Katzenjammer Cats

Katzenjammer is a German word that means “the yowling of cats.” It also means “hangover” because a hangover headache feels like cats are yowling in your skull. The Katzenjammer Kids is the title of a comic strip with a history that spans two centuries and two continents. In 1865 the German author Wilhelm Busch created a series of darkly humorous short stories for children, Max and Moritz, about two bad boys who got into all sorts of scrapes. The series was an immediate success and remains popular to this day.

In 1897, inspired by Max and Moritz, German-American Rudolph Dirks created a comic strip called The Katzenjammer Kids which featured two bad boys, Hans and Fritz, who played tricks on their mother, on a father figure called The Captain, and on The Inspector, the school parole officer. Widely popular, the strip ran in syndication until 1949.

My two Katzenjammer cats, like those bad boys, Max and Moritz and Hans and Fritz, get into comic scrapes as well, jammering all the while and I, like Mama or the Captain, try ineffectually to create a modicum of order from the ensuing chaos.  

Even though I love my job, some days can be frustrating. After a day filled with missed phone calls, angry clients, mixed messages, and general confusion, I staggered home one night looking forward to a good dinner, a glass of wine, a hot bath and an early bedtime. When I arrived, I was met with a jammer, Chloe stood in the window meowing frantically. “Come in! Come in! Save me from Annie!” she yowled, pawing at the window pane. I entered and rubbed her tummy to calm her down. I put some marinated chicken wings in the oven, and together we headed to the upstairs study with the mail. I sat in my rocking chair, putting the envelopes on the end table to sort and placing a glass of wine and a bowl of peanuts on the floor beside me. Chloe lay at my feet, purring, while I divided the mail into piles for recycling and immediate action.

With a rebel yell, Annie burst through the door. Chloe screamed and leaped to the safety of the window sill, knocking over the wine glass. Annie followed, tipping the peanuts onto the sodden carpet. She crouched below Chloe’s window perch, growling loudly while I ran to the linen closet for paper towels to sop up the mess.

When I returned, the cats were gone and the oven timer chimed. I cleaned up the carpet, tidied up the study, and went down to the kitchen to pull the wings from the oven. After making a quick tossed salad, I settled down at the kitchen table for a relaxing meal, Django Reinhardt playing softly in the background. After one bite of salad, I heard a screaming, thumping stampede on the stairs. Annie and Chloe chased each other into the downstairs hall. They landed on the scatter rug which slid down the hall. Annie hit the front door with a thump, yelling in anger and frustration. Chloe sensed an advantage. I heard her growl and spit, followed by a crash. As I rushed toward the living room to see what happened, the cats raced into the kitchen, nearly knocking me down

I found that a vase of flowers on the coffee table had been tipped onto the carpet. Just as I picked it up, I heard a crash in the kitchen. I dashed back to find my dinner plate on the floor. Annie pounded up the stairs, chicken wing between her jaws, followed closely by growling, spitting Chloe.

More paper towels sopped up twin messes. I listened carefully. Was everything quiet? Then my ears picked up a low, rhythmical, distressingly familiar sound, the sound of Annie vomiting. The excitement and the chicken wing were too much for her delicate digestive track. With a sigh, I carried the paper towels back upstairs for yet another cleaning task.” I give up!” I sighed in frustration.  I decided to crawl into bed with a good book and to call it an early night.

As I settled on my pillows, paperback mystery in my hand, annie tiptoed onto the bed and settled softly on my chest, looking deeply into my eyes. “Hard day at the office?” she seemed to ask solicitously. “Don’t worry. You’re home safe now.” With a sweet smile, she leaped daintily off the mattress and slipped beneath the dust ruffle to her home beneath the bed. As soon as she left, Chloe jumped on my chest to take her place. “You poor thing,” she seemed to say. “You look a little tense. Would you like a massage?” She began to knead and purr.

The sound of her purring and the gentle kneading was soothing. I felt much better except, of course, for the pounding headache that was even worse than a hangover. If you own two bad, jammering cats, I thought glumly, you can have a genuine German Katzenjammer without downing even one full glass of wine.

Chloe and the Apocalypse

Last night after dinner I settled down on the sofa with a book and a cup of tea. After a few minutes, I heard Chloe’s footsteps on the stairs. As she walked into the room, I patted the arm of the sofa, indicating that she could perch at my side like she usually does. She jumped on the sofa arm as usual, but instead of sitting at my side, she stepped deliberately into my lap, staring full into my eyes.

