Posts tagged ‘cats’
WALT TRIZNA: THE NEWARK DUMPS
THE NEWARK DUMPS
Located on the eastern boarder of Newark is Newark Bay, a body of water leading out to the Atlantic Ocean. I have always loved the smell of the ocean, the proximity of primal life. However, by the time the ocean’s water mixed with the additions contributed by the factories surrounding the port, all that was left was a hint of what was once the ocean’s promise.
Port Newark lacked that promise, referred to as “The Dumps”. The area surrounding the dock was the home to tank farms, sewage treatment plants, junkyards and the polluting factories. It did not take a great stretch of the imagination to determine how “The Dumps” got its name. On hot summer nights, the family would pile into the old Chevy and take a ride “down the dumps”. It was a chance to escape the heat of the city and sit by the water’s edge. We would park along one of the perimeter roads and look at the freighters and container ships, from countries we could only dream of visiting – distant lands holding even more distant dreams. On one road where we usually parked, you sat between the runways of Newark Airport and the moored vessels. This was before the age of jet airliners – props and turboprops ruled the skies. If you watched enough airplane fly overhead, you would eventfully see a four-engine plane flying with one propeller lazily turning indicating engine trouble.
Sometimes, before heading for ‘The Dumps’, we would stop for a pizza. There was this elderly Italian man – he must have been at least fifty decided to open a pizzeria. So what did he do? He rented a garage, bought a pizza oven, a couple of small tables, and he was in business. The garage was a freestanding cinderblock structure containing three one-car garages. He rented one of the end garages, cut a door through the garage door and this served as the entrance. Located on a narrow street, not more than an alley, it was a far cry from today’s chain-store pizza establishments. Each pizza had a bubbly hard crust and stood as an individual creation – nothing massed-produced here. Later, when the quality of his product became known, he rented the adjoining garage, knocked down part of the common wall and expanded. Could this happen today, with all the zoning laws and chain-store competition, I don’t think so. But back in the fifties he thrived and produced great pizzas.
On hot summer nights, armed with a pizza, we would go ‘Down the Dumps’, to see the ships and watch the airplanes land and dream of distant cities and lands far away.
On weekends the roads of the port were mostly deserted, an ideal place to learn to drive. It was along one of these deserted roads that I almost put my father through the windshield. While driving on one of these roads he instructed me to stop, not yet acquainted with the feel of the brakes, I performed this maneuver rather aggressively. My early driving lessons occurred long before seat belts were standard equipment; hence my aggressiveness resulted in my father flying unrestricted around the car. I finally learned to drive some years later on the back roads of Alabama, after I had already learned to fly an airplane, but that’s another story.
‘The Dumps’ also was the site of two excursions that occurred when I was young. Both were odysseys that have stayed with me, the details slightly blurred, but with time an impression remains.
Before I describe these adventures, there was another activity which we did for entertainment during the summer. We went to the dumps to go fishing. Now the fishing we did down the dumps was not your usual type of fishing. In involve neither a pole, fishing line or hooks. The fish we were after were kellies. I don’t know if this was the actual name of the fish, but kellies is the name we know them by. I do not know if they were saltwater fish for they inhabited tributaries near the ocean, perhaps they were freshwater for the flow of these bodies of water may have been going to the ocean, but kellies they were, and we caught them. They were no more than two to four inches long and gray in color with a light underbelly. No kaleidoscope of color for the fish surrounding the waters of Newark. We usually went fishing after dinner, trading the heat of summer for the breeze coming off the water giving some relief from the hot day. We would pile into the car, and my dad would head for ‘the Dumps’ trying to find a spot on the water near the bay or one of the various channels running through the dumps to the port.
Once we had located the ideal spot with only a small drop down to the water, we started to fish. These were to days of delivering milk to the door. Early in the morning the milkman would leave quart bottles of milk outside our door and remove the empties; it was the empty milk bottles that we used to fish for Kellies. Torn-up slices of white bread were used for bait. We would put bread in the bottle, tie a rope around the bottle’s neck and we were set. Then sink the bottle in the water and patiently wait. The waiting was the hardest part for I believe none of us were over ten. We would wait for what a child thought was a reasonably length of time and then pull the bottle up, and if you were lucky, you had one or two Kellies swimming around in your milk bottle. Any fish we caught we took home but they were short-lived pets. Housed in a fishbowl, the next morning would find them all be floating belly-up, always. We did not go fishing for Kellies often, but it was an adventure for us but misery for the Kellies.
