Ivan the Terrible

Once upon a time there was a Terrible Cat. He was terribly ugly, had terribly long and tangled fur, his ears were terribly mangled, so much that one of them was just gone. And finally, all of the small rodents in the vicinity found him Terribly Frightening. And so, he came to be known as Ivan the Terrible Cat. Ivan had beautiful blue eyes. Well, they were blue, anyway, but they were crossed. Which added to the generally terrible impression. Oh, and he smelled terrible, too.

A fair maiden once happed upon Ivan during a walk in the country (OK, so he was in the yard at my grandparents' house, where he had taken up permanent residence, and I am not exactly a fair maid, I guess, but, well, you know, it makes the story so much nicer to read). This fair maid greeted the Terrible Beast as if he were a babe in white cotton (rather than a tomcat in mats of cat hair, dust, hay, weeds, and that smell that tomcats have, you know)and took him in her arms (and suffered only minor injuries when he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her). She wrapped him in satin (shoved him into a wire chicken cage) and held him close (stuck him in the trunk of her car) as she cried over his wounds (sang along with the radio all the way home).

The Terrible Beast, you see, had terrible open wounds behind each ear ...or what once were ears... and at this point it become impossible to romanticize, so forget the parenthetical interjections of reality; I'll just get on with it:

I took the cat home to my parents house completely against his will, and put him in a dog crate on the front porch. I don't know if you've ever smelled a tomcat in all his, um, glory, but it's not a smell you want to introduce into your house, really, if you can help it. So, there he sat on the porch, until I could take him in to the vet. But I didn't want to spend money on an office visit when I knew what was wrong with the cat's ears: mites. Ear mites are lovely little critters that live in the ears of some dogs and cats, and make things generally so miserable that the host would rather scratch his ears OFF of his HEAD than continue having ears with mites in them. This cat, who my grandparents actually call Whitey, not Ivan, has through the years lost large portions of his ears to fights and mights. I mean mites. He had such huge open wounds behind his "ears" on that day that I just couldn't let him continue to suffer. I wanted the vet to see him just to confirm that all I needed to do was treat the earmites, and that there was not any permanent damage or infection deep inside the "ears."

So, I just brough the cat to the clinic, and at lunchtime asked one of the doctors to take a peek at him. All went well until I tried to get him (the cat, not the doctor) back into the kitty carrier. The cat refused, bit, scratched, writhed (wrothe?) and sprang out of my arms. He took off down the road. The vet said "uh oh, is he hard to catch?" and went off to lunch. So, I followed the cat. I followed him and followed him and then I thought I had him when he crawled into a little hole in the ground... which turned out to be the entrance to a narrow culvert that ran 60 feet under the road -- UNDER THE ROAD -- and came out on the other side. A culvert, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a drain pipe that goes under something, like a road, to divert water in a way that will not harm the surroundings or make the road flood or collapse or whatever. Culverts come in all sizes. There are culverts big enough to walk through. I mean, for a human to walk through. This particular culvert is big enough for a cat to walk through. It is big enough for me to enter head first on my belly, and to crawl through on my belly. Like a soldier in the jungle. But that would have been a ridiculous thing to do. My friend Jess and I set about making a plan. "We have a live trap," said Jess, "but I don't know how to use it." "We could throw rocks into the pipe to scare him out," I said, "if we had a way to catch him at the end." "We could use this net," proposed Jess, pulling out a butterfly net. A BUTTERfly net??? Well, ok. So, I positioned myself at one end with the net, and Jess started sending rocks in from the other end. The cat completely ignored the rocks. I could peer in the end of the tube, and see the cat silhouetted against the light at the end of the tunnel. He never budged. Really, it's impossible to send a rock very far into a pipe that small -- it will always hit the side and bounce before it gets too far. Laws of physics, you know. So, I wanted to get a bb gun. Don't hate me, I wouldn't have cocked it too much, just enough to sting, you know. OK, so I probably wouldn't have done that even if I had a bb gun, which I don't. Finally, I had a bright idea. I called Jess down to my end of the culvert, and had him take over the net. “I’m going in!” I declared. Jess looked at me in disbelief. I think he tried to talk me out of it. But my mind was made up. I was gonna get that cat, come heck or high water. I got myself down to the far end of the pipe, and peered in. Stuck my head in a few inches. Smelled dusty. No high water here lately. In went my shoulders. Down went my head. I eased down onto my belly and began pulling myself forward with my elbows against the corrugated metal. My shirt caught on a ragged tear in the metal and I heard a ragged tear develop in the cotton. I pushed my body forward with the toes of my boots, and then pulled myself up with my elbows. Toes, elbows, toes, elbows. As I dragged my body across dead leaves and dusty gravel I thought to toss a handful of pebbles toward the cat, in hopes of scaring him toward Jess. I succeeded in filling my oxygen supply completely with thick dust while the cat just looked me in the eye, glaring from 30 feet away, his position directly under the center line on the pavement above. I coughed. Elbows, toes. Getting tired. Elbows. Toes. Cough. Belly. Head down in the dirt. Breathe. Cough. Elbows. Toes. Pull. Push. Yell at the cat. Yell to Jess. “I’m coming! I’m almost to the cat! (Only 20 feet to go!) Cough. Scoot. Cough. “He moved! Jess! He’s coming toward you!” Oh, he stopped. Cough. Elbows. Toes. “I’m almost to the cat! Only 30 feet to go!” Elbows. Toes. Head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes. “Jess! I’m almost there! Only 50 feet to go!” ... only 40 feet… only 30 feet… only 20 feet… move, cat, move, please, run out of the tunnel. Why are you so smart? I can’t even see the butterfly net waiting to snag you, why can you?? “I’m touching the cat, Jess, but he won’t move toward the net!” Shove, Cough, Scoot, Elbows, Shove, Toes, Shove “Here he is, Jess! Are you ready? Here he comes!” Shove, Shove, Fight, Push, Shove, GET IN THE NET NOW, CAT! Jess: “I got him! You ok?”

