Three Cats’ Christmas
by Don Royster
Three cats under the Christmas tree
Buster, Sister, Mama Peaches
All purring their yuletide carols
On this the night before Christmas.
They’ve kneaded their joy, now they rest
Curled up next to tinsel and snow,
Dreaming their dreams of Santa Paws
Meowing his jolly ho-ho-ho,
Hoping for some kitty-katnip
And a ball of yarn for their play.
Maybe a mouse or even two.
They dream and sleep this night away
But soon will come the Christmas morn
And all will be right with these three
For they will wake with a good stretch
And a big yawn under that tree
After a game of give-and-take.
They’ll hurry for their bowls of food
And munch and crunch and lick their paws
Clean and they’ll be in the best of moods.
Then they’re off for the Big Outside.
But before they rush out they take
One last turn ‘round the Christmas tree
Just so the three can celebrate
How long long ago a Babe
In a manger lay in the cold
Without a blanket or cover,
And no more than a few hours old,
When one scrawny and feral cat
Crawled in and curled about the Child
And kept the Baby warm that night.
Let Him sleep with a sweet, sweet smile.
The morning came, the sun did rise
Up east and warmed the Child below
While the cat slinked away, no more
To be seen but all the cats know:
How that Cat gave all that he had
Enough to keep away the freeze.
So now in heaven there’s a Cat
That never has to scratch for fleas.
As our three cats go out to roam
This Christmas day they take delight.
It was one of them, some Unknown
Company to Jesus that night.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Note From Editor
Many thanks to those who have donated their pieces. It helps Hazard Cat stay alive and purring. Just to diffuse confusion based on some emails I received, I am still paying for submissions I contracted. I offered contributors the option of donating in order to help with the financial side of things until my jobs settle down. I moved to a new house and moving is $$. I run Hazard Cat out of my own pocket and make no money off it. I just darn love doing it. Again, thanks to my contributors.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The House of Half a Hundred Cats by Katherine Tomlinson
THE HOUSE OF HALF A HUNDRED CATS
by Katherine Tomlinson
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” --Jean Cocteau.
The mission began, as they often did, with a call from a concerned neighbor. Something was just not right, the caller said. She was worried about the woman who lived next door to her. The old woman lived by herself and hadn’t been outside for awhile.
Roz, who ran “No Cat Left Behind,” asked the caller why she hadn’t phoned the police. The woman replied apologetically that her neighbor had “a lot of cats” and she didn’t want her neighbor in trouble with Animal Protection if nothing was really wrong. The phrase “a lot of cats” is a subjective one so Roz told me to be ready for anything, including the possibility I’d find the old woman planted face down on her kitchen floor, with ragged bites taken out of her corpse.
It had happened before.
I took one of the newbies on the run with me. Viv was an earnest college kid who was already burning out. Every time we went on a rescue she ended up with one of the cats. I’d given her the standard lecture—You can’t save them all—but she’d just looked at me with tears welling up in her big brown eyes and I’d given up.
I was the same way when I was her age. At one point in my thirties, I’d shared my apartment with five cats, a tuxedo, a ginger tabby, two Siamese and Collette, a tortoise shell Maine Coon who stuck to me like Velcro when I found her as a skinny kitten in a downtown parking garage. She was 22 when she died and I grieved so hard I vowed I’d never have another cat of my own.
The caller had said her neighbor’s name was Louanne Bettis and that she was 71 and recently widowed. Her home was a modest ranch-style place on a corner lot. A free-standing garage was set back and to the side. As we approached the front door I caught a whiff of the ammonia stink emanating from beneath the garage’s roll-up door. That was not a good sign.
Viv knocked and to my surprise, Mrs. Bettis answered. She was short and stocky and looked much older than 71. She was dressed in a threadbare track suit too small for her bulk and bedroom slippers that had been slit to allow her bunion-covered feet to bulge out of them for comfort.
Her eyes were blank as she listened to us explain why we had come. She claimed not to know any of her neighbors and complained that people should just mind their own business.
As we talked at the front door, several cats appeared at her feet, their tails held high which means “Hey, what’s going on?” in cat-speak. Viv reached down to pet a little gray tabby, and I took the opportunity to ask Mrs. Bettis how many cats she had. She suddenly looked defensive.
“A couple,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “I have the room,” she added. She stepped back from the door. “Would you like to meet them?” Viv and I shared a look and entered. I heard Viv stifle a gasp as she got a really good look at the living room. There must have been 20 cats lounging around—on the chairs, the sofa, the bookcases, the television. (It was tuned to Animal Planet, I noticed.)
The house was in utter disrepair, with cracks in the windows, peeling paint on the walls, holes in the floor and a thick blanket of cat hair coating everything. As Mrs. Bettis moved through the house, a fat, floppy Ragdoll came up to her and bumped his head against her hand. She picked him up and he attached himself to her shoulder, nuzzling her neck as if he were nursing. I could hear him purr from five feat away.
With the cat still clinging to her, Mrs. Bettis took us out to the garage. The overhead light came on as she opened the door. Viv gagged from the toxic stench but managed not to vomit.
