Meant To Be Free

When I moved in with Tiny, I knew she had cats, but I was under the impression they were old, infirm, and likely to die at any moment.

They are old, but their only infirmities are mental and psychological disorders. Death is apparently afraid of them, and the only way they will cross the Jordan River any time soon is if someone ties them up in a gunny sack and tosses them in the water.

I would volunteer for the job, but I have a feeling they would escape from the sack and drown me.

I do not have the stamina to kill a cat—especially a cat with the stamina of Scam or Con. Starving them is out of the question, as Scam is fat enough to survive a famine. I can’t imagine anyone drunk enough to buy them, so I opted to remove them from my presence in the kindest, most loving way imaginable.

I released them into the wild. All creatures are meant to be free!

It was easier than I envisioned. All I had to do was step onto the back deck and leave the door open. Scam disappeared under the porch, and Con vanished into the atmosphere in a streak of brown fur.

We’re FREE! They seemed to say, FREE!

I wished them the best of luck and went indoors to bask in cat-free serenity. I was sipping my cup of celebratory coffee when Tiny shuffled in, glamorously attired in a fuzzy bathrobe with a towel on her head.

Maybe she wouldn’t notice for a few hours. After all, it’s not like cat-free serenity is immediately detectible to a cat-lover. By the time she realized they were gone, they would be off pursuing their dreams of fame, fortune, and a life of crime.

“Where are my cats?”

“Cats?” I blinked innocently and sipped my coffee, “Are they gone?”

“There’s uneaten food in their bowls!”

Zounds! I had forgotten to hide an important clue!

Tiny scurried around the house, calling frantically for Scam and Con. I decided to give her a few moments to search before telling her they were outdoors, frolicking in the sunshine and irritating the neighbor’s Doberman. She would be relieved, of course. Once she realized the benefits of cat-free serenity, she would probably even thank me.

“I think they might have gone outside,” I observed at last.

“Outside? How would they get outside?”

“Through the door. I went out earlier, and I think they may have slipped out.”

Tiny concealed her relief with a shriek of fright, “Oh! My babies!” Jerking the back door open, she raced into the yard, bathrobe flapping in the breeze. “What if something attacks them? They have no way to defend themselves!”

Nothing but claws, teeth, and sarcastic wit.

God created wild animals with natural survival instincts. They could catch mice or steal garbage. If that failed, I was pretty sure they could make a living as professional poker players in a seedy casino out west. They might even become very successful.

Unfortunately for all of us, but mostly for me, Tiny found them both and brought them back to continue wreaking havoc on my already stressful life. It turns out Scam was too stupid to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime chance and tried to set up housekeeping under the back deck. Con was a little more adventurous, but not much.

Oh, they made a big deal out of coming home. You would have thought they were Marco Polo returning from exotic and dangerous lands by the way Tiny petted and made over them that day. She even reported their adventure at work, as though common sense had saved them from the wilds of Hendersonville instead of pure, simple laziness.

I guess some creatures were not meant to be free.