My friends were going away for 5 days over Thanksgiving. They asked if I could do them a favor by keeping an eye on their house and feeding their cats.
Of course, I said yes. However, the favor was not as simple as it seemed.
First of all, I lived
in Minneapolis and my friends lived 13 miles away in Fridley, Minnesota. One
night on this long drive, I noticed a lonely election campaign sign in a field
in Fridley. It caught my eye because it was 5 feet by 3 feet and said
“Vote SCHNEIDER for City Council”. The election was over weeks before,
and the poor sign was sitting out in the cold.
Since my name is
Schneider, I grabbed the sign, and took it home to my nice warm apartment.
Second of all, it was
November in Minnesota. This means snow. On the first night, I got
to my friends’ house after we had a 3-inch snowfall. I dragged their snow
blower out of their garage. I was an apartment dweller and had never once
operated a snow blower in my life. I figured out how to use it
and cleared the driveway.
However, luck was
against me. On the fifth night, the night before my friends were to
return, we had a 4-inch snowfall. My friends were far away in nice
warm North Carolina and did not know that I had to clear their driveway twice.
Third of all, the cats
I had to feed included both domestic cats and wild jungle cats. The
domestic cats lived on the main floor of the house and ate cat
food. The jungle cats were from South America. They looked like small bobcats, and were being bred for medical research. The jungle cats were not kept
in cages; they were all in a large walk-in enclosure in the basement. They ate meat.
On the first night, I went down the basement steps and looked at the cats in their walk-in enclosure, lit by a single light bulb. The jungle cats were sitting on perches up high peering down at me. Their food dish was on the floor. That meant that I would have to bend over to put meat in their dish, exposing the back of my neck.
What if one of the
jungle cats decided I was an intruder? Or got impatient? Or was
just plain ornery? It could leap from its perch, rip open the back of my
neck, and I would wind up bleeding to death lying alone on the cement floor of
a basement lit by a single light bulb in Fridley, Minnesota, and the only people
in the world who knew I was there were in North Carolina.
But it was November in
Minnesota, which meant I had worn a big down jacket while driving to
Fridley. I went upstairs, put on my big down jacket and pulled the hood
up over my head. With my neck covered, I no longer felt vulnerable when
bending over to put meat in the cats’ dish.
Actually I enjoyed
doing this favor for my friends. I could brag that I had fed wild South
American jungle cats. I felt proud that I had learned how to operate a snow
blower without using an instruction book. And I gained a special
sign.
I displayed “Vote
SCHNEIDER for City Council” in my apartment even though I was not the SCHNEIDER
on the sign and it was the Fridley City Council, not the Minneapolis City Council.
Visitors would see the sign and ask me if I had run for city council.
I would lie and say:
“Yes! Did you vote for me?” My visitors became silent. I had
gained a sign that made people squirm.
- . - .- . - . - .
NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath. Price = $11. You can purchase a copy at http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com
Good story.
ReplyDeleteWe kept a pet kinkajou from South America in a huge cage in our basement. My brother worked at Dr. Barsky's animal clinic in Port. The kinkajou was very friendly to the rest of us, but would make dreadful noises and hiss at my brother when he came home from work. She wouldn't allow him near her - he must have smelled like a predator.