Requiem For A Rogue

For ten years I wrote a weekly (weakly) column in the local newspaper, about this and that and sometimes animals. This bit comes from that. The first part ran in the first year of the column, and then came the second part.

Clyde is part of our blended family at home. He is a big, gray cat who thinks he is a dog. Clyde would rather hang with the dogs than do the usual cat stuff, he sleeps on his back and watches TV upside-down, and he looks at us in complete disdain when he catches us bad-talking cats, if he thinks we are including him.

This is not to say that Clyde doesn’t like us, for he delights in bringing presents into the house and leaving them around for our pleasure. He specializes in the perfect gift for every occasion. Wednesday, it was the gopher that he left at the front door. Last week he strategically placed the back half of a roof rat right in front of the entrance to the master bath for my bare-footed enjoyment. My wife says the mouse he dropped on the bed next to her the other day, as she was putting on her make-up, was an interesting surprise.

You gotta love the guy for his enthusiasm and originality.

Clyde is laying low, right now, because his latest little present, delivered last night, hit about ten on the Richter Scale

I was pretty comfortable in my chair in front of the TV, but experience has taught me to attend when my wife lets loose with a blood curdling scream in the bedroom, so I trotted on back. When I got there, she was cowering in the corner in her birthday suit, vibrating, and pointing to an innocent looking bathrobe lying crumpled on the bed. And, she had a few unkind things to say about Clyde.

Not quite sure what to make of this, I picked up her robe and out dropped about five inches of seriously annoyed blue-belly lizard.

It turns out that a lizard inside one’s bathrobe can produce rather interesting sensations as it runs up your back, and when it is your wife’s back, it’s time to remove the lizard. So I wrapped up the little guy and returned him to the bushes in front of the house. In parting, I told him it might be best to stay away from big gray cats in the future.

Poor Clyde can’t figure out what he did wrong.

A short 10 years brings us to today, and I'm still trying to write a good column, but sadly, now I have to do it without Clyde's help. The ole rogue has left us. It's just not the same without him, and since they broke the mold, there won't likely be another.

Say what you want, but Clyde was always his own man. He got something out of living with us, else he would have moved on. He didn't intend to amuse us, but I guess he didn't mind, either. He ate our food and slept on our bed if it was cold, and then he melted into the yard to do his own thing, as he chose. We buried him back in the trees, his heaven, before the devil knew he was gone.