Dropping a Cat and Other Ways to Test Theories

I've always been the curious kid, compelled to peek into forbidden drawers, read other people's mail, dip a finger into what I thought was a bowl of chocolate icing (don't ask...) Yeah, that was me as a youngster; annoying, restless, questioning.

All great qualities in a writer I'd say. Well, maybe not the annoying part.

It also takes energy to perform scientific experiments. I found this out when I had to outrun my brother after breaking his favorite balsa wood plane while examining it for performance.

I knew every hiding place my siblings used, to keep my grubby little hands off their valuables. I found my mother's wedding gown tucked behind a generation or two of clothes and tried it on several times. I wonder if she ever guessed whose sticky fingers had left marks on the tiny buttons at the back.

I had heard that if you dropped a cat from a great height, it always landed on its four paws. This seemed a reasonable conclusion since I'd seen many wild cats in our rural neighborhood and they were quite good at jumping.

I was going to test this theory with my girlfriend, Delores, but luckily for the cat, we got distracted by a stray dog.

This sweet animal let us take him into a wooded area near our homes and ...for his own protection...tie him to a tree.(He was lost after all)

With lots of hugs, pats and reassurances, we left the poor thing staked out like an Amish horse and went home.

After several hours and much sneaking about gathering proper dog food (Cheese slices, crackers, two slices of baloney) I returned to the scene of the kidnapping.

There, waiting for me, was the neighbor whose house sat right next to that little plot of woods. It seems the stray dog belonged to a family just down the road. But that wasn't the end of the story. The critter took to howling and barking incessantly throughout the long, long, long night (that means, enough times to drive a splinter-like ear-shattering noise, into their brains!)

Needless to say, (but that never stopped me) parents were called, the guilty parties had to endure numbing "speechifying" by the sleep-deprived neighbor and rights and privileges were denied. I would of had to "eat crow", but since I expressed some curiosity about its taste, I was denied that punishment.

All in all I learned an important life-lesson: I should have dropped the darn cat!