A Cat-Scratched Hero

From a bridge near Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my three daughters used BB guns to improve their marksmanship. Standing on the bridge’s downstream side, they stood, locked and loaded, waiting to shoot balloons attached to small weights that I tossed from the bridge’s upstream side. As the targets floated beneath them, the balloon killers fired away, making chalk marks on the railing for each hit. Sodas and snacks at a nearby country store were their reward for bursting nine out of ten. Once, when the canal flowed swiftly following heavy January rains, I heard no shots after dropping the balloons. The girls had spotted a shivering kitten clinging to a bridge piling, and their anguished cries said it all: You, Dad, are a man and must do what any man worth his salt would do: save that poor, suffering, shivering little kitty.

My first idea, lowering a rope, flopped. The cat merely hissed at it. Certain he was starving, I opened a can of Vienna sausages and lowered it, only to get more hissing. When the girls’ caterwauling and the cat’s hissing reached a crescendo, my ego being what it is, I saw an opportunity to be a hero in their eyes, and went down to the water’s edge. After gauging the stream’s swift current, I moved upstream to a distance that would allow me to intersect the piling, got a running start, and hit the frigid water at full stroke. The triangulation landed me right on target, and I grabbed the piling, extended a hand and coaxed, “Come, kitty, kitty.” It did — directly into my face, in which its claws sunk. Downstream we writhed, the cat fighting to repel a perceived predator, and the freezing hero-wannabe trying to avoid drowning while detaching the infuriated, fearsome feline. Finally, having redesigned my face with ear-to-ear grid patterns, the cat released its grip, swam to the bank, scurried away, and was never seen again. Returning to the bridge, I expected hugs and praise for my heroic efforts. Instead, the girls stared at their soaked, shivering, scratched sire and whined because he didn’t hold on to the cat and deliver it to them so that they could provide warmth, food, love, and a nice home. Later that day, I sought consolation from my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird, but instead got more humiliation when, fighting an urge to laugh out loud, the old black man gawked at my face and said, “Good Lord, Son, what happened to yo’ face? It looks like a roadmap.” When I told him about my vain efforts to be a hero, he tried to be conciliatory, but glancing again at my excoriated cheeks, he lost all control and burst into howls of laughter. Finally his guffaws subsided, and wiping tears from his eyes, he thought for a moment, and, trying to hold back even more guffaws, choked, “Well, my son, at least in your own eyes, you can be what you aren’t in theirs: a cat-scratched hero.

This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s upcoming book, entitled The Jaybird Tales. The book will be available before the holiday season. Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (jimmycecilreedjr@gmail.com).