I have a Cool Cat




My mother only spanked me once. Dad thought she spanked me more often. If I was caught doing something wrong ( say like washing the car with comet and sos pads) Dad would demand I be spanked. Mom would take me upstairs to my bedroom, and close the door. She would then grab a belt and fold it in two . Mom would make snapping noises with the belt, and I'd cry as if I was being whipped. Afterwards Mom would take me downstairs and Dad would say to me, "See what happens when you break the rules?" As I think back on it ,I hope Dad wasn't fooled by this bad playacting. It would be nicer to think he was in on this liitle charade.
During the summer between my 1st and 2nd grades year I remember it always being hot. We had no airconditioning , and were always fighting over the fans. We would play with other kids with sprinklers and water guns , and every now and then we'd go swimming. Our big treat that summer was the root beer popsicles Mom would buy for us. She'd come home put them in our freezer and call us. Wherever we were we'd come runninglike a pack of hungry wolves. In around 10 minutes they would all be gone, and we'd be begging Mom for more.
During one very hot day while I was sitting in front of the TV ,with two fans blowing on me watching Scooby Doo, Mom came back from the store with a grocery bag. I watched her walk in the kitchen and put a box of the root beer popsicles in the freeezer. I ran in and grabbed one. Mom put the rest of the groceries away and asked if I would let everyone else know we had the popsicles but feed the cat first. I told Mom no problem and she left the kitchen to go upstairs. I grabbed the cat food and poured it in the bowl , and then got it some water. It came runing in as if I'd been screaming, "Popsicles!" I went to the sliding glass doors and could see Rose in the playground area.
I started to open the door and call her when I had a thought. Looking back on it I'm not sure what prompted this thought , but I thought it would be very funny to scare Rose by putting the cat in the freezer and have her open it. I bent down and picked up the cat. I rubbed it's fur a little to calm it down. Then I opened the freezer door and tossed it in. Smiling over my great idea ,I slid open the back door and walked to where Rose was. I figured if I yelled, Geno and John might appear out of nowhere, and ruin my joke.
Upstairs my Mom was thinking maybe a bottle of pop would be nice right. She walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and grabbed a botle of pepsi. She opened it , but before she went back upstairs she thought she'd treat herself and steal a popsicle.
Outside I told Rose about the popsicles. I asked wouldn't it be funny if we ate all of them before Geno and John could ? Rose agreed and we started running back to the house.
Inside Mom opened the freezer door. A very cold and scared cat hurled itself out of the freezer and right at my mother. She screamed and dropped her bottle. I was almost to the backdoor when I saw the cat racing out of the house.
Rose went off chasing the cat. I peeked into the backdoor and saw a broken bottle of pepsi on the floor, and my Mom still screaming. Stupidly I walked in and asked,"What's wrong Mom?"
Mom wasn't even going to try and understand. "Hey it was Rose who was supposed to open that door", didn't calm her down at all. She dragged me up to my room and grabbed a belt. I thought ,"Hey I know this game." She then started to whip me. For the first time the crying noises that came out of my room were not fake. Dad walked in the house and could hear my sobbing noises upstairs. He walked up to my room and opened the door.
"What he do this time?", Dad asked.
"He put the cat in the freezer!"
Dad just shook his head and walked out.
"Well I hope this teaches you a lesson!"
And it did. I never ever put a cat in the freezer again. I did however once try to put my german shepard Duke in the dryer, in order to scare Rose with a similar joke a few years later. Duke however would have none of it.