An Ocicat named Riverspot’s Comet of Sunflame performed tricks at the recent Catsachusetts Cat Club End-of-Season Show, disproving the commonly-held belief that cats can’t be taught, according to one trainer.
The Boston Globe
It had been a long day when I finally pulled into the driveway, grumbled hello at my wife, and started to flip through the newspapers that arrived after I’d left the house at 4:30 a.m. in the morning. For context, it was 6:30 p.m. when I settled into my easy chair, so door-to-door-to-door, a 14-hour day.
“What’s up?” Rocco said as he lifted a leg and licked the spot where his balls used to be.
“Same old same old. What’s new in your world?”
“Nothin’ much. There’s a mess of chipmunk guts on the back patio for you to clean up.”
“Thanks. Where’s your brother-from-another-mother?” I asked, inquiring about Okie, the grey tabby who while he doesn’t have Rocco’s brain power, gets by on his good looks and savoir faire, like a feline Cary Grant.
“Sleeping as usual.”
“So busy busy day at Chez Chapman, huh?”
“Why work when you do it for us?” Rocco said, smugly licking his paw.
I clucked my tongue in disgust–you know the sound, sort of a cross between “tsk” and “shlurp,” when I was brought up short by a story in The Metro section of The Boston Globe, New England’s paper of record.
“Hmm,” I hmmed, and I put some starch into it. “While you guys were doing nothing, some over-achieving cats were leaping through an agility ring in East Boston.”
“Let me see that,” Rocco said, pouncing on the pages.
I held out the front page for him to read. He’s a cat, so if he’d had lips, they would have been moving.
“So?” was his indifferent reply.
“So, if you guys aren’t going to work when I’m slaving away at a hot word processor, can you at least develop some talent so we can make money off of you?”
“In your dreams,” Rocco said, as he turned his attention to his bare, ruined groin.
“What are you guys talking about?” Okie said, raising his head–ever-so-slightly–from the pillow where it had hitherto lain.
“Dad thinks we should . . . learn some tricks,” Rocco said.
“Old ones or new?” Okie asked. He’s that dumb.
“You can’t learn an old trick,” I said. “And an old cat can’t learn new tricks, so you’re pretty much out of the game.”
“Can we at least make fun of the stupid cat whose name is ‘Riverspot’s Comet of Sunflame’?” Rocco asked.
“Roc” I said, coming on like Hugh Beaumont in “Leave it to Beaver.” “We’ve talked about this before: You can only make fun of people . . . or cats . . . for things they’re responsible for, and can change, so no you can’t make fun of his name.”
“Why not?” Okie asked. As I said, he’s a little slow on the uptake.
“Because it’s . . . immutable,” I said, realizing as soon as the word was out of my mouth it would fly over his head. “He can’t help it, and he can’t change it.”
“So,” Rocco began, “can we make fun of him for other things?”
“Sure, it’s just gotta be something he’s responsible for, something he can control.”
“Okay,” The Roc said, scratching a tick under his chin as he gazed off thoughtfully into the distance. “Any cat named ‘Riverspot’s Comet of Sunflame‘ should turn his owner in for possession of hallucinogenic drugs.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darnedest Things.”