CAT AND KATE

My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for a
boy. This is one reason I got a cat.

My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a lawyer he gets in the habit.
Also, he's a small guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
thinks he's got to roar a lot to make up for not being a big hairy tough
guy. Mom is thin and quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets asthma.
In the apartment--we live right in the middle of New York City--we don't
have any heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any food because the
doctors figure dust and smoke make her asthma worse. I don't think it's
dust; I think it's Pop's roaring.

The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came when I earned some extra
money baby-sitting for a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park. I
spent the money on a Belafonte record. This record has one piece about a
father telling his son about the birds and the bees. I think it's funny.
Pop blows his stack.

"You're not going to play that stuff in this house!" he roars. "Why aren't
you outdoors, anyway? Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I was your
age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery route, and my dog Jeff and I
used to go ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday."

"Pop," I say patiently, "there are no rabbits out on Third Avenue. Honest,
there aren't."

"Don't get fresh!" Pop jerks the plug out of the record player so hard the
needle skips, which probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and start
yelling too. Between rounds we both hear Mom in the kitchen starting to
wheeze.

Pop hisses, "Now, see--you've gone and upset your mother!"

I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and ball, and run down the
three flights of stairs to the street.

This isn't the first time Pop and I have played this scene, and there gets
to be a pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to my
Aunt Kate's. She's not really my aunt. The kids around here call her Crazy
Kate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothes
and sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen or
more stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney,
but it's just because she does things her own way, and she doesn't give a
hoot what people think. She's sane, all right. In fact she makes a lot
better sense than my pop.

It was three or four years ago, when I was a little kid,