The Major’s home-front pet situation goes from bad to worse

MAJOR’S CORNER Maj. (retired) Nigel Smythe-Brown

There has been an enormous amount of heavy weather at the family pile in Rockland lately, and my stomach is the worse for wear because of it. I speak of the cats, of course, Pericles and Bertram, of whom a fouler twosome does not exist.

It began, as usual, with an idea from Kitty, my wife of some 50 years. She felt the house required a bird to buck itself up or something, the kind of rot that occasionally comes into her teeming mind. She dropped the clanger over what became a spoiled lunch, as the cheese and pickle sandwich turned to ashes in my mouth.

I shivered from head to foot over the thought of harsh ululation in my slumbering sanctuary. I cried to the gods: Is it not enough that I have to put up with my wife’s cats? Dead silence ensued and I was left to my roiling thoughts. As my readers will attest, I like a calm life with little change.

There is some history on our street of adopted feathered friends. My neighbour (Harold) two doors down won a scruffy parrot in a Christmas draw at the Legion. He called it Ben Gunn after the marooned madman from Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Harold was informed that the parrot would take food from one’s lips if it was offered. Apparently, he did no further delving, stuck a tangerine between his teeth and approached the bird in question.

Mr. Gunn had mixed feelings about his change of venue, because he had loved the company at the busy Legion. Now, to be surprised by an apparition with something sticking out of his mouth was too much even for a parrot with a charitable disposition.

He bit Harold’s nose with a firmness only an alarmed parrot could manage. The upshot: Now Harold has a proboscis along the lines of a wino after a serious car accident.

Needless to say when the screams stopped, Ben was back at the Legion with a sharp note attached demanding damages.

In my case, after a week of begging my wife to reconsider her idea, a very large mynah bird named O’Toole arrived. Now that the bird was here, I decided to do my best to get along. I leaned close to the cage and whistled a soft Irish lullaby to soothe its transition from the bird store. O’Toole bellowed “Gobshite,” evacuated fiercely and turned its back. I was done and slunk to my study.

The cats did a dance around O’Toole’s covered home that would have raised an eyebrow from Fred Astaire. Meanwhile I stared at my long, straight nose in the mirror and wondered if I would go the way of friend Harold. I decided I would give the wretched bird a wide berth with a splash of Smythe-Brown disdain.

Kitty had decided that in order to keep the cats away from O’Toole’s cage, she would overfeed them to the point of indifference. I encouraged her in this mad scheme, hoping for the onset of diabetes in the twins of hell that might carry them off.

However, over the next few days as the shouts of “Gobshite! Gobshite!” filled the house, I began to suspect the plan had gone awry. When I wandered down to the living room where O’Toole’s cage stood, I could not help noticing that while our two cats had gained about 10 pounds each, Bertram was hanging from the bars, trying to get his now-fat paw into the bird’s home.

It struck me as amusing, but not the participants, as the cage sagged under the cat’s weight. Suddenly the felines heard their plates rattle in the distant kitchen, which brought all thought of lunch with O’Toole to a halt.

They lumbered as best they could toward the promising sound, which proved to be anything but false: Blue tuna all around.

I sprinkled a little sugar on the meal and left. One never knows; it could be goodbye.