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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcsp!leimkuhl
From: leimkuhl@uiucdcsp.CS.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: net.bizarre
Subject: Re: bizarre pets (normal name)
Message-ID: <56400001@uiucdcsp>
Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 23:36:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsp.56400001
Posted: Wed Oct  2 23:36:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 03:44:18 EDT
References: <657@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:ucsfcgl.UUCP:-65700:uiucdcsp:56400001:000:2410
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.CS.UIUC.EDU!leimkuhl    Oct  2 22:36:00 1985




We used to have a very odd cat we called Magic.

Magic, a tortoise-shell persian, spent the larger part of her time 
under the big bookshelves in our living room--
coming out to eat only when she was certain the other cats were not around.
In particular, she was terrified of a severely obese old tom-cat named Toby.  
You see, for some reason, Magic had just shown up on our porch 
one day, and in view of the determination she showed by hanging 
about for two days, we had added her to our feline menagerie.
Toby had hated her from the start, and he delighted in playing upon her 
neuroses.  This was quite out of character for Toby, whose usual attitude
was one of passive ambivalence (except, of course, in matters relating
to food).

Magic had a very peculiar walk--almost a crawl.  Her darting about
so close to the floor was more reminiscent of a snake than of a cat.

Her strangest vice was that she loved a sort of self-administered chinese
water torture: she would sit in the bathtub with her head positioned
directly under our leaky shower head, waiting for the drops to fall.
I would often discover her there, in the middle of the night, making
strange cries each time a drop would hit her head.  

While watching a nature show on television one night, we were surprised
to learn that Magic had a strange affinity for jungle noises, especially
the cry of a wild monkey.  When we would mimic the sounds, she would become
quite agitated, darting about in her strange way, sometimes alighting
on the caller's lap.  She was rather frightening to the superstitious,
and it was great fun to bring people into the living room to show her there,
only her eyes visible from her lair under the shelves.  

We lost Magic and Toby in a strange sequence of events.  First Magic was
found dead at the side of the road outside our house, hit by a car.  My
father, who had been working outside that day, conjectured that Toby had
chased her into the path of the auto, for he had been in an especially
vindictive mood that afternoon, and Magic was only slightly less frightened
of streets and cars than she was of Toby.  More bizarre was the death the
next day of Toby, our friend of ten years, at the precise location where
Magic had died the day before.  Probably he was the victim of a cruel
coincidence, but I have never been able to shake the feeling that there
was something more involved.

-Ben Leimkuhler


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