Lucky Is (Hopefully) At Home In Cascilla
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DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
A lot of folks have asked about Lucky after last week’s column. If you missed it, Lucky, a feral cat was rescued in a city-wide effort after he stuck his head in a drainage pipe on a garbage dumpster. The story was funny, but the telling of the tale by Tommy White was even funnier. As one reader commented, it sounded like a Jerry Clower tale.
I talked to Tommy Tuesday to see how Lucky was faring, and he reported the cat’s new home is in Cascilla with Gail Caldwell’s daughter. They turned him loose and reported he has stayed fairly close, but they haven’t been able to put their hands on him yet.
As Tommy explained, the cat may want to wait a while before turning in his application to stay in Cascilla, especially considering Terry Champion comes from that area. Joking aside, it was a great rescue effort.
Cats were a familiar topic for decades in my father’s columns published in The Panolian newspaper in Batesville. He faithfully wrote about the damncats, as he called them, during my childhood and beyond. We had a six-toed black cat named Mama Cat, another calico named Nicks and others whose names I can’t recall.
There was always plenty of drama with the damncats around the house and it always ended up in the newspaper – much to my chagrin. I thought it was too much personal information as a teenager, but my opinion was in the minority. He wrote about our cat bringing a live snake inside on a dark night, an ongoing feud with a neighborhood tomcat, and countless other tales.
I also held a grudge against cats for years after a German Shepherd dog followed me home on my bicycle and stayed for a while, long enough to be my favorite dog. Domino, as he was called, wasn’t fond of cats and the population decreased in our neighborhood. If memory serves me right, Dad cranked his car one morning and there was some extra engine noise, one less damncat. Domino was the primary culprit, he probably had a role in the cat hiding under the hood, and it was time for him to be rehomed. That was the last time I saw him and I blamed the (remaining) cats.
The story goes that Domino went to life in the country but maintained his old habits. The new owner declared Domino would have to start catching the mice in the absence of the now-dwindling cat population around her house or he would be looking for another new home.
But I’m like Tommy White, the passing years have softened my heart. Tommy explained that he was more fond of dogs until recent years when a cat took up residence at his house. His wife, Linda, was visiting family in Texas when the new cat adopted him. When she returned home she met “Tex.”
Apparently Tex is not overly tolerate of other cats, and that was the reason Tommy explained that he and Linda could not bring Lucky to their house.
For me, my cat tolerance is evident after a stray cat also adopted me. This cat is one of the ugliest, laziest cats I have ever encountered. She never leaves the driveway, never catches a mouse and demands to be fed every time I walk out the back door. She spends her hours sitting in front of the door watching every movement inside.
“Sounds like she wants to be an inside damncat,” my Dad surmised.
The still unnamed cat probably won’t ever make it to that status, but she never misses a meal. And admittedly, I take exception when a roaming neighborhood dog threatens her.
