My wife Amy and I were watching “Have I Got News for You” with the hilarious FAMU alum Roy Wood Jr. as host on a Sunday night when we heard a loud crash come from the bedroom. I thought an intruder had smashed in through the bathroom door. Or maybe a car had careened into the house.
The horrific sound scared the grits out of me. When I ran to see what had happened, I discovered that Pops, our 1-year-old Russian Blue cat, had jumped from the narrow top of Amy’s open closet door to a framed painting hanging on the wall. The painting – a tidal marsh nocturne by Tallahassee artist Dean Gioia – could not hold the cat’s weight and smashed into the TV alcove on its way to the floor.
The Gioia canvas popped out. One corner of the frame was cracked off. The dented alcove looked like it had been hit with Thor’s hammer. When the lights came on, Pops looked at us with all the emotional range of perpetually constipated movie star Steven Seagal. The cat can’t act, either.
I said awful things to Pops. I called him this, I called him that, then I called him this again. All of it is unprintable on this platform. Hope the half-pint Flying Wallenda understands English. Glad my beloved mother didn’t hear the profane tirade, or it might have done her in again, God rest her soul.
Didn’t want a jumper
Before Pops divebombed into our lives, Amy and I mulled over getting an Abyssinian kitten.
When I lived in New Orleans in the late 1980s and the early ‘90s, there was a bookstore on Magazine Street that had an Abyssinian shop cat. I became enamored of that reddish-brown cat as the little puma scaled the tall bookshelves with effortless ease. The adorable, amble animal would hide behind rows of books and jump out when least expected with almond-shaped eyes gleaming. There is a reason Abyssinians are called mischievous clowns of the cat world.
“Abyssinians are beautiful but busy and they like to get up high,” I told Amy last year. “That cat would be all over our house. I just want to relax.”
We decided to stick with Russian Blues because the cats were smart and down-to-Earth. Plus, we already had Mavis (aka The Most Beautiful Girl in Puppet Land or Sweetpea) and Pops was her brother from another litter. What could possibly go wrong?
Little did we know we were bringing a demon into our home.
Please remove all breakables
First, we learned Pops hated any closed or partly ajar door.
The feline terrorist quickly learned to jump up and manipulate the door handles with all four paws until the passageway thumped open. This usually took place in the middle of the night. Forget privacy in the bed or bathroom. Some nights Pops would slam a door just to open it again. Guests entering our home must have thought we were going to flee at any minute in a hellfire hurry.
Next, he opened all the cabinets. The ones in the bathroom. Beneath the kitchen sink. Laundry room. Loudly. Why? I don’t know.
When Pops got the zoomies after eating, nothing was safe in the house. Amy and I had to get the breakables out of Pops’ path of destruction during the frenzied freakouts. The glassware Asian vases. The ceramic pots. The clay bowls. The desk lamp with delicate glass shades. They all got moved to my office, which had a protected door handle thanks to an inconvenient, toe-stubbing barstool placed just-so in the hall.
My office space now looks like the display room of an eccentric antiques shop owner. One who is losing his marbles.
Thanks for the decorating help, Pops.
Make peace with it
Pops is proud of his hind quarters.
He should be because his Dr. Seuss-ian tail is, oh, five feet long.
At 6:30 a.m. each morning, the gray cat leaps onto my chest as I am fast asleep, turns his rump towards my face and then backs his escape hatch up to my nose.
If that won’t wake you, nothing will. He’s got a weird way of greeting the day.
All I can think about each sunrise is the comedian Dana Carvey and his impression of 1987-era pop singer George Micheal on an SNL “Weekend Update” segment about his hiney: “Look at it. Accept it. … You can’t hide from it; it is a force to be reckoned with before it destroys you.”
One of Pops’ nicknames is King Julien, the butt-obsessed lemur ruler from the “Madagascar” franchise of films. His other names include Mr. Monkey Pants Doing the Monkey Dance, Total Nutjob, Mr. Destructo, (Expletive) and (Expletive, Expletive).
Death Race 2026
I figured Pops was going through a growth spurt because he slept most of the day and night last weekend. Little did we know he was resting up for his latest round of homegrown jihad.
On Monday morning at 3:54 a.m. Pops ran skittering through the house, claws scratching the wood floors, hitting glass tables, bounding across furniture, knocking books off nightstands and skidding across bathroom floors. This invisable fairy chase lasted a good half hour. No one could sleep with all that racket. At one point, Mavis joined in the wild rumpus and gave chase. It sounded as if they were reenacting the cult film “Death Race 2000.”
“I am so glad we decided to get a quiet, well-behaved cat that doesn’t jump up high or do anything annoying,” I whispered in the darkness.
Just then, Pops jumped on my chest, turned around and shoved his best attribute into my face.
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer for The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Knock, knock. Who’s there? Demon. Demon who?
Reporting by Mark Hinson, Guest columnist / Tallahassee Democrat
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