The Nine Lives of Those Dead Cat Stories

The urban folk tale appears to be as ubiquitous in American life as fundamentalist evangelists, lawsuits and the common cold.

I have received dozens of them from readers responding to the recent retelling, by United Press International, no less, of the one about the housewife who drops a cockroach into the toilet and pours in insecticide when it doesn’t die; then the husband comes home, sits on the toilet, drops in a lighted cigarette butt, and suffers the embarrassing consequences.

That story and numerous others involving comical injuries to hapless husbands, ends with the victim being dropped from his stretcher by paramedics who are overcome with laughter, thereupon breaking an arm, a leg, or a collarbone.

It is among the oldest of folk tales.

The one apparently in most common current circulation involves a dead cat that is picked up, invariably by a woman, and dropped into a shopping bag, with foreseeably droll consequences. Usually the woman has run over the cat, is in a hurry, and takes it to the market. The bag is stolen from her car by a burglar or a bag lady, who then opens the bag, sees the dead cat, faints, and is dropped from her stretcher by laughing paramedics, suffering a broken arm, leg or collarbone.

Of course there are variations.

Barnaby Conrad, author of “Matador,” recalls one he heard recently while lunching with Herb Caen and Dick Tuck, the so-called “dirty tricks” politico of the Nixon era.

“Tuck told the cat story on himself,” Conrad writes. “A friend in San Francisco went to Europe for three weeks and lent him her beautiful apartment on the strict proviso that he take care of Mabel, her beloved cat. The day before she got home, Dick . . . ran over the cat backing out of the driveway. . . .

“In a panic he took the cat in a shoe box to several pet shops and said, ‘Match this cat!’ None could; but in the pound he found one that looked just like her. The friend came home and a nervous Dick Tuck watched as she greeted the cat. She figured the cat was a little cool because she’d been away so long, but accepted the animal as Mabel.

“The jig was up a month later, however, when Mabel had kittens. The owner had spayed her cat a year before, and now she threatened to sue the veterinarian, so Dick confessed all.”

Maybe. But, first, if animal regulation laws in San Francisco are like ours, Tuck couldn’t have taken a cat without having it spayed. In the second place, why should I believe any story Dick Tuck tells?

Mara Eva Brener of Arcadia, a folk singer, says she has been hearing the dead cat story since she was a child. Brener has written numerous verses about dead cats, for example:

A man rang my bell

Wearing goggles, gloves, and hat

He said, “I’m very sorry

I ran over your cat

I’d like to replace him.”

Said I, “That’s very nice

But, tell me, how are you

At catching mice?”

Another version in wide circulation, which she has put to verse, is the one about the hostess who is serving a salmon salad. While she is preparing it, her cat steals some salmon. The woman’s guests arrive and eat the salad. Then she finds her cat dead in front of the house. Thinking it died of tainted salmon, she sends her guests to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped out. A neighbor then tells her that she ran over the cat, but she didn’t want to interrupt her luncheon by telling her. Pierce Rollins heard that one from a friend’s friend.

Yvonne Beltzer Sweeney, a KNBC news writer and an expert on urban folk tales, says she is always catching them on the newswire. Her favorite is the one about the woman whose husband drives a cement truck. She has saved for years to buy him a Cadillac convertible for their anniversary. The Cadillac is in the driveway and she is negotiating with the salesman when her husband comes home. Seeing the flashy car, and seeing his wife talking with a strange man, he dumps his load of cement in the convertible.

Sweeney says the source of these tales is known as a FOAF--friend of a friend.

One thing is sure. Don’t believe any story involving a dead cat.