Sunday Cat

One Sunday when we were having our Sunday dinner, a sleek little tabby cat wandered up to our house. She came to beg a crust, which our nieces gave her, no doubt. "Not another stray," we groaned. "Now she's ours for life." But on Monday, she was gone. As weeks went on, we noticed with amusement, she appeared like clockwork on Sundays ~ even when we had no family to dinner. We speculated, thinking that maybe someone locked her out of their house every church day. So to us, "Sunday Cat" she became. We never thought of her as ours. She came for a visit. Once she appeared on a Monday! We checked our calendar and laughed, puzzled. One Sunday, she brought her mate. He stayed (and stayed). "Freeloader." We know his variety. But not Sunday Cat. Come Monday, she was gone.

Then Sunday Cat disappeared. "What has become of our little Sunday Cat?" we wondered. Sunday Cat had gone, we decided. She was not ours to mourn. Her people must have moved. Then one day, our mystery was solved. We opened the door to find Sunday. And, tagging along behind ~ Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday... Two short of a week, it seems, and all skittish and wild. But they stayed. We feed them. Sunday Cat retains a measure of independence. She keeps her kittens on task. They must catch a cricket or a newt, and she will bring them a mouse. We give them cat food, but they seem ravenous. They are never full. But they are not predictable. Sometimes the whole kit and caboodle disappears for a day or a week.

The kitten sitting prettily in the fall leaves (above) is one of the newcomers. She (he?) is the prettiest, but the wildest. The closest we came to catching her was to grab her once by the tail. That didn't set too well with her wild nature, and we have yet to catch her again.

Front-Porch Society

Lazy-day Sundays... we used to spend them loafing in the front-porch swing. Old and young, we enjoyed swinging or swaying in an old-fashioned glider. The old people sat in big rocking chairs. We talked. The old people chewed the fat and the youngsters listened, taking it all in, to become part of the collective psyche that made up the South. Or maybe the youngun's put in their two-cents worth, and were generally smiled upon and respected and loved. If they got too chattery, they'd be told to "go out back and play." Southern culture flourished in a front-porch society. They say that television and air conditioning brought the front-porch society to an end, and that is probably so. But computers and video games surely deserve a morsel of blame, don't they? And my nieces all have cell phones permanently attached to their ears. Well, every so often, we still stroll out to the porch swing. Sometimes it's for a too-brief spell of quiet contemplation, broken by the noisy "chatter" of our own left brains. Or maybe we sit in the swing for a minute or two to entertain an energetic toddler.

Smelly Cat Song

It is perhaps a sign of the times that my family spent part of Sunday arguing over the words to the "Smelly Cat Song." The big Sunday dinner has been a tradition in our family since I was a kid, and probably long before that. We used to get together at my grandmother's house, with all the cousins. Not every Sunday, but many ~ and nearly every holiday. Later, Mother started cooking for our own family, and the tradition continued. Usually, some or all of my brothers and sisters come over and bring their families. It was my niece who started the "Smelly Cat" conversation. She is a great fan of "Friends" ~ she has it on DVD. Being the expert, she was right about the lyrics. But it amuses me that her mother knew enough about the song to argue the point. Pop culture pervades every aspect of American life, and our house is no exception. The important thing is, we still get together on Sundays. We have our meal ~ sometimes home cooked, and other times take-out (Pizza King loves us). We sit around and half-watch "Columbo," and chat, and catch up on things. We might watch "Coal Miner's Daughter" or "Forrest Gump" or "The Quiet Man." If this once the conversation turned to "The Smelly Cat," it just adds to the multi-generational dimension of Sunday dinner.