The night of the wild Easter bunnies

House cat fails grade as protector

I was on the missing list last week. I was in hospital for a little tune up — grease, oil and filter, points, plugs and condenser. So now I am thinking of bringing two stories together, one about cats, the other about Easter.

Like most houses in Cape Breton, we always had an old mongrel cat around the house and the names were always the same, Towser or Tippy. When a cat would disappear from our house for whatever reason, ran away, died or went to “the farm,” my brother Brian always managed to find a replacement through his knack of having a cat follow him home from school. It may have had something to do with the string dangling from his back pocket. He once brought home a cat, pure black except for his four white paws. We immediately named him Boots, which soon became Bootsie except for the Old Man who insisted on calling him Boots Walsh after a friend of his on the Sydney Police Force.

Boots had the run of the house; slept where he wanted, when he wanted and ate the best diet direct from the kitchen table. At night he roamed the house in what we assumed was a guard patrol. We all slept soundly knowing that Bootsie was looking after us. There wasn’t a mouse or bird that was safe when Boots Walsh was on patrol!

Now here’s where the Easter part comes in. We were taught early that while Easter was an important day in the church, it was not a day to get gifts galore. We would get an Easter bunny or a rooster, some jelly beans and those hard Easter eggs with the white filling. If the Old Man got a few hours overtime we might get a cowboy hat with jelly beans on top or one of those bats with the ball attached to an elastic, which was guaranteed to drive you nuts before dark. The girls would get a new skipping rope, a ball or a hula hoop.

One year the Old Man did better than a few hours so he had the money to buy us those expensive bunnies and roosters — you know, the ones in the boxes with the cellophane window.

On Easter morning we stormed downed the stars only to be stopped in our tracks by a scene of total destruction with Boots in the middle of it all licking his paws. Apparently, Bootsie, on his nightly rounds came across something he had not seen before — rabbits with shining white icing eyes and carrying a large carrot. Then there were the wild-eyed roosters. What was Bootsie to do but protect his territory with a vicious attack on all fronts.

When the Old Man saw the destruction he grabbed Boots Walsh and “put” him in the basement then went immediately to the phone. We thought for sure Bootsie was destined for “the farm.” A few minutes later he came into the living room and told us that Dr. Young said it would be OK to eat the chocolate but not the areas the cat had bitten. We were relieved and immediately dove into the pile. We didn’t know which bunny was whose but we didn’t care — chocolate was chocolate.

Later in the day my sister Margaret asked the Old Man what Bootsie was getting for Easter. “A fifth boot,” he said. “Where will you put it?” “Under his tail with my work book,” The Old Man said with a sly grin.

NOTE: No animals were injured in the telling of this story.

I’m just sayin’...