The Taming of The Cat
by Alan J. Levine
by Alan J. Levine
Diesel hoodwinked us. We went to the Atlanta Humane Society’s
kennels to look for a kitten. Diesel’s story was that he was found
living in the engine of an abandoned truck in some junkyard. By
the time we found him in the kennel, he was already around nine
months old. Being a bit older, he wasn’t quite as cute as the really
little kittens, and thus far no suckers had come along and adopted
him. He had no tail. That would probably be to his benefit in the
not too distant future. He was tiger striped.
My wife’s heart strings were pulled by a tiny black kitten mewing
loudly for its mom. This one had a tail. It was sweet and
affectionate. Diesel was too. He seemed very comfortable with us.
He seemed to like us. So my wife wanted the little black kitten, but
she was outvoted by my son who wanted Diesel. This was
supposed to be his cat. I was a third party neutral. A cat’s a cat.
What’s the difference? But I am a sucker for a good story, and
Diesel already had a name - which was cool. So Diesel would be
ours.
Diesel was hell on paws. He was sweet the first two hours we had
him home. Then he spoiled like a half-eaten tuna and Limburger
cheese sandwich, dropped and forgotten about in a car, which
finds its way under the driver’s seat, with the windows rolled all
the way up, parked all day long in a mall lot on an August day so
hot the pavement sticks to your shoes. If you stroked his back, he
turned around and bit your hand. He looked miserable being held
while he was force fed some loving. He waited behind corners to
attack the dogs as they came rambling through the house. He
waited under beds to attack feet. Now, granted, some of this may
seem like kittenish playfulness. But with Diesel, it was personal.
Diesel scratched my little boy numerous times, and he was the
reason Diesel had a home!
Even our dog Misha, the world’s dumbest and sweetest lab mix,
didn’t like Diesel. This was the same Misha who, when we found
a stray kitten, took it upon herself to nurse the furry little waif.
Misha would sit on the stray kitten, nearly suffocating it. The stray
kitten would struggle for a half-hour until finally it managed to
squeeze out from underneath Misha’s large behind, and pad its
way across the kitchen enjoying its freedom. Misha would calmly
walk across the kitchen, gently pick the stray kitten up in her jaws,
and return to her nest to once again sit on what had become hers.
If our other dog Gromit - who also loved cats, but in a culinary
sort of way - showed an interest in the stray kitten, Misha’s hair
would raise and she’d growl at Gromit with true canine menace.
Misha loved her stray kitten.
But Misha didn’t like Diesel. Diesel was in fact very interested in
Misha’s tail and would attack it incessantly and unmercifully.
Misha would growl and even bark at Diesel. Diesel would run off
and hide around the corner, but would come right back for more.
In this manner, poor Misha would be chased from one spot to
another around the house as she searched in vain for a place to
rest in peace. But so long as Diesel was harassing Misha, she was
leaving the other family members alone. And as Misha and I had
been having too many debates about where in the backyard she
was to relieve herself, I was more than happy to leave Misha as a
sacrificial lamb to the cat.
Diesel had many attitude and behavioral problems that are not
worth getting into. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was
when Diesel peed on our son’s red back pack, which normally he
just slept on. Why did Diesel do this? We’re not sure. But it may
be linked to the bird feeders that my wife put out in the front and
back yards. Diesel was transfixed by the feathered freeloaders who
came to eat at the seed buffet, and by the squirrels who gobbled
up the stuff that the picky birds spit out on the ground. Diesel
would sit at the window, his yellow eyes glued to the activity
outside, and make a strange sort of chattering noise. This noise
was produced by Diesel’s lower jaw vibrating at a rapid speed like
he was a mechanical child’s toy that had been wound up and
magically never slowed down. I guess his little furry feline frame
became overloaded with excitement, and his trembling jaw was the
circuit breaker which kept him from exploding. And I guess Diesel’
s displeasure at being stuck inside the house manifested itself by
his urinating on the back pack. We had driven all the way to our
son’s school one morning, wondering what in the world smelled so
bad, before we realized his back pack was soaked. So, though we
had not planned on Diesel becoming an outside cat, he thus earned
his ticket out the door. He was allowed visits inside for good
behavior, which with him were few and far between. But as spring
time in Atlanta came, there was no reason for a bad cat to wreak
havoc upon our persons and belongings when there were bugs,
birds and squirrels to harangue. Oh, we put a bell on him so that
he’d never actually catch anything that wasn’t hard of hearing.
