A
Cat Tale
My
uncle, Cecil Wayne Wilson, was one heck of a marksman with a .22 rifle. I
was privileged to accompany him on a few squirrel hunting safaris when I
was about seven or eight years old.
Those excursions would usually take place on a crisp fall morning, after
the hickory nuts had reached full maturity.
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He only
allowed me to go with him if I promised to be absolutely quiet and to obey his
instructions. Of course, I would have
promised him anything as long as he let me go.
The woods behind grandma’s house extended for several square miles and
he had a few favorite places to stalk the furry little creatures. When we reached a spot to his liking, he
would position my backside beside a tree and warn me to be quiet.
Thus would
begin my squirrel education. If he saw
an unwary critter nearby, it was lights out for the little guy. If a squirrel saw us, it would skitter behind
a tree trunk. Cecil would tell me, “Now
watch him. He will just go around to the
other side and peek out to see if we are still here.” Sure enough, it went just like he said, and
there was one more dead squirrel.
Sometimes, the
squirrels weren’t very plentiful and he had a special way of calling them. Most people have heard of duck calls or deer
calls, but Cecil had a unique way of calling squirrels. He would hold two half dollar coins apart
with a finger of one hand use the other hand to snap the coins together, making
a clicking sound. Eventually one of them
couldn’t resist checking it out and you can guess the result. Cec seldom missed and he furnished himself
and grandma with squirrel for supper. I
never could summon the courage to try squirrel, probably because I was
horrified the first time I saw grandma crack the head to retrieve the brains
and cook them with eggs for breakfast.
The squirrel
narrative is only prologue to the point of this story. One fine day Cecil and I had the .22 out
behind the root cellar practicing our shooting (Mostly his, but he let me have
a shot occasionally.) While we were
there grandma’s old cat sauntered by.
Before I
even knew it happened, Cecil shot the tail off that cat slick as a whistle. Pop! The tail went one way and the cat took off like a shot in the other direction. Well we didn’t see hide nor hair of the cat for several days, but it eventually showed up and grandma couldn’t understand what had happened to the cat’s tail. She doctored the stump of a tail with turpentine and after a while the cat seemed none the worse for wear.
even knew it happened, Cecil shot the tail off that cat slick as a whistle. Pop! The tail went one way and the cat took off like a shot in the other direction. Well we didn’t see hide nor hair of the cat for several days, but it eventually showed up and grandma couldn’t understand what had happened to the cat’s tail. She doctored the stump of a tail with turpentine and after a while the cat seemed none the worse for wear.
Some thirty
years later, when grandma was staying in a residential care facility in Poplar Bluff,
I came to visit her and, by chance, Cecil happened to be there as well. As the conversation among us progressed, I
asked Cecil if he remembered shooting the tail off that cat. Grandma sat straight up in her chair and
exclaimed, “Cecil, did you shoot that cat’s tail off?” Cecil smiled a sort of half smile and replied
sheepishly, ‘Yeah, Mom, I did.” It was
only then that she learned the truth about the old cat’s tail.
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