The Bilingual Kitty

WC 760

The Bilingual Kitty

By Jack Rawlins

When you’re sent to a foster home, you don‘t have the option of saying yea or nay. You can move in and shut up, or run away. I chose to run away. I don’t know what made me do it, but I ran up the first tree I found—a big, tall buttonwood.

Going up is easier than going down. I don’t do upside down well, so I stayed put until a bunch of guys in a fire truck with an extension ladder came along and picked me like a fuzzy peach.

A nicer bunch of guys you would never want to meet. I had no ID, so they took me back to the firehouse, fixed me a snack, and made a big fuss over me. I liked that.

But I had hardly settled down when the alarm sounded and one after another they all jumped through a hole in the floor and slid down a brass pole. I tried to follow, but like I said, I don’t do down well. I landed on my noggin.

When I came out of it, everybody was gone and the place was empty and drafty…wind whipping through the open door. It was kind of spooky, so I decided to move on.

I had only bopped and zigzagged two blocks when I met a lady walking with two little girls. When the girls spotted me they squealed, swooped down and scooped me up to squeeze the heck out of me.

I felt safe and comfortable with these loving ladies for about ten minutes. Once they got me in their apartment, the girls started fighting about whose turn it was to hold me. They just about pulled me apart. I couldn’t take it, so I hissed, scratched and bit—both of them. They screamed and bawled and called me a nasty kitty. Their mother took their side. She agreed that I was indeed a nasty kitty and no longer welcome. An hour later I was back in the same animal shelter that put me up for foster care.

I had a lousy night. Dogs barking. Cats meowing. The smell of disinfectant, poo and pee.

In the morning an elderly couple came in looking for a good mouser. On that cue, I bounced around my cage like I was nailing a mouse’s bottom. They were convinced and took me home.

I conned them for two days with my good mouser act. But the truth is I could not stand the thought of killing a cute little mouse, let alone eating one. Yuck!

Well, when the old folks found out I was just playing with the mice and the mice enjoyed the game, they gave me my walking papers. They said, “You’re a pretty little kitty, but you’ll never cut it as a mouser.” And I was soon back at the shelter.

You know the saying “When you drop a cat it always lands on its feet?” Well now I’m getting a little depressed. I keep getting jerked around. I’m on my way to becoming a complete failure as a cat. I don’t like little girls. I like mice, but not to eat. I can climb well, but can’t get down.

So, I was in a real funk and expecting another disappointment when two animal lovers walked into my life. They took me home the same day. There, they introduced me to Miss Priglette, their miniature pot bellied pig.

It was Priglette’s foster care that changed my life. She was pretty, intelligent, gently nurturing, a real prig about cleanliness and completely house broken. It was she who got me through a difficult adjustment period. It was she who knew how to cope with a cat that didn’t like little girls, a cat that wouldn’t hurt a mouse.

We hung out together all the time, and had many long philosophical discussions about life as a loved one. Of course, one of the best ways to learn a language is to speak it. In no time at all, I was speaking fluent pig.

One of the most important things she taught me was that an ‘oink,’ gets more attention than a meow. Because she helped me to become bilinqual and to choose my words carefully, I was able to return to the animal shelter, not as a guest, but as an employee who could speak both cat and pig.

I will be ever grateful. It was Priglette’s foster care that took me from confused and maladjusted to well adjusted--as quickly as you could say ‘Oink.’

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