The Rise and Demise of Mr. Horton

When a Brother’s Love Wasn’t Enough to Keep a Cat Alive

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My family used to have dogs when I was real little. There’s only two I remember, Inky and Satchmo. I think they were both cocker spaniels. Both eventually got hit by cars. Satchmo was the first to go. We all remember my oldest brother Jim sadly carrying Satchmo home, with a line of mourning kids behind him, crying and heart-broken at Satchmo’s untimely demise.

I think I was the last one to see little Inky alive — he’d gotten out of the house and was running up Midland Street as I was heading off to Kindergarten. I wanted to chase after him and bring him back, but Mom told me “No, you go to school, I’ll get the dog.” A car caught up to Inky before Mom did, and he joined Satchmo on the Rainbow Bridge. Mom was done after that. No more pets! No dogs, no cats, she claimed that she was allergic to them, and couldn’t have them in the house any more.

And so it stayed, in our petless home, until many years later, when my baby sister Mary, 5 ½ years younger than me, began clamboring for a cat. Mom would have none of it, but Mary had a way of always getting her way. Sister Juli had smuggled her cat into the house, with Mary taking care of it, when she went off for a semester in France. After a few weeks, with Mom not showing any signs of allergic reaction, it was revealed that the cat, Mat Suo, had been living there for weeks. It was hard for Mom to argue with that logic. She relented, but insisted that Mary had to take care of the cat.

Mat Suo was an interesting cat. Apparently the runt of her litter, she never grew larger than the size of a kitten — except for her paws, which grew to the size of a much larger cat. There was nothing graceful about the way Mat Suo ran. It sounded like a herd of buffalo coming across our hardwood dining room floor when she galloped across it with those huge paws.

When Juli returned from France, the cat rejoined her in her apartment near the University of Pittsburgh, where she was matriculating, and Mary was once again petless. When brother Chris got married, his new wife, Marilyn, conspired to get Mary a cat of her own, and this was how Mr. Horton came to live in our house. He was obtained from the Animal Rescue league.

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About a month after Mr. Horton joined the family, a representative from the league came around to check on how he was doing with his new family. I answered the door, and when he said what he was there for, I turned around and yelled, “Mr. Horton, it’s for you!”

My brother Brian and I were not especially kind to Mr. Horton. We lived in a big old house, the kind with large ledges above the doorways in the kitchen and dining room. More than once, we thought it was fun to place Mr. Horton up on one of those ledges as we were the last ones leaving the house for school. Mary would come home in the afternoon to find Mr. Horton still stranded on a ledge, meowing and trembling.

As an adult, I grew to have terrible cat allergies myself (really!). I consider it the revenge of Mr. Horton. But, I never killed him. No, that would be a different brother.

Mary loved Mr. Horton, even as he grew to be a cantankerous soul, hardened and embittered by his treatment at the hands of boys who didn’t appreciate his sensitive nature. He was about as miserable a cat as you would ever find. But Mary was so devoted to him, she would love him even if he couldn’t love her back.

Mary got married right out of high school, barely a month after she graduated. Her new husband, Jim, loved Mary very much, but drew the line at Mr. Horton. He was not welcomed in their house. This is where brother Ken enters the picture.

Ken and Mary in the middle, with Mom on the left, me on the right

Ken was never a fan of Mr. Horton, though he never tortured him like Brian and I did. He just didn’t like the cat. There was no love lost between them. But Ken loved his sister Mary very much, and when she asked him, so sweetly, if Ken would take Mr. Horton in, Ken could not say no. He sucked it up, and took Mr. Horton in for his beloved little sister, Mary. He was a better man than the rest of us, who would have none of Mr. Horton, despite our love for our sister.

Ken and Mr. Horton settled into a fine love-hate relationship in his apartment in Philadelphia. Having never cared for a cat before, Ken had no experience with it. But, he did his best. One time, he noticed that Mr. Horton was not eating his food. He also noticed that the kitty litter box was not needing cleaned out. Mr. Horton was sick!

Ken had no idea what to do. Some friends suggested he try giving the cat some castor oil. That would help him take care of business in the kitty litter, and then maybe he would eat.

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Ken tried this. He got a spoonful of castor oil, and tried getting Mr. Horton to take some. Mr. Horton wanted none of it. Ken kept trying though, as he was sworn to try to do his best by this cat for his sister. Soon, the cat’s whiskers and face were covered with castor oil, and Mr. Horton began to freak out. As Mr. Horton freaked out, Ken got more freaked out. “I better wash him up”, he thought, so he plunked him in his shower, and began showering Mr. Horton down. Now the cat really went bat-shit crazy on Ken, and began shivering and acting like he was going to have stroke. Ken tried drying him off with a towel, then got the bright idea of using his blow drier on the cat.

Things went from bad to worse, and now the cat was howling mad and broke free of Ken’s grasp, darted out of the bathroom, across the living room, leaped over the sofa into the kitchen, then fell over, dead.

Ken ran over to check on him, but it was too late. He had killed his little sister’s beloved cat, Mr. Horton.

That was the hardest phone call Ken ever had to make.