The chorus of birds awakened me at dawn and I rolled over to listen to their early morning sounds. After pausing a few minutes, I dressed and sleepily walked into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.
When I opened the laundry room door to the garage, Frankie, an Idaho barn cat, clutched a live and squirming rodent in his mouth. Looking very pleased with himself, he attempted to bring it inside.
No way! I pushed him back from the door with my foot and he dropped the struggling mouse. The tiny scrambling fur ball made a mad dash over my toes and into the kitchen. Frankie chased after the rodent, and I ran to the closet to retrieve a broom.
With much spinning and sweeping, I managed to brush the mouse out of the house, but not soon enough. Frankie was in fierce pursuit right behind him. He grabbed the racing rodent and ran into the nearby pasture, disappearing into the harvested field. Now fully awake, I cradled my cup of coffee and began to dress for work.
That afternoon I found a grey mouse tail on the cement steps, the remains of the earlier present. Frankie was a top-notch predator, providing me with a smorgasbord of animal parts on many different mornings.
However, when he inspected the neighborhood, he fought with local cats. They defeated him almost all the time. He returned home with ripped ears, neck bites and numerous abrasions. Chunks of white silky hair informed my neighbors that Frankie had been in their fenced yard and had lost another battle to their feisty alley cat.
At the local veterinarian’s office, I discovered that Frankie’s bills had skyrocketed. Much to his chagrin, I forced him to be an indoor cat. Consequently, any time someone left a door ajar, he would rush from the house and escape to mouse heaven for hours on end.
Frankie might have been a battling loser outside, but inside he ruled the roost. Living by myself after a divorce had me dependent on my friends and animals for companionship. A black Labrador retriever named Casey, a black tabby named Zipper, and Frankie, a white Siamese/Persian cat, were my constant colleagues. Everywhere I went in the house, they followed with Frankie leading.
My routine in the evening was to take a bath before I climbed into bed. It was my personal quiet time. On one particular night, I lay in a bubble-filled tub and pulled the shower curtain closed, giving me absolute privacy and peace. Casey and Frankie sat on the tiled floor while Zipper walked along the wide edge of the tub, on the bath side of the transparent drape.
As I soaked calmly in the warm water, Frankie noticed a dark shadow moving across the curtain and pounced. He smashed Zipper into the bath water, right onto my chest. Thinking she was drowning, the black cat scrambled from the tub, racing across my chest and flying over my face. In an instant I had deep scratches over the top half of my body.
“Get out!” I screamed and shot straight up, dripping in bubbles and blood. All three animals raced from my fury and I slammed the bathroom door behind them.
At work the next day my appearance gave rise to several comments. The customers couldn’t believe a cat could create such scratches. “More like a ferocious lion!” one said.
Yes, and all created by Frankie’s angry ambush of the dark shadow on the shower curtain that previous night.
Bobbi Wolverton is a Village resident and author of “Behind the Smile during the Glamour Years of Aviation.” The book is available in audio, eBook and paperback from Amazon.
