My great-grandmother was the storyteller in the family. She had a marvelous fund of stories my brother and I never tired of hearing over and over. Her life on a farm in Kansas and the many things that made such a life so interesting were the source of many stories, one of which had to do with two cats. The antics of these two cats was so entertaining my great-grandmother said the hired hands would actually light lanterns to watch them when the cats were going at it in the night. She would then go on to explain in graphic detail about how the two cats would plan elaborate games to play, seeming to plan various ambushes and attacks on each other.

You have to go a long way back in time to understand how such a thing would be worth getting up in the night and lighting lanterns to watch cats at play being worth the effort. But it was a time long before Hollywood became nationwide entertainment or there was a TV in every home. Yet, even in today’s world of entertainment entire websites are devoted to cats with a plethora of comic cat behavior.

When I was a boy, I vividly recall seeing a performance in San Francisco in which trained cats did truly remarkable things. One segment had cats performing as firemen with hook and ladder fire wagon rescuing another cat from a building, truly remarkable as anyone with experience of cats will testify. But herding cats? Forget it. However, who can fail to laugh at expressions like being “nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?” Hey, cats have “handles” as any child can testify who has sled one around by its handle on a linoleum floor.

In “First Blood” the cop asks why God would ever make a creature like Rambo? Not a few people are wondering the same thing about cats, and when I look at the domestic small pussycat and then consider lions and tigers I have to wonder what could possibly have been in the mind of God to do such a thing? I will say anyone that thinks lions and tigers can be “pets” have to have rocks in their heads. As to God creating lions and tigers, maybe not if one credits Satan as a competitor in the creative process, but whether or not few creatures so well exemplify Nature red in tooth and claw as cats of every kind big or small.

But leaving off any heated theological debates, here of late reading all the comments about cats has been really interesting. There are definitely people who love them and people who hate them. But the history of the old maid with her cat for company is a long one, though not a few old men like me fall into the same category. And oldsters living alone especially often find a dog too much trouble to care for, while cats are relatively easy to keep around.

Then too cats have been fascinating to people since the beginning, those like the ancient Egyptians having a real thing about them. I loved the scene in “The Mummy” with Brendan Fraser (a really funny guy) frightening the creature with a pussycat. A close friend suggested cats are really “aliens,” and it has become a running joke between us ever since. And seldom does the advice “Don’t name something you might have to eat” apply to cats.

I will say at the outset that were it not for their being warm and furry, with their meow and purr, with their displaying such distinctively cat characteristics and antics, their loving the comfort of a warm lap while having their furry bodies stroked and being a pleasant thing for humans to do, their inviting so many cute pictures and cartoons like Sylvester, Garfield, and others there would most definitely be a bounty on the critters, and I can easily commiserate with those who quite rightly complain about the problems they can create.

The present resident cat showed up at my back door here in the country as a “dumpee.” A feral kitten at the time, it must have recognized me as someone who likes cats; and electing to stay has now been here for over seven years. But living in the country as I do, she remains for the most part an outdoor cat though in winter has her own cushion inside my cottage, but often preferring my lap which requires me at times to do my typing around her.

But to my mind there is no excuse for people that dump either cats or dogs to run wild. And while feral cats are not going to maul people to death as some dogs do, they prey on birds which presents a real problem where one would like to have songbirds especially around.

Here in the country I love seeing the quail, doves, and smaller birds all about my place, and I take care to provide water and seed for them. But here is the resident cat, eyeballing them and making the point Nature is somewhat either erratic or uncaring of weaker creatures being the prey of stronger, a continual reminder Nature is far from being perfect, and perhaps a reflection of the command by God in Genesis for humans to “subdue the earth.”

However, there is no solution to the problem of cats becoming a problem for people or other critters apart from responsible people. But like the problems of gangs and graffiti and other forms of vandalism in the cities, the lack of responsible people lies at the bottom of the trouble. Animals will do what their nature is to do, but people are responsible for matters of choice.