"Cats Flattened While You Wait..."

Few animals stir and evoke emotion like cats. There is no middle ground regarding this creature. Folks either love them, or despise them. For the record, this writer has been acutely allergic to cat hair since he was a boy. Therefore, his cat worldview is, "feline challenged."

Cat lovers are passionate in their calling. Cat haters even more so. Bumper stickers abound that declare a cat hater's conviction. Such as, "I Love Cats...They taste just like chicken," or, "The Only Good Cat is a Dead Cat." A personal favorite is, "Cats Flattened While You Wait."

Animals seem to possess an innate fear of humans. The Lord says in His Book that man would have "dominion" over the animal kingdom. Sometimes, it seems that cats are the lone animals that would stand in God's court of law and protest that ruling.

The late Johnny Carson observed that the universal disdain for cats was tied to their obstinate, uppity, independent air. Carson said that if he was going to spend money to purchase an animal, feed it, house it, give it basic medical care, and see to its well-being, whenever he summoned the animal, he fully expected it to come.

Carson asserted, "Cats do NOT come when you call them...They look at you as if you'd lost your mind...Like you were crazy for assuming that you were in control, or something."

For some reason, cats are commonly associated with women. If two women get into a tussle it is called a, “cat fight.” If a woman is hard to get along with she is labeled as, “catty.” If a woman is happy, she is said to, "purr."

Conversely, the image of, “a boy and his cat,” just doesn’t ring true somehow.

Boys of all ages find great joy and fulfillment in playful, cat torture. They tie pieces of paper onto cat's paws just to watch them try to walk. They tie cans onto their tails just to see them run away in fear of the noise. And, young boys have been known to hold cats upside down so as to intentionally drop them - in order to test the theory that cats always land on their feet.

A group of Riverside boys was playing "church" on a lazy, Sunday afternoon. They rounded up a #2 washtub, filled it with water, and went looking for baptismal candidates. The first victim they found was one of the neighborhood cats. It did not take them long, however, to discover a fundamental truth of life: cats do NOT like water. When the baptismal service was over, there had been lots of scratching, clawing, hissing, and bloodletting, but no cat was successfully, "...born of the water and the Spirit."

Sometimes, boys never grow up.

Cruelty to any domesticated animal, cat or otherwise, is a disgrace. There is no excuse for any human to abuse or inflict intentional pain and suffering on an innocent, domesticated animal. Animals in the wild that pose mortal danger to humans are a different story. They should be eliminated by a hunter's rifle. Sometimes, animals in the "wild" that pose no threat to humans are the ones who endure the greatest mistreatment

This writer’s father worked for the Southern Railroad for over eleven years. For many years, Inman Railroad Yards was the central staging ground for all freight train activity in and out of Atlanta. Inman was a huge facility covering many acres, ranging to more than two miles in diameter in some places.

The main “call office” at Inman Yards was situated in the middle of this giant rail facility. It was connected to the different staging areas located throughout the yards by a network of vacuum tubes, similar to those used by banks in their drive-through windows.

Orders and manifests would be placed in large cylindrical canisters and sent out through the vacuum tube to the engineering crews that were set to man the departing trains, and vice versa. These canisters would travel at speeds in excess of thirty miles per hour, and sometimes traverse almost a mile’s worth of tube in order to reach crews working the far reaches of the rail yards.

On one occasion a stray cat had been milling around the trains prowling and panhandling for food, affection, or whatever else it could find. The cat evidently became a nuisance to someone. The anonymous rail worker grabbed the cat, stuffed it into the vacuum tube (without bothering to see if it would fit in the canister), and closed the door.

One can only imagine the harrowing ride that poor animal endured on its way to the call office.

The clerical people (mostly females) working in the call office said they could hear something coming far down the tube. There was a blood-curdling, high-pitched screaming that echoed down that long pipe in advance of the cat’s “arrival.”

Suddenly, the cat came flying out of the vacuum tube. When it did, witnesses in the call office claimed that it did not have one hair left on its body. The poor beast was so frightened that it tore up stacks of files, office furnishings, and anything else in its path - while leaving a trail of cat feces in its wake.

One of the ladies finally opened the entrance door to the call office, and the poor, hairless cat flew out the door.

Southern Railroad management conducted extensive investigations in search of the cat culprit. No one, however, was ever willing to step forward and point the finger of blame. The perpetrator was mostly likely an overgrown boy in a man’s body. If those ladies in that call office could have ever gotten their hands on him, HE likely would have gone for a vacuum tube ride himself.

The cat was never seen again around Inman Yards. However, a recent conversation with a retired railroad worker revealed that the legend of this particular cat prank continued to circulate around the railroad yards for several decades after it happened.

If there is a hell, this would be likely be the final destination that cat lovers would vote to send the person that shoved that innocent animal into the tube. They might even vote to have him endure a tube ride of his own for all eternity.

Since it was the Good Lord that created cats, they must fulfill some purpose in the order of all things.

If only the ministers and priests of this world could figure out a way to “dry clean” their feline sins away.

Disclaimer: No cats were harmed in the telling or writing of this story.


“Well I’ll Be John Brown”

- David Decker
  February 18, 2011