Chapter Eight: The Big Showdown

If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s an insolent cat. This one was insolent. I could see it on her face—that snotty self-righteous, self-satisfied smirk that just drives me nuts.

I marched up to the fence. She was sprawled out on the top board, maybe five feet above the ground.

“I understand you made some smart remark about the mother of these children. Maybe I should point out a couple of things to you. Number one, their mother is a wonderful woman. Number two, she’s very sick today. Number three, she happens to be my sister. Number four, I don’t like cats. And number five, if you don’t take back your smart remark, you could be in very serious trouble.”

She yawned. “Wait just a minute, would you?” She leaned over the other side of the fence and called someone. Three homely little kittens crawled up beside her. “I want the kids to hear this. Children, these are dogs. Remember our little talk about dogs? The ugly one is full-grown and the others are pups. I want you to pay close attention.” She turned back to me. “Would you repeat what you just said, all that number one, number two stuff?”

“You bet. Your little urchins might learn something.” I repeated it. “And number five, if you don’t take back your smart remark, you could be in very serious trouble.”

The cat turned to her children. “I said their momma wears combat boots.” The kittens laughed and squealed. “And the Big Yukk didn’t like it.” They laughed some more. “And Big Yukk wants to make something of it.” Oh, they thought that hilarious.

“You got that right, sister. I’ll try to keep control of my temper, but if you keep talking trash like that, I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

The old bag turned to her kids again. “Now children, remember what I said about dogs, how they’re not very smart? Here is a perfect example. As long as we’re on the fence and he’s on the ground, we can do and say anything we wish.”

I turned to my bunch. “Kids, we might as well add this to your education, so study your lessons and pay attention. Here we have a dumb cat teaching her kittens how to be dumb. The old lady thinks she’s safe on that fence, which means she’s never dealt with cowdogs before.”

“You see the shape of the head?” the mother cat went on. “You’ll notice how crude it is. That’s a mark of the breed.”

“It’s common knowledge,” I went on, “that tearing down entire fences, even stout ones, is just part of a day’s work for a cowdog. I mean, reducing a fence like that one to a pile of splinters is nothing special to your Uncle Hank.”

“And you’ll notice,” the cat said, “how dogs like to brag and boast.”

“You’ll notice, kids, that you very seldom get anywhere talking to a cat. They’ve got a smart-alecky streak that begins at the base of the skull and runs all the way to the tail.”

“And now, children, we’ll have an exercise in dog pesteration.”

“And now, kids, we’ll give Big Momma one last chance to repent.” I turned to the old lady. “You want to take back what you said about my sister and the mother of these lovely children?”

“Kittens, sing along with me, to the tune of ‘America the Beautiful.’ Ready, two, three,”

Your momma wears old tow-sack drawers,

And hold them up with twine.

She has a ringworm on her nose

And picks it all the time.

Your momma’s combat boots smell bad,

So do her dirty socks.

Which goes to show what all cats know:

All dogs are just a pox.

When they finished the song, all four cats looked down at us and grinned. And I might point out that they had terrible voices.

“Uncle Hank,” said Barbara, “they’re making fun of our momma and I don’t like it!”

“I know, hun, I heard the whole thing.”

Little Roscoe came up, and he looked mad. “What are we going to do, Uncle Hank? We can’t let ’em get by with that.”

“You’re right, son. All right, pups, let’s have a meeting of the War Council.” We huddled up and made some medicine. I asked which of the kids could sing. Turned out that April and Barbara had terrific voices and the boys were, well, tolerable good.

We came up with a plan of action and turned back to the cats. They were still grinning. “All right, pups, let ’em have it.” We bombarded them cats with a song of our own, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” I stationed April and Barbara on the front line:

When God made a cat He was desperate

For something to make Himself laugh.

He gave it the brain of a monkey

But dropped it and broke it in half.

Cats are stoo-pid,

They don’t have the sense of a snooker ball.

That’s why monkeys

Deny any kinship at all.

“Nice work, pups!” I said. “Let’s do that chorus again, but this time with harmony and passion. Lead off, April! Sock it to ’em Barbara!”

We gave them cats another dose of the chorus, and it was just by George wonderful. When we finished, the cats weren’t laughing or grinning anymore. Big Momma had a sour look on her face.

“That was the worst singing I ever heard,” she yowled. “Kittens, that was a typical performance from a group of low-class, poorly bred garbage dogs.”

“Garbage dogs! Now wait a minute . . .”

“The dog that eats garbage thinks garbage. That’s one of the laws of science.”

