Snowball

I grew up in a house with lots of pets. They all lived in the aquarium, and swam around, not bothering anyone. Some of them lasted a few months, others lived for years in our 20 gallon tank.

Fish are nice pets because they don't make any noise, don't climb on you, and are very low maintenance. If a fish dies, no one cares; you toss it in the toilet, and when you are low on fish, you just go out and buy a few more fish.

But there was one week, when I was probably about 12, when we had a cat. My dad had his medical practice out in the sticks. As he was driving home one day, he passed a farmhouse with a sign that offered free kittens. To everyone's surprise, he came home one day with the cat.

The cat was pure white, and we named it Snowball. I don't know if anyone ever checked whether it was male or female.

Anyway, Snowball was a cat, and we had been having a problem with mice in our house, and my dad thought if he brought a cat home, the mouse problem would take care of itself.

I should start with this. My mother never liked snowball. Neither did anyone else. And no one really knew anything about taking care of a cat. Every night, at bed time, the cat would suddenly get very active, and start running all over the house, turning bed time into a circus.

Also, I should add, if you put this cat in a box with a mouse, I'm not sure the cat would win. I think Snowball would have just gone to sleep.

Anyway, one day I was nice to the cat. I held her and petted her. She repaid my kindness by walking on me in the middle of the night, and waking me up. It is frightening to wake up in the middle of the night looking at a cat, and I was never nice to the cat again.

This all happened the week before Succos. On erev Succos, Snowball disappeared. We looked all over the house for Snowball, but the cat was nowhere to be found. We searched outside for a short time, but it was freezing cold that year, and we gave up. We were quite certain that Snowball had gone outside, got lost, and froze to death.

That night, while we were all sitting in the Succah, my mom went into the house to get the soup. When she went inside, she heard and eerie sound coming from the dining room. Snowball had somehow gotten wedged between the china cabinet and the wall, and had been stuck there all day long.

My dad moved the China cabinet enough so that Snowball could get out, and on the first day of Chol HaMoed, he returned Snowball to the farmhouse where he found her.

I don't have a good reason for telling you this story. I was reading another blog which talked about how sad that were that their cat died, and it reminded me of Snowball, the cat I hated.