Cat Tales by George H. Scithers

pinch.”
    â€œYou make animals sound more delicate about food and drink than humans,” Old Horsemeat observed.
    â€œThey probably are,” his wife countered. “For one thing, they don’t smoke, or drink martinis. It’s my firm belief that animals — cats, anyway — like good food just as much as we do. And the same sort of good food. They don’t enjoy canned catfood any more than we would, though they can eat it. Just as we could, if we had to. I really don’t think Gummitch would have such a passion for raw horsemeat except you started him on it so early.”
    â€œHe probably thinks of it as steak tartare,” Old Horsemeat said.
    Next day Kitty-Come-Here found her salted offering upset just as the two previous bowls had been.
    S UCH WERE the beginnings of the Great Spilled Water Mystery that preoccupied the human members of the Gummitch household for weeks. Not every day, but frequently, and sometimes two and three times a day, Gummitch’s little bowl was upset. No one ever saw the young cat do it. But it was generally accepted that he was responsible, though for a time Old Horsemeat had theories that he did not voice involving Sissy and Baby.
    Kitty-Come-Here brought Gummitch a firm-footed rubber bowl for his water, though she hesitated over the purchase for some time, certain that he would be able to taste the rubber. This bowl was found upset just like his regular china one and like the tin one she briefly revived from his kitten days. All sorts of clues and possibly related circumstances were seized upon and dissected. For instance, after about a month of the mysterious spillings, Kitty-Come-Here announced, “I’ve been thinking back and as far as I can remember it never happens except on sunny days.”
    â€œOh, Good Lord!” Old Horsemeat reacted. Meanwhile Kitty-Come-Here continued to try to concoct a kind of water that would be palatable to Gummitch.
    As she continued without success, her formulas became more fantastic. She quit boiling it for the most part but added a pinch of sugar, a spoonful of beer, a few flakes of oregano, a green leaf, a violet, a drop of iodine . . .
    â€œNo wonder he rejects the stuff,” Old Horsemeat was tempted to say, but didn’t.
    Finally Kitty-Come-Here, inspired by the sight of a greenly glittering rack of it at the supermarket, purchased a half gallon of bottled water from a famous spring. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of this step earlier — it certainly ought to take care of her haunting convictions about the unpalatableness of chlorine or fluorides. (She herself could distinctly taste the fluorides in the tap water, though she never mentioned this to Old Horsemeat.)
    One other development during the Great Spilled Water Mystery was that Gummitch gradually emerged from depression and became quite gay. He took to dancing cat schottisches and gigues im promptu in the living room of an evening and so forgot his dignity as to battle joyously with the vacuum cleaner dragon when Old Horsemeat used one of the smaller attachments to curry him; the young cat clutched the hairy round brush to his stomach and madly clawed it as it whuffled menacingly. Even the afternoon he came home with a shoulder gashed by the Mad Eunuch he seemed strangely light-hearted and debonair.
    T HE MYSTERY was abruptly solved one sunny Sunday afternoon. Going into the bathroom in her stocking feet, Kitty-Come-Here saw Gummitch apparently trying to drown himself in the toilet. His hindquarters were on the seat but the rest of his body went down into the bowl. Coming closer, she saw that his forelegs were braced against the opposite side of the bowl, just above the water surface, while his head thrust down sharply between his shoulders. She could distinctly hear rhythmic lapping.
    To tell the truth, Kitty-Come-Here was rather shocked. She had certain rather fixed ideas about the delicacy of cats. It speaks well for her