them back in the house. Ultimately, nothing short of a thunderstorm could induce them to come inside.
This soon became a cause of concern. Unlike Tiger and Bama, who grew up as outdoor cats, Bella and Lacey are city cats who had always lived indoors. As a result, the fear was that Lacey and Bella lacked the necessary survival skills to live in a place that is populated by coyotes, foxes and snakes. Bama and Tiger knew how to avoid such predators, but Lacey and Bella were innocents, and it seemed only a matter of time before curiosity might indeed kill the cats.
So the decision was made to capture Bella and Lacey and return them, on a permanent basis, to the status of indoor cats. Of course, nobody asked Bella and Lacey if this was their preference. Suffice to say, they did not accept the transition gracefully.
First, they were forever waiting by the door, ready for any chance to bolt outside. That strategy produced only very limited success, however.
So Lacey and Bella came up with a different tactic. They decided they would pretend to be deathly afraid of the carpet.
This is how Bella and Lacey became that rare breed of animal known as Flying Cat. At her mom’s house, their feet never hit the floor. Rather, they leap from one piece of furniture to the next, like a man might jump from one river rock to another to get to the other shore. Did you ever see the map in those magazines that are stuffed into the seatback pocket of an airplane that show all of the places the airline services? I suspect Bella and Lacey have created a similar mental map of the house: “Cat Flight 104 from Recliner to Coffee Table is now ready for departure.’’
The house is clean, nicely furnished, comfortable. But even the coziest of ambiences is altered when the air is thick with cats.
Unlike me, Joy and her mom are convinced that the cats’ sudden and almost pathological fear of the carpet is grounded in truth rather than conspiracy. Fleas, they say. Their theory is that Bella and Lacey picked up fleas from outside and brought them into the house, where the vermin had nested in the carpet. Joy went online and read that cats will avoid any area which they know is inhabited by fleas. So, the thinking goes, there must be fleas in the carpet.
It’s a reasonable idea, of course. But the theory breaks down a bit when you consider the measures taken to address the problem and how ineffective those solutions have been. The carpets have been treated not once, but twice, with flea-killer. The carpets have been shampooed. Both cats have been given flea-preventative medications. And yet, the cats still avoid the carpet like a debutante avoids a Wal-Mart.
It is for that reason that I believe this fear of the carpet is a recent fabrication. If dogs rarely think, cats think entirely too much, if you ask me. They seem to me to always be carefully calculating their next move.
A few days ago, Joy decided to move the cats out of her mom’s house and into her little cottage. I am happy to report that Lacey and Bella have ceased their flying. I think maybe they realized that the strategy wasn’t working. At any rate, they walk around Joy’s house, showing no aversion to her rugs.
But somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the cats’ plots to return to outdoor living. Rather, I think they are formulating a new strategy. Heaven only knows what it might be. I mean, if they’ll concoct a Flying Cat strategy, there is no limit to the extremes to which they are willing to go.
For now, though, they have offered no clue. I am watching them carefully, however. They are up to something, I am sure.
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