Cat-Fish & Fish-Cat

CAT-FISH & FISH-CAT

  by

  Michael Allender

  Copyright 2014 Michael Allender

  (The fourth in a series of fourteen stories)

  Cat-Fish & Fish-Cat

  (Story #4)

  "Here's one...MUNDANE,” my brother, Ben said to me. “Know what that is?" He had that irritating 'gotcha' look on his face. We were playing a word game on our east Texas farm in the late forties, and he was right: I hadn't a clue. I was only nine, but I prided myself in knowing the meaning of words.

  "No—but don't tell me yet," I said, stalling for time.

  "Pertaining to the world," he informed me gleefully as he read from our dictionary. "Distinguished from heavenly or spiritual things. You know, just plain stuff, like dirt, trees, food...just stuff."

  It took me a moment, but I finally came up with a counter offer. "Okay, but Pleasure Walker says plain food is the stuff miracles get made out of." I loved it when his brow crinkled up in deep but unsuccessful thought.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Well, remember how Jesus fed all those folks with some bread and a fish? And the guy who fed his horse lumps of sugar and taught it how to count?" We'd read about that as a family.

  "All right, then," he said. "I guess Aunt Beatrice is mundane, too." I braced for his trump card. "She said it was a miracle she ever caught Uncle Vernon, and he said it was her fried chicken and biscuits."

  Mundane miracles of the stomach, all.

  I suspect the relationship that was fostered between one barnyard kitten and a long-whiskered catfish on our farm had similar origins as well. Still, I like to believe that it went beyond that, that it somehow achieved that ethereal plateau we ascribe to the truly unexplainable, if not the miraculous. Perhaps it was only weird, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

  We had many dozens, maybe hundreds of barn cats that lived out their lives on our farm during the eighteen years I called it home. The cats not only cleaned out the mice that lived on the feed we stored for our dairy stock, they were also good company. We probably had as many cats as we did mice, and we supplemented their diet with milk fresh from the cows every morning. We usually avoided feeding them in the evening as my dad reasoned that the cats should be hungry at night when the mice were the most active. Besides, he said, they slept all day. All except one, that is.

  When I was young I named as many of the cats as I could remember. Grunts, for example, named for his voice. Snaker got his because he liked to hunt garter snakes. Plus we had a Pukey, a Tree Top, Possum, Sunbuns, Crook-tail, and countless others.

  One little cat, a calico and perhaps the prettiest of all our menagerie, went for quite a spell without a name. I couldn't bring myself to call it something silly like Cutsie or Pretty Face, not when all the other cats had such logical and serious names.

  I finally gave up, and simply called it Kitty. Early in Kitty's life, at about the time she left the protection of her mother and began nosing about on her own, she seemed to prefer people to the company of other cats. Perhaps that is why she took to being so active in the daylight hours instead of at night when her only company would be other cats. Kitty was a follower, as only a few cats ever are, and she took a liking to Ben. I have no idea why this is true, but over the years I've discovered that cats often choose to befriend those who are not especially fond of felines, and Ben was not what I would call a cat person.

  He had a strong attraction for dogs, especially Hounder, but he kept an emotional distance from all other animals. I suspect it was due to his interest in hunting and trapping, and the frequent turnover of our farm animals. And cats, with their aloof personalities, didn't rate any higher on his scale than wiener pigs or beady-eyed mink. They were simply part of the landscape. One time he caught one in a fox trap, and the next day its hide was de- fleshed and stretched out on the side of the barn. It happened to be a calico, and Ben made a little rug out of it, which I remember being very upset about, for it was probably the mother of Kitty.

  "I'm sorry, Ab," he said. "But it was just a cat. Should'na been down by the creek." As though there were warning signs telling cats about his traps.

  Kitty couldn't have known about this aspect of Ben's personality, of course, and since she was born in the spring, she spent her first summer bedeviling and following the object of her affection while he went about his daily chores. More than anything else, she liked to trail behind him when he went to the stock tank, and Ben seemed tolerant or indifferent to her company.

  We commonly ran a trotline in two of our tanks to keep us well supplied with catfish. A third tank we kept as a kind of breeding pond, encouraging the fish to grow to prodigious size by feeding them the leftovers from our meals. Some became true pond hogs.

  Catfish are normally slow moving bottom feeders, preferring to wait for food to come to them than to work up a catfish sweat by going hunting. But if you feed them on the surface long enough, some become quite tame and will take food right out of your fingers. Honest to God. A few disbelieving fishermen saw it and gave Dad some pretty tempting offers for his breeding stock. Dad thought about each one, but the fish stayed.

  That pleased Ben, who really seemed to enjoy feeding the fish, and I'm sure it did Kitty as well, for she never missed an opportunity to go to the pond. She would hop right down to the end of the dock and watch Ben feed the fish for as long as he was there, peering intently over the edge while the end of her tail kept time with her thoughts.

  All our cats were outside cats, but Kitty preferred to stay as close as possible to the house. She began curling up on a burlap sack that I left for her between a big metal tub and the house. The sack wasn't much of a bed for such a little princess as Kitty, but she didn't seem to mind. She had company. Ben filled the tub with water and kept a not-so-large catfish in it that he took from one of the ponds. It became a curious kind of pet for him, even to the point of stroking its belly and lifting it gently out of the water so he could talk to it. To the best of my recollection it was always a one-way conversation.

  Kitty also seemed fascinated by the fish, and somewhere in this close crucible something strange happened. Ben fed the catfish scraps from the kitchen table, and the chunks of bread or leftover vegetables were eagerly accepted by the growing fish. But as it grew it became fussy, refusing many of his offerings and accepting only bits of fat or meat that were in the mix. It seemed to have a carnivorous streak in it, which Ben admired. "I'm going to have to butcher a calf for it pretty soon," he said with pride. But we couldn't afford to waste good meat on a catfish, and its water became clouded and dirty from untouched food scraps. Ben had to change it often, a messy and unpleasant chore, and as his affection for the fish waned, he began to talk about what a fine dinner it would make. My protests probably saved the fish's day.

  After a few months the fish had grown so much and the trouble of changing its water had become so irksome to Ben that he decided to release it into the breeding pond. "Think I'll tag it first," he said, and he did so by sewing a string on a small patch of red cloth, then stitching that through its dorsal fin.

  When the time came, Ben just scooped it out of the tub by its tail and hauled it on down to the tank. Kitty and I followed in hot pursuit, with her meowing all the way, and me trying to get Ben to keep the fish's head from dragging the ground. On the dock Ben laid the fish down on the boards and let Kitty examine it, which she did by sniffing excitedly around its head. The fish's bugged-out eyes moved around like BB's, following the cat, and when their very dissimilar whiskers touched, Kitty leapt back as though shocked, and the catfish closed its gaping mouth and lay very still. We laughed out loud, then Ben picked up the fish and lowered it into the water. "Go
make some catfish," he said, and then walked back down the dock toward the house. "Let's go get some supper, Ab. Come on, Kitty."

  I followed him, but Kitty stayed.

  In the morning, Kitty was lying in her familiar place on the burlap sack outside the back door, sound asleep instead of being up and active as was usual. And, keeping the surprises going, she stood first in line when Dad and Ben began milking the cows, eagerly taking her share straight from the cow's teat as Ben stripped it, squirting the milk through the air to the cat. It was as though she had been doing it all her life, and her aptitude impressed Ben. "That danged Kitty stands up on her hind feet when I squirt milk at her. Sure learns quick."

  And now other patterns of her behavior changed as well. She began sleeping during