Oh Brother

My Dad worked in a horse barn where wild cats thrive and dart away like youthful dreams. A little long haired Calico caught his heart as the poor thing was stomped upon day after week by horses as unaware of it as dreams of dreamers.
I was too young to question how he caught a wild cat in that barn and brought it home without a cat box in our ‘53 Chevy that had no floor board over the transmission. I was too young then, and I’m nearly too old, to recall my childhood memories of how gently he treated animals. Back in the late fifties he broke horse to ride, without any bronco billy gruff episodes. He whispered to ponies before the language was notated in pulp fiction or films with Robert Redford was planed out for him before he was born. While every farmer who grew sheep snipped off a lamb’s tail with sheers, dad taught me how to do it with a rubber band. Now, I know, it must have taken him months to tame that cat, and how many more months before he knew that cat was tame enough to bring home to his youngest son.
Whatever cost my Dad paid, he did as secretly as stitches healed the kicks to his head from the horses that he fed and cleaned every day.
Jeff, my little brother, must have been around two the summer Dad brought “Puffy” home. Jeff wore nothing but cloth diapers and a shock of hair as white as new teeth.
We had had cats before. Each had defined ‘bolted’ before this wild child, Jeff. The gentle sound of Jeff’s baby soft bare feet on linoleum would jolt them awake from slumber as if the Sun itself had shouted, “Bolt! Bolt for the sake of your nine lives! Run!”
This cat : the ‘Home of lazy toes’, eyes as green and calm as the true color of gold, would not ruffle. Jeff would swoop Puffy up and toss him over his shoulder or lug the poor thing upside down- back to bare belly.
Everyone within sight would suck in their last breath and rush to Jeff as if he were about to leap down an open well. Thoughts of what we should have done came trailing later: “I’ll grab the water bucket to separate them”, “I’ll get the iodine”, “I’ll run to the neighbors and call an ambulance”.
`But...’
Puffy never struggled. Never put up a fight. And when Jeff slammed her down to floor, or yard, and fell upon hell’s fury, like a lightening bolt, Puffy merely mewed and shook her tail. Jeff would squeeze and punch that kitten like a hand-me-down pillow.
My Dad, coming home from the horse barns, bedraggled himself, took pity upon the kitten and noted, My God, the poor thing was better off being stomped by the horses. One night, he gathered up the little spot of hairy color and placed it in the worn out Chevy and returned it to place of its birth.
Next morning, Jeff awoke calling out for Puffy. He looked everywhere. He called until his breath betrayed him. He could not eat for calling and searching. Not even mom could keep him down for his nap. When Dad come home, he worn out from toil- there was no peace. His ‘look alike’ two year old wobbled on feeble legs, his eyes bloodshot eyes, and his voice hoarsely cried, “Puffy, Puffy”. Mom was beseeching heaven, “God, I’m going to kill him.” Dad rose up from the dinner table forsaking a full plate of garden grown vegetables. He stomped out, leaving the door open, fired up the ‘53 Chevy and was gone.
We were all sitting outside the door watching Jeff search every bush, every wild flower for Puffy when Dad came back. The car door opened and Puffy ran out like a shot of fur. Jeff called again. The cat stopped in its tracks. Jeff dove upon it. Mom picked the both of the up and we all went back in to the table. Jeff and Puffy, in the high chair, one hand on a fork and the other entwined in calico.