Blog Challenge: A Funny Thing Happened to Me

Since there's no obvious statistical analysis to be done for this LongAndShortReviews blog prompt, I'm posting this post on Wednesday. It can count for Thursday. It's this week's Petfinder post.

A funny thing about me, in the sense of "not funny-ha-ha but funny-peculiar," is that although people reading my posts usually chortle, I feel paralyzed by the prompt "A funny thing happened to me."

What was I laughing about? Is it still considered polite to laugh about that? To mention it? The peevish young people of the Illiberal Left seem to think body secretions are very funny, but would they laugh at celiac symptoms? Would I want them to? Would I think they deserved to laugh at celiac symptoms if they did? Well, my reader base are people who don't laugh at celiac symptoms are funny, anyway, so that's not what you have to read about today, though those who are interested can scroll back to the doggerel poem about the glyphosate-saturated pears. 

I tend to laugh at myself. The situations into which I get, being a writer who's interested in everything. I took a construction job once. We were standing about, waiting, and I ducked into the building and washed my hair. When I came out the damp November air was chilly enough that I wanted to keep moving, and the Bulldozer Man had finished the day's work, so we were scraping mud off the backhoe. I reached in under the tread to dislodge a clod from a wheel, thought about another job where I'd rushed into an office at the last minute and been sent home because my hair looked "dirty," and laughed out loud. A man who was having trouble at home thought I was laughing at him. "Oh no," I said. "I was thinking that some city friends should only see me now." "Well, know your city friends," he screamed, in the biblical sense, and someone said, "You wish." Well, it was funny when it happened, because the great big grumpy man started to laugh too.  I don't think it looks very funny written down, but it would've been a real coffee snort if the coffee hadn't been finished hours ago.

Children are another rich source of comedy, but it takes a long time for me to feel that it's right to share and laugh at the things children say. A man who'd probably be a grandfather by now, if still alive, was told at some tender age that he was a grandson and his sister was a granddaughter. He apparently didn't know the word "daughter," or maybe he did. Anyway he solemnly told his parents, after a day at the grandparents' house, "I'm the grandson, and Sis is the grand-doggie." I've heard younger relatives make similar amusing mistakes. They're still alive so those are their stories, to tell or not tell.

Animals? Do we like to laugh at animals? What about the mix-ups humans get into when we adopt anmals?

The summer I rented a room in a house divided into six bachelor apartments, it was decided that the house needed a cat. Down to the D.C. Animal Shelter went Conscientious Joe and I. A big warehouse full of caged cats were all meowing, "Pick me! No, me! No, me! Get me out of here!" I liked a quiet, dignified little Tuxie, but a big white and grey female kitten grabbed Joe's sleeve and yowled. When he made eye contact, the kitten purred. "I am taking this kitten," Joe announced.

She had obviously been a pet and took it for granted that she'd be one again. She found her litter box and used it. She purred. She cuddled, She ate everything in sight. Many cats like the seeds of cucurbits, and pumpkin seeds are great treats for cats (and cat lovers) because they kill intestinal worms with an overdose of nutrients. (When Cat Sanctuary cats look skinny or mopey, I share a box of pepitas with them. Usually they recover their bounce in minutes and their lost weight in a few days.) That kitten devoured whole cucumbers if she could get at one. And zucchini. And bananas. And peanut buttter sandwiches. And a good bit of a raw carrot. She had to be locked in the bathroom when anyone was cooking because, otherwise, she'd get into the kitchen, swarm up the cook's legs, jump onto the counter and eat the food. 

The house was a typical Takoma Park household. Deaf Jim was a nice guy except that he liked to watch videos with the sound turned all the way up. He was especially interested in lip-reading the words in explicit movies. Dopey John had just been evicted; Jack and Jill had yet to move in. Hot Lips June had an adorable little boy she used to send outside to play when men came to visit her and bring them money. Jagdish was the one who had never had a pet or liked cats, so he was given the honor of naming the cat. "What's an Indian name for a kitten?"

"Piso," he said. "Pisi for a female. It doesn't sound nice in English. Bilo is a small animal. Call her Bili."

Privately I called her a Daughter of Belial after she swarmed up my one intact pair of tights and 1980s silk Chanel-style suit. "Probably cost me a job!" I was not yet a cat person. June was a dog person, and her dog didn't like Bili at all. It turned out that Joe was the only one in the house who ever liked Bili. Nobody wanted to be cruel, but one day a woman walked past leading a funny-looking kitten on a string. June and Joe had not been getting along too well. She said they'd never been a couple. He said he'd thought they were. June was outside, gardening, when the woman walked past. Later she said, "I wasn't looking, but Bili must have followed that woman...I wouldn't know her, but I'd know that kitten of hers. It must be some fancy breed. Abyssinian?"

Nobody else missed Bili, but Joe did. We advertised a reward. There were no takers. An advertisement for a lost Abyssinian-mix kitten was posted, too. 

"I think Bili is stuck in the tree," Joe said. 

Sure enough, a white animal was in the big oak tree behind the house, about sixty feet up, meowing in the loud aggressive way Bili did. The voice was different, deeper and harsher, I said, but Joe reckoned that would be from meowing all night. 

