Free The Cat's Job by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Feline Fact

Ginger and the Bully
of Lowergate Court
by Sharon Lee
    For nine years Steve and I (with
Archie, Arwen, Brandee and Buzz-z) lived in an impossible little
townhouse on Lowergate Court in Owings Mills, Maryland. Lowergate
was one of five courts that comprised the stunningly misnamed
Bright Meadows, the entire campus of which was roughly
three-quarters of a mile around.
    The best thing about Bright Meadows (besides that the rent
was
cheap
and the roof kept the rain off. Mostly.) was that there
were many dozens of cats in the neighborhood. Steve and I would go
for walks up and down and around the various courts and say hi to
Jazz and Mom, Sasquatch, Pirate, Taffy, Sandy, The Gentleman, Blue
and Ginger.
    Ginger was the mayor.
    I
didn't say he was the mayor -- anyone could see that he
was, just by looking at him. An orange striped cat of middle years
with a habitual demeanor of grave attentiveness, he made his rounds
every day, up, down and around the courts, across to World's End
and down the back woods. He would stop by our place mid-morning and
trade orange cat stories with Archie through the bottom screen in
the kitchen door. At least once I saw him at World's End with
Brandee, hunting moles. He cuffed Buzz-z once when they first met
and that took care of that -- deference to the mayor was Buzz-z's
rule, ever after.
    Ginger was a non-partisan mayor. He was a cat, true enough,
but he held every resident of the courts to be
citizens
, equally subject to his authority -- and his
protection. Steve saw him run off a stray dog that had frightened
one of the toddlers in the playground. I saw him streaking to the
rescue, the day Pirate was treed by a couple of boys with too much
time on their hands.
    The Gentleman, who was Brandee's
special friend, was a Cat of the World -- a wire-tough
black-and-white with gnawed-up ears and a limp off the back right
leg -- and even he accorded Ginger the respect of his rank,
whenever he found himself on Hizzoner's turf.
    Not so, the Siamese.
    I do not at this distance remember the
Siamese's name. Perhaps I never knew it. Steve claims some vague
recollection of having heard him called "Khan." I'm not so sure.
What I am sure of is that he arrived outside my kitchen door one
April morning, just before Ginger's daily visit, swearing and
cussing and hissing at Archie, who was standing up on his hind legs
and giving back as good as he got.
    I threw a glass of water on him
through the screen and told him to get a life, which, as it
happens, was a mistake.
    From that moment on, the Siamese
targeted our house. He would show up at all hours, bitching and
screaming. He would crouch under the bush by the door and leap on
Brandee, or Steve or me as we left.
    But we weren't the only
ones.
    He made Taffy's life a misery. He jumped The Gentleman so
many times that The Gentlemen went to visit friends in the country.
He clawed Jazz so badly the vet was afraid he wouldn't be able to
save the eye. S'quatch would scream when he saw the Siamese coming
his way and scramble up the drain pipe to sit wailing in the rain
gutter until his lady fetched him down. Brandee would flatten
herself to the ground and her ears to her head and
dare
him to try it, which was also Sandy's approach -- damages
there were minor, but the name-calling sessions were
deafening.
    Ginger tried to reason with him, to no
avail. I tried to reason with his owner and was told to mind my own
business and "if that cat come missing," she'd know who to
blame.
    This went on from April until
August.
    And one hot August afternoon, with the
heat beating out of the sky colliding with the heat rising off the
tarmac at the level of your ears -- up at the top of Lowergate
Court, right next to the dumpster -- an amazing thing
occurred.
    The Siamese was sitting in the parking
lot, swearing at Pirate, who was scrunched down under a starveling
cedar tree, pretending to be invisible. They had been doing this
for some time.
    Suddenly, in other parts of the