Bloggin' Umholtz

Behavior Modification Therapy

         A couple of days ago David McClain had written in his blog about tossing one of the cat’s out in the middle of a storm and it reminded me of our cat when I was growing up.

         I guess I should really say, my sister’s cat, because she’s the one who brought her home. She had gone away to church camp, (my sister, not the cat) and while there, she and her friends found an abandoned kitten by the side of the road. They adopted it. They kept it in their cabin. They were only at camp for a week, so it became necessary to figure out what to do with the cat when the time to head home came. One by one they lined up at the one pay phone in camp and called their respective parents. The question was asked. The response was always negative. Until, my sister made the call home. Mom wavered. I’m sure it had to be Mom. Pop, would have just said, “Nope” and changed the subject. “Is it raining there?” The hesitation was all that was needed. I was pretty young at the time so I don’t remember much about the dynamics involved, but suffice it to say that the waver was widened into a crack and the crack became a chasm and pretty soon “Nope” became “I guess it’ll be all right.” And the next thing my Dad and I knew we had a cat…and to make matters worse, they named it Purry.

         Not to be outdone I retaliated the following year and we added a dog named…Cuddles. After about two weeks, Pop said his name should have been Puddles.

         Years passed. The cat developed some interesting habits. One of these was that when she returned from her daily excursion outside she would run across the porch and jump up on the screen door, embedding her claws in the metal screen hanging there until somebody opened the door and let her in.

         My Dad was losing his patience replacing storm door screens.

         One Saturday morning I was walking through the house when I heard my Dad holler for me from the basement. At the bottom of the cellar steps I found him standing on the concrete floor in his socks holding two wires. The wires were attached to this strange looking wooden box and two more wires ran from the wooden box to my Lionel train transformer. The transformer was plugged into a wall receptacle.

         “Here, take off your shoes and hold these,” he said with a grin. Not being the dimmest bulb in the package and having had years of experience with my Dad’s sense of humor, I declined.

         “Well then, turn the transformer up some more, if you’re not going to hold the wires.” Without hesitation, I obliged. I mean how often do you get a chance to electrocute your Dad? (“But officer, he told me to do it!”) No, the Darwin Awards hadn’t been invented yet.

         Over the next few minutes we experimented with different throttle settings on the train transformer which elicited responses from him, starting with, “tickles some” and ending with “Hoo –Hoo! I can taste the metal fillings in my teeth!”

         Curiosity finally got the best of me and I asked him what the heck was going on. As any good mentor would do, and believe me, he is an excellent mentor and teacher of the finer points of electricity among other things, he patiently explained to me that the strange wooden box was actually a starting coil from a Model A Ford and, while it put out a lot of voltage, the amperage was actually quite low. And then he revealed his plan.

         The following weekend my Dad and I hauled the transformer and starting coil contraption up to the kitchen. The original wires had been replaced with leads about fifteen feet long to which alligator clips had been attached. The two metal screens in the storm door were wrapped with tape to insulate them from the rest of the door and one lead was attached to each screen. We sat down to wait. It wasn’t long until Purry came bounding across the porch and jumped up on the lower screen. She proceeded to climb until her front paws were sunk into the upper screen and her lower claws were still attached to the lower screen. Dad gave the train transformer about three-quarter throttle all at once.

         Cats can not only screech exceedingly loud, they can hit an octave that will cause permanent hearing damage to all living organisms within a radius of about twenty feet. Not only that, but cats, devoid of wings can fly. It was about eighteen feet from the screen door to the top of the front porch steps. Purry landed on the third step down. And yes, she landed on her feet. My mother and sister were completely unaware of our foray into the use of electroshock therapy. We didn’t see the cat for two days.

         Did it work?

         She never jumped on the screen again and she lived to be nineteen years old.

         Now if we could only teach her to not jump on the kitchen counter at night...well, there was that roll of metallic cloth in the basement.

         Yep, it worked also.

         A number of years later when both my sister and I had grown and moved away from home the cat proved it’s loyalty and worth. One night while my parents were sleeping, the cat jumped up on top of my mother and began licking her face. She had never done that before. Mom woke up and smelled smoke. She woke up Dad and he rushed downstairs to find the house on fire. True to form, instead of calling the fire department, he put out the fire. From that day on, as far as my Dad was concerned, that cat could do no wrong.

         What started the fire?

         Well, it was electrical, of course


         Postscript: There must be something to this electrical shock therapy thing. Purry lived to be 19. My Dad will turn 91 in April.