Lilian Braun - The private life of the cat who... - tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran

My chum Arch Riker sold them in the school yard for a penny. Unfortunately, our enterprise was short lived. Now, several decades later, I entertain myself by writing limericks—and encouraging others to do so. “Anyone can write a limerick” is my slogan. And the good folk of Moose County have become writers of rhymed jingles with the traditional five lines in a-a-b-b-a rhyme scheme.

The best limericks focus on a person or a place. The winner of the annual Qwill Pen Limerick Contest celebrated the town of Brrr, coldest in the county, where the lake is said to be frozen ice in winter and melted ice in summer.

There was a young lady from Brrr

Who always went swimming in fur.

One day, on a dare,

She swam in the bare,

And that was the end of her!

Here in the boondocks it’s noticeable that animals, wild and domestic, so often are the stars of our limericks:

A sexy young tomcat named Jet

Loved every lady he met.

One day he got ill

And they gave him a pill,

And now he’s suing the vet.

A black-and-white stray named Toulouse

Found a home in the county of Moose.

Now he dines on ice cream

And chicken supreme

And oysters and pâté of goose.

An amazing young fellow named Cyril

Was ingenious, agile, and virile.

He ran up and down trees

On his hands and his knees

And eventually married a squirrel.

A sweet little feline named Catta

Is getting fatta and fatta.

But she’s very nice

At catching mice

So what do an ounce or two matta?

A bibliocat named Dundee

Is as Scotch as a feline can be.

He quotes Burns quite a lot

And reads Sir Walter Scott

And dines on haggis and tea.

A handsome young feline named Frodo

Is aware of the meaning of no-no.

But he doesn’t give a tat

Because he is a CAT

And thinks everyone else is a Dodo.

Old Bubba is not very brave

And hasn’t learned how to behave.

But he warns of dangers

And murderous strangers.

And we’ll love him from here to the grave.

A live-in charmer—Miss Kitty—

s blue-eyed and loving and pretty.

Chasing to and fro

She never says no.

She’s a cat, not a girl. What a pity!

16.

cool koko also says

Dumb animals know more about humans than dumb humans know about animals.

When the man’s away, the cats will play.

Ring out, wild bells! Here comes the dogcatcher.

A penny saved . . . isn’t worth a sniff of catnip these days.

A dog by any other name would smell like a dog.

Half a dish of cream is better than none.

A cat can look at a king . . . and doesn’t have to lick his boots.

Bite not, lest ye be bitten.

What’s your cat’s name? Ask that question and brighten someone’s day. People seem to enjoy telling the names of their pets—and how they came together.

They’ll say, “Her name is Snowball. A dear friend in Florida had a litter of kittens and wanted me to have one for old times’ sake. The little thing flew north all by herself, and we drove to the Chicago airport to meet her. There she was sitting in a travel coop, quite self-possessed, among all the luggage. She melted our hearts. Her name on the coop was Sunshine, but we thought Snowball was more appropriate. She didn’t mind.”

Or they’ll say, “His name is Pasha. When we found him, he was an abandoned kitten stuck in a drainpipe and crying his eyes out. At first we called him Little Devil because he was so naughty, but he grew into a lordly member of the family and we call him Pasha.”

There are scores of reasons for naming cats. I know a cat in Japan called Mr. Jones, and a cat in Kansas named Hiroshi.

I also know a Siamese who was named Bootsie when he was a kitten because of his little brown feet. When he grew up to be a handsome adult, he appeared to have an emotional problem; he was shy and disagreeable with outsiders. When renamed Brutus, he developed a whole new personality: sophisticated, forthright, and obviously the head of the household.

What’s the name of your cat? When readers of the “Qwill Pen” column were asked that question, an avalanche of postal cards descended on the mail room of The Moose County Something.

Pinky and Quinky for a pair of longhairs—short for propinquity and equanimity.

Toulouse for a black-and-white longhair—suggested by the black-and-white posters of the artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Jet Stream, for the companion of the WPKX weatherman.

Holy Terror, for the obstreperous Siamese living under the same roof as a retired clergyman.

I noted that two-syllable names are in the majority—the better to catch a cat’s attention, perhaps. . . . A few names are uncomplimentary—the less said about them, the better. A few are named after famous personages, but they are unwieldy and say more about the cat-person than about the cat. I find nothing catly about Socrates or Babe Ruth. Nor do I approve of calling a cat George or Pauline.

The largest category of cat names submitted by readers were those connected with food. They amuse the humans without offending the pets. Peaches, Pumpkin, Jellybean, Ginger, Pepper, Strudel, and Popcorn.

But he’s your cat, and if you want to call him George (after your grandfather) it will be okay with him, as long as you feed him well.

I’ll never forget the trick a delicate little seven-pound cat played on two healthy adult males at the Nutcracker Inn. It had to do with her uncanny sense of spatial relationships.

At home she liked to sit on top of a seven-foot cabinet and watch the scene below without getting involved. She would stand in front of it, look up, crouch, then rise to the top in a fluid leap, propelled by her incredible hind legs. She never fell short and never overshot the mark.

When I had a visitor, Yum Yum would walk into the room just enough to make her presence felt (she liked compliments) but not close enough to be grabbed. Scientists say a cat gauges how far a human can lunge, adjusting for the individual’s height and arm length.