“You’re fixing to learn some other laws of science if you don’t watch your mouth.”

“They’re crude, rude, uncouth, and socially unacceptable.”

“And about half-dangerous, you forgot that one.”

“And since they have no talent, no poetic gifts, no subtlety, no reasoning faculty, what they do best is BARK.”

“Oh yeah?”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Yeah.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Well I got news for you lady. There’s more talent in one of these cowdog pups than in a whole trainload of cats.”

“Very well,” she said, “we’ll just see about that.” She turned to her urchins. “All right, kittens, on the count of three, we shall hiss. One, two, three!” They all humped up their backs and started hissing.

“Okay, that does it! Pups, this is war. Diplomacy is wasted on a bunch of alley cats. Form a line and stand by for growling!” The kids got into position and waited for the command. “Ready on the left? Ready on the right? Aim . . . growl!”

We let ’em have it, some of the best growling I’d ever heard. The kids did a terrific job and I was proud to be there.

Old momma cat didn’t like that even a little bit. “All right, kittens, you’ve heard the enemy. As you can see, he’s big, dumb, and loud. On the count of three, we’ll answer with yowling and second degree hissing. One, two, three!”

They humped up, yowled, and hissed at us.

“Pups,” I called out, “stand by to bark! By George, if it’s war they want, it’s war they’ll get. And remember the cowdog motto: ‘Do unto others but don’t take trash off the cats.’ Ready on the left? Ready on the right? Aim . . . BARK!”

Boy, you never heard such barking. Them kids just raptured the air . . . ruptured the air, whatever . . . just set up a thunderous barrage of barking. It was a nice piece of work.

Old lady cat was getting madder and madder. “Very well, kittens, we shall have to give them the maximum load. On the count of three, give them yowling, third degree hissing, and SPITTING! One, two, three!”

All four of the little dunces leaned over the fence and let ’er rip. Ordinarily I can control myself in the face of yowling and hissing, even third degree hissing. But hey, that spitting . . . no sir. No cat spits at Hank the Cowdog and lives to spit another day.

“All right, pups, they’ve pushed us to the limit! This is all-out war. Prepare to attack the fence and don’t bother to take prisoners! Ready on the left! Ready on the right! Take aim . . . attack, charge, bonzai!”

Barking at the top of our lungs, we launched the first wave against the fence, with the cats hissing and spitting at us from the top. Oh, it was a battle to remember!

The fence was made of solid wood, don’t you see, and I had calculated that it would take two or three waves for us to lay it flat on the ground. It was our rotten luck that several people in the neighborhood came out their back doors to see what all the noise was about.

A big guy in a T-shirt came fogging out of the house that belonged to the fence we were in the process of destroying. “Joan, call the dog pound,” he yelled, “we got a pack of stray dogs back here! Hyah, git outa here, you dadgum barking fools!”

When I saw him coming and heard him mention the dog pound, I canceled the invasion and sounded the retreat. “To the house, pups, run as fast as you can, retreat!”

They peeled off and headed north down the alley as fast as their little legs would take them. I waited until the last pup had made his escape and then I looked up at the cats.

“We’ll meet again, cat, and when we do that fence won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.” Don’t know why I said it that way. If you think about it, it don’t make a lot of sense, I mean, fences aren’t exactly . . . in the heat of battle a guy sometimes . . . never mind.

The old hag had a big grin on her face, looked so smug and self-satisfied I was tempted to risk capture and death just to clean her off that fence and teach her some manners.

“I told you we could make you bark,” she said.

“Yeah, and don’t you ever forget it!”

Just then, that maniac in the T-shirt reached the back gate and filled the air with rocks and sticks. “Git outa here, you sorry flea-bitten mutt! Go on, leave my cats alone!”

So there you are. The entire incident had started when one of his precious cats had made a vicious, scandalous remark about my sister, the mother of my nieces and nephews. When will the human race learn that cats create 83% of all the trouble in the world and start 93% of all the fights?

I mean, statistics don’t lie. I pulled these statistics out of the hat, so to speak, and while they may not be 100% accurate, they don’t lie. Yet the human race continues to rush to the defense of . . . oh well. There’s no use getting upset just because the world is all wrong and I happen to be right 96% of the time.

I ran from the scene, and with my amazing speed I reached the tunnel just as the last pup was crawling back into the yard. It was none too soon. At the end of the block, I saw a white pickup with a wire cage in the back.

Painted on the door was a big police badge, along with the words, CITY OF TWITCHELL DOGCATCHER.