The house was more peaceful with Diesel outside. True, Diesel
earned his name because he had been found in an abandoned truck
engine. But that had been some time ago. And we weren’t even
sure it was a true story. Besides, it wasn’t cold outside, so the
attraction of a warm engine to sleep in should have been a non-
issue. But one morning when my wife was readying to go to work
and drop our son off at school, and I had slept late thanks to a
break in my schedule, luck ran out. My wife came back in the
house looking nice in her suit and all made up while I sat unshaven
at the dining room table in boxers. She told me the station wagon’s
power steering wasn’t working. Great. So she takes the truck and
leaves me to deal with the station wagon. I throw on some jeans to
go out and pop the hood.
Power steering. Okay. I’m not a mechanic. The first thing I do is
look at the power steering fluid reservoir. Looks a little low. So I
add some fluid. Maybe that’ll do the trick. I’m about to shut the
hood when something out of the corner of my eye catches my
attention. Over near the coolant reservoir, I notice a huge wad of
fur sticking by power of static electricity to a piece of metal. Huh?!
What’s up with that? I walk over to the other side of the car and
pick up the chunk of hair. Sure looks like it could be Diesel fur.
But I saw him this morning run into the house as I opened the
door to let the dogs out. He seemed fine.
Oh, crap!
The magnitude of the problem becomes clear as I scan the engine
and begin to notice patches of fur all over the front of the engine
around the radiator and belts. The power steering belt is off its
pulley. I look at the belt and tug on it. Oh, crap! It’s wedged in
between its pulley and the cover of the timing belt! Oh, crap! It’s
wedged in really good! How in the world did a little cat manage to
do that? I can’t pull a belt off its pulley when it’s at its proper
tension. How in the world is a cat going to do that? And the cat
looked fine! I had just seen him this morning going into the house
before my wife had left for work. Did he do his damage getting
into the engine, or getting out? I can’t imagine how even the
angriest semi-domesticated cat of Diesel’s limited strength could do
such a thing without the assistance of power tools or divine
intervention. It just didn’t make sense.
Sure enough, I locate Diesel. Lucky for him, I had some time to
cool off, because if the engine hadn’t killed him, I was ready to.
Sure enough, Diesel doesn’t look so good upon closer inspection.
He’s missing patches of fur at various places all over his body
from his ear to his rear. One rather large patch is shorn right down
to the skin. You dumb, lucky animal - how did you manage to do
what you did? I pick him up. He meows in protest, probably due
to great discomfort, but he doesn’t bite or scratch. In fact, he
seems rather happy to be held and purrs loudly after a moment.
Thanks to my dad’s expertise and patience, the power steering belt
is cut out and replaced. I will no doubt continue to find fur in the
engine for years to come. But my wife added one small detail to
the story that she didn’t tell me that morning. Turns out, when she
first tried to start the car, it made a really strange noise. She tried
again, and as she backed the car around the bend of our driveway,
the steering became increasingly difficult and then near impossible.
She stopped the car, and saw the cat run out from underneath the
car towards the house. So Diesel had been in there while the
engine was running! And lived to meow about it.
Diesel is a much sweeter cat these days. He seems to appreciate
his human family and the dogs more than before. Now, Diesel
either uses his litter box or takes his business outside. I guess
animals, like humans, value what they’ve got much more when
they come perilously close to losing it all. And of course Diesel’s
fur will grow back. But his tail won’t. And it’s probably a good
thing that he had no tail and never will. Because though Diesel is a
kinder, gentler cat, it remains to be seen if he’s a wiser cat. Oh, he’
s plenty terrified of the station wagon. The sound of its engine
sends him running in the opposite direction. But we don’t know if
Diesel generalizes what happened in the car engine to what could
happen just as readily in the truck engine. This question is now a
source of much debate between my wife and I. What does go on
in the mind of a cat? Of course we’ll never know, but we both
hope Diesel has learned to fear the truck just as much as he fears
the car. Because after all, he’s a pretty good cat. He’s even curled
up at my feet right now as I type. Yep, Diesel’s a pretty good cat.
He just needed a little work.
The Taming of The Cat, Copyright © 2008 Alan J. Levine
kennels to look for a kitten. Diesel’s story was that he was found
living in the engine of an abandoned truck in some junkyard. By
the time we found him in the kennel, he was already around nine
months old. Being a bit older, he wasn’t quite as cute as the really
little kittens, and thus far no suckers had come along and adopted
him. He had no tail. That would probably be to his benefit in the
not too distant future. He was tiger striped.
