Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
When I was growing up, my family couldn’t have pets. Not real pets, anyway. If it had fur, some sibling would immediately erupt in hives and start wheezing. So we were mostly turtle-with-a-plastic-palm-tree people until Luigi showed up.
Luigi was the neighborhood’s battle-scarred, brawl-winning, feline transient. Everybody knew him, but nobody admitted to owning him. He dwarfed all the local cats and, come to think of it, most of the dogs. Striped like a tiger, Luigi stalked the streets as if the suburbs were his personal Serengeti. You did not want to be a mouse, lizard or human limb within leaping distance of this cat.
So one day, Luigi, whose left ear was hanging on by sheer will alone, followed me into the house. I didn’t notice him until my father started screaming colorful adjectives in exceptionally high decibels. Loosely translated, it meant, “If you kids plan to see puberty, you’d better get that thing out of here!”
Dad grabbed a broom, and Mom armed herself with pot lids. They didn’t have an emergency plan for cat eviction, so they went for the closest domestic weapons. My mother leaped from chair to chair, clanging the lids wildly as my father swept the cat out with a series of macho thrusts. Luigi left, but only long enough to decide if my parents were serial killers.
Dad delivered daily rants: “You kids better keep that thing out” because “It’s filthy,” and “I don’t want a cat. Period.” We listened. Luigi didn’t.
Every time our front door opened, the “mangy thing” would materialize out of thin air and strut right in. Then a miracle happened.
A week later, Dad was lounging on the sofa watching Sunday football with his new BFF, Luigi. “Don’t sit there. You’ll disturb my cat,” he warned. “If you’re going to sneeze, go outside.”
My siblings theorized that aliens had abducted our real father, but I think Mom just wanted her broom back. Either way, we had a cat.
Since then, I’ve been fascinated by cat-centric people, like the Dutch guy who couldn’t bear to part with his longtime pet, Orville.
In 2012, Orville was tragically killed by a car, so his owner—an artist, which may explain a lot—decided to see if the cat would have better luck flying.
This involved a visit to a taxidermist, who preserved the beloved feline in a spread-eagle stance. Next, a helicopter expert attached propellers to the pussycat’s paws and motorized his belly.
The cat-copter’s inaugural flight took place at an Amsterdam art festival, where some visitors were not prepared for a remote-controlled feline navigating amongst the nudes.
I’m just glad Dad didn’t know about this taxidermy business. Luigi might still be sitting on the couch, with the TV remote mounted in one paw and a Budweiser in the other. Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to fly unless the Giants fumbled.
EDITOR’S NOTE: South Carolina Living is reprinting some of Jan A. Igoe’s previous columns. This “Humor Me” originally appeared in the November 2014 issue. Visit SCLiving.coop/news/in-memory-of-jan-igoe.