“You can lie in my lap, if that’s what you’d like,” I said, scratching her back. But instead of lying down, she pulled herself up to her full height, hiding the book from my view. “Lie down, Chloe,” I said again, pushing down a little on her back. She began to butt the book with her head, knocking it out of my hands. Then she turned again and stared into my eyes.

“OK, I’ve had it. No lap for you!” I stood up, knocking her to the floor. She got up without complaining, strode purposefully to the stairs, turned around and stared again. It was a classic “Lassie” moment.  “What’s wrong, Chloe? Show me what’s wrong!”

She led me up stairs, pausing on the landing and turning back to make sure I hadn’t gotten lost. At the feeding station, she looked, first, at the water bowl, then at me, then at the bowl again. Sure enough! It was empty. I filled it from the sink; she had a long drink of water, and then turned to gaze at me again. I took the bowl back to the sink, topped it off with fresh water, and put the newly filled bowl back in its place. She ran back downstairs and, as I sat back down with my book, threw herself exhausted on the carpet. Another tragedy averted thanks to Chloe’s quick thinking. She and one incompetent human are all that stand between the world as she knows it and the apocalypse. It’s a heavy burden to bear.

My friends with dogs tell me that they prefer dogs over cats because dogs can communicate with their owners. Specifically dogs have empathy and a sense of humor that cats seem to lack.  “When I come home, he seems so happy to see me,” John says about his Labrador retriever. “He jumps up, barking happily, with those expressive brown eyes. He looks as though he’s smiling. Cats always have the same poker face. You can’t tell what’s on their mind.”

I think back to the dog my family had while I was a teenager, a setter mix named Lucille. It’s true she seemed beside herself with happiness when family members came home after a long absence. She greeted us, capering with joy. When the returnees finally sat down, she would place her head gently in one person’s lap and gaze lovingly with her big, brown eyes. Clearly, she really liked us.

But her real passion was not for any member of our family. She saved her adoration for another, a public figure she had never met. She was mad about Richard Nixon. Whenever we turned on Walter Cronkite and Nixon appeared on the evening news, Lucille would run to the television and press her face right to the tube, leaving drool marks on the screen. Usually a gentle dog, she would growl and snap at anyone who tried to pull her away from the T.V. until Nixon was no longer on the broadcast. We never knew if Lucille’s love of Nixon was grounded in her concern about the Cold War or if she just was grateful for the Checkers speech, but nothing would keep her from her hero.

One evening we had guests in the living room. My grandmother, who had her own suite, had left the company to retire for the evening. Lucille lay on the carpet at my mother’s feet. Suddenly she leapt up and streaked toward grandmother’s room like lightening. “What happened?” asked the guests. “Is your grandmother OK? Does the dog sense that something is wrong?”

“Oh no,” said Mother.  “I forgot. The State of the Union is being broadcast tonight. Mom must have it on T.V., and Lucille wouldn’t miss it.”

One winter Lucille got bronchitis. She coughed, had a fever, and moped around the house. The vet gave her antibiotics and suggested we cover her chest. “You don’t have to buy one of those pricey dog sweaters,” he said. “Just use your imagination.”

Mother took a warm, grey child’s sweat shirt and cut off the sleeves. She put it on Lucille, belting it with a piece of fabric. Lucille was used to being dressed up for Halloween, so she took her new outfit in stride. Besides, she was too sick to object. My sister decided to dress it up a little. She painted a formal suit with a bow tie, shirt front and lapels on the front of the sweatshirt. Since Lucille could respond to a modest number of commands, family members had fun telling her to sit up. She would show her suit front, waving her paws in the air with a goofy doggy grin and she’d get a treat in return. One evening Lucille was out in the yard when a call came in from a neighbor. “You have to get your dog out of the driveway. She’s a menace in that stupid shirt. A driver almost had a wreck in front of your house”

We rushed out to see what was happening. Lucille was sitting at the foot of the driveway, looking intently up the street. Whenever a car appeared, she would wait until the driver had a clear view of her. They she’d sit up on her haunches, waving and smiling. The driver would hit the brakes, staring and laughing. We pulled her back inside.  “Can you imagine the call to the police after a wreck?” we said. “I’m sorry I drove off the road, Officer, but I was flashed by a laughing dog in a tuxedo.”

Chloe may lack Lucille’s sense of humor and her keen interest in politics, but it’s hard to be lighthearted or concerned about world events when you are the only bulwark between an orderly life and the end of the world. Tonight while I washed the dinner dishes, Chloe patrolled the perimeter. Food in the food dish, check! Water in the water bowl, check! Annie asleep in the upstairs bedroom, check! Clean litter box, check! Assured that we would make it safely through another night, she waited for me to sit down on the sofa, knitting in my hands, smooth piano jazz in the background. She sat beside me on the arm of the chair and we watched the sun set slowly. I sighed, she sighed. I patted her rump and she licked my hand. Thanks to Chloe’s vigilance, we made it through another lovely day.