My wife’s heart strings were pulled by a tiny black kitten mewing
loudly for its mom. This one had a tail. It was sweet and
affectionate. Diesel was too. He seemed very comfortable with us.
He seemed to like us. So my wife wanted the little black kitten, but
she was outvoted by my son who wanted Diesel. This was
supposed to be his cat. I was a third party neutral. A cat’s a cat.
What’s the difference? But I am a sucker for a good story, and
Diesel already had a name - which was cool. So Diesel would be
ours.
Diesel was hell on paws. He was sweet the first two hours we had
him home. Then he spoiled like a half-eaten tuna and Limburger
cheese sandwich, dropped and forgotten about in a car, which
finds its way under the driver’s seat, with the windows rolled all
the way up, parked all day long in a mall lot on an August day so
hot the pavement sticks to your shoes. If you stroked his back, he
turned around and bit your hand. He looked miserable being held
while he was force fed some loving. He waited behind corners to
attack the dogs as they came rambling through the house. He
waited under beds to attack feet. Now, granted, some of this may
seem like kittenish playfulness. But with Diesel, it was personal.
Diesel scratched my little boy numerous times, and he was the
reason Diesel had a home!
Even our dog Misha, the world’s dumbest and sweetest lab mix,
didn’t like Diesel. This was the same Misha who, when we found
a stray kitten, took it upon herself to nurse the furry little waif.
Misha would sit on the stray kitten, nearly suffocating it. The stray
kitten would struggle for a half-hour until finally it managed to
squeeze out from underneath Misha’s large behind, and pad its
way across the kitchen enjoying its freedom. Misha would calmly
walk across the kitchen, gently pick the stray kitten up in her jaws,
and return to her nest to once again sit on what had become hers.
If our other dog Gromit - who also loved cats, but in a culinary
sort of way - showed an interest in the stray kitten, Misha’s hair
would raise and she’d growl at Gromit with true canine menace.
Misha loved her stray kitten.
But Misha didn’t like Diesel. Diesel was in fact very interested in
Misha’s tail and would attack it incessantly and unmercifully.
Misha would growl and even bark at Diesel. Diesel would run off
and hide around the corner, but would come right back for more.
In this manner, poor Misha would be chased from one spot to
another around the house as she searched in vain for a place to
rest in peace. But so long as Diesel was harassing Misha, she was
leaving the other family members alone. And as Misha and I had
been having too many debates about where in the backyard she
was to relieve herself, I was more than happy to leave Misha as a
sacrificial lamb to the cat.
Diesel had many attitude and behavioral problems that are not
worth getting into. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was
when Diesel peed on our son’s red back pack, which normally he
just slept on. Why did Diesel do this? We’re not sure. But it may
be linked to the bird feeders that my wife put out in the front and
back yards. Diesel was transfixed by the feathered freeloaders who
came to eat at the seed buffet, and by the squirrels who gobbled
up the stuff that the picky birds spit out on the ground. Diesel
would sit at the window, his yellow eyes glued to the activity
outside, and make a strange sort of chattering noise. This noise
was produced by Diesel’s lower jaw vibrating at a rapid speed like
he was a mechanical child’s toy that had been wound up and
magically never slowed down. I guess his little furry feline frame
became overloaded with excitement, and his trembling jaw was the
circuit breaker which kept him from exploding. And I guess Diesel’
s displeasure at being stuck inside the house manifested itself by
his urinating on the back pack. We had driven all the way to our
son’s school one morning, wondering what in the world smelled so
bad, before we realized his back pack was soaked. So, though we
had not planned on Diesel becoming an outside cat, he thus earned
his ticket out the door. He was allowed visits inside for good
behavior, which with him were few and far between. But as spring
time in Atlanta came, there was no reason for a bad cat to wreak
havoc upon our persons and belongings when there were bugs,
birds and squirrels to harangue. Oh, we put a bell on him so that
he’d never actually catch anything that wasn’t hard of hearing.
The house was more peaceful with Diesel outside. True, Diesel
earned his name because he had been found in an abandoned truck
engine. But that had been some time ago. And we weren’t even
sure it was a true story. Besides, it wasn’t cold outside, so the
attraction of a warm engine to sleep in should have been a non-
issue. But one morning when my wife was readying to go to work
and drop our son off at school, and I had slept late thanks to a
break in my schedule, luck ran out. My wife came back in the
house looking nice in her suit and all made up while I sat unshaven
at the dining room table in boxers. She told me the station wagon’s
power steering wasn’t working. Great. So she takes the truck and
leaves me to deal with the station wagon. I throw on some jeans to
go out and pop the hood.
