Mother Nature...

Holly and I like to jog. Sometimes, like this morning, we are even lucky enough to jog together. We love to watch the sunrise, the fog dissipate over the mountains and commune with nature before we start another hectic day apart. Sometimes, however infrequent, we are even more blessed and we're allowed to see Mother Nature in Her true element. Deer, horses, even the occasional cow all seem majestic in the morning light and mark the path we traverse.

But, as unexpected as it was, Mother Nature really blessed us this morning as we silently watched a woman in her mid-40s walk down the street in a robe, wearing bunny slippers, yelling at the top of her lungs for her cat.

As she shuffled past us, she stopped us in mid-stride and yelled directly into my face, “Have you seen my cat?” She was literally five feet from us and yelling as if we were 50 yards apart.

“Your cat?” I responded, in a somewhat hushed tone. “YES, my cat! I’m looking for my cat. She is white and about 4 feet tall.”

“Four feet tall?” I asked. “Your cat is four feet tall, like this tall?” Placing my arm four feet off the ground for effect.

“YES,” her octave climbing with each response. “It’s a big cat. A really big cat. She is a mountain cat, and I have to find her. I thought she was running next to the two of you, and then I realized she wasn’t.”

“Oooookkkkkk,” I said. “We’ll be on the look out for your cat,” as Holly and I ran faster and faster away from her and her absent “pet.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I do not want to begrudge anyone from their morning drugs or even their midnight drugs or whatever this woman was on or not on. She looked nice, but somewhere in the recesses of her mind, something was not right.

At least I hope she was high, crazy or drunk. If not, that is a big cat and that cat could do some damage.

Cats hate me. Trust me. I know a thing or two about them. When I was little, my sister Missy wanted a cat. The cat then routinely jumped up on our counter and licked our butter. It always hissed at me and I am sure wanted to secretly scratch out my eyes in the middle of the night. To this day, I still keep my butter in the fridge.

But cats are nothing compared to one-eyed roosters. We had one of those as well. It would chase you around until it clawed you or you hid in its blind spot. I mean, it only had one eye, so it was not too hard to avoid, but it took every chance it could to stab you with its claws.

My dad killed the rooster one day. It tried to peck him one too many times and as he went to kick it, his shoe flew off his foot and went into an irrigation ditch filled with water. He was so mad that he took his other foot, the one that still rested inside a shoe, stepped on that rooster’s head, grabbed the talons and that was that. I had never been so proud of my dad in my life.

So take my word for it, if you see a four feet tall, white mountain cat be careful. It will most likely try to claw your eyes out. But on a positive note, I know the owner. She is the whacked out lady walking down the street at 6:00 a.m. in a robe, looking for a make believe cat.

She won’t be hard to find. I always thought people who did drugs were chasing the Dragon, now I know that it is really the cat they are after.