Sunday, August 2, 2009

Adventures with Chow

When we bought our house in Queens, we immediately got a cat and I have had cats almost all of those 40 years. Our first cat was named, imaginatively "Baby". The next one, whose mother was "Ching", we named him "Chow". A year or so later, because we were stranded upstate in NY because of the blizzard of 1969, we were not able to keep our appointment with the vet so Chow and Baby had kittens. We kept one of them and named him Mein. Today's story is about Chow. Just like Winnie the Poo, Chow was a cat of little brain. But, he was so lovable. More stories about him at a later time.

Around this time my father retired from the NYC Transit Authority after working there 50+ years. My mother decided to surprise him with a party. The major problem was that he was home and she was still working. She blamed my brother, saying that he was having a party and would my father clean the house, shop for food and maybe cook for the party. He agreed.

The night of the party, because we were young marrieds and our cat was family, we brought Chow, the kitten, to the party. You know, love me, love my cat. At one point we left Chow alone in the kitchen. When I went back into the kitchen, there was a suspicious hole in the potato salad and mayonnaise all over Chow's face. Between fits of laughter, I called my husband and my mother. Now we were all laughing. I quickly cleaned Chow's face, took a spoonful of salad from the dish and spread the salad around so it looked like nothing was wrong.

Everything went without a hitch, no one was the wiser. They all thought Chow was the cutest kitten. Oh yes, my father was surprised. I think he was the only person ever who did all the cooking, shopping and cleaning for his own surprise party

1 comment:

BetteJo said...

Went outside to greet some friends who dropped by unexpectedly one evening only to look thru the kitchen window and seeing my cat chowing down on the remains of the tuna casserole we had for dinner. He was quite pleased with himself!