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DIVORCING
A CAT GETS COMPLICATED
By Dalton Roberts
Chattanooga Time Free Press
March 8, 2002
With
deep chagrin, I must report to you the end of my marriage to Wifey Mae.
We barely lasted a week. The Honorable Sam Payne fervently admonished me
for not giving it a better try.
I pointed out that this was my first divorce from a cat, seeking some
mercy from the court. Instead, he shook his finger right in my face,
almost yelling, "You have broken the hearts of trusting women
and now you've set in on poor homeless street cats! I sentence you to
two weeks of mandatory marital cat counseling. And if you mess with me,
I'll have Judge Walter Williams spank you, too. Bailiff, get this
man out of my face!"
He stood up, spun around, swished his robes like Rev. Robert Schuler on
the Crystal Cathedral Hour, and retreated to his private quarters. And
here I sit in a Humane Society cat counseling class trying to write this
column on an old Royal portable typewriter.
Since the court is cutting me no slack, all I know to do is to appeal to
my dear readers for mercy and understanding. I beg you to put yourself
in my place.
Come look at my legs. They're scratched from my ankles to my hips. It
looks like I have spent a week naked on a blackberry-picking expedition
and crawled on my belly through an acre of Marine Corps barbed wire. One
place on my thigh has a deep infection. There's something about an
infected cat scratch that laughs out loud at all kinds of antibiotics.
It must have something to do with that box they scratch around in.
Come look at my bird feeders. Wifey Mae got up in the 4' by 4'
bird-watching window and leaped repeatedly at any bird in sight. So,
there are none in sight. They backed off to some distant pines and
indignantly squawked, "You're gonna have to do something about that
wife of yours, man."
Among my favorite birds are the Goldfinch. I have a long thistle tube
feeder hanging just inches from the window. After hours of being
terrorized, they headed south, leaving their little suitcases
half-packed there on the window sill. One left a note saying,
"You've seen my moss-green tail feathers for the last time,
Buster."
Back to the 4' by 4' window. I keep special things there. Little things
my daughter sculpted for me, like wrens and redbirds; a statue of Pappy
Cliett, my high school agriculture teacher; some tiny hatching rocks my
sister painted for me; and Foghorn Leghorn who has never failed to bring
a grin when I needed it most. Guess where all those things ended up? The
divorce has only been final for a few days and I am still crawling
around retrieving treasures she swatted, chewed and mangled without the
slightest twinge of conscience.
She never took the first computer course but she kept trying to take
over my computer. I'd have a letter in progress, get up to make a cup of
green tea, and return to find pages of words like "oogleglops,
smeckinffrettin, plavidforgums, glippersnoogetts," and worse. It's
more embarrassing than you can imagine to have a wife who cannot write
the simplest letter, even with ten extra fingers.
One more thing. My water bill. Last week I mentioned her foot fetish.
That foot fetish is nothing compared to her commode fetish. The swirling
water completely hypnotized her. So the only way I could get her to
leave my birds alone was to keep flushing the commode. I guarantee you I
have paid Mike Loftin's salary down at Tennessee American for the next
six months.
So I flushed her. Right out of my life. Right back into the loving arms
of my sister who tutored Job for his PhD in patience.
I'm free again! And Judge Williams does not have a paddle big enough to
get me to take her back.
~~~~~~~~~~
More of DR's writings can be found on his website, along with other
goodies. http://www.daltonroberts.com/
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