He would let Cougar out at night just before midnight he headed out the door for his job on the night shift. Our cat would wander the streets at night claiming his territory. It was never too long before i'd be woken up from my sleep by the sounds of two cats meowing at one another somewhere close by and i knew for certain one of those cats was mine.
Cougar would go through at least a fight a night and sometimes a lot more. But every morning when i'd wake up for school and check outside there he would be curled up sleeping on the front porch waiting to come inside. He'd lovingly wrap his coat of fur around my leg as i prepared his canned food and as i leaned down to plop the food out onto his dish that'd be when i'd see his battle scars from the night before.
Sometimes he would have only a patch of fur missing, those were the good nights. However at times he would come back with cuts, scratches and even gashes. It was the gashes that bothered him the most as he would paw and scratch at it making the wound become infested and swollen with puss.
On one particular morning Cougar came home with an astonishingly large gash just behind his left ear and another gash albeit not as bad behind his right ear. I was a young teenager at the time and knew that i had to show the gash to somebody or take him to the pet hospital.
I already knew at the age of 13 that telling 'anyone' meant 'tell anyone but my dad' for i had already come to the conclusion that my dad was eccentric. If you can picture "Doc" from Back to the Future, splice that character with the maniacal Al McWiggin doll stealing character from Toy Story 2 then add the cute obliviousness of Mr.Magoo then you'd have a pretty good replica of my dad. He was kindly nuts.
Sadly i had to leave for school and as often happened due to our opposing timetables, dad would pull in to the driveway from work at the same time i was heading out the door. Meaning, that unless he went directly to bed he would notice the cat. That would be bad. Very bad.
Sure enough i came home from school to find my dad running around outside the house holding the wrong side of a broom. He bent down awkwardly trying to peer to the side of his enormous belly and searched under our AMC Gremlin the ugliest car ever made. Cougar made a bolt for me but crashed into my legs falling over upside down revealing the first contraption my dad had made for him, shoes made of tape.
Clumsily he made his way up the stairs the way my great grandmother would ascend the stairs with her walker nearly falling down with every step. I reached the front door behind him and he almost couldn't wait to get inside as he tried bumping his head on the front door while i fiddled with the key in the lock. As i did so i was looking down at his head cast. The only difference between somebody in a full head cast at the hospital and my cat was the ugliness of the cast itself.
This thing covering his entire head was seemingly first made of 100 gauze strips stapled together forming somewhat of a noose around his neck and covering both side wounds before being tied like a picnic basket over his head. Then that layer was held in place by more hockey tape it looked like as i could only make out the edges of my hockey tape. The final layer that secured the whole mechanism in place was about 15 passes of Duct Tape making a megaphone like shape extruding from his neck. No wonder my cat wanted to get away from my dad so badly. Indeed as i opened the door my cat surged forward banging his head straight into the kitchen chairs falling flat on his chin because of his snow shoes. (This photo i found online is a much much tamer version of what my dad devised)Somehow he managed to get up and let out a weak meow as he crashed sideways into the wall under the phone. Righting himself he hobbled around the corner and i heard him skid chin first down the stairs toward the basement where finally he limped into the dark crawl space to hide from the scary fat man.
He stayed there all evening and i didn't even bother to go look for him. I knew he was traumatized and needed time by himself. Sure enough that night when my dad was heading out the door for work Cougar timed his run and streaked out the front door before it closed. I noticed he had gnawed off almost all but one of his taped socks leaving a trail of tape behind him as he ran that looked like the end of a wedding dress.
"What the heck" my dad said as Cougar shot past him triumphantly. My dad glared at him as he backed out of the driveway and scurried off to work. I begged Cougar to be safe as i locked the door and went up to bed. An hour later woken by the sound of wailing cats locking horns in a fight. "For crying out loud Cougar" i mumbled from under the blankets. I put a pillow over my head and squeezed out the noise knowing in the morning i'd have to reassess the damage.
However nothing could have prepared me for what i'd see or hear as i rounded the corner that day. I could hear it first, the mortified screams of my cat, the yelps of an animal not only in duress but in agony. It sent a shiver up my spine and weakened my knees as i broke out into an awkward trot trying to summon speed from my legs to get me home to help.
