~~~ Cat Tale ~~~

This is a story from my early bachelor days. I lived alone except for a pet cat. Arthur was like most cats in that he wasn't overly affectionate. He spent most of his days sleeping under the sofa and his nights prowling the neighborhood. He had strange eyes: one was green and the other gray. He had one unusual behavior that bordered on the spooky. Perhaps once a month or so he would canter into the house, plop down and begin observing me intently. His eyes would open real wide and then close slowly and stay closed for perhaps a minute, all the while his tail had fits of jerking. He would repeat this pattern several times and then leave.

At first I made very little of this, but then a book I read about cats made me more suspicious of this peculiar aberration. Just what did that book say that aroused my interest? It claimed that some cats could read ones thoughts, and I had in mind a plan to test that crazy hypothesis. For weeks I waited for him to assume his strange habit. I had nearly forgotten about it when one day as I rested on the sofa he appeared lazily ambling into the living room. I happened to be watching a good movie on TV when I noticed him curled up on the carpet and staring at me in that odd way. Ah, I thought to myself, this is what I have been waiting for.

As I was pondering how to conduct this experiment, I remembered the animosity that existed between Arthur and the neighbors basset hound Butchy. That's it I thought, chuckling to myself, and so this is what I did: I formed an image in my mind of Butchy sneaking up behind Arthur; teeth showing and growling viciously. I maintained this picture with various themes for perhaps only a minute. Nothing happened! Not a twitch of the ear nor a blink of the eye. I concluded that Arthur did not have the ability to read my mind and started chiding myself for ever believing so. I arose from the sofa to get something to eat. I find it hard even today to describe to you what happened next. It was as if the floor suddenly tilted at a crazy angle and I was falling! I found myself lying face down on the floor, heart pounding, and a tingling sensation like electricity flowing through my body.

As I slowly recovered, I remembered that a similar thing happened to me once before. I was thirteen years old and it was summer haying season. My Father was teaching me how to build a hay stack. This is how it's done: One man gathers the hay and brings it to one spot where the other guy is supposed to neatly pile it up in a generally rectangular shape. The first guy has a cushy job because he gets to drive the tractor over the field scooping up the hay, while the one doing the stacking has to trample on top of the hay getting hotter and sweatier. The only fun part of hay stacking is when the job is done. That's when you get to jump off the stack onto the empty hay basket and get lowered back to earth.

As I was saying, that summer my Father taught me how to make a proper hay stack. My first one turned out very tall, but too narrow and a little bit lopsided. I was not aware of this, in fact I was feeling very proud and started imagining myself as the champion hay stack maker of the world. My uncle Calvin had just arrived at the stack to deliver another load. He engaged the hydraulic lift to bring his basket full of hay up to the top. As I watched, a sudden look of alarm came over his face. Then he started hollering and waving his arms, but I couldn't hear above the roar of the tractor. It was then that I felt a sudden movement beneath my feet. It all happened so suddenly. One moment I was king of my universe and the next as if I was on board ship at sea during a storm. My hay stack pitched over and I was going with it. I did have sense enough to toss my hay fork as far away as possible. It was all over in a few seconds and the only harm I received was to my pride and the fright of my life.

I had not thought of that incident for many years. I picked myself up off the floor and looked down at Arthur with wonder and amazement. It almost seemed as if he was laughing. Then with a satisfying purr he got up and left the house through his door. I heard later from my neighbor that Butchy received a boxing from my cat that same day.