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Cat Fu

by Hal Reichardt

Our family has a young cat named Whiskers who was not wise to the ways of the world. He kept limping home with huge patches of fur gouged out of his side and a sorry look on his face. We live in a good neighborhood, so these incidents really made me angry. The problem didn't appear to be gang-related. Whiskers just couldn't fight.

He's a lover, and a young one at that; about three years old. For most of his life, Whiskers had a buddy next door named Beethoven, a friendly old fellow who was sort of a big brother to our little cat. Then the neighbors moved and took Beethoven with them. Slowly, over time, the cat neighborhood changed from a happy playground into a malevolent daily test of street smarts and survival instincts.

With no guardian angel around to protect him, Whiskers started getting roughed up. It was one indignity after another. One day he got mugged in the garage and let the other cats eat his lunch. This got to be such a recurring problem that we stopped giving him lunch money after a while. Another time he disappeared for a few days and came home covered with grease, with his hair spiked up like a teenager. That meant we had to give him a bath, never a reassuring exercise with cats (they look so skinny when they're wet). The word on the street was that Whiskers was a pussy cat. What's a parent to do?

The answer was obvious, but it took me a while to come to the realization. It was time for Whiskers to learn the art of self defense. I thought about teaching him how to box, but I couldn't find any boxing gloves small enough to fit his paws. Then I hit upon the perfect solution. Cats are naturally agile, able to stretch and bend any way they want. Just the type of skills needed for success in the martial arts. Whiskers was going to Tibet to learn the ways of the Kung Fu masters in a monastery high up in the clouds. And I was going to be his guide.

We took the slow boat to China so that I could use the extra time to prepare my little friend for the physical and spiritual demands that lay ahead. We watched episode after episode of the old Kung Fu television show along the way, and eventually I had to concede that David Carradine was not a cat. That made Whiskers feel better about his own lack of fighting skills.

Nevertheless, I got headbands for both of us and insisted that we rise at dawn every day to greet the sun and practice our kicking and stretching exercises. Before long, Whiskers was asking for a simple bowl of rice at every meal. Somehow, he mastered the use of chop sticks, another good sign.

When we got to the monastery, Whiskers was brought in to meet the blind Kung Fu master. He referred to Whiskers as grasshopper and promised spiritual enlightenment to his little student if he diligently followed the path laid out for him.

When the training began Whiskers was an instant sensation. The monks don't see many cats, so they all paid close attention when Whiskers was learning his jumping moves. Everyone marveled at his ability to land on his feet no matter how he was tossed in the air. To test his patience and resolve,
Whiskers was instructed to meditate in the courtyard for hours on end without moving a muscle. The meditation went fine until a bird flew into a nearby tree. To this day Whiskers still loses his concentration when there's a bird around, but the monks were so impressed with his Zen-like
countenance prior to the interruption that they overlooked the unscheduled snack.

Whiskers worked diligently until one day the blind master said that he was ready to rejoin the outside world as a Kung Fu cat.

Safely home, my family watched anxiously to see how Whiskers would put his new-found skills to work. We had the first-aid kid handy just in case we had to mend up any of Whisker's old enemies. But instead of wiping up the streets with the bad cats, Whiskers surprised us all by starting a monastery in our garage. It's a new order called Cat Fu. There is something unsettling about seeing a group of cats wearing white cotton robes and headbands and kicking the air in your garage. But the neighborhood has never been more peaceful.

Cat Fu became so popular that our whole family decided to join in the fun. Now we've all got headbands and white robes. The neighbors are getting sick of hearing us play "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting" on the radio in the garage, but we're giving out free chop sticks to smooth things over and that's been working well so far.

We're eating a lot more rice these days and finding a new kind or inner serenity that we never knew existed. I did a double-take when Whiskers referred to me as grasshopper, but I'm slowly adjusting to taking Kung Fu lessons from my cat. Besides, I'm learning to love again, and that makes it all worthwhile.