RSS Feed
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Great Cat Hunt
I usually tell it to friends I trust to appreciate the irony of it, but who would never think ill of me for the telling. It gives me no delight or comfort. I tell you now only because recently I wrote about how feral cats are at least as big a threat to the endangered beach mouse as are those developers who want to develop the dunes. And since even environmentalists agree that it will be hard for the mice to survive without something being done about the cats, I offer this story as an instructive example of how, where cats are concerned, the best-laid plans can go astray. It is the story of the Great Cat Hunt. An elderly widow lady fed feral cats - wild as a buck they were. They lived under her house and in a falling-down shed behind. Every afternoon she would come out on the back steps and put down pans of leftovers and such. Then she would go inside and the cats would come. Cats of many colors. Cats of many sizes. Bred and inbred for generations. And when the food was gone, they would disappear. They were dirty, scabby, vermin covered survivors. And as summer approached, their smell became, well, smelly. Her daughter, who lived in town with her family, worried about disease and that the odor carried with it the effluvium of ancient illnesses that would strike her mother. She wanted the cats gone. But she knew her mother would never consent to their eradication. So she went to her husband and, being the loving partner he was, he agreed to enlist some friends and together they would do the job. A word about the men involved. These were members of the "greatest generation." They had survived the Depression, war, postwar, and at mid-century (this occurred around 1950) they were finding their respective places as solid citizens in small-town society. Yet they were still country boys, born to the rough outdoors of blood sports, which had given them skills that they kept sharp with occasional hunting forays that usually consisted of some shooting and a lot of drinking. The husband called them up. Told them the situation. They were eager to help. Here was the plan. Late on the appointed afternoon the daughter would take her mother to town to "trade" - the term the mother still used for the commerce she carried on with local merchants. While the women were gone, the men would do what needed to be done, with as little disruption to the neighborhood as possible. The closest neighbor lived off to the side and across a vacant lot. Also a widow, she shared the house with her middle-aged son and her cat, a large white Persian named "Fluffy." Fluffy was a house cat, mostly, but occasionally it would get out and have to be chased down - which was no big problem since Fluffy was old and fat and always headed for the feral cat pans to see if anything was left. So the cat-hunters gathered - alcoholed, armed and dangerous. Drawing upon their military experience, they laid out a field of fire from which they were sure nothing could escape, passed the nearly empty bottle one more time and took their posts. Then one of them rattled the cat pans and the cats, thinking it was supper time, trotted out, tails high. Witnesses say it was like World War III. Chaos ensued as the men who had defeated Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo cut down on their new enemy. Guns blazed, cats screeched and ran, and in a moment it was over. The army came out to count the dead. "One ..." They looked around for the others. But there were no others. Just one. One big, fat, white Persian. Sheepishly, the soldiers slunk away - all but the husband, who stayed long enough to bury the fallen. Then he left. I do not know how he explained it to his wife. I only know that I was told of how the neighbor came out at sunset and called "Fluffy, Fluffy, kitty-kitty-kitty." And how days passed and the summons grew fainter until, one evening, she walked out on the back porch, looked around, and went back inside without a word. So I leave you with this. You who wish to save the beach mice from the cats, remember Fluffy. And be warned. Harvey H. Jackson is a professor and chairman of the history department at Jacksonville State University. He grew up in Grove Hill and his hometown is a source for many of his columns.
E-mail hime at: hjackson@jsucc.jsu.edu
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
