Rabbit Box Blog

It turns out Grandma Iva’s cantankerous cat is still wreaking havoc, even 60 or so years later.

When Mom read what I had carefully written based on what she told me, she said I had it wrong. The cat never came in the house, she said. I protested that I wrote exactly what she told me, but she smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said, “you got it wrong.”

Now to be clear, I had no recollection of the cat until Mom brought it up last week. I do vaguely remember the cat cussing, because we had a cat (named Cat, as we were masters of originality) that demanded meat or fish by calling out “Ham!” in contrast to his usual meow. Grandma Iva’s cat had a bigger vocabulary.

Gary remembered more. I’ll offer his story as one that we all seem to remember as true, with the proviso that time can change memory in surprising ways. Anyway, it’s almost as funny as the one Mom didn’t tell me the other day!

Gary thinks the cat might have been named Mittens, because it had double front paws. He used to hang on the screen door of the kitchen and meow for food, then cuss if he didn’t get it fast enough.

One day the preacher was visiting Grandma Iva, and they were sitting at the dining room table. The cat climbed up the screen door and called out for food. Iva was busy talking to the preacher, of course, so she took no notice. The cat’s patience ran out, and he let out a stream of “damn, damn, damn!”

“What did that cat say?” said the preacher.