CAT NIP

Kudos to Dolberry for his Shamrock entry! I do now have a camera available but I have not yet mastered the skill of posting pictures on the blog site, or I would show my crop of shamrocks. I have both purple and green and they are spectacular, excuse me, I meant to say they WERE spectacular. They are spending the winter in the family room and they lose some of there zest for life down there. They are like bears, they hibernate and turn very,very ugly. But, not to worry when the gentle winds of spring blow back to my deck the shamrocks will once again burst forth in all their glory and be ready for serious competition.

It has been brought to my attention that there are reports of cats or maybe just one cat having Swine Flu in Iowa! I have been there(not in Iowa but Ohio) and done that! My encounter with the diseased cat took place in London, Ohio about 70 years ago. Believe me it was a life altering experience. Cat flu can be very painful and cause a lot of consternation in a small town and in a family.

One snowy Christmas day I was walking from one grandmother's house to another grandmother's house when I was attacked by my own grandmother's cat. The attack was unprovoked but my formerly loving grandmother swore up and down (as the saying goes) that the cat saw me and knew it was pay back time. My GM was under the impression that I had teased the cat the previous summer. Not entirely accurate.

When I went in the house to report the attack, my big brother went out to chastise the cat and it nipped him too! It ran under the shed and when my grandpa went out to confront the cat, it ran out of the shed and, yes, you guessed it; it nipped him also! Did Grandma blame them for their encounters? No!

The attacker whose name was Bib, died the next day. Woe is us! Grandpa reported it to the board of health in London and they promptly dug the cat up. (Grandpa had buried it in the garden.) and sent its head to Columbus for a 'cattopsy' and it was discovered that it was indeed gravely ill. They did not term it Cat Flu but referred to it as Rabies. Sort of a cross between Mad Cow disease and Swine Flu disease.

My brother, Grandpa and I all had to have a very painful series of injections to keep us from contracting the disease. The injections were unbelievably distressful, and we had to take 21 of them. One each day for three weeks. If we did not get the shots we could become dreadfully ill with hydrophobia.

I did not go mad as I could have but I did prepare for the worst. I promptly, at the height of my discomfort, make a list of all the people I was going to bite if I became afflicted with hydrophobia. My sister was high on the list, as a matter of fact, she was first on the list because she would shriek and pretend to run every time I got near her. She insisted that she would not sit next to me at the table during dinner, just in case I became rabid during the meal.!

The list took me awhile to compose because I felt it was my opportunity to repay any unjust treatment that I had suffered through in my life. It was a very satisfying task. There were a few nuns on the list too. Later in life I did see the error of my ways and try to make amends to them. Teaching junior high school gives one perspective on many things.

Fortunately, I did survive the treatment but I do not take it lightly when there is a report that cats may be afflicted with flu. Beware! Ciao.