"Someone ought to go up and rescue her," Joe said. "She must be too scared to climb down."

"Call the fire truck," Jagdish suggested. June did. The Fire Chief, who taught all of us about buying smoke detectors and not letting ourselves be photographed and other basic safety precautions,refused to send out a ladder to rescue a cat.

"Maybe if it was a person," suggested Jim.

"Can a person climb that high? said Joe. "She's out on the end of a branch that's hardly wider than she is."

"Maybe if a person climbed part of the way and got stuck?" said Jagdish.

"Why is everyone looking at me?" I said.

"You're the smallest. You can climb highest," said June. "Come on, I'll give you a boost."

How I know the cat was sixty feet up was that the tree could support me for a good fifty feet above the ground, and the cat was another ten or fifteen feet above me, when two fire fighters raised the forty-foot ladder. Then, of course, seeing strangers approach, the cat climbed higher. She was not Bili. She was a calico cat nobody had seen before. 

"Can you climb down?" a fire fighter yelled up to me.

"I can't climb up far enough to reach the cat," I said. 

"This is as far as the ladder goes. Forty feet. If the cat's going to live, it'll remember how to climb down when the crowd's out of the wyay. We were called out to rescue you. We can't leave until you're out of the tree."

So I climbed down, and Joe muttered that if I'd been more patient when Bili made the mess on my sleeping bag she would have come to me, and I growled "It's not Bili," and Jagdish said, "I bet that cat's hungry, anyway. Put a piece of fish on the rake and wave it about. See if that helps her remember how to climb down the tree."

I went in and washed the bark and dirt off while the men stood on one another's shoulders. Joe waved the garden rake with the fish fillet on it. Jagdish aimed the garden hose up into the tree. When the cat made its way down far enough, June turned on the water, and the startled calico cat skittered down onto across the rake and down the stack of young men. I missed this action.

When I came out everyone else was having a nice Saturday morning picnic. The cat was still at the far corner of the yard, polishing the rake. She was  not yet a house pet, but soon would be.

She learned to answer to the name of Patchy. She was a polite, peace-loving animal, much nicer than Bili in my opinion. 

But Joe still missed Bili, and a week or two later he told me he had trapped a black cat in the shed, and wanted me to call the woman who'd lost the Abyssinian-mix kitten.

   

"That cat's neither an Abyssinain mix nor a kitten," I objected.

"So? It's been a few weeks. That kitten's probably grown. All you have to do is go to her house--that old lady probably won't be scared of you--and see if she's got Bili in there, and bring Bili out."

All of us went to the woman's house. The others waited in Jim's minivan while I knocked on the door.

"You've lost a black kitten, I believe? We've found....    "

The woman cut me off. "It wouldn't be my Kiko because I found Kiko. Here he is!" 

Kiko greeted me enthusiastically. Possibly he could smell that I'd petted Patchy before we left. Then Bili, obviously not exacly willing to play with Kiko but wanting to see what he was playing with, came into the front room.

"That's the cat I've been looking for!" I said. 

"Take her, then," It went exactly as planned. "I only brought her in because she followed me home, and I'd lost Kiko."

Bili knew me, all right, She leaped up into my arms. I was the way back to Joe, her chosen humans. Back at home she remembered where things were, and went diretly to a loaf of bread someone had left on the counter in its wrapper, dragged it into the bathroom, clawed off the wrapper, and ate most of it. Nothing ever seemed to disagree with Bili, although sometimes the contents of the litter box were unusually soft and abundant.

By that time Jack and Jill had moved in and I'd found another place to move to, but Bili stayed with Joe for years. I never heard that anyone else liked her. I suspected that was part of her attraction. She helped keep other people out of his space.

Here are three cute shelter cats...

1. A Gray and White Kitten Like Bili: Milos & Otto from New York 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/milos-59547971/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

They're described as a pair of brothers, not quite a year old, who bounce and pounce and play-fight, then snuggle together for naps. Otto  is said to have a big appetite.

2. A Calico Cat Like Patchy: Button from Merrifield (Virginia) 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/button-homer-56669553/va/merrifield/4paws-rescue-team-va260/

The page includes a picture of her snuggling with another calico cat, mentions a sibling called Homer, but doesn't describe the sibling witn whom she will be adopted. The shelter policy is to place kittens in pairrs. 

Patchy was an older cat whose worn ears and patchy, mostly white coat suggested she'd been homeless for months. This kitten, born in May 2022, doesn't look much like her except for having a similar coat pattern--mostly white with some black and orange on head and back.

3. A Black Cat Like Kiko: Anandi and Ravi from Fayetteville 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/anandi-and-ravi-60311965/ga/fayetteville/fayette-humane-society-ga83/

I've never seen another cat who looked much like Kiko. Here are two especially photogenic adoptable black kittens, anyway. Anandi, the female, has the black nose. Ravi, the male, has the pink nose. They also were born last spring, and are described as cute bouncy-pouncy kittens. "Eat, play, sleep, repeat." 

None of these kittens has much of a story. Apparently they're all pretty normal, adorable kittens whose original humans just made the mistake of not having their mothers spayed in time. This post is by way of a nag. If you don't want kittens, have it done now.