Cat Tales # 2

My cat, Myrna, for those of you who have inquired, has recovered fully from her fly catching adventure, which plunged her 5 flights onto the roof below my balcony. Since then she bagged a mouse (not moose) and has been quite the frolicky kitten. My PC monitor chirps like a baby bird in a box so she pounces onto the keyboard to investigate the monitor's face, discovers nothing worth noting so gives a look and sniff behind it. Nothing. So, off to bat around some crumpled paper.

I named Myrna after a neighbour, the mum of one of my childhood friends who also minded me while my mother worked in Detroit.

Myrna the 'baby-sitter' took me with her when she visited her female friends and their kids. I enjoyed this because my mother was always working and if we went visiting, it was always family.
I can recall the radio playing late 60's music like Petula Clarke's "Downtown". This song reminded me later on of our little visits to her female friends where I used to sit up n the floor and listen to the days gossip and complaints. Myrna always listened quietly, smiling. I especially liked going to Myrna's mother's house because they would drink tea and I would get the milk and cookies.

What was so special about Myrna's mum's was the bathroom. I loved going in there. Everything was pink. The sink, the toilet, the bathtub, the rugs, the toilet cover all in fake pink fur. The soap was pink, even the toilet paper was pink. Remember those crocheted poodles that were supported inside by pop bottles? That too, was pink.

Myrna nursed a fat lip after I was "kissed" by a mosquito. She ignored the fact nor didn't make fun of me when I "pee'd the bed" on a sleep over. She also had the best toys. Hers was the only home to have an African-Canadian doll, an anonomly in my neighbourhood of practising white Catholics.
But the hard life in Windsor's Remington Park was to maintain its status quo.

About 5 or 6 years later, after the long cross country trek across Canada passing through north-west Ontario (the mosquito infested Lake of the Woods), Manitoba (muffler blew in Winnipeg), Saskatchewan (Hoppy's campground), Alberta (the badlands, my first Taco at the Medicine Hat rodeo), Vancouver B.C. (falling China town drug addicts) and the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island (sounding whales) in our orange Volkswagan Beetle, we returned to learn that Myrna had been shot dead by a jealous husband, believing she was cheating on him.

The story was more horrific for Lynnee, my childhood friend because she had seen her father come up from the basement carrying the rifle. She ran screaming to my best friend's house, terrified he might kill her too. She told us later that afternoon, she instinctively knew what he was going to do, that he was going to kill the mother of his children, his wife after so many years, after a long night of drinking.

He got away with murder by only being sentenced for 2 years. His defence back in the early '70's was "temporary insanity". Such was the value of women's lives back then.

I wasn't sure how my family would respond to me naming my cat Myrna. But I have special memories of this woman. The name seemed suitable because Myrna is known to mean "gentle one" in Latin.