Now for my dumps’ odysseys, my adventures that took place there. They were journeys in more ways than one; one occurred when I was about ten and the other when I was about thirteen. I now live in the suburbs where the houses have large yards and manicured lawns. There is crime but it is usually minor and occurs at the malls which they never stop building. Yet in this environment whenever our girls leave the house we want to know where they are going and whom they will be with. When I was young I can’t recall being interrogated every time I left the house. We were just going out to play, and if there was a plan it was not usually related to our parents. If we were going far from home we would tell our mom where we were going, but all us kids just seemed to come and go.
The first journey to the dumps involved my sister Judy and I and two kittens. Everyone knows I do not care for cats even though we have two living with the family now. Our oldest cat is a pure white named Stimpy. We adopted him when the woman who found him, as a tiny kitten lying next to his mother who had been hit by a car, determined that she was allergic to cats. Stimpy has been with us for about ten years and has grown to be a big old cat. The other cat in our family is Sally. She was adopted by Lynn two years ago from the SPCA and is definitely Lynn’s cat. She follows Lynn like a shadow wherever Lynn goes and wants nothing to do with me. Sally will jump on my lap during the rare times when no one else is available.
I can tolerate cat, but they are not my favorite animals. When I was nine or ten I, and my sister Judy, who is three years younger, somehow obtained two kittens. They were mostly black with some white markings and were very young. Of course, we wanted to keep them, and I think we did for a day or two but it soon was discovered they were infested with fleas, for the whole family started to scratch. Our parents said they had to go. I now think of myself as an organized person. My career has been in science for years now. Every day I must deal with a vast amount of detail when I conduct my experiments and look for a successful outcome. Back at the tender age of nine or ten details were not something I bothered with much.
I told Judy I had a plan, a plan that would allow us to keep the kittens and no one would know anything about it. Unfortunately, my plan lacked any detail. I decided where we could safely keep them; we would take them down ‘the Dumps’. We would build a shelter for them, and they would be safe, and we could visit them whenever we wanted. And the place we would keep them was only two or so miles away – perfect. How would they be fed or watered, where would they go to the bathroom, what happened if some of the wild dogs that populated the dumps found their hideout? What happened if the weather turned bad? These were details that my young mind did not consider. Judy and I took some cat food and the kittens telling my parents that we were going to get rid of them but not telling them what my excellent plan was.
We set out down our street, Christie Street, towards ‘the Dumps’. Our little legs took us past part of the Ballantine brewery complex. We walked past the projects on Hawkin’s Street. We walked under a darkened bridge where people parted with couches and other items no longer deemed useful, and reached the boarder of the dumps, which also meant the end of the sidewalks. On we walked past a factory making headstones and other works from quarried stone. We passed more factories, getting closer and closer to our destination. Finally, we were in area of ‘the Dumps’ I decided it would be a perfect place to keep the kittens. The site of our kitten sanctuary was across the street from the future site of the Newark Drive In, but that was still a year or two in the future. We gathered pieces of wood and old crates and soon had shelter for our kittens. As safe and secure as a nine- and six-year-old could hope for. Once we were happy with our construction we put the kittens inside, left them some food but no water, we were unable to carry water, sealed up any exits and started our journey home. We knew we had done the right thing. We could keep the kittens and visit them whenever we wanted. We only had to walk two miles each way.
We arrived home after being gone what must have been hours, and no one asked us where we had been. I don’t know who broke first, but it was probably my sister. The beans were spilled, the plan revealed, the journey exposed. We all piled into the car to rescue the kittens from their secure abode. As we approached the shelter we could hear their cries, they were still there. We released them from their shelter and took them home but did not keep them; I do not remember what their final fate was only our attempt to save them down ‘the Dumps’, was a failure. What I took away from that experience was that a plan without the details worked out might not be a good plan or maybe not even a plan at all.
My next journey down the dumps came a few years later and was of a completely different nature. This excursion took place with two other guys, one of which was my good friend Billy. He told me he had explored an area on the edge of the dumps which contained a hobo camp, and that he was going again and did I want to come along. Of course I wanted to go, exploring a hobo camp on a Saturday afternoon seemed like a brilliant idea. The fact that we would be violating someone else’s home and property never entered our young minds. Also, the fact that the hobos might be home was never considered. We were on a mission, an exploration. After telling my mother I was going for a walk with my friends and would be back in a while, we set out on our adventure.
It was a good two or three mile walk to our destination. Our journey took us to the more industrial edge of the dumps. We walked past a series of large and small factories towards the far end of Wilson Avenue and our destination. The hobo camp was located behind the East Side High School football stadium, the high school I was soon to attend. The high school was located nowhere near the stadium, with land being at a premium, they located the stadium near the edge of the dumps. After I left East Side High School, in a stroke of genius, they decided to build a new stadium. The old stadium had plenty of parking. The new stadium, nestled among factories and an elevated railroad track, no closer to the school than the old stadium, had absolutely no parking at all, all the parking would have to be on the street. I’m sure the residents of the homes that bordered the area of the stadium really look forward to football games.
