Damn Cat

Dear Boo and Bubble,

A few years after we moved to 3 Lakecrest, we inherited a cat named Jinx, a solid black tom with piercing green eyes and a penchant for the dramatic presentation of dead prey on the stoop at the back door just about every morning.  Jinx originally belonged to Rick Booream, who, in high school, moved in next to us at University Ridge Apartments (my very first home) along with his single mom Dorothy and older sister Gail.

Rick was a true genius with an IQ so high he often intimidated his teachers and other adults.  But, to the children of University Ridge he served as somewhat of a Pied Piper with his vivid imagination and ability to compose and tell stories.  We would sit on the front steps of his apartment by the hour listening to him read from “Gail and the Ghost,” a comics series that he wrote and illustrated. 

The details of how Jinx came to be ours elude me in their specifics.  All I remember is that after we left University Ridge for 3 Lakecrest, Mamaw Mary and Granddaddy Schaefer stayed in close touch with Rick.  When his mother died from cancer, he turned to them for guidance and support, virtually becoming a member of our family. 

Upon Rick’s graduation from high school, he enrolled in the University of Virginia, one of the finest institutions of higher learning the USA boasts.  Apparently, though, it was too fine to accept cats.  Desperate to find Jinx a home, he asked Mamaw and Granddaddy if we would take him.  Granddaddy acquiesced on the one condition that Jinx be an “outside” cat.

And so it began……every morning for the next few years started with “Damn Cat!”

You see, Granddaddy had a daily routine.  Upon waking, he would grab his bathrobe, slip on some Minnetonka suede moccasins, and pad down the hall past the kitchen through the living room to the front door.  The latest edition of The Greenville News awaited him outside somewhere in the yard, always anybody’s guess due to the inconsistent arm of the paperboy.  Granddaddy opened the door, walked down the steps and searched until he found the paper.  Upon retrieving it, he retraced his steps back into the house and to the kitchen where Mamaw Mary already had a cup of steaming coffee placed on the table for him.

That first morning with Jinx as our cat, Granddaddy came to the “open the door” part of his routine, at which point Jinx scampered into the house, and once inside, there he stayed.

“Damn Cat!”

From that point on, you could call it “Groundhog Day.”  Jinx’s one goal in life was to get into the house.  He waited patiently and at sometime around 7:30 every morning, the front door opened, he ran through it – “Damn Cat!”

I finally asked Granddaddy why he felt compelled to curse the cat.

“Well, the thing that makes me so mad is, that cat is smarter than I am.  Every morning I totally forget that he’s there and every morning he totally remembers that I’m going to open the door.  It just galls me, that’s all.  Damn Cat.”

The scene played out over and over until Granddaddy opened the door one morning and Jinx was not there.  When we learned that he had come out on the short end of a cat fight the night before, it brought a great sadness to 3 Lakecrest.  Nobody cried any harder than Granddaddy. 

Damn Cat.