One advantage of growing older is that you are able to begin having adult conversations and interactions with your children. I find it funny now to share stories of my own youth and childhood with my two daughters that my Wife wouldn’t let me share with them when they were children.
I have a long list of such stories that detail my wild and in some cases misspent youth.
Bottle Rocket Fights, Jumping off the Theodosia Bridge, Playing Chicken by shooting an arrow from a Bow straight up in the air and seeing who would chicken out and run diving for cover first, Rock and BB-Gun Fights, Busting the Ice in the Lake in February to go swimming and Kidnapping a neighbors house cat and holding it for ransom are just a few of such stories that I wasn’t allowed to tell my children…..and now, After having been blessed by my two daughters with two Grandsons, I have been commanded under threat of death not to relate these stories to the boys.
Well, since I am not allowed to tell my stories I got to thinking that I can’t be the only person out there with interesting stories from their youth…and hoping to share some of mine and wanting to hear some of yours…..here’s one of mine.
Ms. G’s cat…
My Step Brother Mike lived with my Grandparents on my Mothers side of the family…I made it a point to spend as much time as I could during every summer break from school with him… cuts and bruises were the norm during these summer visits which often ended up with our being in trouble for one thing or the other…
One summer in particular Mike and I seemed to be a little more restless than usual…Grandpa helped us earn a little spending money mowing yards, picking up rocks and weeding gardens for a couple of the older neighbors he did chores for. Ms. G was an older widow woman who lived just a short walk down to the end of a dirt road from Grandpa’s home. She had this Yellow Female Cat that she loved which always seemed to be running away.
One morning Ms. G stopped by and offered Grandpa a ride to the Grocery store with her since he didn’t own or drive a car. After a couple hours they returned and Grandpa called me and Mike over and told us to take a look around and see if we could find Ms. G’s cat as it had ran off again. We took off immediately and searched Ms. G’s 40 acre lot, after having no luck we began searching Grandpa’s property as well. We lucked out and found the cat in Grandma’s chicken coop.
Mike being the oldest crawled in first and got a hold on her and that’s when the fun began…that old cat didn’t want to leave and began yowling and putting up one hell of a fight. After a minute or so she came rocketing out of the coop and I dove on top of her. If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn I had accidently gotten a hold on the wrong end of a Bobcat. She scratched me, bit me and took off again towards the milk barn when I finally let go of her. A few seconds later I saw that Mike hadn’t faired any better than I as he was clawed and scratched up as bad as was I.
We walked back to the house feeling somewhat defeated but mostly angry, and licking our battle wounds, all the while plotting our next move on how to catch that stupid cat. My first suggestion involved my Remington Nylon 66 .22 and a shallow unmarked grave to be dug on the backside of the property lines…but Mike came up with a better idea.
Grandpa had just a few days before helped us construct what he called a Rabbit Gum…For those who don’t speak Hillbilly, a Rabbit Gum is a wooden box trap that Grandpa used to use when he was younger to trap rabbits alive in. He would then take them back home and put them in a Rabbit Hutch to fatten them up for meat over the winter months.
After Grandma cleaned up our wounds and applied a liberal dose of Bactine Antiseptic we put our plan into action. We took the four traps we had constructed and set them up around the barn and chicken coop baiting them with Tender Vittles that we took from Grandma’s pantry.
It took us a few days as we seemed to catch everything but that cat. Finally one morning we checked our trap line and sure enough there she was in a trap that was nearest to the chicken coop. Now you would think that we would be anxious to get rid of that cat and would take her straight back to Ms. G….But no….
We took her and put her in one of Grandpa’s Rabbit hutches and kept her there for a good week. No we weren’t trying to torture her and we kept her fed real well and even spent a good deal of time there petting her and taking care of her.
Ms. G told Grandma one day that she was sure her cat was gone and that if someone could find her that she would give $20’s as a reward to get her back. That was what we were waiting for…the next morning bright and early Mike and I were standing on Ms. G’s porch, cat in hand and knocking on the door.
We collected our reward and off we went to spend our money…..This would have been the end of the story but for one thing. After spending the money….Mike and I began to feel bad. Not bad for keeping that damn cat prisoner for the better part of 10 days mind you…but bad that we had taken money from this sweet old lady.
We considered going to Grandpa and coming clean on what we did…but that would surely have resulted in a trip to the woodshed if not the immediate death of the two of us. Once again we plotted and came up with a plan that would make us feel better.
A couple of days later we showed up on Ms. G’s doorstep as it was time to mow her grass…When we were finished Ms. G came out money in hand to pay us but we refused to take her money and told her that she had given us too much money the last time we mowed for her. We went back the next day and spent half a day watering and weeding her garden again refusing to take any money from her.
When it was all said and done over the rest of the summer we never took any monney from Ms. G for any of the chores we helped her with so that damn cat ended up costing us probably $40 that we would have collected from chores…but we came to terms with ourselves and felt better about taking the $20 reward and did so without anyone else finding us out.
There is a little bit of irony in this story…you remember that cat that Mike and I came to hate? Well up until that cat did finally die… (From Natural Causes I will add.) Every time afterwards when that stupid cat ran away from Ms. G’s house…It would make a beeline for Grandma and Grandpa’s, where Ms. G would come and pick it up and take it back home. So I guess it wasn’t too traumatized from it’s time in captivity in the Rabbit Hutches.
Okay, so maybe my Wife and Daughters do have a point…and I will have to wait until the Grandsons are older before telling them some of my stories.
P.S. Amazingly after this incident...Grandma began getting more egg's from her chickens and her baby chicks quite coming up missing....I think that old cat was sucking eggs and killing chick's.
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