This was a journey of discovery for me, exploring the hobo camp and discovering more while we walked and talked. Somehow along the way, the conversation turned to sex with the introduction of the subject of how babies are born or more importantly conceived. My friends asked me if I knew the facts concerning conception. This was something I had thought about and felt I had it all figured out so I shared my knowledge with them.
You see I’m the oldest in my family and witnessed my mother’s other pregnancies. I guess it was when my mother was pregnant with my brother, the youngest and ten years my junior, that I really started noticing things and figuring out what was going on. I noticed that my mother started taking a strange pill when she was pregnant with my brother. It all made sense. To get pregnant you took pills, sold of course only to married women. When the baby was to be born, a flap of skin opened on the women’s belly, the baby was born, and the skin healed over. I shared this knowledge with my friends, and I thought they would wet their pants with laughter.
They now told me their idea of the matter of conception, and they were more on the mark than I was. Oh no, pills did not get you pregnant; a far different deed did the job. I was in shock. My parents would never do the things described to me, described in great detail I might add. And if somehow, someway even a little of what they told me was true; I surely would never perform what was needed to become a father. My pill theory made so much more sense, my world was turned completely upside-down. My young mind had a great deal to digest after this momentous walk.
This conversation caught my attention, and before I knew it, we were approaching the hobo jungle. Soon we had the football stadium in sight. I was familiar with the area long before the stadium was built for this was also the location of Rupert Stadium. Rupert Stadium was the home of the Newark Bears, a minor league baseball team. After the team folded, they transformed the stadium into a track for stock car races, which I attended with my father when I was quite young.
Behind the football stadium, off in a large area of small hills and high grass was a series of small sheds made from whatever materials were available. In this area there was a large mound of broken glass, which knows why, but my friends thought this added an important ambiance to the area. To get to the hobo camp we had to cross a fairly wide stream, but there was a large plank set across the stream, so crossing was not a problem. Did a flag go up in my young mind? Did a small voice say, “Do you realize, dummy, that this is the only way out?” No small voices that day so of course we continued. Once in the camp we just walked around observing the hobo lifestyle. The place was empty, or so we thought. Suddenly we started yelling at us from the area of the stream crossing. There was a hobo between the only exit and us. He indicated to us that we were trespassing, more truly intruding in his life. I don’t remember his exact words but I’m sure they weren’t friendly. He was right though. We were intruding on his life and when he stepped away we crossed the plank and beat a hasty retreat.
The adventure was over. Time to return home to a tired but somewhat wiser individual with new knowledge gained on my walk to the hobo camp.
MY LIFE WITH MILLIE AND SAM: THE FINISH
MY LIFE WITH MILLIE AND SAM
10/16/2021
Millie was losing even more weight, and her arthritis was causing her great pain. She hadn’t eaten for two days. So, I made one of the most difficult calls I have ever made in my life. I called the vet’s office and said it was time. I drove her to the vet. Went inside to tell them we were in the parking lot. As I walked back to my car there was Millie lying on the back seat looking at me with her beautiful eyes full of love.
A vet who has known Millie all her life came into the exam room and immediately said by the smell she could tell the problem was her kidneys.
The process went very fast. First Millie got something to make her sleep. Millie was standing and just keeled over. The vet said it was not usually so dramatic. Next came the injection which would relieve Millie of all her pain and sleep forever.
Millie is gone now but will never be forgotten.
Update 6/27/2025
Since this story was first written my cat, Sammy, has died at the age of 17. I have never been much of a cat person, but after 17 years I must say Sammy grew on me. However, Sammy being Sammy, I’m not sure of Sammy enjoying having me around.
MY LIFE WITH MILLIE AND SAM: CONTINUED
She came home with us, and we crated her in the living room, then went upstairs in our split-level home to go to sleep. Millie began crying. We thought she missed her siblings, but she was missing company. Once moved to our bedroom, the crying stopped.
In September my wife went on vacation, and I was left with un-house-broken Millie. I brought Millie into the sunroom and closed the door to the rest of the house. Armed with paper towels and a host of cleaners I was prepared to clean up after Millie until she learned where to do what had to be done. Eventually she learned to go to the back yard and do her business. Before she left on vacation Joni said Millie should not go on the couch in the sunroom. I figured, okay, I would lie on the couch and Millie would lie on my chest. The rules were met somewhat. To make a long story short that couch was one of her favorite places. She loved to lie down with her head on pillows. She loved pillows. The couch is now heavily stained with ripped cushions. But Millie was happy on her couch and that is what mattered.
