[Granville-Hough] 14 Nov 2009 - Cat Houses

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:43:32 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Before the Economic DownTurn - 14 Nov 2009

----- Original Message ----- 
> From: DAVID DAVISON 
> To: LaVerne Higgins 
> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 6:11 PM
> Subject: Fw: The Veterinarian
> > 
> One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the Pastor of a small church
> found a pink envelope containing $1,000. It happened again the next week!
> The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw an elderly woman put the
> distinctive pink envelope on the plate.
>	 This went on for weeks until the pastor, overcome by curiosity, approached her.
> 'Ma'am, I couldn't help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the collection plate,' he stated.
> 'Why yes,' she replied, 'every week my son sends me money and I give some of it to the church.'
> The pastor replied, 'That's wonderful. But $1,000 is a lot, are you sure you can afford this?
> How much does he send you?'  The elderly woman answered, '$10,000 a week.'
> 	The pastor was amazed. 'Your son is very successful; what does he do for a living?'
> 'He is a veterinarian,' she answered. 
> 'That's an honorable profession, but I had no idea they made that much money,' the pastor said.
> 'Where does he practice?' The woman answered proudly, 'In Nevada. He has two cat houses, one in Las Vegas , and one in Reno ' 

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That reminds me that my Richardson grandparents did have a cat house, or that is what we called it.  It seems there was a period when there were more children than rooms in the main house, so these grandparents moved up a tenant house from some place and were able to put two or three children it it.  It did not have a fireplace or chimney, so was used only in mild weather.  By the time we joined forces with our grandparents in 1938/39, it was used for storing seeds for the next season and for unused furniture and such items.  My grandmother, and my mother later, fed her farm cats on the back porch, and the cats would then retire to this old house.  We called it the "cat house" because it smelled eternally of cats and not yet trained kittens.  The presence of the cats and kittens did keep down any rats or mice. 

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Later in life, we had true house cats in the cities where we lived. So did our Army neighbors.  We soon learned that when these housecats were about to become mothers, they took up residence under the adult's bed.  We pondered why this was so.  Surely they were not that interested in our sex lives.  Someone finally explained it this way.  "They're looking for the safest place they can find, so they get under the adult's bed."  So, more than once, I have been awakened by the murmurs and smells of new kittens.