Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Five

Charles, Chipper, Chippy

Many will remember him from Maynardville.com; others as an employee of the technology department for the Union County Public Schools.

I first knew him as Charles Brown. I later came to know his full name was Charles Walter Brown. He and I were in every grade together throughout elementary school and had at least one class together each year in high school. We are almost, but not quite related. His uncle married one of my maternal aunts.

The first time I remember hearing him called anything other than Charles was in Raymond Johnson’s seventh grade math class at Maynardville Elementary. Mr. Johnson said, “Chipper, you must stay on your seat.”

It just so happened that I had a cat that needed a name. He was a petite, mostly white cat with a light brown tail. That entirely light brown tail really stood out in contrast to the almost entirely white fur on the remainder of the cat’s body.

The brown tail reminded me of Charles Brown, and that got me thinking of Mr. Johnson having called him “Chipper”. My mother almost always named every cat, but I got the honor of naming this cat “Chippy”, not so much for Chip Brown himself, but because I liked the way Mr. Johnson rolled “Chipper” off his tongue.

Chippy, like all our other cats, was an indoor/outdoor cat. Indoors, he liked to lie in the living room on the foot of my father’s bed. Chippy was a gentle cat, but he did hate to have his tail messed with.

Unfortunately for the cat, my dad was captivated by his brown tail. Dad, no great lover of cats himself, liked to pull Chippy’s tail, not enough to hurt but just enough to aggravate. Chippy tolerated this for some time, but one day he obviously decided that he had endured enough. He rapidly, without warning, stabbed every claw on one of his paws into Dad’s hand.

Dad was quite the sight as he grabbed his hand, where spots of blood were forming where the cat’s claws made contact. He cursed that cat and every cat of God’s creation, and from that day on he loathed Chippy.

A few years later, Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx which required removal of his voice box. That left Dad with two major forms of communication, facial expression and writing. Many times his facial expressions were easier to read than his notes, for Dad went only to (not through) second grade at Wooddale School. Dad wrote everything in big capital letters, some backward, used no punctuation, and tended to spell everything the way it sounded. Additionally, he did not separate his words with spaces, so sometimes his notes were hard to read.

There was a momma cat at our house that had about five kittens. Dad was trying one day to close the back screen door, and every time he would put one kitten out another would run in. He looked for a little while like he was juggling cats on the threshold. Finally, he got exasperated, picked up three kittens at one time, and used their heads to open the screen door so he could throw them onto the back porch.
I risked his wrath by saying loudly, and not necessarily kindly, “Quit being so mean to them cats!”

First, came the look. Then he went for the notepad and started writing. When Dad wrote, you waited. I would almost rather he would have beaten me than to have to stand there for what seemed like eternity while he wrote that note. When he finished, he gave me another meaningful look, loudly tapped the pad with his pencil and handed me the note. It read something like this:

I F U D O N T K W I T B E I N S O H A T F U L A B O T T H E M C A T S I M
G O I N T O B E E T O N E O F T H E M O V E R Y O R H E D

For those who might need a little help deciphering Dad’s code, his message said, “If you don’t quit being so hateful over them cats, I’m going to beat one of them over your head.”
Forgive me, animal lovers, but that was my last attempt to defend furry beast from my father’s wrath. From that moment, it was all man (or woman) and beast for themselves.
Next week I’m going to share a tale of a comforting cat.