Weave the Web

Many suburban families have memories of that one great cat that once graced their shag-carpeted floors. You know the one I’m talking about – the cat that survived, that ate Chinese food, that the kids used to dress up in sunglasses, and somehow the cat would sit still for it. There are pictures to prove it, in all of our albums.

 

Charlie was that cat for me. Charlie loved to sleep in warm spots around the house, and our Fresno garage was an oven in the summer. Charlie loved to sleep in a number of places in the garage, but by far the riskiest location, and his favorite, was on top of my mother’s car. He’d curl up, like cats do, and fall into those deep summer sleeps that resemble kitty hangovers more than naps. So, there’s my mom, driving down the road and wondering why people are gesturing wildly at her roof when she stops at the traffic lights. Finally, she puts two and two together and stops. She managed to get him off the roof and into the car. I imagine he looked like a crazed, wide-eyed feline hood ornament.

 

Back home, Charlie gave up that sleeping spot completely. Apparently in search of new, safer warm spots, Charlie intrepidly developed new routines in the house. Raising a family of three kids, my mother was always busy with the laundry. Charlie, like all sentient life-forms, loves the feel of a pile of warm laundry just out of the dryer. My mom had learned to keep an eye out for him, since she hated the hair he would leave in his various impromptu nests. So, there she is in the kitchen adjacent to the laundry room, and she hears this thump, thump noise along with the kind of howl a cat makes when its schizophrenic, constipated or both. Behold, Charlie discovered that not all warm laundry has finished its dryer cycle! I’ve since seen this incident satirized in a Far Side cartoon, where an evil dog has left a trail of cat food to the open door of the clothes dryer, hoping to lure his nemesis to the tumbling fate within. Since we had three dogs ourselves, I can only assume one of them was responsible.

 

The inside of the house apparently more dangerous than previously thought, Charlie returned to the garage, the quest for warmth resumed. What could be riskier than the top of the car? Underneath it, of course! And there, Charlie took up residence for many a warm summer afternoon. On what must have been a particularly deep nap day, Charlie failed to arouse when my mother started the car. She pulled out of the garage to pick me up from school and Charlie really got his tires rotated, if you know what I mean. Charlie suffered a broken back leg and three broken ribs. I can remember holding him on my lap while my mom sped to the vet.

 

Of course, Charlie did not meet his end from an event that lends itself to the grandiose nature of his personality. The way he did leave the family, though, shrouded him in exactly the kind of mystery that elevated him to the status of kitty icon. He lived on to be quite old and decrepit as some cats get. One day, he simply didn’t come back inside. We never found his body; like many cats, most likely he simply found a quiet place somewhere and expired in his sleep.