There were at least 30 cats in the garage and only one litter box I could see—the cat sand long ago turned to cement. Unlike most cats you see in these hoarder scenarios, all the animals looked like they were in great shape. Their coats were groomed and free of mats. I didn’t see any runny eyes or hear any raspy coughs. They were sleek and well-fed and affectionate.
Mrs. Bettis surveyed her cats with pride, seemingly unaffected by the reek. She clearly loved her cats. And that’s the sad thing about hoarders. They’re usually lonely people who think they’re doing a good thing when they adopt so many animals. They don’t realize that what they’re doing isn’t necessarily in the cats’ best interest. They don’t know it’s also against the law. They don’t realize it’s a sign of mental illness.
I went back in the house with Mrs. Bettis while Viv stayed by the truck to get some air and unload the cat carriers we’d brought. I explained that we were going to help her find homes for her cats and she started to cry. “Don’t take my cats away,” she begged. “They’re all I have left.”
I asked her if she had any family living nearby and she said she did but that she didn’t like to bother them because they had their own families. She showed me a framed family photograph that had to have been taken a good 30 years earlier. Her late husband had been a handsome man.
Viv came in carrying a couple of kennel cartons and we convinced Mrs. Bettis to let us take as many as we could accommodate in one trip.
When you’re out on missions like this, you sometimes have to do triage. There are always way too many cats and the pounds are full of potential pets whose days are numbered. Viv stuffed the carriers with the short-haired white and black cats we called “cows” and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we’d have a hard time adopting them out.
She had tears in her eyes as she looked around the room and I knew she was trying to figure out a way to rescue just a couple more. I took pictures of the remaining cats and when we got back to the cattery, I posted a video on YouTube. We got a lot of comments on the order of “Leave the poor woman alone,” but we also got offers from people who wanted to adopt every single one of the cats we’d brought back. Buoyed by our success, I put together a convoy of rescuers and we headed out to Mrs. Bettis’ to pick up the rest of her cats the following week.
We arrived to find the house the center of frenetic activity. There were two news satellite trucks parked at the curb and five patrol cars lined up on the dried-out grass of what had been a front lawn. The house itself was open and empty. Not a sign of a cat anywhere. As I watched, EMTs loaded a body bag into an ambulance. I told everyone to stay put and got out of the truck to find out what was going on. My first thought was that Mrs. Bettis, distraught over the idea of losing her beloved animals, had killed herself.
“It’s not the old lady,” a young cop said before the Detective in charge of the scene walked over and told me to get lost. I walked slowly back to the truck, looking over the small crowd that had gathered. I spotted a thin woman who was watching the goings-on with the avid eyes of a born gossip. She caught my glance and drifted over, eager to spill what she knew to an appreciative audience. I wondered if she had been the woman who’d made the original call as a “concerned neighbor.”
The body, she told me was not Louanne Bettis but her husband. He had gone missing a little over a year ago under what had been called at the time “suspicious circumstances.” The police had come and searched her house but no one had spent too much time in the garage. The police had shown up early that morning after getting a tip to search the garage for the remains of Al Bettis.
They’d arrived to find Louanne and her cats gone and the garage door open. They’d found skeletal remains buried beneath the litter box. Identification was pending, but the skeleton was still wearing his wedding ring and odds were it wasn’t some stranger. Weird thing, added the neighbor, the phone tip had come from Louanne’s own land line, so the police had just missed her by an hour or so.
* * *
They never found Mrs. Bettis, but in Palmdale, a small city northeast of Los Angeles, an animal rescue group noticed there was suddenly a colony of 40 cats foraging in a dumpster behind a Ralph’s supermarket. Overwhelmed, they sent out a bulletin to every cat rescue organization in California . We were full up but when Roz heard the story, she asked me to go to Palmdale and see what was what.
When I drove up to the location in the “No Cat Left Behind” van, I was met by a middle aged man who looked like he’d just mustered out of the Army—brush cut gray hair, rock-hard body. Not your stereotypical cat lover. He was wearing a vintage Lynda Barry t-shirt bearing a cartoon of a poodle with a Mohawk. He told me his name was Bill Clinton, no relation.
He told me he had some volunteers coming in from Lancaster who’d agreed to take 20 of the cats and asked me if we could take ten. I said sure because I knew that’s what Roz would say.
One of the cats came up to me and rubbed against my leg. It was the fat, floppy Ragdoll I’d seen Mrs. Bettis cuddle. When I picked him up, he stuck to me like Velcro and started to purr. Bill raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Sucker,” he said.
I named the cat Churchill. Churchill seems happy enough, but after living in such a large social group, he gets lonely when I’m away at work. I think he needs a brother or sister to keep him company.
I’ve got the room.
by Katherine Tomlinson
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” --Jean Cocteau.
The mission began, as they often did, with a call from a concerned neighbor. Something was just not right, the caller said. She was worried about the woman who lived next door to her. The old woman lived by herself and hadn’t been outside for awhile.
