Sissy Cat and Ching (Cats 3)

We were a catless family for quite awhile after Ginger was given away. Well, not completely catless. My mother had been collecting cat figurines for several years, and she was getting quite a few of them. There was at least one in every room of the house. I used to point out to her that since she liked cats so much, we should actually have one again. But she would always say that it would be too much trouble and cost too much money.1

Even though we didn't have a cat of our own, there were some cats in the neighborhood. Our next door neighbors had a Siamese cat named Sissy Cat. It got its name from the girl of the house--her name was really Elizabeth, but everybody called her Sissy--it meant "sister" and not "'fraidy cat"-- since she was her big brother's little sister. The cat started out being hers, but when she got older she didn't pay too much attention to it. Sissy Cat was a Siamese, and a rather pretty Siamese as I look back, but I didn't like Siamese because to me they didn't sound like real cats--their meowing sounded more like a baby crying, and they were meowing all the time. That was about the time the movie 'Lady and the Tramp' came out, and even though we couldn't see the movie, the songs got played on the radio, including the Siamese cat song--the one with the line "We're Siamese if you please; we're Siamese if you don't please." I thought that pretty well summed up the attitude of Siamese cats in general. Anyway, Sissy Cat was quite a good hunter; she caught birds all the time and once got a rabbit.2

Later on there was another Siamese at the bottom of the street; his name was Ching. Sissy Cat moved around and did her hunting, but she was actually quiet for a Siamese. Ching was not. He made it his business to inspect each and every house on the street at least once a day, and he was not afraid to share his opinions with the occupants. My two brothers and I shared the front bedroom on the second floor, and Ching loved to sit right under the windows and state his woeful conclusions about the condition of our property. We would stick our heads out the windows and tell him to be quiet, but it didn't do much good. One day, fed up with his racket, I found an old, half-used, hardened tube of body filler putty for model cars. I leaned out the window and threw it in Ching's direction. I missed, but from that day on, Ching avoided our house in his daily rounds. It was a lot funnier because Ching was a very stout cat; he waddled as he made his way up the street, more like a duck than a cat, and he didn't need any putty to fill his body! So after that my brothers and I were always laughing about Ching and the body filler putty.3