That's the Cat's Ass, Ya Skank!

“Don’t step on that skank.  You have to be careful because she’s so small.”

This was the warning my mother issued to my daughter this morning.  I know it sounds like I live in an absolutely insane household, but it’s not really that bad.  Simply, whenever any animal is especially filthy or ill-looking, my mother refers to the creature as “skanky.”  Due to her unique vocabulary, I had always accepted this adjective to mean just that; skanky = very dirty and pitiful in appearance.  At one point in the past, I used this word in my classroom when asking the students if anyone wanted to adopt a stray cat I had recently found.  My students instantly erupted in laughter, and I didn’t initially realize that I had just told them I found an extremely promiscuous cat.  So, the current skank to be careful of was another stray cat my brother had recently found outside his place of employment.

In addition to referring to this creature as a skank, both of my parents have often spewed some unique phrases I once accepted as normal.  I remember when I was young and couldn’t immediately locate my mother; I would ask my father where she was at.  He would reply one of two ways: “Ah, I took her out back and shot her,” or “she’s buried in the back forty.”  He would then proceed to laugh hysterically at his joke.  Apparently, lying to your children about having murdered their mother is a fucking laugh riot. 

While my mom has always bitched at most of the pets, calling them skanks or nuisances (she honestly named one of our past cats FC for fucking cat), my father was adamant that we give them proper attention. To this day, if I walk past one of the animals without acknowledging their presence, my father will state: “Say a kind word.”  This is his request that we say “good dog” or something of the like.  He will also holler at me from another room, “Angela! Angela! Get downstairs!” I always go, still expecting that he has some urgent need that I must attend to.  I am then told, “Look at the dog.” Usually, the dog is doing nothing but lying on his lap and slobbering, but apparently I have just missed the cutest, most adorable, heart-melting thing in the whole wide world … ever!  

While unlike my father in almost every other way, my husband also uses the most random of phrases.  His expressions are those of an eighty year old man.  I think I’ve actually heard him say “Hot Dog!” in excitement before.  He’s generally quite mild in comparison to me.  On one occasion, however, enthusiastic about something he had just witnessed, he exclaimed, “That’s the cat’s ass!”  This was new to me; I had heard of the cat’s pajamas, but never the cat’s ass. 

So -- if you listen well to the world around you, you will constantly be delighted and entertained, learning new expressions and terms nearly every day.  To be observant and subsequently amused by your surroundings is totally the cat’s ass.

No Sex, No City

“So what? You think you’re like Carrie Bradshaw now?”

Okay. This isn’t actually what my brother asked me yesterday when discussing my blog; he didn’t know the character’s name and I say kudos for him.  So, he really said, “You think you’re like that chick from Sex and the City now?”  C’mon, she was a writer, yes;  beyond that, our characters share very little in common.  When Bradshaw was obsessing over Manolo Blahniks (I absolutely had to Google that spelling), I was still holding onto my Converse one stars from 1998. 

Bradshaw also wrote about sex.  I have two children under the age of two.  My daughter doesn’t fall asleep well unless she is able to snuggle her dad, and my son is less than six weeks old, sleeping in the bassinet next to the bed and waking us up every two hours.  There is no sex happening in my home.  Right now, having to sleep in the wet spot means you’re stuck where my daughter spilled her milk.

Bradshaw lived in the city; I live in Northern Wisconsin.  While she was hoping for a proposal from Mr. Big, I was just seeking a man who did have all of his own teeth and who did not have a serious alcohol problem. 

I live in a township where apparently people purchase property just to house an abundance of cats.  I also live next to a home that none of the owners can afford to actually maintain.  In the three years we have lived at our current residence, we have had five different direct neighbors just in one house.  I swear to God that they’re not moving all the time either because of me! 

The house has always been sold on land contract.  Part of me believes the man who actually owns it wants to find people that can’t really afford the property, so they pay the mortgage for a couple of months before leaving and he still gets to keep a down payment.  It’s quite the racket, and it’s led to an interesting assortment of characters.  So, on that “send me money bitches” request, fences are damn expensive – and I could really use a fence.

The first neighbor was on disability after a series of strokes and other serious health problems, so he spent a lot of time in his garage wrenching on things.  He tried to sell us several old lawnmowers he had worked on.  His son –in-law was only eighteen, and lived with them after knocking up the daughter, forcing a shot-gun wedding.  He didn’t have a job as no one wanted to employ him while he was on probation for drug related and other criminal charges.  So, the son-in-law’s hobby was fireworks.  He sat on the porch on a regular basis and shot off bottle rockets.  This was usually around one to three in the afternoon.  Lots and lots of bottle rockets all afternoon every day.