Roz, who ran “No Cat Left Behind,” asked the caller why she hadn’t phoned the police. The woman replied apologetically that her neighbor had “a lot of cats” and she didn’t want her neighbor in trouble with Animal Protection if nothing was really wrong. The phrase “a lot of cats” is a subjective one so Roz told me to be ready for anything, including the possibility I’d find the old woman planted face down on her kitchen floor, with ragged bites taken out of her corpse.
It had happened before.
I took one of the newbies on the run with me. Viv was an earnest college kid who was already burning out. Every time we went on a rescue she ended up with one of the cats. I’d given her the standard lecture—You can’t save them all—but she’d just looked at me with tears welling up in her big brown eyes and I’d given up.
I was the same way when I was her age. At one point in my thirties, I’d shared my apartment with five cats, a tuxedo, a ginger tabby, two Siamese and Collette, a tortoise shell Maine Coon who stuck to me like Velcro when I found her as a skinny kitten in a downtown parking garage. She was 22 when she died and I grieved so hard I vowed I’d never have another cat of my own.
The caller had said her neighbor’s name was Louanne Bettis and that she was 71 and recently widowed. Her home was a modest ranch-style place on a corner lot. A free-standing garage was set back and to the side. As we approached the front door I caught a whiff of the ammonia stink emanating from beneath the garage’s roll-up door. That was not a good sign.
Viv knocked and to my surprise, Mrs. Bettis answered. She was short and stocky and looked much older than 71. She was dressed in a threadbare track suit too small for her bulk and bedroom slippers that had been slit to allow her bunion-covered feet to bulge out of them for comfort.
Her eyes were blank as she listened to us explain why we had come. She claimed not to know any of her neighbors and complained that people should just mind their own business.
As we talked at the front door, several cats appeared at her feet, their tails held high which means “Hey, what’s going on?” in cat-speak. Viv reached down to pet a little gray tabby, and I took the opportunity to ask Mrs. Bettis how many cats she had. She suddenly looked defensive.
“A couple,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “I have the room,” she added. She stepped back from the door. “Would you like to meet them?” Viv and I shared a look and entered. I heard Viv stifle a gasp as she got a really good look at the living room. There must have been 20 cats lounging around—on the chairs, the sofa, the bookcases, the television. (It was tuned to Animal Planet, I noticed.)
The house was in utter disrepair, with cracks in the windows, peeling paint on the walls, holes in the floor and a thick blanket of cat hair coating everything. As Mrs. Bettis moved through the house, a fat, floppy Ragdoll came up to her and bumped his head against her hand. She picked him up and he attached himself to her shoulder, nuzzling her neck as if he were nursing. I could hear him purr from five feat away.
With the cat still clinging to her, Mrs. Bettis took us out to the garage. The overhead light came on as she opened the door. Viv gagged from the toxic stench but managed not to vomit.
There were at least 30 cats in the garage and only one litter box I could see—the cat sand long ago turned to cement. Unlike most cats you see in these hoarder scenarios, all the animals looked like they were in great shape. Their coats were groomed and free of mats. I didn’t see any runny eyes or hear any raspy coughs. They were sleek and well-fed and affectionate.
Mrs. Bettis surveyed her cats with pride, seemingly unaffected by the reek. She clearly loved her cats. And that’s the sad thing about hoarders. They’re usually lonely people who think they’re doing a good thing when they adopt so many animals. They don’t realize that what they’re doing isn’t necessarily in the cats’ best interest. They don’t know it’s also against the law. They don’t realize it’s a sign of mental illness.
I went back in the house with Mrs. Bettis while Viv stayed by the truck to get some air and unload the cat carriers we’d brought. I explained that we were going to help her find homes for her cats and she started to cry. “Don’t take my cats away,” she begged. “They’re all I have left.”
I asked her if she had any family living nearby and she said she did but that she didn’t like to bother them because they had their own families. She showed me a framed family photograph that had to have been taken a good 30 years earlier. Her late husband had been a handsome man.
Viv came in carrying a couple of kennel cartons and we convinced Mrs. Bettis to let us take as many as we could accommodate in one trip.
When you’re out on missions like this, you sometimes have to do triage. There are always way too many cats and the pounds are full of potential pets whose days are numbered. Viv stuffed the carriers with the short-haired white and black cats we called “cows” and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we’d have a hard time adopting them out.
She had tears in her eyes as she looked around the room and I knew she was trying to figure out a way to rescue just a couple more. I took pictures of the remaining cats and when we got back to the cattery, I posted a video on YouTube. We got a lot of comments on the order of “Leave the poor woman alone,” but we also got offers from people who wanted to adopt every single one of the cats we’d brought back. Buoyed by our success, I put together a convoy of rescuers and we headed out to Mrs. Bettis’ to pick up the rest of her cats the following week.
We arrived to find the house the center of frenetic activity. There were two news satellite trucks parked at the curb and five patrol cars lined up on the dried-out grass of what had been a front lawn. The house itself was open and empty. Not a sign of a cat anywhere. As I watched, EMTs loaded a body bag into an ambulance. I told everyone to stay put and got out of the truck to find out what was going on. My first thought was that Mrs. Bettis, distraught over the idea of losing her beloved animals, had killed herself.
