It Probably Feels like 109 Years For Him

About a week ago a strange white cat began hanging around our house. He seemed like a pleasant enough animal at first although he had kind of an inbred look to him. I know this because I have personal experience with inbred animals, and no, I'm not talking about my family. When I was a little kid we had a dog named Beasley who was procured by my uncle from a cardboard box outside a grocery store. Because in my family we are all about planning, forethought, and research.

Anyway, Beasley was a very sweet puppy, but as he matured he became a bit, er, flighty. When I was about two or three years old he started to display some aggression toward me. He never touched me, but he'd growl from time to time for no particular reason. There I'd be in the backyard in my plastic pool, splashing and rolling around in my hot little toddler bikini, and Beasley would be standing in the corner of the yard, glaring at me with his tiny mongrel terrier teeth bared.

Needless to say my parents were less than pleased by this, so they carted Beasley off to the vet to see if there was any sort of physical problem that might explain his sudden change in temperament. The vet examined him, asked some questions, and informed my parents that Beasley was probably inbred. I have no idea how he knew this. Perhaps that was his stock answer. Hair falling out? Inbred. Tail crooked? Inbred. Doesn't like Alpo? Eh, inbred. Of course, given what we knew about Beasley's box-in-front-of-a-grocery-store provenance he could very well have been descended from a long line of brothers and sisters.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), my parents found Beasley a new home with no other animals or small children and he lived out the rest of his psychopathic days in peace, happiness, and harmony. But I still remember The Look he'd get before he lost his shit, and this new neighborhood cat definitely had that look. Inbred? HE MIGHT BE!

The first day the crazy white cat started hanging around I thought he was a bit forward, since he traipsed around our deck and backyard like he owned the place. I found that a bit presumptuous, but then I noticed that he had a petunia stuck to his butt, and how can you not love that? Apparently he'd been rolling around in the plants between our house and our neighbors' and as a result he had a blossom festooned on his bottom. It's pretty hard to be all big, bad, and fierce when you've got a flower dangling from your ass. So I gently shooed him away lest he upset the two feline princesses we have living in our house, and he contentedly trotted off.

Fast forward a couple days to Saturday. I was standing outside on the deck with Gloria who was lounging around in the early morning sun while Maggie was still inside the house crunching on her breakfast. I noticed the crazy white cat out of the corner of my eye but didn't pay too much attention. Not until he stormed the deck and started attacking Gloria. I managed to grab a nearby broom and raced over to him before he was able to inflict any injuries. I started shrieking things about fuckers having to go through me if they wanted to get to her, waving the broom around, and tripping over my flip flops as I chased the psychotic animal off the deck and into the backyard. I stood guard there for a few minutes, broom in hand, making sure the white menace didn't come back up on the deck. About this time our next door neighbor came outside to observe the situation. Either that or he wanted to get a close up of my awesome striped seersucker pajamas, which is a definite possibility. They are pretty sweet.

He asked if one of our cats had had a run-in with the white cat, and I told him what had just happened. He said that he'd posted notices on the neighborhood listserv in an attempt to find a home for the cat, and that he and his family had been feeding the stray. They'd even let him inside their house with the intention of keeping him permanently, but he'd violently attacked their existing housecat and no amount of acclimation seemed to be working. The neighbor had given up and made an appointment with Animal Control to take the cat in.

Later that afternoon after The Mister got home I told him that the white cat had been back and up on the deck again. Blah blah. My husband reacted with mild interest until I told him that Gloria had been jumped. Oh, the fury! I might as well have run up to him and kicked him in the shins.

Later that evening as we were leaving the house (with the cats safely inside) I saw the white cat coming up the steps of the deck. I pointed it out to The Mister, who proceeded to grab a croquet mallet and set off in search of The Fucker Who Tried To Hurt Gloria. (Yes, we have a croquet set, and yes, we play croquet. I've made no bones about the fact that we are tremendous dorks. I don't know why you're surprised so quit looking at me like that.)

I started to shout something about just scaring the white cat and not hurting it, but it was like standing in the infield of the goddamn Indy 500. It was dizzying. I saw a white streak go around one side of the house and emerge on the other side a few seconds later only to be followed by my husband swinging a croquet mallet furiously over his head. My man can move, y'all.

I'd like to say here that it was precisely nine years ago today that my husband and I walked into the courthouse in Columbiana, Alabama to get married. We had no rings, no witnesses, no nothing -- aside from the can of Country Time lemonade that I brought in with me because I was so damn thirsty. We got married in the A/V room of the courthouse by a Judge Judy lookalike who was named -- wait for it -- Judge Judy.

So it's nine years later and every day of my life I'm still reminded of how lucky I got. There are any number of reasons why I did better in the spouse department than I deserve, but when I see my husband running around the house with a croquet mallet helicoptering over his head, hissing and shouting profanities at a mentally unbalanced cat, I know somebody or something is looking out for me. Fate totally did me a solid.