I stuck my head out the end of the tunnel and wormed my way around so I was face up. I was lying on a pile of old dirty snow in the entrance to the culvert. I was covered in dust, in old leaves, in who knows what. Jess said to wait, he’d help me get out, after he locked the cat up inside. I lay in the culvert, breathing. Coughing. Jess returned. I smiled up at him with my best smile, hoping he could see it through the filth. I handed him my glasses, and he proceeded to try to pull me out of the culvert. It was not to be. The pipe at that end was crimped so that the opening was really not quite as wide as my shoulders. I was willing to sacrifice my arms to get out of the pipe, but it also happened to end less than a foot from a chain link fence, the base of which was buried a foot under the ground so that it could not be bent up. There was no way to get me out of that culvert. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, looked up again at Jess and went back into the tunnel. Pull with the toes. Push with the elbows. Toes, pull. Elbows, push. Head down, pull, push, toes, elbows. Cough. “Jess, can you see me yet?” Cough. Scoot. Repeat. Cough. Scoot. Repeat. “I see you, Emily!” Only 40 more feet, maybe!” Cough. Scoot. Repeat. Cough. Scoot. Repeat. Belly to the ground, face to the dirt. Cough. Scoot. Repeat. “You’re almost here now, Emily! Only 40 more feet now!” Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. “Only 20 more feet now, Emily!” Repeat. “Watch out now, you’re about to go over a tear in the pipe, it’s really jagged!” Lift body over torn steel, sucking belly up into ribcage. Quite a feat, that. “10 more feet!” Scoot. Cough. Breat—no, Cough. Scoot. Pull with the toes. Push with the elbows. “Jess! Am I there yet?” “Just 10 more feet, Emily!” Inches are multiplying. I’ve moved 10 inches. No, that was just 10 centimeters. No, that was just 10 millimeters. “Just 957,358, 294, 176 millimeters to go, Emily! You’re almost here!”

At some point, I’m not sure how much longer it took, I began to see my surroundings brighten from blackness to a sooty grey, and then suddenly I was in the bright blue, half falling out of the end of a big piece of corrugated steel pipe. Jess just looked at me. “That was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen.” Was that a compliment?

I trembled a little as I tried to walk back to the clinic. My vocal chords, apparently caked with dust, refused to vibrate, so I sounded half-dead when I talked. I was shocked to see my reflection, and when I ran my hand through my hair, well, my hand just stuck there.

But we’d bagged the cat. The Terrible Cat.

While the Terrible Cat waited at the clinic, I went home and showered. At that point, I wanted to send the cat back to the farm and forget the whole thing. Jess insisted on checking out his ears, and then the ladies decided to shave him. The cat, not Jess.” We took off hair inches thick, all mats. It came off in one piece, like one dreadlock. Now I had a cat with goop flying out of his ears, and no hair, except on his head, tail, and legs. Terrible.

I took him home, and pondered what to do with him. I needed to treat his ears for 2 weeks, so I couldn’t take him back to the farm. And I couldn’t put him out on the porch, because he had no hair and it was the dead of winter. So, he lived in the garage, happily ever after.

Or, not.

This story only gets worse. It will be continued….