Off to save the lizard: 'No good deed goes unpunished' with cat in the house | Hinson
Pinko came running into the living room from the garage with a green anole lizard in his mouth.
Oh, yeah, Pinko is a 16-year-old, indoor-only Russian Blue cat, not a college student or member of Congress. I know it is not cool to say Russian these days ever since the megalomaniacal putz Putin attacked Ukraine.
But if I referred to the cat as an Archangel Blue no one would know what in the pluperfect hell I was talking about. Besides, this Russian Blue did not attack a neighboring country for no reason.
Pinko confines his assaults to lizards, and he has a big one dangling in his maw.
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Unwelcome gift
Pinko meows. Well, the cat sounds like Tom Waits clearing the gravel out of his throat when he meows. The Russian Blue looks extremely proud of his capture, which may or may not still be alive.
Pinko drops the green body by the fireplace so I can admire it. Just what I wanted, kitty. A slightly chewed anole. All I can think is, “You had better toss that reptile into the backyard before Amy comes home.”
Amy is my wife. Anoles give her the heebie-jeebies. This makes no sense since she grew up on a cypress pond in the woods of North Florida that crawled with moccasins, frogs, water snakes, gators, skinks, and anoles. It’s like being raised in a library but being scared witless of books.
The clock is ticking. Amy will open the front door at any second. I grab Pinko and toss his fuzzy butt into a nearby bedroom where Shuggie Pop, the other indoor-only Russian Blue, is waking up on the bedspread. I shut both cats inside.
Not dead yet
When I go to grab the lizard, the miniature dinosaur springs to life and scampers beneath a nearby TV table. Nothing looks quite as idiotic as a grown man down on all fours yelling at a traumatized lizard that he is trying to save the (expletive) anole’s (expletive) hide.
Then it dawns on me. There is an apex anole hunter in the bedroom. Why not let Pinko do all the work? Again.
When I open the bedroom door, I am bum rushed by two Russian Blues. I point Pinko toward the TV table and grapple with Shuggie Pop. The excitable Shuggie is about as easy to corral as a canned ham with claws. I throw a squirming Shuggie back in the bedroom and slam the door.
As I turn around, Pinko is seated, posing with the lizard (who is having a really lousy day so far) firmly between his fangs. Trying the get a live anole out of a cat’s mouth is about as difficult and foolhardy as it sounds.
Voles in your slippers
Why do cats think humans long for wingless birds, headless mice, and still-breathing snakes? Scientists say it’s their way of showing off hunting ability, displaying worth and seeking praise. I think cats are just messing with us.
Take Kato, a spoiled Himalayan cat I had a few years ago. Kato may have looked adorable, but that Hello Kitty clone had the genocidal soul of Pol Pot when it came to voles. Voles must have put their muddy feet on the furniture and clogged the toilet because Kato had it out for the little mole-like varmints.
At night, he would use his flat face to push open the water-heater doors leading to the dirt underworld of our house. There, in the dark, he would hunt voles. When he got one, Kato would chew off the tinder bits (dinky vole noses, tiny vole toes, petite vole ears) and dump the lifeless body into one of my bedroom slippers.
Let me tell you something, nothing inspires crazy dancing first thing in the morning more than squishing a freshly killed, spittle-covered vole corpse. When I quit wearing slippers because I was tired of them being used as dead vole depositories, Kato left little bodies on the steps leading the kitchen in the morning. According to Kato, I needed to smush a half-eaten vole before breakfast.
Natural born killers
Cats are hard on the little things. When colonialists arrived in New Zealand, they introduced cats to the island nation. The invasive cats took one look at the native birds, especially the flightless ones, and treated New Zealand like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Domestic cats are natural born killers. Most owners choose to ignore this about the four-legged murder machines.
I lock eyes and stare sternly at Pinko. Maybe now that he is old enough to drive, he can comprehend the look of disappointment on my face and will drop the anole. He doesn’t.
He is a cat. He has no remorse. I snatch up Pinko and the sad tug of war begins. I don’t know if the lizard is alive or dead at this point, but I do know that Amy will freak out if she comes through the door just as I pluck a limp lizard out of the cat’s jaws.
Pinko doesn’t like it one bit when I finally pry the catch out of his mouth and toss the lizard back on the hearth. The cat is having a conniption on the way back to the bedroom. Shuggie wants in on the action, too, so getting both Blues behind the door turns into a two-cat tango.
Somehow, I finally close them inside. Whew. Now the lizard.
A close call
I pick the motionless anole up by its tail. The tail breaks off in my hand. A ploy. The lizard tries to scamper back beneath the TV table, but I grab the slobbery reptile.
Then the little motherscratcher bites me. Hard. That’s the thanks I get. I toss the anole on a plant in the backyard. As one of my late editors used to say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
As I am closing the back sliding glass door, I hear a key in the front door. Amy is home.
“So, how was your day?” she asks.
“Well, not much happened,” I say.
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer at The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Off to save the lizard: Cat in the house is up to bad tricks