The Sound of Mew-sic

Four mornings ago I was awakened by country music at 5:30. It sounded like it was playing on the street or downstairs in my house. I put on a bathrobe and padded downstairs. The radio/CD player was tuned to a Christian country station. The player remote control, instead of being on top of the radio as usual, was on the sofa cushion. Chloe lay, curled up beside it, seemingly asleep. I turned off the radio and padded upstairs for another short nap before the alarm clock rang.

The next morning, I was awakened again by Reverend Bob, the D.J. for the Christian Country network. “That’s odd,” I thought. My sleep-addled brain remarked that both this day and the one before, Chloe had left my bed and headed downstairs shortly before the music began. This time, the remote was back on top of the radio where I had placed it the day before, but Chloe lay on the sofa, eyes shut to contented slits, listening to the mellifluous voice of Reverend Bob announcing another song.

I’m a slow learner. It was the third morning before I figured out that Chloe had somehow programmed the remote to have the clock radio start playing the Christian country station at 5:30, a few minutes after she padded downstairs to take her seat on the sofa. That evening I discovered I had misplaced the radio instruction booklet and couldn’t figure out how to de-program the radio. I turned down the volume instead, hoping beyond hope that Chloe can’t figure out how those buttons work.

This experience got me to thinking about cat-themed music. I’ve read a number of articles about cats and music. Most researchers and cat owners seem to feel that cats like classical music. I’ve tried Mozart, Hayden, Telemann and Vivaldi. Neither Annie nor Chloe seem interested in the least. They aren’t affected at all by jazz, New Age,  or world music. I even tried a sample from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. No response. What, other than the music from Cats, are some famous cat-themed songs?

Most songs with the word "cat" in the title aren’t really about cats. “The Ballad of Cat Ballou”, for instance, is an Oscar-nominated theme song for a 1965 Western about a schoolmarm, Cat Ballou, who becomes an outlaw. “Three Cool Cats,” a 1958 song about three guys looking for three girls. In 1962, the original Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Peter Best, recorded “Three Cool Cats” and thirteen other songs as a demo for Dacca records. Decca rejected the group, a decision I’m sure their management sorely regretted in the following years.  Here’s a link to the recording for those interested in hearing the very early, pre-Ringo Beatles:

Some songs about cats, like those about dogs, are aimed at children. The two best known are both embedded in animated films. Both feature sinister felines. “I Tot I Taw a Puddy Tat” is part of a 1947 Tweety and Sylvester animated short in which Sylvester the cat attempts to catch and eat a canary named Tweety Bird, a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes production. The 1955 Disney animated movie "Lady and the Tramp" features two Siamese cats, Si and Am attempting to steal a goldfish from the Cocker Spaniel, Lady, in the song “We are Siamese if you Please.” While both are generally viewed as humorous children’s ditties, I remember seeing them both at different times as a child and finding them rather menacing since the cats in both are devious, amoral, homicidal creatures. Neither cartoon would encourage me to want a kitten! Here they are for you to enjoy (or find unsettling). In watching them again as an adult, I still see them as more sinister than humorous.

Equally unsettling for different reasons is the children’s song, “The Cat Came Back,” a comic song written in 1893 but still sung today in different versions, about attempts to abandon or kill a cat which backfire with gruesome results on the perpetrators.

            None of these numbers are suitable for Annie and Chloe who would either find them as disturbing as I do or else would choose to emulate the homicidal Siamese couple, Si and Am. So are there any cat songs I like and would share with my feline companions?

            In 1981, the British rockabilly band, Stray Cats, released "Stray Cat Strut" on its premiere album, a song about a black and orange Tom who is

“. . . a ladies' cat,
A feline Casanova, hey man, that’s where it’s at
Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man
Get my dinner from a garbage can.”

It reminds me of one of my favorite literary cats, the redoubtable Mehitabel.
Here’s a very funny You Tube music video (sorry about the advertisement) featuring a wonderful guitar riff.

            Given my love of all forms of jazz including ragtime and stride, here’s a favorite of mine, "Kitten on the Keys,” by Zez Confrey, released in 1921 and a staple of player piano rolls.

              The great doctor, organist, and theologian, Albert Schweitzer once wrote, “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” But as my experience with Chloe and the radio has shown me: "Not at the same time, Herr Doktor! Not at the same time!"