KAMIKAZE KITTY
by Janet Kres
From September 1989 East Texas Mensa SpectruM

The youngest and most rambunctious of our menagerie of cats has a new hobby - diving off the garage overhead door onto the car roof. Since his other two hobbies are eating and sleeping, he lands with the force of a meteorite. It will wake one up on a Monday morning. I have extracted unexpected vengence - once when he was up there, I hit the switch to lower the door. Kamikazi Kitty bailed off the disappearing door in a big hurry. However, that surprise hasn't checked his parachuting tendencies. Now we check the garage door before we put it down.

This cat is not exactly Mensa material. He's the one who played with the nest of baby rattlesnakes. As the vet com mented, "Most cats are smart enough to leave snakes alone." With daily reminders ("Don't play with snakes today!"), he's doing fine. Probably the next assisted learning experience will be "Come inside. It's raining."

Lest you think this cat is totally useless, let me assure you that he provides for human employment. One weekend while we were away, he brought a rat into the house through the pet door, played with it a bit, then left it - alive - in the house. We came home to four cats, a terrier dog, and a live rat parked un der the refrigerator. It took a human exterminator to remove the rat. While the East Texas economy could probably use the work, we belled the cat to prevent future occurances.

The cat does have an important task - holding down the bed. He devotes hours of his day to this job. And through his diligence, the bed hasn't moved one inch. See, cats aren't to tally useless!