It was my dad who wanted help though.
"Hold him, you have to hold him tight, come help me quick."
The problem with being only 13 is that when dad speaks it is like the law that i have to obey. As wrong as it was i simply had to listen to him or endure his unkindly wrath.
Reluctantly i approached and my eyes met my cat's eyes and we locked together in a moment of mutual understanding that i will never forget. My feet shuffled forward and i saw what my dad had almost completed for his next contraption to mask my cat's open wound.
You see this is how my dad thinks with basic logic like Spock from Star Trek except more stupid. If the tape contraption on his paws and head didn't work to prevent the cat from scratching his own wound ... why simply make a better contraption.
I have no way to either glorify or condemn what my dad had done. It just is what it is. He had sewn to the back of his neck a piece of our carpet. The howls of despair came from my cat every time my dad operated on Cougar by adding another stitch with a needle and thread through the carpet and through his neck. I looked around the neighborhood with shame in my eyes but since it was mid afternoon nobody was taking notice at the torture taking place.
I simply hung my head and cried while i held on to Cougar as lovingly as i could. My dad had wrapped him in a blanket tightly and had re-taped his paws so there was no scratching. I suppose my cat had grown weary of trying to escape. His only reactions were the painful twitches released when my dad would finish off his stitching.
Ten minutes later it was done. My cat was beat tired i could see it. When he was released from the blanket he only shook his feet with disapproval at having his paws covered in hockey tape yet again. He layed down on the grass on the front yard of our house and didn't make an attempt to drink or eat the water and food i had brought for him. I had at the same time a feeling of pity for my cat and a feeling of hatred towards my father. Cougar hid himself in the crawl space again and i was sure he was dying in there.
So i was shocked when i heard him streak up the stairs as my dad was leaving for work at midnight and i hopped out of bed to see him for myself. He hit the lawn running and never looked back as he disappeared under the wooden fence across the street. I thought perhaps he was running away. I almost hoped that he would recognize how crazy my dad was and would never return. But sure enough at 7am there he was curled up on the foot mat waiting for me to let him in.
I got down on my hands and knees so that i could be at his eye level and he came up kissed me with his nose. At that moment i felt like it was me he was coming back to see. We were forming a bond. It was like he knew i needed him to survive my dad and i knew he needed me.
Or perhaps he needed nothing anymore. For as i checked his body when he was eating he had no new visible marks from fighting.
This was great as i knew he needed time to heal. And so the next night and the night after that he went out and returned with no new scars or wounds. Weeks went by without him getting a new scratch yet i knew he was fighting as i could hear him engage every cat in the neighborhood nightly.
It was then that i realized he had become a super hero cat. A feral cat with carpet infused body armor completely wrapping the only place cats attacked, the neck area. So he was invincible. Other cat attacks wouldn't hurt him let alone mark him and every night my cat went out the door knowing i think that he was in god mode.
So a month after i reacted with great dismay when my father told me we had to take off the carpet. That's like taking away Superman's powers. My cat would be mortal again. It just wasn't fair.
I sat cringing in the corner by the tv not wanting to be part of any such experiment so i just monitored my dad as he held the cat examining him from all angles. He had a peculiar look on his face like that of a surgeon who had lost his memory right before surgery, unable to discern where to make the first incision.
This went on for about five minutes until he put the cat down and sent him on his way outside the house.
Naturally i sprung to my feet and wiped away the tears clinging to my eyes.
"What happened dad?"
"I can't take it off" he replied, his voice heavy with a tone of defeat.
"Why not?"
"It's infused to his neck."
Not quite understanding what he meant i went outside to check for myself. My fingers ran through his hair on his neck which had grown right through the carpet itself. If i pressed down hard enough i could feel the carpet down below but it was indeed unrecognizable. With delicacy i tugged at the carpet with my fingers but i only pulled up skin and carpet together. While the hair had grown through the carpet his skin had grafted itself to the fabric making a new flesh so to speak. A new skin.
Carpet cat was born.
Cougar the Invincible.
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