Dedicated to Tara and Whitewalls...and special customers
Summer, 2013
The More People I Meet, the Better I Like My Cat
Every summer when my brother came home from college, his old boss welcomed him back with open arms. Ray delivered pizza for Zeppy's Pizza-2-Go and I'm willing to bet Domino's now defunct '30 minutes or it's free' guarantee was retired because of Ray's frequent breaking of the sound barrier on his deliveries.
At least once a week he would come home snarling about "idiot city planners" and their choices of street names. In one subdivision he ran into Wandering Willow Way North, Wandering Willow Way South, Wandering Willow Court East, Wandering Willow Court West, Wandering Willow Drive, Wandering Willow Terrace, Wandering Willow Avenue, Lane, Place, Courtyard, Pass and so forth. None of the streets had more than 8 houses (one only had 2) and they were clumped together in the same pod—and not a willow tree for miles. The subdivision planner was probably on the hit list of every delivery service around.
I remembered this when driving Lexi to a birthday party one year. Her little friend lived in a brand new subdivision called—for real—Storybook Acres. The directions? Priceless. 'From the Shady Acres Shopping Centre (sounds more like a retirement home), go 2 miles south on Killarney. Enter through the white scrollwork arch with carved roses. Take the first right onto Goldilocks Place. Take the left curve, it becomes Rapunzel Road. Go 2 blocks, the road forks. Left is Sleeping Beauty Cove; take the right, Rumplestiltskin Drive. Go 1/4 mile to the Enchanted Castle clubhouse. Go right on Gingerbread House Lane (the first street I could really get behind). We're the fourth house on the right. Our mailbox stand is Dopey.'
No, they didn't think their mailbox looked dopey—the mailbox stand is Dopey. All of the mailbox stands are one of the seven dwarves, repeated throughout the subdivision. They had seven two-story house variations in a row: front door left/top floor balcony left; front door left/top floor balcony right; door center/balcony left or right; door right/balcony left or right; door center, balcony in the back yard. All of the houses with Dopey mailboxes had a center door and the balcony in the back. If I had lived there they would have been shopping for a rubber room. I'm betting there are plenty of Saturday nights where people stumble home from the local bar and spend hours trying to open the wrong door.
Every part of the country has this phenomenon. When we went to visit Fran and Cal, we Googlemapped the directions before we left town. I thought Ducky was going to cry. Take Camino de Dona Carmelita to Camino de Dona Catalina to Camino de Dona Carlotta to—you get the drift.
"Ignore all that," Fran said cheerfully when I called to confess that we were lost—again. "Write this down: go back to Lankershim and Sunrise, there's an AM/PM on the northwest corner, Walgreens on the northeast, Circle K on the southeast, Shell station on the southwest, it's the only corner with that exact layout. Go west on Sunrise. Go a mile and a half. Turn left at the two-story brick house with the three Jacaranda trees—there's only one with three trees. They have purple blooms all over them. Go four blocks. Turn right at the house with the big black double doors and the dancing skeleton mailbox. Go four or five blocks to the cheesy ranch house—trust me you can't miss it, it looks like a tacky knockoff of the Ponderosa or a bad 50s Western. Turn left. Go two blocks until you see the scrap metal dragon. Turn right about half a block later. Go two blocks. Turn left when you see the black cat sitting on the fence. Or by the fence. We're the fourth house down on the right with the old hippie VW van in the driveway with I Sing the Body Electric and some great artwork on the sides."
"Wait, wait—what if the cat isn't there?"
"She will be!"
We got lost another four times. Not because of her directions but because we got distracted—there were some interesting things between points A and B. There was the house with the glassed-in enclosure in front with a couple of trees growing in it and through the mesh ceiling—and about a hundred birds flitting about (to the interest of a half a dozen cats in the yard). The house with the "ginormous" pine tree and equally huge (and probably permanent, since this was the middle of summer) Xmas decorations. The house with the bookcases built into the fence and the words "lending library" above them. (I really wanted to stop for a closer look but we had already fought our way back to Sunrise twice and Ducky was in no mood to dally.)
Finally we made our way from Jacaranda trees to skeleton to cheesy ranch house (truly hideous and impossible to miss, painted in day-glow turquoise and coral) to the dragon to the cat…quite possibly the biggest cat I have ever seen. Makes Garfield look like a shadow. The heck with Maine Coon, I think this cat is part panther. The fence had a huge platform built onto it that was the size of a card table and it was just barely big enough for the cat. Okay, to be charitable, she was a fluffy beast and that covered a lot of acreage.
"That's a biiiiiiiiig kitty," Lexi drew out, nose pressed against the glass of the back seat window.
"Understatement," Ducky muttered in a 'no, we are not taking that cat home to Virginia with us' voice.
"Is the cat glued in place?" I asked Fran when we finally tumbled through her door. "I swear, she didn't even twitch the whole time we sat there!"
"Nope. She just lies there all day. She might jump down to water the begonias, but she goes right back up. She eats and sleeps out there during the day. She's out from the time they wake up til just after dinner."
"And none of the dogs terrorize her?"
She started to giggle. "Far from it. When she was a kitten, this huge Rottie came bounding up to the house and I'm sure they figured she was done for. She just marched up to the dog, went 'miau' in this teeny, tiny voice and the dog skidded to a stop. You could see him thinking, 'Something ain't right... Mama told me how much fun this is. Run up to cat, bark at cat, scare cat, chase cat. Did you miss the memo? Not get the script pages?' He kind of shook his head and stepped up... barkbarkbarkbarkbark! And Tara closed the gap, right up in his face, went 'miau' again and this poor dog started backing away. Well, Tara figured this is an invitation to play and starts bounding toward the dog—who turns tail and books. So we have this kitten—" She cupped her hands. "—chasing this Rottweiler—" She threw out her arms like she was hugging an elephant.
"Oh, my god. How embarrassing for the dog." I was almost in tears from laughter. Fran is a very expressive storyteller.
"As she got bigger, she got tougher. Sheldon and Marcus adopted a little boy a couple of years ago and last year, well, one of the dogs who didn't know any better slipped out, ran over to the property, going straight for Ryan. Never even got close. Tara catapulted—" I groaned. "—off the perch, streaked after him, tackled him, beat the living bejesus out of him and hounded him all the way home." I groaned again; Asimov said it best, the beauty of a pun is in the 'Oy' of the beholder. "That's when the Yancys built that platform. She flops around, the kids make a fuss over her. But she'll puff up like a crazed Brillo pad, quite impressive really, if a dog even looks the wrong way at the house or someone strange walks close by."
"I like that cat."
"So do we. She considers all of the kids to be her kids. The kids nicknamed her Nanny McPhee!"