I am a “cat person” now. I started to say I am “officially” a cat person, but I doubt there is a certification process. If there was one, it would probably involve something like the Nissan Heisman House on the tv ads, where the residents would be women in their 80’s who each own 8 – 10 cats and live in an old ramshackled house and wear ratty cardigan sweaters.  They would each be suffering from “gray lung”, a condition caused by excessive ingestion of kitty litter dust, and would be the oracles deciding who meets the standard of “cat person”.

I didn’t grow up a “cat person”, however. When I was a kid in Christiansburg in the late 1950’s and 60’s, my folks, and thus I, were “dog people”. I learned at some point that my father, who like my mother had spent his formative years on a farm, liked cats and felt that having some around would have been nice, but my mom would have none of it. (He also liked black snakes – something about killing mice. I would prefer just to have the mice.)  Thus, my mother formed my early opinion of cats by referring to them as “slinky” and “odd” and “sneaky”. When you mixed in the Hawley’s pair of Siamese up the street, who climbed curtains in their lovely home and mewed constantly in what I assumed was a Cantonese dialect, I was definitely not a cat person in my youth.

So my family had a succession of dogs – Spot, Blackie, Tippy, Mickey and finally Patches. Christiansburg had no leash laws during those years, or at least none that anybody worried about, so our dogs roamed the neighborhood, like their pals. As a result of moving vehicles, canine temptresses, or simple wanderlust, our dogs (all unneutered males as I recall) disappeared at an alarming rate.

Spot was our first – a collie with nary a spot – named by my school teacher parents after the fictional animal star of the Dick and Jane first grade reader, as in “see Spot run”. If I had had a sister I am sure she would have been Jane.  As I recall, Spot met an early demise in typical fashion of the era – by unsuccessfully trying to bite the tire of a passing car. My main memory of Spot is a lasting scar over my right eye from when he bit me when I was 3 years old and unadvisedly fooled with his food bowl. I got 3 stitches from Dr. Clarke but apparently was not the least bit traumatized, as I was told I hugged Spot when we returned from the doctor’s visit.

Blackie was our second – a beautiful black cocker spaniel who was – my father suspected – poisoned through some poor dietary choices.

Next came Tippy, a cute but nondescript beagle mix from the farm of one of our many Lucas cousins in Riner.  My main memory of Tippy is of my cousins Joe and Bobby, who lived up the hill (“Mockingbird Hill”) at the end of our street, bringing Tippy down in a cardboard box early on a frigid Christmas morning. I was told that Santa had brought me Tippy. This story became the first chink in St. Nick’s armor, as I wondered why he would leave my puppy at my aunt’s house in the custody of my cousins.  To further compound the holes I found in this story, my aunt’s house had no chimney, a fact which was a constant worry and source of confusion for me as a child. My dad would tell me that Santa used the back door, but I didn’t buy the possibility that the Great Man just strolled in Aunt Mary Alma’s back door like a mere mortal, like Mrs. Knowles from next door coming over for coffee.

Next came Mickey, a wonderful long legged beagle bred by a family across town. By now you can tell my parents replaced our family dogs as rapidly as tragedies befell them. I don’t remember exactly what became of Tippy – I think I was spared the gory details. But my devoted father believed that every boy my age needed a baseball glove and a dog to follow him around. Mickey, obviously named after Mickey Mantle the Yankees star, was next and he was the perfect companion. He followed me to the neighborhood baseball games and, along with all of the other dogs, would lie in foul territory casually watching the game. I think it was the summer before my 5th grade year when Mickey was last seen, in fast pursuit of a rabbit headed towards what is now I-81, southbound. I remember refusing to accept that he wasn’t coming back.

This led us to Patches – another product of the Lucas farms and a feisty rat terrier. Patches was the quintessential one man (one boy) dog. He survived from my 5th grade year until after my college graduation. The wise guys in Vegas would say that those odds were about the same as betting on the sun rising in the west. The game would have been off the board. The over and under on the longevity of a dog who lived off of West Main was probably 2 1/2 years.

Patches was such a one person dog that I was the only human he would allow to pet him. My mother faithfully fed and cared for him the entire 4 years I was away at college. But whenever she mustered the courage to try to pat him on the head or scratch behind his years, Patches would snap at her. He also bit 2 of my girl friends. He didn’t seek out people to bite or attack, but with the exception of the writer, he regarded everyone with the same level of distrust that Hillary Clinton has for a Congressional subpoena. But he excitedly jumped into my arms and licked my face every time he saw me.

My fondest memories of Patches are the many late night conversations we had on the steps down to our basement. He looked like a smaller version of the RCA Victor dog – mainly white with one black ear and a black patch over one eye. Admittedly our talks were somewhat one-sided but Patches was a good listener. Many a Friday night in high school after another loss in football I would sit long into the night and tell Patches how much I hated to lose. There is the old joke about guys coming home and kicking the dog after a loss. I chose to bore our pup into submission with conversation. Eventually Patches would adroitly direct the conversation to matters of romance and I would ask him to help me understand why the love of my life at the moment did not know I existed. He would sit patiently and occasionally tilt his head from side to side. Later I would learn that people would pay others hundreds of dollars per hour to do the same thing.  

Later as an adult I owned 2 Golden Retrievers – Sun Dog and Brandy – each of whom were smarter than most of Congress (damning with faint praise huh ?) and great companions for our girls. Patches’ demise, which I will not go into, convinced me to favor large friendly dogs who could not be killed in one bite.

Well I started this column to write about cats but wandered off into my early history with dogs so I will save for another day my “cat history”.  Suffice it to say that I now live with a lovely she devil of a cat named Scarlett – a tortoiseshell who seems typical of what I have read about that line of kitties. She has become a good companion since I have been living alone and has kept me occupied with cleaning up debris and repairing things around the house. I hope to write more about her in the future – but this much I will say for now – an old house with lots of grass cloth wall paper and a year round Christmas tree is a veritable theme park for a rambunctious tortie.