A Funny Story

It’s interesting how your mind can work sometimes. How randomly some memory pops into your head. Something you haven’t thought about for months or years.

That happened to me just the other day while I was on the couch hoping my stomach would stop doing gymnastic routines. It is a rather funny story.

There’s some set up involved (the whole story isn’t all that long but some back ground information is necessary). Across the street from the house I grew up in lived an older woman. I’ll call her Mrs. P. She loved animals. She took in all sorts of them. She had a cocker spaniel named Sandy and a succession of cats called kit. I can’t tell you the number of times she would come onto her front stoop and call out Kit . . . Kit.

Well the last Kit was one SOB of a cat. Probably the meanest cat I’ve come across (except for the last cat my parents had but that’s another story). It was found underneath the porch of a next door neighbors. The cat hunted just about everything in the area. I once even saw it try and take on a raccoon which must have been twice the cat’s size. Mrs. P had bits up and down her arms where Kit had bitten her. Once the damn cat even bit my mother. When told this Mrs. P implied it was my mother’s fault. I believe my father came up with the name we always referred to this cat and that name was Preddy as in predator.

So that’s the set up now here’s the story.

I was home over summer during college. A friend was over. We were sitting on the front porch steps. Mrs. P came out of their house. She was holding Preddy. Preddy was not the cat he once was. He was much reduced in size. I said to my friend wow I thought Preddy was dead. Mrs. P put Preddy on the porch step. Preddy swayed back and forth. Mrs. P picked Preddy up and placed him on the next step down. Again Preddy swayed back and forth. Without missing a beat my friend turned to me and said he is dead. We had a great long laugh at that one.

Again, I’m not exactly sure why I thought of that as I was lying in agony on the couch. Then again maybe my mind was trying to help me relieve the agony. But it did bring a smile to my face.