Cat and Her Early Morning Surprise

Cat in the Window — ©2025 Patrick T. Power.

When my former wife, Penny, and I were still rather early in our relationship—I'm guessing sometime in 1980—we went out to her mother's adoptive parents' home on Woodbury Road in Laingsburg, Michigan to get a cat. Actually, I don't recall now if we went out there specifically to get a cat, but while we were there, we made the decision to bring one home to her place. The cat that lived on the Criders' farm had recently given birth to six or seven kittens, and with little deliberation, we brought home the runt of the litter. We had a tough time deciding upon a name, though. I recall that I thought Tuck was worthy of consideration. Ultimately, we settled on Cat, a name that later morphed into Big Fat Cat or BFC.

Like a lot of cats, Cat wasn't much into being held. She would lie on our laps if we had an afgan draped over us, but didn't generally care to show much affection for us. When she was hungry, especially in the wee hours of the morning, she would chew on whatever she knew would wake us up, whether books or record album covers. Somehow, she knew it was annoying to the point to get action. And it was more than just the sound of paper tearing, it was clack-clack sound of her gums (or whatever) coming together and then separating time anfter time after time.

One very early morning years later, after we'd married and moved to Lansing from Toledo, where we'd lived for about two years (and where Cat's decision to pee on a carpet cost us a rental deposit), the sound of Cat gnawing on something woke us. The sound was coming from beneath and behind Penny's drawing table which was on the opposite side of the room from the bed. We discussed what it was she was chewing at when all of a sudden, she let out a "yaoow" amongst a flurry of paper, work that Penny had tucked between the table and the wall.

We quickly surmised that she'd chewed through the electrical wire leading from the wall to the desk lamp and got shocked. After a few seconds of silence, and breaking the tension of the moment, Penny asked, "Do you think she's dead?" At which I think we both burst out laughing.

I got out of bed and went into the living room to check on her. Cat was panting heavily but she otherwise seemed fine.

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