The Girl With A Cat On Her Head

Prudence was twelve when it happened.  One morning she woke up with a cat on her head.  The Proudfoots didn’t own a cat, so Prudence was puzzled about where this one had come from.

“Go away, cat,” she mumbled and rolled over to fall back to sleep.  The cat was unperturbed and simply adapted its position without waking up.  Prudence tried to go back to sleep, but the tip of the cat’s tail kept tickling her ear.

“This is ridiculous!” Prudence said and raised her head from the pillow.  The cat didn’t budge.  It was still curled up snugly on the top of her head, stuck there like a large sand bur.  So, Prudence stood up.  Still the cat didn’t budge!  “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

She tried to lift the cat off her head, but it was a very heavy cat and seemed to be somehow glued there.  Curled up cozily in a doughnut shape with its tail wrapped around its body, the cat slumbered on, breathing softly.

Prudence looked in the mirror.  It was a handsome black and white “tuxedo” cat.  Prudence shook her head, trying to dislodge the cat.  The only thing that came loose was the cat’s black tail, which now dangled ridiculously between her eyes, making her appear cross-eyed.

Thinking that gravity would displace the cat, Prudence suddenly and swiftly threw herself forward, bending from the waist.  Astonishingly, the cat defied the gravity of the situation.  It miraculously clung to the top of her head!

Prudence jumped up and down.  Still the cat did not move.  It merely began to purr — a very loud purr.  Clearly, the cat, if it cared at all, was not the least bit concerned about being perched so high off the ground.

Executing a quick preparation, Prudence (who took ballet classes) pirouetted on the spot.  Her revolution was hampered, however, by the fact that she could not spot her turn effectively with her now top-heavy head.  “Aargh!” she cried, exasperated.  She was becoming more and more desperate.  “This is embarrassing,” she thought, “How am I supposed to get dressed for school?

Then she began to sob.  “Oh no, my book report!” she cried, remembering that she was supposed to give the report to the class that morning.  “I can’t go to school with a cat on my head!  I can’t stand up in front of the class and give a book report with a cat on my head!  I will be the laughing stock of the entire school!  Nobody will want to come near me,” she wailed.

You have no idea how difficult it is to get dressed with a cat on your head.  Nothing would go over her head now, so everything had to have buttons on it.  So I guess you could say that she became either too “buttoned-up” or too “buttoned-down” on any given day, depending on her mood.  In time she would learn to manage this obstacle, although a bit awkwardly.  This first day was the worst, of course.  She went down for breakfast, wondering what her mum would say.

As she sat down at the table, her mother commented, “Oh, what a lovely cat, my dear.  Where ever did you find it?”

“I don’t know, it was just there when I woke up this morning,” Prudence responded.

“Well, isn’t that nice!” said her mother, turning around to attend to the food on the stove.

Prudence ate her breakfast and headed for the door to walk to the school bus.  Her mum gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Have a nice day, dear!  Good luck with your book report!”

“Yeah, right!” Prudence thought as she walked out the door and headed down the street.

You’d be surprised the looks you get when you’re walking around with a cat on your head.  Drivers of cars passing by slowed to a crawl and craned their necks to gape at her.  “Does that girl have a cat on her head?” one wondered incredulously.  Another mumbled, “What could her parents be thinking, letting a child out of the house like that?”  Prudence could not have overheard these things, but she didn’t have to.  The expressions on their faces said everything.

The children already waiting for the bus at the corner saw Prudence coming.  Their jaws dropped.  “Is that a cat on her head?” one child whispered to another.  Most of the children started to giggle.  Prudence thought she would die of embarrassment, but then one little boy said, “Whoa!  Awesome!  Can I wear it, Prudence?”  At first, Prudence thought he was just making fun of her, but the little blonde-haired boy persisted.  “Please, Prudence, can I wear it for just a little while?”

