GRIZZLY G. GUS

CATSTROPHIC CATSASTROPHY OF CATACLYSMIC CATSEQUENCES

Now I am not gonna say that any man who owns a cat is a sissy, not because it isn’t true, but because some of those guys could kick my manly butt. Just the same, I’ve been seeing a tragic but seldom discussed form of mental illness most prevalent with our more senior citizens who hereafter shall simply be referred to as ‘really old farts.’ From my own experience, I can tell you it is very sad and unpleasant to witness. Someone in your family probably has or will have this illness.

It was a long time ago, but I can remember it as if it had happened…a long time ago. My old man, already in his sixties, took me to visit my grandparents, whom I had not seen since the last time I saw them. It was not that I wouldn’t have liked to visit them, especially since I lived in northern Florida, and they lived in Tampa. However, I only ever saw them when my dad took me. I was not accustomed to visiting them on my own. My dad was uncomfortable with the idea of me seeing them by myself. This made me suspect there was some sort of cover-up going on. I’d always had my suspicions about Grandpa.

He was from the old country (Germany) and looked like Hitler. Later, when I was much older and bolder, I finally asked him—very cautiously, what he knew about the Führer. In his broken English, always filled with an abundance of expletives, he explained he was only fourteen when his brothers bought him a ticket to come to America; Hitler had just started his rise to power. I had no choice but to accept his explanation, as I didn’t have the phone number for Simon Wiesenthal, but I would continue to keep an eye on him just the same.

My dad and I were there to fix and clean up Gramp’s place before the Health Department carted the old folks off to wherever they cart old folks. Even though they were dang near ninety years old, they were managing for themselves, in their way, at their home. The house had a guestroom, but my old man said we would stay at a nearby motel. Since he was paying for this, I had no objections. He had been down there taking care of things before, so I figured he knew what he was doing, even if sometimes he acted a bit senile himself.

On the first day at their house, it started off normal enough. Grandma made breakfast. Afterward, I started working out in the yard, painting, cleaning, and sweating my butt off. It was summer in Southern Florida…duh…it is always summer there. As I had begun having heatstroke, thank goodness, it was time for lunch. It was not any cooler in the house, but after a gallon of iced tea, I figured I’d survive. Then it was back outside again until dinner.

Sometime after breakfast, the next day, I began noticing some very strange and bizarre behavior by my grandparents. Maybe their behavior was normal, how would I know. They were fixing little cat food dishes and setting them all over the house. The next thing I knew, I was up to my…er…in cats. At that moment, I had thought the awful odor was how old people smelled. It was, in fact, the aroma of tuna fish, cat piss, and crap, bottled up in a house for ten years with all the windows closed, baked by the sun without air conditioning, at temperatures over 110 degrees every day. If you don’t clear your sinuses in an hour in that house, nothing else will. would if an hour in that house doesn’t clear your sinuses.

Did I mention I am allergic to cats? That explained why my eyes had turned red and swollen shut. Soon after that, I was sneezing and coughing so badly that I had to spend the rest of my week outside, taking my meals under a palm tree.

Dad said there had to be over twenty-five house cats. No wonder the place smelled like someone crapped a carp! With that many critters, the litter box was certainly ‘standing room only.’ No kiddin’, it was for certain kitties were doing their business in places they should not have been. If that weren’t bad enough, Gramps would be outside feeding another thirty cats that lived on the property like an infecatstation.

Maybe they were being bussed in from the inner city for all I knew. I was in a sea of kitties when the plates touched the ground. For the record, I’m not crazy about one cat, and now I was in the middle of a freak’n catvention. It was catastrophic. Most of these animals looked like they’d been fighting in the MMA and mostly losing. There were some with catusions, catcussions, broken tails, and mange. What a pity; one kitty had an eyeball hanging out by a vein, and the rest looked like they could use a catscan.

After seeing that, I decided to skip lunch. Pop wasn’t much of a cat lover either. He’d never go out of his way to hurt one, but he probably wouldn’t run into a burning building to save one either. He was also complaining about the smell, the cost to feed them, and most of all, the cattations from the Health Department he had to answer. The city officials were having a catniption because of all the complaints from the neighbors.

Kitty lovers will argue that feeding and caring for a few felines is harmless, especially if it keeps the old folks busy and amused—and who doesn’t want ‘amused’ old people? Besides the awful smell, all the cat food on the ground had increased the palmetto bug population in Gramp’s backyard to just over the same number of people currently living in China. The principal difference is that bugs are much smaller than Chinese people so that you can keep millions of them in your backyard…bugs, that is…not Chinese people. Also, Chinese people do not run up your leg and try to nest in your shorts; it’s only an assumption on my part but I only know one Chinese person, a young lady named Ping Pong. She never tried to climb up my leg, though; I think I would have liked that.

Besides crotch-nesting palmetto bugs, there were American, Asian, and German cockroaches, making Grandpa’s backyard sort of a United Nations, of insects. I’m not an Entomologist (more of an Entenmann-ologist…love their donuts). When there are insects, there are predators. My Grandparents’ double-lot in their residential sub-division had enough mice, rats, birds, lizards, frogs, and other insects, making it a half-acre version of the ‘Wild Kingdom.’ These insects are such a wonderful source of protein; it probably won’t be long before someone comes out with a breakfast bar called. ‘Palmetto Protein Bars,’ covered in chocolate and coconut.’ [Yum Yum] That is not the worst; these cats were nothing more than a mobile home for at least a trillion fleas and other virulent diseases.

