DUSTY
This is a story about an amazing cat named Dusty. In the early eighties I lived in a small 2-bedroom house with two other adults, four large dogs, one cat and a recently acquired six-month-old kitten. Dusty was a seven-year-old black cat who was the oldest of all the animals. Since the dogs were all acquired as puppies they all respected Dusty as he sashayed about as the king of the house. Dusty was a little overweight and I had never seen him move fast except to get a food treat. He had an odd habit. Some times we’d come home and find he’d taken the potato chips out of the cupboard, (always potato chips and the cupboard would always be closed) spread the contents on the counter, ate what he wanted and left the rest. I’m sure it would have been quite the sight with all the dogs standing around hoping for a treat!
Dusty’s favorite activity was lying in the warm summer sun. He never strayed far from the house, it seemed he only liked to lie on the back deck. One day I was watching the kitten playing out on the deck. She was running around in circles and jumping about like she was possessed. I swear she jumped up and did a somersault in mid air. I looked over at Dusty, who was sprawled out on the deck railing and shook my head. I can still remember my exact thought at that time. Shaking my head I thought to myself, “Dusty, you couldn’t move like that if your life depended on it!”
No sooner had that thought gone through my mind, when Dusty sprang from what I swear was a laying down position to the top of a doghouse about eight feet away. In a single bound, he sprang from four feet off the ground to about a dozen feet up a young cedar tree. from there he very quickly shimmied another ten feet to the top of the tree, tagged the top, then shimmied down backwards about ten feet to where he originally leapt to. He then jumped backwards off the tree from a height about twelve feet, did a 180 in the air, landed back on the top of the doghouse and in a single bound landed back in the same spot and was laying in his original position. He then looked over at me and gave his paw victorious licking. You know I didn’t need to read his mind to know what he was thinking!
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