“It’s not the old lady,” a young cop said before the Detective in charge of the scene walked over and told me to get lost. I walked slowly back to the truck, looking over the small crowd that had gathered. I spotted a thin woman who was watching the goings-on with the avid eyes of a born gossip. She caught my glance and drifted over, eager to spill what she knew to an appreciative audience. I wondered if she had been the woman who’d made the original call as a “concerned neighbor.”
The body, she told me was not Louanne Bettis but her husband. He had gone missing a little over a year ago under what had been called at the time “suspicious circumstances.” The police had come and searched her house but no one had spent too much time in the garage. The police had shown up early that morning after getting a tip to search the garage for the remains of Al Bettis.
They’d arrived to find Louanne and her cats gone and the garage door open. They’d found skeletal remains buried beneath the litter box. Identification was pending, but the skeleton was still wearing his wedding ring and odds were it wasn’t some stranger. Weird thing, added the neighbor, the phone tip had come from Louanne’s own land line, so the police had just missed her by an hour or so.
They never found Mrs. Bettis, but in Palmdale, a small city northeast of Los Angeles, an animal rescue group noticed there was suddenly a colony of 40 cats foraging in a dumpster behind a Ralph’s supermarket. Overwhelmed, they sent out a bulletin to every cat rescue organization in California . We were full up but when Roz heard the story, she asked me to go to Palmdale and see what was what.
When I drove up to the location in the “No Cat Left Behind” van, I was met by a middle aged man who looked like he’d just mustered out of the Army—brush cut gray hair, rock-hard body. Not your stereotypical cat lover. He was wearing a vintage Lynda Barry t-shirt bearing a cartoon of a poodle with a Mohawk. He told me his name was Bill Clinton, no relation.
He told me he had some volunteers coming in from Lancaster who’d agreed to take 20 of the cats and asked me if we could take ten. I said sure because I knew that’s what Roz would say.
One of the cats came up to me and rubbed against my leg. It was the fat, floppy Ragdoll I’d seen Mrs. Bettis cuddle. When I picked him up, he stuck to me like Velcro and started to purr. Bill raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Sucker,” he said.
I named the cat Churchill. Churchill seems happy enough, but after living in such a large social group, he gets lonely when I’m away at work. I think he needs a brother or sister to keep him company.
I’ve got the room.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Self-Taught Witch by Elizabeth Creith
Self-Taught Witch
by Elizabeth Creith
When my cat went missing,
I worked my strongest finding spell
- all-out, no holds barred.
But spells need limits; who knew?
Pyewackett came home.
Pens, odd socks, rings, keys, rain constantly from my ceilings.
Lost spirits drift in my hall.
I don't mind them - much.
It's the lost hopes weeping that
keep me awake.
by Elizabeth Creith
When my cat went missing,
I worked my strongest finding spell
- all-out, no holds barred.
But spells need limits; who knew?
Pyewackett came home.
Pens, odd socks, rings, keys, rain constantly from my ceilings.
Lost spirits drift in my hall.
I don't mind them - much.
It's the lost hopes weeping that
keep me awake.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Hazard Cat Editor is Moving
I will not have Internet access until the 12th of October. If I get a chance to snag someone else's Internet, I will post more cat goodies. Until then, hang onto that back screen door.
Marisa's Cat by Fay Franklin
Marisa’s Cat
by Fay Franklin
Marisa had a cat with wings. You couldn’t see them, of course, but she knew they were there. Small, iridescent things, sprouted from delicate feline shoulder blades, fluttering and shimmering and glowing with unknown colours, patterned with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
People might think that a cat could not possibly fly with such little wings. Well, look at a bee. How does that work? Bertrand Russell observed that, for an angel to fly, it would have to have a breastbone thirteen feet long. Maybe they do.
And anyway, Bertrand Russell had thought a lot about cats and wasn’t even sure that they existed. So Marisa expected that he would have found a cat with wings just as acceptable as any other.
Marisa had never seen an angel but was content to imagine that impossible breastbone, as well as the rest of the seraphic bone structure that accompanied it.
Marisa’s cat had a prominent breastbone, but by no means, even cat-sized, did it pro-rata to an angelic thirteen feet. Depending, that is, on the size of the angel. Still, she knew that her cat had wings, and that it flew.
She knew because, when she was down at the bottom of the pit, when she could not get out and everything was black, down would swoop her cherubic, impossible cat, and pull her out. He would catch his tiny, falcate-moon claws in the tangles of her hair and lift, lift, lift, and they would rise together, straight through the window bars and out into the light, she and her cat.
Once, he laid her gently into warm, silky water and hazy jasmine-scented steam, and never even got his paws wet. Another time, he settled her into a soft bed, tucked his wings against his bony flanks, and curled up beside her, purring quietly at a job well done. And there was the time that he rested her into an old wicker chair, in a green-shaded place, and then dashed off across the grass, unfurled his wings and floated off into the summer air in the mazy wake of a butterfly.
