Uncle Telly's Cat

My Uncle Telemachus was a storyteller. Dunno if he ever wrote them down, but he could tell a story with the best of them, and I have been compared to him more than once, to neither of our irritation or insult.

Uncle Telly had a wife and family, but today I will talk about his cat. The cat wasn't anything unusual as cats go; Telly's cat was, in fact, very typical of cats.

And I never would have known Uncle Telly had a cat until he told me about the day his friend Salvatore came over, and they got to chatting and watching the football game and drinking beers one Sunday afternoon, the way men do. Note that I was not there; this is Uncle Telemachus' story, and this is all HIM.

... and apparently, this particular game wasn't as exciting as it might be. Or maybe there were too many beers involved. This may well have been the case; Uncle Telly had a liver like leather, and could drink most anybody under the table.

...but, as it was, at one point, Sal dozed off on the couch. Uncle Telly didn't mind; he sat and sipped his beer and watched the game.

After a while, Sal's head sort of fell back a bit onto the back of the couch. He did not wake up.

After a while longer, Sal began to buzz a little, the way some of us do in our sleep.

And after a bit longer, Sal began to outright snore. Loudly. The way your spouse does when she's imitating you and complaining that you snore, or some character on a sitcom does, shortly before someone throws a lamp at him.

Now, Uncle Telly didn't much mind; he just turned the sound up on the TV. But Telly's cat apparently got interested. What was THIS?

And Telly's Cat jumped up on the armrest of the couch and began to examine Sal in some detail. What was that NOISE?

Telly paid no attention, until the cat crept a little closer, cautiously... and then doubled back, got on the armrest, jumped up on the back of the couch, and slowly began to approach Sal's head, which was lying full back on the cushions, now, roaring away like a small chainsaw.

...well, apparently, the game wasn't all that interesting after all, because Uncle Telly noticed the cat, very cautiously sneaking up on Sal's head, and began watching the tableau on the couch more closely than the game. Hey, he never told any stories about the GAME, but I must have heard THIS one like six times, now.

... and Telly's Cat finally got very close to Sal's head. He peered into Sal's mouth with some interest, and much curiosity. Where the hell was that NOISE coming from?

About then, Uncle Telly glanced at the coffee table, where there sat an unabridged dictionary.

He glanced back. The cat was now staring raptly into Sal's mouth. Craning his neck a bit. His muzzle was now in Sal's wide open mouth. Where was that NOISE coming from?

Now, I will tell you, I don't believe that there was an unabridged dictionary sitting on Uncle Telly's coffee table. This is exactly the sort of exaggeration I would expect from Uncle Telly. I am in fact, fairly sure that it was a copy of MOUNTAIN BEAUTY OF COLORADO: A PHOTO COLLECTION or some other coffee table book of the sort you'd find in a nicely arranged living room.

But Uncle Telly wouldn't settle for that. No, he had to have an Unabridged Dictionary, sitting there on the coffee table for no reason.

In fact, the first time I heard this story, I think it WAS a coffee table book, and then a few years later, it was a dictionary, and I'm sure if he was here now, he'd tell me with a straight face that it was the entire collected Oxford English Dictionary, in fourteen volumes, in a neat stack, sitting right there on the coffee table.

At any rate, the cat now had his entire face, up to the ears, in Sal's wide open mouth, engaged in close and focused examination of Sal's rattling tonsils.

Sal had not noticed, and was still dead asleep and snoring like a bomber on its way back to England on one engine and many prayers.

So Uncle Telly calmly reached out, picked up the book, whatever it was... carefully positioned his arm so's not to hold the book over the coffee table, but a section of floor, about three feet off the ground... and then turned his head to face Sal and the cat...

...and dropped the book.



Did I mention the living room had hardwood floors? And that this was all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?

This, of course, woke Sal up and startled both him AND the cat, and I leave it to your imagination what their respective reactions were. I assure you that your imagined mental picture is probably not exaggerated nor far off.

I do not remember the exact words Uncle Telly used, but there were few of them, and I remember that he somehow found a way to distill "explosive sudden pandemonium" into a six syllable adjective. Uncle Telly was GOOD with words.

And this is how I found out that my Uncle Telemachus had a cat. And a friend named Sal. I could not tell you if he still does, after THAT, but that's the version he told ME.

UPDATE: My cousin informs me that in the original version of this tale, she thinks that it might have been his father in law, not a friend. In which case, I am here to tell you that Uncle Telemachus was a braver man than I, because there’s no way in hell I EVER would have pulled anything like that on MY father in law....