The Cat Who Had 14 Tales

Why was she so stubborn?

If you wanna know, Tipsy was good for business. She sat in the window and made passes at flies, but it looked like she was wavin’ to people on the sidewalk. The kids, they was tickled pink, and they come in the store to spend their penny. Grown-ups got a laugh out of it, too. It was good to see someone smilin’ in the Depression.

Where did Tipsy get her name?

That’s the funny part. She was white all over, with a black patch over one ear. Looked like a black hat slippin’ down over one eye. Gave her a boozy look. To make it even better, she staggered, sort of, when she walked. Musta been somethin’ wrong with her toes.

Was she still there when the inspector returned in two weeks?

Tell you what happened. Porky was always feudin’ with his mother-in-law, and he was bound and determined to get rid of the cat. So one night after Mrs. Nick went upstairs to bed, he puts Tipsy in a soup carton and lugs it to a drugstore six blocks away. I was there to get an ice cream cone when Porky walked in. You could get a triple dip for a nickel then. Three flavors only. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.

“Hey, Sam,” Porky says to the druggist. “You still got trouble with mice? I found you a good mouser.”

“I don’t want no cat,” Sam says. But Porky dumped Tipsy out of the box anyway, and she staggered around like she was four sheets in the wind. You should hear the customers whoopin’ and hollerin’. They said: “You gotta keep her, Sam.”

So Tipsy moved in. Made herself right at home. She caught a coupla mice and then bedded down on some clean towels behind the soda fountain.

Sam always played cards with us in the back room at Gus’s Bar, and he told us what happened the next day. Tipsy was entertainin’ the customers when in walked the man from the Board of Health. He gave Tipsy a long hard look. Seems like he recognized her but wasn’t sure.

“Have a root beer,” Sam says to him. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything except the cat,” says the inspector. “The law prohibits animals in establishments vending food and/or beverages.”

Well, Sam wasn’t one to fool around with City Hall, so he pitched Tipsy out in the alley.

How did the customers feel about that?

They was disappointed, but—you know what? The little devil staggered right back to Nick’s Market—six blocks. When Porky got to work the next day, there was a crowd around the front window—people laughin’—kids jumpin’ up and down. Tipsy was on the string beans, wavin’ at them.

Next night, Porky put her in an evaporated-milk carton and took her to Gus’s place. It was a blind pig before Repeal. After that it was Gus’s Timberline Bar. He had it fixed up like a log cabin.

I was helpin’ out behind the bar when Porky walked in with the milk carton.

Gus give him a wallop on the back and says to me: “Pour the ol’ galoot a shot o’ red tea to warm his pipes.” He liked to talk logger-talk sometimes.

Gus was a nice old fella, but he looked half-crazy. Gray hair stickin’ out every-which-way, nose crooked, no color in his eyes. Used to keep a saloon up north near the lumber camps, and he was a tough cookie. When I got to know Gus he was pretty old, but he could still jump over the bar and bounce a foundry worker or dockhand if they was makin’ trouble.

I remember the bar—all made of logs, with a pine slab three inches thick. A beaut! There was a potbellied stove with about fifty feet of stovepipe. And all over the wall there was animal heads—deer, elk, moose. A stuffed raccoon, stuffed weasel—all like that. Gus said he bagged ’em all himself, but nobody believed it. He was soft on animals. We guessed he’d shoot a man before he’d shoot a squirrel. He had a pet chipmunk in the saloon up north, and some drunk bit its head off on a bet. Gus laid him our good—with a peavey handle.

What did Gus think about Tipsy?

He thumped the milk carton and says to Porky: “Whatcha got in the kennebecker?”

“New invention for killin’ rats,” Porky says.

Gus peeked in the box, and Tipsy sneezed right in his face. The old fella howled like a bridegroom. “She’s a dinger, ain’t she?” he says.

He put her on the bar, and Tipsy staggered down the pine slab—the whole length. Weavin’ between the shot glasses and beer mugs, with that boozy black patch tippin’ over one eye, she sure was a funny sight!

I says to Gus: “Want me to cut off her drinks, Boss?”

Well, boy, Tipsy got to be the hit of the whole blame waterfront. She put on a reg’lar comic act in the bar. Give her a cigarette butt and she’d stalk it, grab it, throw it in the air, bat it a couple times, and then sit on it and play dumb, like she didn’t know where it was. I poured a lotta shots and pulled a lotta beer when Tipsy was around.