And when, at last, it was time for Marisa’s cat to start circling up towards the harvest moon, he took Marisa with him, and they ascended together, dizzy and delighted, into the star-strewn autumn sky.
by Fay Franklin
Marisa had a cat with wings. You couldn’t see them, of course, but she knew they were there. Small, iridescent things, sprouted from delicate feline shoulder blades, fluttering and shimmering and glowing with unknown colours, patterned with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
People might think that a cat could not possibly fly with such little wings. Well, look at a bee. How does that work? Bertrand Russell observed that, for an angel to fly, it would have to have a breastbone thirteen feet long. Maybe they do.
And anyway, Bertrand Russell had thought a lot about cats and wasn’t even sure that they existed. So Marisa expected that he would have found a cat with wings just as acceptable as any other.
Marisa had never seen an angel but was content to imagine that impossible breastbone, as well as the rest of the seraphic bone structure that accompanied it.
Marisa’s cat had a prominent breastbone, but by no means, even cat-sized, did it pro-rata to an angelic thirteen feet. Depending, that is, on the size of the angel. Still, she knew that her cat had wings, and that it flew.
She knew because, when she was down at the bottom of the pit, when she could not get out and everything was black, down would swoop her cherubic, impossible cat, and pull her out. He would catch his tiny, falcate-moon claws in the tangles of her hair and lift, lift, lift, and they would rise together, straight through the window bars and out into the light, she and her cat.
Once, he laid her gently into warm, silky water and hazy jasmine-scented steam, and never even got his paws wet. Another time, he settled her into a soft bed, tucked his wings against his bony flanks, and curled up beside her, purring quietly at a job well done. And there was the time that he rested her into an old wicker chair, in a green-shaded place, and then dashed off across the grass, unfurled his wings and floated off into the summer air in the mazy wake of a butterfly.
And when, at last, it was time for Marisa’s cat to start circling up towards the harvest moon, he took Marisa with him, and they ascended together, dizzy and delighted, into the star-strewn autumn sky.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Amazing Fluffy by Anna Sykora
The Amazing Fluffy
By Anna Sykora
“Tara’s performing,” said plump Clara, serving her son more sauerkraut. The fuzzy, pink-nosed tabby peeked down from a kitchen cabinet.
“Whenever we sit here, she shows off,” Hans said, who was eight.
“Me-ow.” Tara eyed the open door. Reaching her front paws to it, she gracefully shifted her weight and drew up her hind paws one at a time, balancing on the inch-wide door.
Hans and his mother stopped eating as the cat paced back and forth, pointing her feet and rounding her back, fluffy tail erect. Tara’s brother and sister--tabbies with spotted noses-- watched from under the table.
“She belongs in the circus,” said Hans. Placing her paws together like a diver, now Tara slid straight down the wooden door. “Bravo!” he cried and clapped. Tara looked up, gave a little skip and twitched her fluffy tail, and then scampered down the stairs to the basement. The other cats ran after her.
“She’s spoiled.” Clara cleaned her thick eye-glasses with a tissue. “We should ignore her tricks while we’re eating.”
“She’s fun.”
Clara got up and fetched more, steaming sausages. “Speaking of circus, would you like to go? Men with a tractor put up a tent on the field behind the supermarket. I saw seven camels grazing there.”
“Do they have lions?” Hans asked with excitement.
“I saw some tigers on a poster.”
#
The next day, a man with a moustache came to the door with circus discount coupons. While Clara took two, Tara--hiding under a table--slipped outside.
When she hesitated, near the hedge (she wasn’t allowed to leave the house), the man grabbed her and stowed her in his bag. He’d sell her fur to some old German lady, to warm her aching knees at night...
Weeding the garden, Clara didn’t notice Tara had disappeared. That evening, she brought Hans to Circus Bellini a few minutes late. After they bought tickets, a frizzy-haired girl opened the tent flap as if performing a magic trick. Inside, the tent looked much larger, rising to a shadowy height.
Seven shaggy brown camels already trotted around the ring in spangled blankets. Their pot-bellied trainer wore a long, black gown, a scarlet turban and golden slippers. He shouted at the camels and they halted and hung their heads right over the barrier. Children shrieked with joy, and their parents frowned in the hot, sour stench of the animals’ breath.
“Let’s sit in those chairs right next to the ring,” cried Hans.
“Soon as this act is over,” said Clara.
The young ringmaster, who wore a red cap with a tassel, joked how the smartest people in Pappenheim had gone to the movies instead... Hans and his mom sat through a juggler who broke several plates, and a tightrope walker who didn’t do much. Then a skinny clown chased a poodle around the ring, swatting at him with a butterfly net. The dog darted between his legs or jumped right out of reach. Finally he pulled down the clown’s pants--revealing polka-dot boxer shorts.
Meanwhile Tara chewed her way through the thief’s bag hung up in his trailer. Nobody clapped when she dropped to the floor. Soon she grew bored, rolling a grape in circles--so she ate it. When the trailer’s door opened, out she skipped; she ran through the grass towards the loud music.