“If only, . . .” Prudence thought.  She attempted a smile, but said nothing and got on the bus which had just pulled up to the curb.

There were no seats in the front on the bus, so Prudence had to walk all the way to the back of the bus with that cat on her head.  Everybody except the little blonde boy was laughing and teasing her.  “Hey, cat girl!”… “Cat got your tongue?”… “Me-ow-ow!” … “S-s-s-ss,wry-aaaern!” they snarled, mimicking a cat.  She hung her head and slouched down as far as possible into a seat at the back of the bus.  The little blonde-haired boy sidled in beside her.  “Don’t pay any attention to them.  They’re just jealous!” he said.  Prudence swallowed hard as one tear slowly made its way down her cheek.  She brushed it away savagely, not wanting anyone to see her misery.

The first day at school was indeed miserable for Prudence.  The teacher, thinking that Prudence was being deliberately disruptive, immediately sent her to the Principal’s office.  She sat in the office, glumly waiting for the Principal to invite her into her office.  Eventually the Principal’s door opened and the Principal appeared.  When she saw Prudence, the Principal’s eyes widened; she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly.  Judging from the Principal’s subtle reaction, Prudence wondered if perhaps the Principal had seen this kind of thing before.  The thought gave her some hope.

“Come in, Prudence,” the Principal said.  Prudence went in and sat in the chair in front of the Principal’s desk.

“Well, then, I see you have a cat on your head,” said the Principal.

“Yes, ma-am,” whispered Prudence softly as she hung her head.  “I don’t know how it happened.  I woke up, and it was just there.  I haven’t been able to get it off no matter how hard I’ve tried.  I’ve tried everything.”

“Uh-hmm,” noted the Principal, looking out the window pensively.

After what seemed an eternity to Prudence, the Principal turned to her.  The deep, soft look in the Principal’s eyes seemed to see right through her.  Then, the Principal sighed and looked down at the carpet.  A hint of a smile briefly passed over her face, but it was not the kind of smile one has when one has just been given a dessert.  This elusive smile seemed to convey a thousand deeper, sadder feelings of some recollected grief.  Prudence waited.

Finally, the Principal continued in soft tones.  “Once, quite some time ago, I knew another young lady who suddenly woke up one morning with just such a cat on her head.”

“You did?” said Prudence, her eyes widening incredulously.

“Oh yes, and that was a black and white tuxedo cat, too,” the Principal noted.

“Really!  What happened to her?  Did she ever get the cat off her head?” Prudence asked.

“Yes,” replied the Principal, “Yes, she did, but it took a very long time and a lot of hard work, but one day the cat was just gone.”

Prudence’s jaw dropped in disbelief and shock.

“Well, then,” said the Principal, “Off you go, back to class!”

“But …,” Prudence stammered, “How did she get the cat off her head?”

The Principal smiled and, standing up to show Prudence the door, said, “One day, a mouse came along and ate the cat.”

“What?” Prudence exclaimed, stopping in her tracks, “That’s not possible.”  But she was already being ushered out the door.  As she headed back to the classroom, she puzzled on the prospects of a mouse being large enough to eat a cat.

By the time she was to give her book report to the class, she had composed herself enough to stand tall and walk straight to the front of the classroom with her head held high, cat and all.  She stubbornly refused to let the jeering glances of her classmates get to her as she delivered her book report.  However, it never seemed to bother the little blonde boy that she had a cat on her head.  He was Prudence’s best friend.

Bizarre as it seemed, Prudence had faith that one day a mouse would come along that was big enough to eat that cat.  The Principal had said so.  This is how Prudence was able to make it through school and then college, but the cat was always there, sitting on top of her head.

