Little Tornado

If you have cats you know that the prime directive is that cats do not go outside. Outside is bad. Cats that go outside can get hit by cars, get eaten by wildlife, get terrible diseases, get exposed to AM radio. It’s all bad out there.



You can imagine my shock then yesterday morning when I opened my back door to rush off to get a haircut and I found a large kitten standing on the porch screaming. “Golly”, I said out loud, “You look just like Fred!” As this kitten continued to scream at me I realized that he didn’t just look like Fred, he was Fred. Fred was outside.


Um…….Fuck!


I dropped my wallet, keys, and heart on the floor. I tried to open the screen door but Fred was still screaming his head off would not move so I could not get the door opened. Then he tried to come in directly through the screen. He bounced off the screen, got more frantic and screamed even louder.


This went on in slow motion for 20 or 30 very long seconds when finally I got him to back up a little so I could open the door and let him in. He zoomed in and ran up stairs.


Looking around I could see a window screen in the middle of the yard, potted plants knocked over, turf ripped out of the earth, and plastic fish scattered all over.












At this point I was completely freaked out. Did Fred rip out the screen in one of my upstairs rooms and jump? Was he hurt? Was he broken? Oh my God! Now I started screaming. Then I realized that the window screen was from my downstairs dining room. At least he did not fall two floors to the ground below.


As you know I was born two months early. This means I am always early for everything. I cannot be late. I can't. So I left to go be on time for my haircut and called Mark to tell him to go over and check on Fred. I was worried that he was cut or hurt or something. After I got off the phone I realized that probably some burglar had broken into my house through that downstairs window and was now inside my house doing bad things to my other cats.


Turns out that all was well though. Mark called a bit later. Fred was sitting on top of an armoire, devoid of physical damage and he seemed to have already forgotten the whole drama. I asked if there might, perhaps, be a burglar in the house. Mark suggested that I could have mentioned this hypothesis a bit earlier, but no, there was no one else in the house besides he and the cats.


So this raises the whole question then of what did happen. Clearly there was some sort of mico-typhonic event….a little tornado. This is so weird because on the last Aimee Mann album there is a song called Little Tornado and we always laughed at this and said it reminded us of Fred. Anyway, this little funnel cloud must have touched down in my back yard, sucked Fred out through the open window, knocked over the plants, and deposited plastic fish. I have not reconciled this with the fact that it was bright and sunny day without a cloud in the sky, but obviously some kind of tubular shaped winds of destruction were involved.

I am open to other suggestions here.  Let me know if you have a theory.