The man with the moustache scrambled after her. “Catch me that cat!” he yelled at acrobats waiting outside the tent. Tara scampered around the field, among performers, animals and props. When she caught the smell of huddled cats she wiggled between metal bars.
Seven tigers, drowsing in a pile, opened their bloodshot eyes. One got up and started stalking her, so she scooted back out of the cage. The man with the moustache grabbed at her fluffy tail and missed, but then a poodle in a rhinestone collar yapped at her.
Tara climbed a ladder leaned against the tent. When the man poked her with a stick, off she leaped--right onto the neck of a horse trotting into the ring. Riding backwards, she clung to his mane as he broke stride and plunged. The pot-bellied trainer, Mr. Bellini (now wearing a fur cap and high boots with his black gown) cracked his whip and then pointed at the tabby cat.
At this, the ringmaster announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, making her debut in our show--the Amazing Fluffy!” People applauded.
“I never saw a cat in a circus before,” said Hans.
“Looks like an accident,” Clara scoffed, “like the rest of this fleabag circus.” But she was smiling wide as Hans.
As the horses trotted in patterns and the lighting changed from blue to red to yellow, Tara worked her way down her horse’s neck, turned around and rode like a hero.
As she passed within a yard of her owners, “That looks like Tara!” Hans burst out.
“It can’t be,” said near-sighted Clara.
When her horse left the ring, Tara jumped off and ran away. “Find me that cat!” shouted Mr. Bellini, who owned the circus and trained horses and camels, was married to the woman who trained the dogs, and the father of the girl who hung by her hair. “Find her, and I’ll make an act with her to write circus history!”
During the intermission, Hans and his mom strolled around the field. The circus folk were hooking metal gates together to build the tiger cage. Tara groomed herself and took a nap behind the acrobats’ teeter-totter. Shaggy camels grazed in their paddock as the sun set in a golden blaze.
Hans and his mother stopped in front of the tigers, who prowled their trailer as if they’d lost something.
“Maybe they know they’re next,” he said.
“It’s time to go back for the rest of the show.”
Now the tigers came running into the cage through a passage of small ones fitted together. Their pink-cheeked trainer, who looked l7, wore shiny black overalls and yelled at them in Polish. A middle-aged blonde stood watching closely, just outside the bars.
“I bet that’s his mother,” Clara said. “She sells the tickets too. Everybody does everything; they just keep changing costumes.”
The young trainer got five tigers to sit up on their stands, rewarding each with a treat of meat. Two bad cats roared when they didn’t get any.
Suddenly Tara, chased by the poodle, scampered into the ring. Children shrieked as she slipped through the bars of the cage. Kicking over their stands, two tigers ran after her, and the others bounded after them. The trainer held up a hula hoop and Tara jumped through it, followed by the tigers. The audience cheered and applauded wildly.
“Ladies and Gentleman, the amazing Fluffy!” cried the ringmaster, now wearing a too-large tuxedo. “And you’ll never see another act like this if you live 100 years. So remember the Circus Bellini, and tell your friends and neighbors about us. We may be small, we may be poor, but we train the most wonderful animals.”
When Tara raced past on top of the barrier Hans cried: “Mom, that’s really Tara! I recognize her pink nose.” The tabby fled the tent.
“Tara should be safe at home,” said Clara uneasily.
Two tigers were wrestling in their cage, a third rolled her stand around like a toy, and a fourth roared at the trainer while the blonde woman poked her in the back with a whip. The clown attached the passage to the cage, and pushing and prodding, the circus folk helped drive the flustered tigers back into their trailer. Then, to the sound of exciting music, they hurried to break down the big cage. (The music ran out before they finished.)
Hans fidgeted while Mr. Bellini made a big white horse trot in place. “Mom, I tell you it’s Tara. Please believe me, mom.”
“This afternoon a circus man brought us the coupons...”
“Maybe he stole her, mom!”
Now, the Great Rocco (they recognized the juggler who broke plates) rolled the crocodile out in a trunk, let him out to crawl for about two yards, and then packed him back inside...
Finally, in a swirl of dry ice fog and to the sound of dreamy music, Flying Bettina stepped into the tent, trailing a white scarf 30 feet long. Tenderly Mr. Bellini helped his daughter fasten her hair to the cable that would tug her aloft. As the music swelled and Bettina soared, Tara chased the scarf across the ring.
“Tara!” shouted Hans. The audience roared as she pounced, sank her teeth into the flimsy scarf and flew upwards, clamped on like a bulldog. High in the air Bettina frowned.
“Please, don’t drop our cat!” Clara yelled, waving. People laughed: was this part of the act?
The ringmaster hurried into the ring, waving the clown’s butterfly net. Bettina dangled Tara on the scarf about 5 yards above the net. The clown improvised a drum roll on a metal garbage can...
“Hans, wait right here!” Clara climbed over the barrier as Bettina dropped the scarf and the cat into the net. The ringmaster carried Tara away, Clara at his heels.