Power steering. Okay. I’m not a mechanic. The first thing I do is
look at the power steering fluid reservoir. Looks a little low. So I
add some fluid. Maybe that’ll do the trick. I’m about to shut the
hood when something out of the corner of my eye catches my
attention. Over near the coolant reservoir, I notice a huge wad of
fur sticking by power of static electricity to a piece of metal. Huh?!
What’s up with that? I walk over to the other side of the car and
pick up the chunk of hair. Sure looks like it could be Diesel fur.
But I saw him this morning run into the house as I opened the
door to let the dogs out. He seemed fine.
Oh, crap!
The magnitude of the problem becomes clear as I scan the engine
and begin to notice patches of fur all over the front of the engine
around the radiator and belts. The power steering belt is off its
pulley. I look at the belt and tug on it. Oh, crap! It’s wedged in
between its pulley and the cover of the timing belt! Oh, crap! It’s
wedged in really good! How in the world did a little cat manage to
do that? I can’t pull a belt off its pulley when it’s at its proper
tension. How in the world is a cat going to do that? And the cat
looked fine! I had just seen him this morning going into the house
before my wife had left for work. Did he do his damage getting
into the engine, or getting out? I can’t imagine how even the
angriest semi-domesticated cat of Diesel’s limited strength could do
such a thing without the assistance of power tools or divine
intervention. It just didn’t make sense.
Sure enough, I locate Diesel. Lucky for him, I had some time to
cool off, because if the engine hadn’t killed him, I was ready to.
Sure enough, Diesel doesn’t look so good upon closer inspection.
He’s missing patches of fur at various places all over his body
from his ear to his rear. One rather large patch is shorn right down
to the skin. You dumb, lucky animal - how did you manage to do
what you did? I pick him up. He meows in protest, probably due
to great discomfort, but he doesn’t bite or scratch. In fact, he
seems rather happy to be held and purrs loudly after a moment.
Thanks to my dad’s expertise and patience, the power steering belt
is cut out and replaced. I will no doubt continue to find fur in the
engine for years to come. But my wife added one small detail to
the story that she didn’t tell me that morning. Turns out, when she
first tried to start the car, it made a really strange noise. She tried
again, and as she backed the car around the bend of our driveway,
the steering became increasingly difficult and then near impossible.
She stopped the car, and saw the cat run out from underneath the
car towards the house. So Diesel had been in there while the
engine was running! And lived to meow about it.
Diesel is a much sweeter cat these days. He seems to appreciate
his human family and the dogs more than before. Now, Diesel
either uses his litter box or takes his business outside. I guess
animals, like humans, value what they’ve got much more when
they come perilously close to losing it all. And of course Diesel’s
fur will grow back. But his tail won’t. And it’s probably a good
thing that he had no tail and never will. Because though Diesel is a
kinder, gentler cat, it remains to be seen if he’s a wiser cat. Oh, he’
s plenty terrified of the station wagon. The sound of its engine
sends him running in the opposite direction. But we don’t know if
Diesel generalizes what happened in the car engine to what could
happen just as readily in the truck engine. This question is now a
source of much debate between my wife and I. What does go on
in the mind of a cat? Of course we’ll never know, but we both
hope Diesel has learned to fear the truck just as much as he fears
the car. Because after all, he’s a pretty good cat. He’s even curled
up at my feet right now as I type. Yep, Diesel’s a pretty good cat.
He just needed a little work.
The Taming of The Cat, Copyright © 2008 Alan J. Levine
Another Story from
an Untamed Yard:
Aliens on the
Porch!!!
And be sure to check
out ancient cockroach!
an Untamed Yard:
Aliens on the
Porch!!!
And be sure to check
out ancient cockroach!
This story was
brought to you by
KITTY
KRUNCHIES!
Tuna Steak Taste On
A Trailer Park
Budget!
brought to you by
KITTY
KRUNCHIES!
Tuna Steak Taste On
A Trailer Park
Budget!
Kitty Krunchies - Because All Cats
Deserve A Little Mmmm-Mmmm!
Deserve A Little Mmmm-Mmmm!
Copyright © 2008 Alan J. Levine
Support the CCCC:
Center for Cat and
Carburetor Coupling
by making a donation!
Center for Cat and
Carburetor Coupling
by making a donation!
