You start leaving paw prints on judges’ Caddies and living hell awaits. : Throw the Cat a Little Higher

A woman called the other day to say that she was sick and tired of the pain and indignation being suffered by cats.

I was in the middle of a column that was refusing to scan and the last thing I needed was a cat activist haranguing me.

When I get this kind of call I hum slightly, a technique that often causes the caller to feel he has a bad connection and hang up.

This precludes the necessity of cutting someone off in mid-sentence, a practice frowned upon at the Los Angeles By God Times.

But humming meant nothing to this lady. She simply repeated the sentence: “I am sick and tired of the pain and indignation being suffered by cats.”

Louder: Hmmmmmmmmmmm . . .

Continued humming, however, only encouraged her to begin the sentence yet a third time, so I said, “Wait. I heard you.”

I didn’t want to spend eternity with that same phrase circling my soul.

She said, “Good, what are you going to do about it?”

“About what?”

“About that cat killer.”

I knew what she was talking about, since that is what most animal lovers, especially those favoring cats, have been talking about for a week.

She was angry because the presiding judge of the San Fernando Superior Court threatened in a memo to “eradicate” stray cats in the parking lot because, among other iniquities, they were leaving paw prints on his yellow Cadillac.

Judges will take a lot, but you start leaving paw prints on their Caddies and living hell awaits.

The jurist who wrote the memo was Robert Fratianne. He meant it as a joke, he said, and, since no judge I’ve ever known has had much of a sense of humor, I accept his explanation.

But, unfortunately, the damage had already been done. It was like sentencing a traffic violator to the gas chamber and then shouting April fool! after he has already died of a heart attack.

Judge Fratianne’s mistake was that he put his attempt at humor into writing and, when it backfired, there it was in black and white. It would be best from now on if he just did a stand-up routine and left written satire to others.

“He wasn’t really advocating a cat-shoot,” I said to the lady on the phone, “he was simply expressing his annoyance. It was a judge’s way of having fun. They don’t get a lot of enjoyment out of life.”

Bob Hope used to tell a joke about cat-shooting, but all I can remember is the punch line, “Throw the cat a little higher.” I didn’t mention this to the lady on the phone, however.

“He was creating a climate of cat-hating,” she said.

I am not a man of immense patience, especially on those days when I would rather have a little hardware store in Newhall than a column to write, so I said, “You’re probably right.”

She said, “What?”

“You’re right. The man was no doubt advocating cat-bashing, but I frankly don’t see anything wrong with it. There are roughly 100 million cats in America, and clouting a few can’t hurt.”

“How dare you . . . “

“We have a balance here, don’t you see. While the judge is drop-kicking cats into the air, you are running all over the field catching them before they hit the ground. You miss a few, but what the hell. As the Lord once said to Jim Bakker, “You can’t win ‘em all.’ ”

The Cat Lady, as I anticipated, hung up and I was able to finish writing my column with a feeling of warmth and well-being I experience only when I know I have rattled another human being.

When I mentioned this to my wife later in the evening, she said, “You weren’t kidding.”

“Of course I was.”

“You enjoy torturing living things. What about the goat?”

My wife loves animals. Whenever a domestic argument evolves into a recitation of each other’s shortcomings, I can top whatever she has to say by reminding her of the time she killed the turtle.

The turtle’s name was Ricardo and she thought it was hibernating and left it in a closet where it starved to death.

The incident didn’t upset me a lot, but she has never forgiven herself, which is part of the reason why we have an excess of animals around the house. It is a way of atonement for having done in Ricardo.

One of our pets is a goat named Melody.

I regard Melody the way Ronald Reagan regards Sam Donaldson, with barely concealed contempt.

Melody is an especially ugly goat, due partly to a dog attack years ago that injured her throat muscles and left her tongue hanging out. How can you love anything that walks around with her tongue sagging from one side of her half-open mouth?

Now Melody has a bad leg and must be walked for therapy.

“You’re not walking her,” my wife says, “you’re dragging her.”

“Good,” I say, “then let’s quit arguing and take the goat for a drag.”

“You’re a hard man,” she says.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, “what about Ricardo?”

Sure it’s cruel, but she’s smarter than me and I need every weapon I can get. When things get tough, you throw the cat a little higher.