At the close of Bettina’s sailings and flailings--while Hans wondered what had happened to his mom and the cat--the entire troupe of 13 performers came prancing back out in their shiniest costumes, to take their bows.
Last of all strode the ringmaster, holding the Amazing Fluffy tight, who wore the poodle’s rhinestone collar. He held her up to the north, south, east and west, to the evening’s best applause.
#
“If people could train cats,” Clara said, “they’d be in every circus.” She was sitting with Hans at their kitchen table, eating limp sauerkraut with onions and apples. “The problem is cats only do what they want.”
From upstairs came an amazing crash. “Where’s Tara?” cried Hans. They heard a loud thumping and stood up as their wicker laundry hamper came bumping down the stairs, all by itself. When it got to the bottom, the lid flew open--and out jumped Tara.
“Tadaaa!” cried Hans and applauded. This time Clara joined in:
“Guess she just wanted a toboggan ride. No harm done: a few more dents in our wooden stairs.”
Tara twitched her fluffy tail, gave a little skip and scampered down the stairs to the basement. Her brother and sister followed her. What would she do next?
By Anna Sykora
“Tara’s performing,” said plump Clara, serving her son more sauerkraut. The fuzzy, pink-nosed tabby peeked down from a kitchen cabinet.
“Whenever we sit here, she shows off,” Hans said, who was eight.
“Me-ow.” Tara eyed the open door. Reaching her front paws to it, she gracefully shifted her weight and drew up her hind paws one at a time, balancing on the inch-wide door.
Hans and his mother stopped eating as the cat paced back and forth, pointing her feet and rounding her back, fluffy tail erect. Tara’s brother and sister--tabbies with spotted noses-- watched from under the table.
“She belongs in the circus,” said Hans. Placing her paws together like a diver, now Tara slid straight down the wooden door. “Bravo!” he cried and clapped. Tara looked up, gave a little skip and twitched her fluffy tail, and then scampered down the stairs to the basement. The other cats ran after her.
“She’s spoiled.” Clara cleaned her thick eye-glasses with a tissue. “We should ignore her tricks while we’re eating.”
“She’s fun.”
Clara got up and fetched more, steaming sausages. “Speaking of circus, would you like to go? Men with a tractor put up a tent on the field behind the supermarket. I saw seven camels grazing there.”
“Do they have lions?” Hans asked with excitement.
“I saw some tigers on a poster.”
#
The next day, a man with a moustache came to the door with circus discount coupons. While Clara took two, Tara--hiding under a table--slipped outside.
When she hesitated, near the hedge (she wasn’t allowed to leave the house), the man grabbed her and stowed her in his bag. He’d sell her fur to some old German lady, to warm her aching knees at night...
Weeding the garden, Clara didn’t notice Tara had disappeared. That evening, she brought Hans to Circus Bellini a few minutes late. After they bought tickets, a frizzy-haired girl opened the tent flap as if performing a magic trick. Inside, the tent looked much larger, rising to a shadowy height.
Seven shaggy brown camels already trotted around the ring in spangled blankets. Their pot-bellied trainer wore a long, black gown, a scarlet turban and golden slippers. He shouted at the camels and they halted and hung their heads right over the barrier. Children shrieked with joy, and their parents frowned in the hot, sour stench of the animals’ breath.
“Let’s sit in those chairs right next to the ring,” cried Hans.
“Soon as this act is over,” said Clara.
The young ringmaster, who wore a red cap with a tassel, joked how the smartest people in Pappenheim had gone to the movies instead... Hans and his mom sat through a juggler who broke several plates, and a tightrope walker who didn’t do much. Then a skinny clown chased a poodle around the ring, swatting at him with a butterfly net. The dog darted between his legs or jumped right out of reach. Finally he pulled down the clown’s pants--revealing polka-dot boxer shorts.
Meanwhile Tara chewed her way through the thief’s bag hung up in his trailer. Nobody clapped when she dropped to the floor. Soon she grew bored, rolling a grape in circles--so she ate it. When the trailer’s door opened, out she skipped; she ran through the grass towards the loud music.
The man with the moustache scrambled after her. “Catch me that cat!” he yelled at acrobats waiting outside the tent. Tara scampered around the field, among performers, animals and props. When she caught the smell of huddled cats she wiggled between metal bars.
Seven tigers, drowsing in a pile, opened their bloodshot eyes. One got up and started stalking her, so she scooted back out of the cage. The man with the moustache grabbed at her fluffy tail and missed, but then a poodle in a rhinestone collar yapped at her.
Tara climbed a ladder leaned against the tent. When the man poked her with a stick, off she leaped--right onto the neck of a horse trotting into the ring. Riding backwards, she clung to his mane as he broke stride and plunged. The pot-bellied trainer, Mr. Bellini (now wearing a fur cap and high boots with his black gown) cracked his whip and then pointed at the tabby cat.
At this, the ringmaster announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, making her debut in our show--the Amazing Fluffy!” People applauded.
“I never saw a cat in a circus before,” said Hans.
“Looks like an accident,” Clara scoffed, “like the rest of this fleabag circus.” But she was smiling wide as Hans.
