Jungle Cats Peering Down At Me

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.

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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

Bigger Than Texas

I walked into the auditorium with a friend from Austin, and he gasped, "This is bigger than Texas."

My friend was really saying that he found it hard to believe there is an auditorium outside of Texas bigger than any auditorium inside Texas.  He found it was especially hard to believe that a place like Minneapolis has such an auditorium.

We were at a free orchestra concert.  Northrup Auditorium was built in 1929 as the central ceremonial site of the University of Minnesota.  Northrup is vast: It has 4,800 seats --- 2,000 more seats than Carnegie Hall.

The next event I attended in Northrup cost two bucks.  It was a solo concert by an 82-year-old nurse.  This nurse had once been a successful blues singer in her younger days, touring all over Europe.  Her name was Alberta Hunter.

Alberta sang for us.  She did not show her age; instead, she showed humility on stage.  She was nearly overwhelmed by seeing all the people who came out to listen to her after she had been out of the limelight for decades.

My next concert at Northrup was Bonnie Raitt and it cost way more than two bucks.  

I approached the concert with a bit of trepidation: friends of mine had been ushers at a concert by The Animals the previous week.  My friends said the audience grew restless and resentful because The Animals refused to sing their old classics.  They only sang their new music, which irritated the the audience who had come to hear the old classics.

However, Bonnie Raitt's audience was not restless, much less resentful.  They were absorbed.

Bonnie showed humility on stage.  She told us, with a tone of awe in her voice, that Koerner, Ray, and Glover were in the audience.  As far as I knew, these guys were just an ordinary folk trio playing a few venues in Minneapolis.  

I had no idea they had been around for a long, long time.  Bonnie told us that Koerner, Ray, and Glover had inspired her, had encouraged her, and had helped launch her career.

Then Bonnie pointed to someone else in the audience: her father.  She invited him up on the Northrup Auditorium stage.  She didn't give us his name, she simply asked him to sing a song --- without a microphone.  I was astonished that she would ask someone to sing without a mike in a vast auditorium.  Was this a prank?

It soon became clear that it was not a prank.  Bonnie's father's voice was clear and sweet and strong.  Then I remembered that there had been a Broadway musical actor named John Raitt....was he Bonnie's father?  

My astonishment turned to amazement: an old man’s un-miked voice filled an auditorium bigger than Texas.  It must have been John Raitt.

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YouTube video of Bonnie Raitt and John Raitt singing Irving Berlin's "They Say It's Wonderful" (3-minute video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmyBA2xPN4g&feature=related

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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