Traveling with Cuthbert

My father liked cats and often for some reason when we didn’t have one he would suggest that we go looking for one so we eagerly set out to a home near El Dorado Springs where we heard a lady had some cats for sale. When we got there we found a litter just ready to be separated from their mother and they were all red beautiful Persian kittens. We watched as she pulled boxes of kittens out from under her bed and worried about how much money Papa would approve us spending for one of these kittens. Finally I got my nerve up and asked how much these kittens cost. I gasped when she said that they are one dollar each. I was sure that Papa would not object to that he had paid as much as twenty dollars one time.

In the past when we had cats or kittens at the Wayside, when we had to leave because of my father’s work in Washington, D.C., our good neighbor Mr. Berry would keep the cats for us until we returned in the spring.

We began quickly to train this beautiful little kitten to ride in the car and to wear a harness. It wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be. We would take Cuthbert in the car with us just for little rides like up to the mailbox and give him lots of loving attention when we did it. He was harder to train to walk on a leash with a harness.

Clarence, from a grocery store, would often send a bite or two of liver if Cuthbert happened to be in the car with us when we came to pick up our groceries.

Unfortunately one of Momma’s good friends had died the day before we planned to leave. Since she had requested members of the Ellis Domestic Science Club to be pallbearers Momma would not consider waiting the extra two days. We had already closed up the house so our first adventure with Cuthbert in a motel happened while we waited. We had been given several helpings of liver as a farewell gift from Clarence so we had plenty for him to eat.

Around noon on our first day out Cuthbert began to start Meowing and insisted on sitting on Momma’s lap instead of ours. When we had made a stop at a gas station that carried groceries the manager told Momma to get some catnip. It worked. Cuthbert became himself. Thankfully when he was car sick earlier our baking pan full of sand saved the day.

We made three round trips with Cuthbert and the most exciting event with him was when Papa skidded backward off the highway and was stopped by a single tree just off the road. As the car was in a precarious condition we were all told to get out in the light snowfall. My sister Ellen was holding Cuthbert. A garage worker told us that the car would have to be hauled to his nearby shop but it would take quite a while. Papa stayed with the car and the rest of us were offered rides by other concerned witnesses.

I was holding Cuthbert on a leash from the front seat of a typewriter salesman’s car, while Cuthbert retreated behind the largest typewriter in the back seat. Papa had asked these volunteers to leave us in the lobby of a well- known hotel, so I kept Cuthbert with us and enjoyed all the admiring remarks from others in the lobby. It was quite a while before Papa came back so he decided we would just spend the night in the hotel. I think he needed some time to calm down himself.

Another day we were eating in a restaurant and had left Cuthbert in the car on his leash but one window opened a crack. About halfway through the meal, I crossed the street with some food tidbits for Cuthbert. What I saw made me call out “Cuthbert has been stolen” because an empty harness was dangling from the window. The whole family got up and rushed across the street and frantically looked everywhere. Some of us looked around the street, others looked down where the highway passed the street but a brother and a sister got the idea of looking at a stairway that went above a dentist office and there they found Cuthbert waiting in a window for his family to come get him.

We had other adventures with Cuthbert but we don’t have room even for telling about Cuthbert attending my sister’s wedding which was held under the apple trees in the backyard.