When they couldn’t afford a new roof, they just walked away from the property.  Then came the hoarders.  Seriously, like they could have been on an episode on TLC. By the way, doesn’t TLC stand for The Learning Channel?  Can anyone tell me what educational value there is in “Toddlers and Tiaras,” and its even greater spin-off “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”?  Anyway, their shit was everywhere.  Dressers, tables, chairs, and doors lined the back yard.  After an unsuccessful auction attempting to sell some of these treasures and make a little money, they could no longer afford the property either.

Then came a single mother and her son.  There was nothing unusual that appeared to be happening.  They were pretty quiet, so we were happy.  Then the actual property owner knocked on our door one afternoon.  He gave us his phone number and asked us to call if there was any odd activity next door.  He said the police had tried serving his newest leaser an eviction notice for failing to ever make a payment, although she was there less than four months.  The police had been there for several hours and were yet unsuccessful in their attempt.  He hoped we would see a U-HAUL before seeing the officers over there again, but also thought that was an unlikelihood.  He then warned us, “Don't go over there.  She keeps an automatic rifle right by the door.  I just thought you should know.” 

I’ll refrain from making any comments on the new residents just in case I should decide to be friendly someday.  If you really know me, however, that’s highly unlikely to happen.  So, while Bradshaw lives her fabulous fictional life, I will stay holed up at home because the neighbors usually scare the shit out of me, but I will never be moving to the city either as I like trees more than I like most people.  I just thought you should know.

Cat Custody

When my first husband and I were going through a divorce, there were two things that he was adamant about keeping: the cat and the crock pot. I left one day while he was at work. I packed what I could in my car and left, knowing that I would never be returning to the marriage. I did, however, need to return to his home in order to obtain the rest of my belongings. We had arranged a date and time for me to do so when he ensured he would not be present. The other title I considered for this post was, "Dude! I already said you could keep the fucking crock pot!" He had called continuously in the time between my initial departure and my planned return for my possessions to request that I leave him the crock pot, don't take the crock pot, he needed the crock pot, even explaining why because it matched the dishes he was keeping too. I never said he couldn't keep the crock pot; I bought a new one later for only $14.99 at Fleet Farm.


Because they didn't sell cats at Fleet Farm,  I was unable to replace the pet. I took no issue with him retaining the cat, though. I will admit that she was an incredibly loving and attractive cat, but it was never my desire to bring a cat into our home in the first place, as I have severe allergies. The cat, which my former husband named Tommy after the Who's classic rock opera (despite her being female), had come to us while he was living in a group home due to a recent and severe suicide attempt. Based upon the severity of each resident's illness and current concerns over his or her safety, some of them were allowed to occasionally leave the location unaccompanied. One of the residents who was allowed to leave had made friends with a group of young males who lived in a nearby apartment. These weren't the most upstanding citizens for anyone in need of group home living to be associating himself with. After one particular visit with these young men, this resident returned to the group home with an adorable little kitten whose poor body had been covered in cigarette burns. Those employed at the group home determined the kitten could not stay there, but they certainly didn't desire to return the kitten to whence it came either. So, my husband asked if I we could take the cat. After seeing the poor kitten in such a condition, my pathos had been appealed to and I brought the kitten back to our duplex, where I lived with two dogs that my husband had also requested we bring home in an effort to save them. For all the saving he wanted to do of cats and dogs, he never made any genuine attempt to save our marriage. (This is a good thing, though, because divorcing him was the best decision I ever made regarding that man.)  

The last time a cat came into my life, it was me who determined I must save it. I was remarried five years ago. My current (and absolutely wonderful) husband and I purchased a home together three years ago. Shortly thereafter, a cat appeared in our backyard, and it stayed around for a couple of days. This cat was not nearly as cute as Tommy had been; he was pretty skanky looking, extremely thin, and had filthy gray hair that had matted together so badly in many areas that it could not be untangled, and later needed to be trimmed off. We determined we weren't going to feed the cat right away because we had no intentions of keeping it. Our initial goal was simply to find the rightful owner of this wandering creature. My husband went over to talk to the neighbors. When he asked if their cat had run away, the neighbor replied, "No; that's not our cat. Come with me, though, because you're not going to believe this shit." My husband then followed our neighbor to a nearby property. On this property there had been erected a small plywood shack; the entire neighborhood later came to recognize this building as "the cat shack." During this visit to the cat shack, my husband observed approximately thirty cats living on the property.  He also learned that the property had been purchased by an out of state man who was going to be evicted from his residence if he didn’t get rid of his overabundance of animals.  Therefore, he bought land local to us on which to house said animals.  He still lived in another state, and traveled to his shack about once a week to care for the animals.  When my husband later relayed this information to me, he added, “I had heard a generator running on that property while walking pass it before, but I just thought there was something normal going on back there … like a meth lab.  I never imagined there was a damn cat shack. That’s crazy, Angela.” 