Sometimes she held out hope that perhaps the cat would eventually just get bored and jump off.  She studied very hard and, much later, became quite an accomplished writer.  Occasionally the cat would jump off for a bit while she was writing, but the next day she’d wake up and it was back again, fully ensconced on top of her head.  At times she despaired, convinced that she was possessed by the cat.  The cat owned her.  How she got her driver’s license is another story, but driving around with a cat on her head got a little tricky for Prudence:  the cat’s tail would inevitably droop in front of her face and begin twitching back and forth.  People tended to stare.  (You’d be surprised the strange looks you get driving around with a cat on your head!)

After college, she lost contact with the little blonde boy, but she traveled and eventually became a teacher.  Much to her own surprise, despite having a cat on her head, Prudence became quite successful in her chosen career.  However, occasionally the cat would suddenly stand up, arch its back, and have a hissy fit when someone approached.  On these occasions, people’s eyes popped wide open; startled, they retreated.   Prudence realized it was sometimes hard for people to be around her, but the truth was that she was very lucky:  people were kind to her, and her friends didn’t judge her.  For her part, Prudence was surprised that she functioned as well as she did with that cat on her head. 

At times the cat got hungry for a tasty mouse and would leave her alone to go hunting.  At such times, Prudence hoped against hope that the cat would run across the giant mouse and be dispatched, but no such luck.  Prudence resigned herself to her fate of living with a cat on her head, but she worked tirelessly on herself, trying to do the best she could.

Then one day, who should appear but her friend, the little blonde boy, who was of course all grown-up by this time.  Even though he could obviously see that Prudence still had the cat on her head, it didn’t seem to matter to him — even when the cat hissed at him— because he loved her so much.  She knew that she had always loved him, too, and loved him even more because he didn’t care about the cat.  They soon married, but that is not the end of the story.

Many years later, while sitting at the computer, the computer mouse suddenly began behaving erratically.  It acted as if it were possessed:  running amok, darting around the monitor screen as if bewitched, refusing sometimes to select what she wanted, and then erratically highlighting in hyper-speed mode the entire document instead of the single word or phrase she intended.  The mouse was acting like some capricious “god-mouse,” completely out of her control.  It seemed to have Prudence in hand, rather than the other way around.

Prudence’s frustration mounted.  She found herself screaming irrationally at the mouse:  “Why are you acting like this?  Why are you doing this to me?  I haven’t given you anything bad!”  But the mouse was performing as if it were on drugs.  “Perhaps it got into some metharella cheese,” she thought.  She was worried her mouse was terminal, or that some other vermin had gotten into the computer.  She looked for answers on the internet.  It was suggested, much to Prudence’s relief, that the problem might be due to a “dirty laser light” and that all she needed to do was clean off that light.  Lo and behold, inspection of the laser light under the mouse revealed a sizable quantity of black and white cat hair and dander obfuscating the laser light.  There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the hair and dander was from the cat that had been sitting on her head all those years.  It suddenly dawned on her:  the mouse was suffering from a hairball!  And, apparently — wonder of wonders — the mouse had eaten the cat!  Could it be true?

Prudence jumped up and ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror.  Sure enough, the black and white tuxedo cat that had been sitting on her head all those years was gone, nowhere to be seen!  It was a miracle.  A mouse had eaten the cat, just as the Principal had predicted!  All this time she had been hoping for a giant mouse to come along to eat the cat.  But this was not a giant mouse at all.  Because Prudence was a teacher of history and civilizations, she was aware of the notion found in certain primitive cultures that the part stands for the whole.  In those cultures eating one part — even a very small part — of something was the same as eating the whole thing.  So, even though the mouse had eaten only a small bit of cat hair, it had nevertheless eaten the whole cat by eating just that little bit of cat hair and dander.  She forgave the mouse its god-like hubris and erratic behavior, realizing that it had acted like that only because it was suffering a bad case of indigestion after eating the cat!

Once Prudence had extracted the hairball and blown off the offending cat matter, the mouse resumed its normal functioning once again.  It no longer acted as if it was possessed, and, without that cat on her head, neither did Prudence.

Wilor Bluege, November 16, 2010