CATEGORY: MRS. ANDERSON

When Jari was living with Bob and me, her childhood friend, Mary Nuchols, came to visit. (This was the same Mary who had waited with Jari while I climbed the South Sister).  Mary had an over-sized German Sheppard dog named Boo, who had been her faithful companion since childhood.  Boo came in and lay down on the rug at Mary’s feet taking up the whole rest of the rug that was not occupied by Mary.  When we all moved out to the kitchen, Boo came too.

Our house had a short, narrow hallway that led from the living room into the kitchen.  The bathroom opened into that hall.

At the time of Mary’s visit, our cat, a calico named Archipelago (because of her many islands of black and orange) had just given birth to kittens.  We had made a bed for her and her new family in the bathroom.  The door to the bathroom was open when all of us, including Boo, strolled casually through the hallway from the living room into the kitchen.  Boo was so big that no one could comfortably walk beside him through the hallway.

When Archipelago looked out the bathroom doorway and saw Boo, all her prehistoric motherly instincts got sucked into the twentieth century in one flash.  She came flying out of the bathroom like a saber-toothed tiger and landed on Boo’s back.  Then she went around him like a buzz saw set at high speed.  Or that is what I thought I saw.  It happened so fast, she was only a blur.  She either looped around his neck, or under his stomach and up again.  Or both.  She was growling and hissing all the way.

When this feline frenzy landed on him, Boo thought he had been struck by prehistoric lightning.  His mouth opened but no sound came out.  He froze in place.  After I deftly nabbed Archipelago, stuffed her back in the bathroom and closed the door, he expressed his indignity by uttering one word, and one word only.  He quietly said, “Wuuuf.”