Once I learned where the runaway on our back porch had come from, I determined it must be saved.  I started feeding the cat, cleaned him up, and made my husband take him to the veterinarian.  To this day, my husband will still occasionally mumble, “One hundred and forty dollars. One hundred and forty dollars that you made me spend on that fucking cat.”  The cat was clearly happy, though.  He started to gain weight and enjoyed playing in the yard with our miniature daschund.  We named the cat “RC,” which was short for “random cat.”  Often, you could hear RC fighting with other cats in the middle of the night.  If one were to interpret his screeching and howling, I imagine he was saying, “Bitch, get out of my yard.  This is my gig now.  I found these good people first.  You get your ass back to the shack, and don’t you come around anymore.” 

On one of his visits to care for the cats, “crazy cat man” (the name also used by the whole of the neighborhood) was seen wandering up and down the road, crouching down in his Carharrt overalls (no shirt), and calling out for his cats – “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”  My husband took a photo of him so that he could show others what a mountain man appearance crazy cat man possessed.  When someone once asked how my spouse was able to take this image without cat man’s knowledge, he explained how he covered the flash with his finger and hid behind our hibiscus.


My brother once said to me, “Why didn’t you show me that picture first? I wouldn’t have gone back there if I had known that man looked that fucking crazy.”  This comment came following my brother’s own and only visit to the cat shack.  He was over at the house one night, and said he kind of wanted to check the property out after all he heard about it.  It was a popular topic where we lived as the number of cats on the property began to grow, and thus the stench also grew, and more feral cats were to be found appearing in all of our backyards.  The most recent agenda for our township include the following item: “#4. Cat Shack Situation.”  Due to his growing curiosity, my brother decided to see things for himself.  Before he left, I warned him, “Please don’t go back there if you hear the generator running.  That means he’s on the property right now, and I think he’s dangerous.” 

Not long after he left, the sliding door flew open and my brother came abruptly runnning in, failing to close the door behind him.  With his hands resting upon his knees, crouching down and gasping for breath after dashing promptly home, my brother declared, “Oh shit. Oh shit, Angela. I’m never fucking going back there. It’s fucking horrifying.  Holy shit.” After fully gaining his breath, my brother provided me with some details, and showed me the images he had captured on his cell phone.  To begin, there was now a sign located on the property that read, “If you have a problem with me – call #$% - *&%! – NOT THE SHERIFF!!!!”  The shack was also now larger, with tunnels running out of it. The words “COWARD,” “PUNK,” and “FUCK” were now spray-painted on the side of the shack.  My brother showed me the picture of this that he had captured right before falling into a tiger trap.  He was taking these images when he fell into the ground, barely managing to catch himself by his elbows and prop himself to avoid falling all the way to the bottom of a seven foot hole that had been covered with a thin piece of Styrofoam and camouflaged over with dirt and leaves.   

We went out of town the following weekend to visit with some friends. Upon our return home, RC could not be located.  My mother said, “Oh, that cat probably just ran away. They get real horny this time of year."  There is no doubt in my mind, however, that crazy cat man had been on our property to reclaim the cat that had abandoned him and chosen us.  

RC hasn’t been back since, nor have any other random cats desiring a different living situation.  Crazy cat man isn’t around either as he has now been institutionalized following a court case.  He believed the other neighbors were killing his cats, so he decided to fire shots after calling one neighbor a “fucking pervert,” among other verbal attacks.  He was arrested for felon in possession of a firearm. When this story ran in the local paper, it reported that he denied having more than four cats on his property.  The media also reported that crazy cat man would be representing himself in court, as he had “dealt with lawyers before and they usually called me names.”  Eventually, over one hundred cats were removed from the property.  For a while, there was a “buy one cat, get one free” sale at the local humane society.  I didn’t save any cats that time, and you can’t make this shit up.