The Cat Incident.

**For those of you that read my blog back when it was Just Call Me Seven, you may have read this before… Sorry!**

This is a story that I wrote in my Writing 121 class at RCC quite some time ago. My dad loved it so much that he sent it off to the local newspaper, and they published it. Unfortunately, he neglected to tell me, and I’ve never actually seen it in print, other than the final draft my teacher handed back to me. I have edited this one just slightly (just a couple words here and there to make it flow better, since my writing style has matured a bit), but for the most part it is exactly the same as the article in the paper. Enjoy.

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A feline wail floated up from the backyard. “What was that?” my mom asked her three suspiciously guilty-looking children. “Nothing,” we declared adamantly, “We didn’t hear anything…”

We hated our next-door neighbor’s cat. The darn thing always got stuck in our walnut tree, and being the “saints” that we were my younger brother Daniel would climb up the tree everyday to try to retrieve it. Now, this was just a scared little kitten that didn’t know any better, but we were convinced that this cat was the spawn of Satan himself. “That cat is so mean!” we would whisper vengefully amongst ourselves. “We’re just trying to help it and it hurts us! What an ungrateful little beast!” We firmly believed that this cat climbed up the tree on purpose, just because it knew Daniel was going to climb up there and rescue it. We knew it did this just to sink its teeth into some poor benevolent child’s flesh. No one could have made us think otherwise. This cat was definitely sent from the Pit.

One day, after repeated acts of bravery on my brother’s part, climbing and being wounded and climbing again, we had had enough. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” we coaxed, with murder in our eyes. We borrowed a line from Swiss Family Robinson that always seemed to work for Francis: “We’re not going to hurt you, little fella!”

Surprisingly, we actually got our grimy little hands on the poor cat after running about in mad circles for quite some time. Obviously, this cat had no clue what was soon to be transpiring, or it would have run one heck of a whole lot faster.

I have to pause now in telling the story to describe the “gallows.” We lived in Rogue River at the time on a one-acre lot. Our property had trees on it. Lots of trees. So many trees. We had pine trees. We had trees with walnuts, apples, pears and cherries. There were three cherry trees, two of which were joined at the bottom, standing about five feet apart. Someone (I can’t remember if it was the former owner or if we hoisted it up there ourselves) had laid a long pole in the forks of each of the trees, forming a nice little arena for a hanging.

This was the perfect spot to commit the crime. We stole a piece of thick rope out of our other next-door neighbor’s backyard, which was also home to various truck parts, beer bottles, shingles, etc. Once we found a hypodermic needle there. Needless to say, we were NOT allowed over there. I really couldn’t tell you why we chose this piece of rope over all the other, thinner pieces, because this rope was SO hard to tie, especially since we were so young and “coordination-impaired.” Maybe we thought that the thicker rope would better bear the weight of the neighbors’ tiny kitten, or maybe there weren’t any smaller pieces. But that was what we had to work with, in any case. Daniel was struggling to keep his grip on the cat while Joseph and I tried to tie the rope onto the pole. “Hurry up, you guys!!” he shouted frantically, between moans of pain. “Can’t you go any faster?” “We’re hurrying as fast as we can! This stupid rope won’t stay tied!”

Finally, we got the rope securely fastened to the tree. Now came the hard part. How were we supposed to hang this cat? None of us had ever done anything like this before–keep in mind that I, being the oldest, was only eight. We tried tying the rope around the cat’s tail, but it just slipped off and another frantic chase ensued.

Next we tried the neck, but by this time the cat was just beginning to realize his imminent doom and had redoubled his efforts to escape.

So we finally settled on the waist. Another struggle with the rope: “Hurry up, you guys!” This from Daniel, again the unlucky bearer of the feline burden. “Can’t you go any faster?” “No, the stupid rope is too thick! It won’t stay tied!”

Just as we got the rope tied tightly around the cat’s waist, Mom called, “We’re going to the store! Come get in the car!” So off we raced to the car. As we were about to get in, Mom asked, “Do you kids hear that?” “No,” we lied, with faces as sweet as angels, “we don’t hear anything…”