Off The Cuff: Of mice, cats and a red-blooded man

As a red-blooded American male who has been known to faint at the sight of his own blood, I have often been asked if I am a man or a mouse. The answer is simple: I am a man except when I see a mouse, in which case I am a 'fraidy cat. That is one of the reasons I have cats.

No man who has cats can ever claim to be king of his castle. As a man with four cats, however, I can claim to be the owner of the world's largest collection of deceased rodents.

My life as the proprietor of a cathouse began 14 years ago, when my daughters, Katie and Lauren, who were nine and seven, respectively, talked me into buying them a cute little kitten that Katie named Ramona.

I can say with no small amount of pride that Ramona is the dumbest creature God ever made. Intelligence tests pitting Ramona and a loaf of Wonder Bread have proved inconclusive. Still, we love her because we are, after all, only human.

When Lauren was 15, she announced that she wanted another cat.

Thus did we welcome into our home a kitty who, because nobody could think of a name for her, now answers to Kitty. Ramona has always been an inside cat, mainly because she's too stupid to find her way home, but Kitty is smart, so she got to explore the great outdoors.

One day, Lauren, who had just turned 16, came up to me and said brightly, "Guess what, dad? You're going to be a grandfather!"

More unsettling

There is nothing in a man's life more unsettling than that. When I heard further that my grandchildren would be quadruplets, I was practically disconsolate. Only the assurance that I wouldn't have to put them through college prevented me from jumping out a window.

Two months later, out of wedlock and into our hearts, the kittens were born. It was the first of two Kitty litters, totalling seven kittens, that we were blessed with.

We found five of the kittens good homes that did not happen to be ours and kept two: Bernice, the party girl of Long Island, New York, and Henry, an overgrown mama's boy.

Shortly afterward, we took Kitty, Bernice and Henry for snip jobs that immediately eliminated Kitty's pregnant pauses and the sibling revelry that was beginning to develop between Bernice and Henry.

Could be star

Now the three of them could star in a National Geographic special. I'm sure you have seen shows from the Serengeti Plains in which lions hunt zebras, buffaloes and other hapless beasts, stalking them with stealth and cunning before bursting into a full run and bringing down their prey in a flash of teeth and claws.

It's like that in our yard, except that instead of hunting warthogs, which would have a tough time getting over the fence, our cats go after mice, as well as birds, squirrels, rabbits and other critters, many of which the cats bring to my wife and me, either as tokens of their love or as peace offerings because one of them has just tried to use daddy's leg as a scratching post.

I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I wish they would stop. Sometimes they are right outside the back door, gifts from our cats.