Church

They say that cat's have nine lives.  For one of our cats, he had at least sixteen.  Seventeen if you count the near drowning. 


His name was Church.  He wasn't very big, not much larger than a nice oven mitt.  When he was a kitten, his ultra soft gray hair would stick up at all ends after he'd awakened from sleep.  Instead of bed head, Church had bed body.  My memory of thirty-five years ago probably isn't perfect, but I assume that Church wandered near our house one day conscious of the copious amount of scraps we threw out after meals.  Like most felines that wandered near our house, they were wary at first of the dog, but as we were an accepting family, even the dogs turn a blind eye to natural enemies.


Church was different than most cats.  He didn't seem to purr - more of a guttural hacking sound, like the sputtering of a lawn mower that isn't quite ready to wake up.  Probably one of his lives was consumed by feline consumption - who knows, but when you get down to it, there aren't really ninety-nine ways to kill a cat.


We weren't really into caticide.  Feeding them was a natural progression of farm life.  Sooner or later, though, they'd all end up on 20th Ave. that ran next to our homestead becoming a nice little speed bump for a passing grain truck.  The cats on our farm met their ends in strange ways: in the winter, they like to find warm places to sleep.  Unfortunately, one of our cats strayed a little too close to the fan belt...  Sometimes they'd wake up actually under the hood of the car five miles down the road screeching hysterically because we inadvertently were taking them to school and after we had stopped, they'd pop down from the engine and, well, they became our unfortunate small speed bump.


That's just the unfortunate life cycle of country cats sometimes.


Church had the opportunity to survive many of these things, but one night he didn't get so lucky.  Granted, Church never seemed like the smartest cat, like one of those goofy hyenas from the Lion King that couldn't seem to keep its tongue inside its mouth, but Church's greatest Matthias memory happened early winter, probably in the mid 80's.


One cold and stormy night... 


That night probably wasn't stormy, because if it was, Church would have walked away from the cement slab in front of our garage.  He must have been very sleepy, probably done with catnipping for the day, and he fell asleep on the front corner of the cement.  Sometimes in north central Iowa, in winter, the temperatures drop really quickly - who knows really what happened at that point, there are varying interpretations from the rest of my family - and things flash freeze, kind of like in the movie The Day After Tomorrow when a perfect storm turns the entire northern hemisphere into a frozen wasteland.  That's pretty much every January where my parents live.


To make a long story short: Church was so tired that he didn't notice that his body was starting to stick to the cement.  Just like when kids stick their tongues to metal during the winter, so did Church's body.  We didn't notice him at first, but after a while - perhaps just after supper while doing dishes, I looked out the kitchen window and I saw the little patch on the cement covered by a thin film of snow but yet somehow a piece of it moving.  It was Church's front right paw and his back right paw.


The whole left side of his body had frozen to the concrete.


Racing out to Church, I was unsure of what to do next.  Being relatively young, I thought perhaps I'd tug on him a little bit.  Not such a good idea.  His fur started to stretch a little bit and he made this small revving lawn mower noise.  It never occurred to me to perhaps go get some warm water and run it along underneath him. 


It did occur to me to get a snow shovel.  A big one.


When I came back, Church was in greater distress; his mewling had diminished and if I didn't excise him from the sidewalk, he'd have redeemed his ninth life.


So, I did what any normal ten year old would do: I scraped him off the cement with the shovel.  Oh you should have heard him then.  Most of his fur was still there.


With cat on shovel I walked into the house.  I'm just going to put the conversation down that I think I remember - the odds are I'm going to embellish a lot, but it makes it more fun as this actually happened.


Mother: (Still finishing up with the dishes)  What were you doing outside, Reid?


Reid:  Mom!  Mom!  Guess what?  I brought Church inside.


Mother:  (wiping her hands on a dish towel)  What?  (turns around) Okeeee, what have you brought in here?  Is that a rat?


Reid:  No, Mom, it's Church.  You know, our cat!


Mother:  (takes a step closer)  Well I'll be...


Reid:  He's dying, Mom.  We have to do something.


Mother:  We've got to warm him up somehow.


Reid:  Do you want me to wrap him in some towels?


Mother:  I don't want that thing messing up my good dish towels.


Reid:  Then what are we going to do?


(Pause:  then, both Reid and Mother turn towards the oven at the same time)


Reid:  Yeah, we could put Church in there.  That would warm him up good.


Mother:  (thoughtful) I don't know if this is a good idea. 


Reid:  We've got to save his life!


Mother:  (takes a cookie sheet out of the drawer next to the oven)  I don't want cat hair all over my good oven.  (puts the cat on the cookie sheet.)


Church:  Meeouch.


Reid:  Hurry, Mom, Hurry.


Mother:  Easy, Reid.  He'll be okay.


Reid:  How hot should we make it?


Mother:  I don't know - we don't really want him to char; maybe set the oven on bake - what do you say, 100 degrees? (Fahrenheit)


Reid:  Sounds good to me.  (Turns on the oven and places Church in the oven)  Do you think we should shut the door?


Mother:  Probably not.  But, I've never done this before.


Reid:  Me neither.  But it sure is fun.  This is good bonding time, me and you, my Mom, baking some cat.  (Gives her a hug)  Thanks, Mom.




We left Church in the oven for about fifteen minutes and when he was good and warm, we got some oven mitts out and pulled him out of the open oven.  Strangely enough, Church was as good as new - or as good as Church ever was, apart from the slight vertigo, the weeping eye and the ear that kind of hung off to the side.  Come to think of it, his tail didn't look that good either.


Church survived, but we wanted to keep him near us for a few days.  As it was Christmas, we went to Grandpa and Grandmas.   Church rode with us in the car.  I think he was probably sick the whole time and what we hadn't had the foresight for was that Church's fur on one side of his body fell off - he kind of looked like that guy from Batman - Two Face, except it was Two Sides.  One had hair, the other had frostbit skin.  Oh, and he lost that one ear, all the hair on one side of his face, two joints of his tale and the ability to really control his bladder.


But, he was still alive thanks to our quick thinking. 


When we were back in the States, we sat around and told stories at Christmas time.  This was an old favorite and even though everything that I remember is probably wrong, and my mother will probably scold me for making her look addled (I'm sure it was I who actually went through with putting the cat in the oven over her argument) it is a good story to remember. My mother was laughing so hard she started crying.


In the next couple of blogs I'm going to remember some stories about my sisters, Vikki and Dani.  Some of the stories might be embellished a little, but when we went back this time, we spent some time in Cedar Rapids.  An interesting thing happened there, also.