As the horses trotted in patterns and the lighting changed from blue to red to yellow, Tara worked her way down her horse’s neck, turned around and rode like a hero.
As she passed within a yard of her owners, “That looks like Tara!” Hans burst out.
“It can’t be,” said near-sighted Clara.
When her horse left the ring, Tara jumped off and ran away. “Find me that cat!” shouted Mr. Bellini, who owned the circus and trained horses and camels, was married to the woman who trained the dogs, and the father of the girl who hung by her hair. “Find her, and I’ll make an act with her to write circus history!”
During the intermission, Hans and his mom strolled around the field. The circus folk were hooking metal gates together to build the tiger cage. Tara groomed herself and took a nap behind the acrobats’ teeter-totter. Shaggy camels grazed in their paddock as the sun set in a golden blaze.
Hans and his mother stopped in front of the tigers, who prowled their trailer as if they’d lost something.
“Maybe they know they’re next,” he said.
“It’s time to go back for the rest of the show.”
Now the tigers came running into the cage through a passage of small ones fitted together. Their pink-cheeked trainer, who looked l7, wore shiny black overalls and yelled at them in Polish. A middle-aged blonde stood watching closely, just outside the bars.
“I bet that’s his mother,” Clara said. “She sells the tickets too. Everybody does everything; they just keep changing costumes.”
The young trainer got five tigers to sit up on their stands, rewarding each with a treat of meat. Two bad cats roared when they didn’t get any.
Suddenly Tara, chased by the poodle, scampered into the ring. Children shrieked as she slipped through the bars of the cage. Kicking over their stands, two tigers ran after her, and the others bounded after them. The trainer held up a hula hoop and Tara jumped through it, followed by the tigers. The audience cheered and applauded wildly.
“Ladies and Gentleman, the amazing Fluffy!” cried the ringmaster, now wearing a too-large tuxedo. “And you’ll never see another act like this if you live 100 years. So remember the Circus Bellini, and tell your friends and neighbors about us. We may be small, we may be poor, but we train the most wonderful animals.”
When Tara raced past on top of the barrier Hans cried: “Mom, that’s really Tara! I recognize her pink nose.” The tabby fled the tent.
“Tara should be safe at home,” said Clara uneasily.
Two tigers were wrestling in their cage, a third rolled her stand around like a toy, and a fourth roared at the trainer while the blonde woman poked her in the back with a whip. The clown attached the passage to the cage, and pushing and prodding, the circus folk helped drive the flustered tigers back into their trailer. Then, to the sound of exciting music, they hurried to break down the big cage. (The music ran out before they finished.)
Hans fidgeted while Mr. Bellini made a big white horse trot in place. “Mom, I tell you it’s Tara. Please believe me, mom.”
“This afternoon a circus man brought us the coupons...”
“Maybe he stole her, mom!”
Now, the Great Rocco (they recognized the juggler who broke plates) rolled the crocodile out in a trunk, let him out to crawl for about two yards, and then packed him back inside...
Finally, in a swirl of dry ice fog and to the sound of dreamy music, Flying Bettina stepped into the tent, trailing a white scarf 30 feet long. Tenderly Mr. Bellini helped his daughter fasten her hair to the cable that would tug her aloft. As the music swelled and Bettina soared, Tara chased the scarf across the ring.
“Tara!” shouted Hans. The audience roared as she pounced, sank her teeth into the flimsy scarf and flew upwards, clamped on like a bulldog. High in the air Bettina frowned.
“Please, don’t drop our cat!” Clara yelled, waving. People laughed: was this part of the act?
The ringmaster hurried into the ring, waving the clown’s butterfly net. Bettina dangled Tara on the scarf about 5 yards above the net. The clown improvised a drum roll on a metal garbage can...
“Hans, wait right here!” Clara climbed over the barrier as Bettina dropped the scarf and the cat into the net. The ringmaster carried Tara away, Clara at his heels.
At the close of Bettina’s sailings and flailings--while Hans wondered what had happened to his mom and the cat--the entire troupe of 13 performers came prancing back out in their shiniest costumes, to take their bows.
Last of all strode the ringmaster, holding the Amazing Fluffy tight, who wore the poodle’s rhinestone collar. He held her up to the north, south, east and west, to the evening’s best applause.
#
“If people could train cats,” Clara said, “they’d be in every circus.” She was sitting with Hans at their kitchen table, eating limp sauerkraut with onions and apples. “The problem is cats only do what they want.”
From upstairs came an amazing crash. “Where’s Tara?” cried Hans. They heard a loud thumping and stood up as their wicker laundry hamper came bumping down the stairs, all by itself. When it got to the bottom, the lid flew open--and out jumped Tara.
“Tadaaa!” cried Hans and applauded. This time Clara joined in:
“Guess she just wanted a toboggan ride. No harm done: a few more dents in our wooden stairs.”
Tara twitched her fluffy tail, gave a little skip and scampered down the stairs to the basement. Her brother and sister followed her. What would she do next?
Posts
