When Daddy used tin snips on the cat − 1 June, 1973

It's actually my brother James' fault. He always slammed the front door after bringing in groceries from the car outside. Mama cat and her kittens lived a semi-feral existence on the front porch of the house, trying to zip in when we had bags in our hands in order to make it to the kitchen where they could rip off a scrap. She had a young tom cat from a lprevious itter who sported a white coat with a grey fluffy tail and mask. Well, James in all his autistic glory came barreling in with two bags of groceries when the cat decided to chance it but was about a half second too late. The massive front door cracked hard on the last two inches of tail, producing a huge yelp of pain and pretty much breaking the tail clean near the last few digits. It bent almost 90 degrees with the cat running in circles on his way back to the front porch. A day or two passed and it turned from a purple to an ugly black. Apparently, the skin was broken and gangrene had set in.

Us kids tried to convince Daddy to take the cat to the vet. He looked at the screwed up tail and told my sister Katherine that he'd be back in a few seconds, just hold the cat and keep it still. Returning with a pair of tin snips from his gargate, he bent down like a surgeon and in a flash made a clean amputation about one digit down from the infected area. Actually there wasn't as much blood as I thought there would be and even though the cat howled and dragged some blood through the grass, it very quickly took to licking the wound clean.

Within another two or so days, the wound had closed over and after a couple of weeks, the tail was basically okay.

But none of the other cats ever made a move toward that front door again when James brought in the groceries.