Stupid cats

I used to love to read the Peanuts’ comic strips. One of my favorite storylines was Snoopy’s ongoing battles with the cat next door, which he always referred to as “that stupid cat.”

I know how he feels. After I conquered the Chihuahuas owned by the rednecks renting the house next door to me, they’ve unleashed a new instrument of terror – stupid cats.

There are two and perhaps three orange cats at the house, and they let them roam freely. Which means, into my yard. Now, ordinarily, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Cats can’t do a lot of damage, right, and they don’t bark or chew up stuff. Sure, one of they may get run over because they tend to like to sleep under our cars, but things happen. They have eight more lives anyway, right.

But things have changed. See, I have a bare spot in my yard, and the other day I decided to fix it. I put out some seed, covered it with topsoil and fertilizer, and laid some straw on top. I could have gotten some sod, but that seems like cheating.

So I look out the front door the other day, and two orange cats are right there where I planted the seeds, rolling around and knocking the straw everywhere. I went outside, cursed them, yelled “Git!” at the top of my lungs, and they scurried away. What got into those stupid cats, I thought? But I tidied everything back up and went inside.

Next day I walk out, they’re doing it again, only this time it’s obvious they’ve been rooting around in there for a while. I yelled, and they just looked at me, so I picked up a football and fired it at them, and they skedaddled. I walked over to fix up their mess, and then it hit me – they had found a new litter box. They had left some, well, evidence. Those blankety-blanking cats were out there blankety-blanking in my blankety-blanking front yard!

This reminded me of why I don’t like cats in the first place. It took my mind back to when I dated a girl back in high school, and her family had some ridiculously pampered cats. It was rumored they paid $500 for them - $500 for a cat! – and I disliked them from the start.

I remember our first date. I dropped her off at the door. She stood there with the sliding glass door slightly ajar, and I told her that I had a good time, and I closed my eyes and leaned forward to do what teenage boys do at the end of a first date, and – whoosh. I felt something brush past my pants leg.

I opened my eyes to find my date not standing there expectantly with puckered lips, but instead looking past me, frantic and wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “The cat got out!” she screamed. “Oh, it will come back,” I said, and moved in again, but I wound up clutching air, because she was past me and headed toward the back yard.

Great, I thought. This stupid cat has ruined my date. I reluctantly followed the girl into the back yard, and learned that there was a creek back there. A creek with a very high bank. And that stupid cat was down by the creek, looking up at the high bank and meowing helplessly, since it was apparently not capable of climbing back up.

So you can guess what happened. I climbed down into that creek, I grabbed Fluffy or whatever the stupid thing’s name was, and I carried it back up the bank, slipping a time or two, and returned the expensive fur ball to my date. And did I get rewarded for my chivalry? No, I couldn’t even kiss her goodnight, because she was standing there holding and stroking the blankety-blanking cat.

With that memory coming back, as well as the sight of cat doo-doo in my front yard, I walked over to the neighbors’ house and rang the bell. A young lady with a blank look on her face came to the door and listened as I explained, politely, what was going on, and asked her to please figure out a way to keep the kitties out of my yard. She said she would talk to her mother about it.

I haven’t seen them since, which is good, because if I catch them doing number two in my yard again, I’m going to take them out in the back yard and introduce them to Lucky. She’d love to play with a couple of stupid cats.

Men vs. women

I was thinking this morning (a rare occurrence) about some of the ways men and women are different.

Of course, women are crazy – and I say that with affection - but I mean other than that. There is a great divide between the behavior of the genders.

The difference came up the other night, when I was at the grocery store with my wife and daughter, and I was pushing the shopping cart out to the car, when I did what any man would do – I jumped up on it and rode it part of the way across the parking lot, pretending I was Richard Petty, hopping off just before we reached our car.

My daughter was predictably embarrassed at this childish behavior, but my wife assured her that it was normal, and that my son does it too. It’s in our genes, like the urge to scratch inappropriate places in public settings. It’s what we do. It’s how we roll.

There are quite a few things men do that you never see women do. For example, you never see a woman walk into a room, then jump as high as she can and try to touch the ceiling. But most males do this, or at least we do until when we’re about 40, when such an activity would make our hamstrings pop like rubber bands stretched too tight.

We don’t just throw away used paper towels or crumpled up pieces of paper; we pretend the garbage can is a basketball goal, and we shoot. Sometimes we’ll do a hook shot, or a fadeaway jumper, or if nobody is looking, a vicious 360 dunk.

We pick up any long, slender object nearby (umbrella, yard stick) and we swing it like a golf club or a baseball bat, or, if you were one of those weird Dungeons and Dragon kids, pretend it’s a sword. This impulse never goes away.

I have never seen a woman kick a rock down the sidewalk as she walked, trying to keep it going for as long as she can, and pretending in her head that if she can get past three more driveways, she will have set a new world record.

I’ve never seen a woman try to catch pennies off of her elbow. I will still occasionally bend my arm back, stack up some pennies and then try to snag them without letting any hit the floor. My friends and I used to practice this all the time. My personal record is 37.

You very seldom see a woman play air guitar, and that’s good, because quite frankly, they don’t do it very well. But if you take any man of a certain age and crank out the opening to “Whole Lotta Love” or “Sweet Child O’Mine,” he will almost instantly drop his right hand to his side and pretend to hit the strings with his imaginary pick. Depending on the situation, he may soon start doing windmills, making funny faces and sliding across the floor on his knees.

A man cannot stand and simply hold a basketball or soccer ball or tennis ball. He must instinctively bounce it, and will do so until a woman screams in anguish for him to stop. They have these super-bouncy balls in Dick’s Sporting Goods, and when I was in there with my son recently he picked one up and bounced it, and it almost reached the ceiling. Of course, I got on to him and told him to stop, but inside I was thinking, “Dude. That is so cool.”

This is just a small list of some of the fun women are missing out on in life. They don’t make paper footballs or throw spitballs or thump each other on the ear or all sorts of other fun things, but I think they should give it a try. Might make them not so crazy.