Kitten in the Kitchen

by Marie Martinek, Waukegan, Illinois, USA

This is actually a story from several years ago. My brother has a household that, if this were the 60's, would be called a commune. It's a big old steamboat mansion that was converted into a rooming house in the 1930's. It's now still a rooming house, with 24 sleeping rooms (each one has its own lock), but everyone in it knows each other, and they all get to vote on whether someone moves in.

Being all quite civilized people, most of them have cats. Some of them, multiples. They've tried various rules regarding how many get to roam, and where, but when they started, there were very few. Which meant that whoever was in the kitchen would be surrounded by a knee-high carpet of fur, with expectant tails sticking higher.

Rimble, at that time, was a snot-nosed kitten, which meant that a lot of the other cats wished he would leave them alone, and would knock him about. So, he was knee-high to the knee-high carpet of fur, causing occasional hisspits, as my brother and his girlfriend were working on 10 pounds of raw chicken (39 cents a pound - can't beat that with a stick!), disjointing and pulling off the yucky stuff.

Suddenly my brother felt little claw-prickles, and looked down to find Rimble climbing him like a tree. He removed the small fur-ball, wiped his chickeny hands on him, and handed him to his girlfriend. She wiped her chickeny hands on him, and dropped him back into the cat-carpet. (Do remember, this was years ago, before salmonella got bad in commercial chicken.)

The nose of every cat in the kitchen swiveled towards Rimble. They leaped. They licked him off thoroughly, rolling him from cat to cat as he attempted escape.

From then on, Rimble was Everybody's Kitten. They'd washed him, so he was theirs, and could get away with kittenish antics. They might bat him across the room, but it was more like "play with me" dribbling a basketball than a "get away kid, ya bother me" hockey slapshot.

Editor's note:

• If you want to comment on this article, why not write direct to Marie Martinek?
• She will be pleased to hear from you!

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