With the potential of an outbreak of plague greater than that of the Middle Ages and me standing in the middle of it, when I made it back to the hotel, I took a bath in Lysol® and Clorox™. When I complained to my dad about the cats, he told me what he had done during his last visit.

“I figured out an ingenious way to get rid of most cats outside and a few inside. I passed out free tickets to the ‘Garfield movie to all the kitties and had a mini bus waiting at the end of the block to take them to the theatre downtown. After the movie, the cats were told they would stop at Chucky Cheese for pizza before returning to the house. Instead, they were taken to the animal shelter. They promised me, after a week, if no one claimed them, they would be transferred to Homeland Security, deported to Tijuana, and sold to a ‘Cat Juggling Ring.’ While my plan had been very effective previously, this time, your Grandpappy is watching me like a hawk, constantly taking inventory of his kitties.”

Gramps may have been old, but he was one crafty old coot. Every time the old man or I put up a poster in the neighborhood offering an all-expenses paid evening with dinner and tickets for the Broadway Show ‘Cats,’ Grandpa came behind us and tore them down. He was going to make sure we didn’t kid-nap or cat-nap, any more of his pets by luring them away with cat-nip and free tickets.

While I loved my grandparents, I wasn’t sorry when it was time to go home. I still smelled like a wet muskrat in heat, dragged through a city landfill, a week later. I tried licking myself clean, but I kept coughing up hairballs. I had to run through an automated truck wash at the Love’s Moore Haven Truck Plaza as a final resort. The brushes stung a bit, especially on the naughty parts, but to tell the truth, I derived great pleasure during the hot wax and buff.

For those of you who think I have spent enough time talking about cats, all I can say is TOUGH KITTY. There should be a law against having even one cat, but I know women love them. As for you guys…and you know who you are, how can I say this and still be politically correct—if you happened to be ‘manly challenged’ go ahead and keep one or two little pussies, if that makes you feel ‘purrrrrfectly’ happy.

However, that brings us to the cataclysmic question of ‘…How many cats does a person need?’ What is reasonable? There was an article in the ‘Washington Post’ by Leef Smith about an eighty-four-year-old woman who had to appear in court because she kept 488 cats in her townhouse. Yo…Spanky, if you own 488 cats, you probably don’t have a freakin’ idea what the word reasonable means. You probably don’t even have a firm grasp on reality.

Besides all the previously mentioned problems I’ve mentioned about having too many cats, this lady’s problem was even worse. According to the police report, 222 of the cats were already dead. While you would call that a catastrophe…I call it ‘a good start.’ One of the charges was that she had tried to obstruct justice when authorities came to her home while attempting to hide her pets.

Let me see if I got this right. You live in a townhouse, own 488 cats, and are trying to hide them from a court-ordered search? All right, I have a few ideas on how to hide the 222 dead ones, at least. I do not want to go into great detail, but it would involve a blender, a bucket, and a toilet. Disposing of the other ‘live’ 266 cats would be more difficult, though not impossible.

The court ordered a mental evaluation to see if the woman was insane. Hmm…do you think there was any chance of that? I’m sure my grandparents, like this old lady, started out with one cat. Then…what the heck, two cats, three cats, and the next thing you know, she was running a cat–house. I am highly confident this lady and my grandparents are not the only victims of this tragic illness.

What is the solution? [Don’t try to steal this idea because there is a patent pending] I have designed a modified ‘Cat Feeder’ that can be installed wherever you have elderly people or anyone showing signs of ‘Catafeedingtosis.’ What ole Gramps and Granny don’t know is that when a cat hops onto the feeder, sensors, not detecting any humans within the immediate area, becomes a Cat–a-pult. FLING…Weeeeeeee! The little freeloading fur-ball goes flying.

Not only will this teach the furry moocher not to come back for a second helping of Tender Vittles®, but you can also adjust the range and distance. This is where your military artillery experience would pay off. You can choose landing sites such as a trampoline, a swimming pool, a Doberman kennel, or a BBQ Grill. You never know…a whole business could develop with products like: Squirrel-a-Pult; Rat-a-Pult; Wife-a-Pult. Why the possibilities are endless. I hope to make enough money from this deal to start that group home for young foreign Asian female exchange students, like I’ve dreamed of…many nights.

Everyone is afraid of something. I’m afraid I will live so long, I’ll be found walking around in a catatonic state feeding a cat…or cats, [the quantity is irrelevant]—any more than ‘none’ is too many. I imagine I’d also be wearing checkered Bermuda shorts, black socks with sandals, a Hawaiian shirt, a John Deere ball cap, and singing songs by Wham.

If I’m ever found in that condition, in the name of all that is holy, I’m begging you, grab a rock, a shovel, or a two-by-four, and immediately bludgeon me to death or call someone who will. Don’t let me go on suffering like that.

Thanks, I know I can count on you.

Grizzly G. Gus    ©    2025.