Joni enrolled Millie in a dog training school. I went along with them but had to stop. While all the dogs were walking in a circle on leashes Millie would come over to me to say hello.
As with most dogs Millie became more than a pet. She was a member of our family.
I remember when our cat did something unacceptable. Joni sprayed water on the cat, and the criminal ceased the activity. When Millie did something Joni did not approve of she sprayed Millie. Millie loved it. During the winter Millie would break through ice to get to water.
Millie has such a mild personality. Sometimes our cat, Sammy, would sleep on Millie’s bed or Millie’s favorite chair. Now Millie was at least seven- or eight-times Sammy’s size, but she would not bother the cat. Millie would come to me looking up as if to say, “Dad do something.” When we would pass a barking dog on walks, Millie looked as if she was thinking ‘What’s your problem’?
When Millie grew old and somewhat confused, if she wanted me to do something she would stamp her left front paw. How she learned that I have no idea. As I tried to figure out what she wanted she would go to her bed and lie down forgetting that she wanted something.
There are two incidents in Millie’s I will never forget.
One day Millie went to the backyard when nature called. She began barking. Millie never barks. I went out to investigate and there she was challenging a groundhog which had reared up on its back legs. Not a good sign. After I saw what was going on I went into the house and got a broom to chase the groundhog away. But for some reason I chose a different tactic. I hit Millie on the head to get her attention, allowing the trespasser time to escape.
The second event could have been disastrous.
Millie has only left the backyard twice, crawling under the fence. She barks when she wants to be let back in. One day, no barking. She was outside for a long time, so I went out looking for her. No Millie. We live on a very busy street. In was close to Christmas so the street was busier than normal. I heard horns blaring and went out front to see what was going on. Traffic was stopped in both directions and there sat Millie on the double yellow lines. How she got there without getting killed I’ll never know. I called her to come, and she did with what I thought was a guilty look on her face.
With advancing age Millie became more and more confused and developed arthritis. And not long ago she stopped eating dog food. She was losing weight. The vet told me I should cook for her. I made her scrambled eggs or pancakes for breakfast and pork chops, fish sticks or chicken for dinner. But eventually she ceased to eat human food. I could see the end was approaching, fast.
MY LIFE WITH MILLIE AND SAM: A PETS’ STORY
Recently, my cat, Sammy (Samantha), died. She will probably be the last pet I have. And this will be the first time this house has been without a pet in about 35 years.
We’ve gone through a host of various types of animals as pets over the years. There have been lizards and snakes. I had a ball python for 25 years. We’ve had gerbils and a hamster. The hamster was found by a friend around Christmas time. The girls named it Noel. There was a hermit crab named Shelly. We have also had three dogs and four cats as pets one time or another. I’ll save most of their stories for the future.
This story will concern the last two pets who lived in this house. Millie, a fantastic dog and Sammy who would demonstrate an attitude when she wasn’t sleeping, which was most of the time. But no matter what their personality, they were part of the family.
MY LIFE WITH MILLIE AND SAM
This is a story about my dog, Millie, and my cat, Sam. Both remarkable pets.
My wife, Joni, and I adopted an SPCA dog. He was a terrier of an unknown mixture named Whitey for obvious reasons We loved him and had him for years. I would be sitting in a chair in the living room, and he would sit in front of me. I would say, “He’s coming up” and he would jump into my lap. Of course, he was white, but when he got a haircut portions of grey skin would show.
When Whitey died Joni said, “No more dogs.” Whitey’s death was grieved by the entire family.
My brother’s wife had quads, and they already had two kids at the time. We went to my brother’s house to celebrate the high school graduation of Lauren, Katie, Christopher and Andrew. All went on to get degrees, and some of the kids, advanced degrees.
When we arrived at Mike’s house the first thing he said was that we should go into the garage. He had a female Chocolate Lab named Haley. She was gaining weight, so Mike cut down on her food. His daughter, Jessica, came home from nursing school and said, “Dad, she’s pregnant.” When we walked into the garage there was Hailey nursing nine pups of various types. There were Chocolate Labs, Yellow Labs and pups colored brown and white. Mike did not know who the father was but my money is on a German Shepard. The pups were born at the beginning of June. Joni could not resist having one of these pups. Who could? At the beginning of August found Joni, my daughter, Lynn, and myself driving to my brother’s house to select one.
At that time there were seven or eight left. They were outside when we got there running around in a pack. Falling, jumping but always staying together. The pups were let into the house and we all sat down to have lunch. Joni had her eye on a Chocolate Lab named Chubs because he was the largest of the liter. As Joni was eating her lunch, and the pups were playing, a brown and white pup came and sat next to Joni. We did not pick out a pup. The pup picked us. I wanted to name her Molly, but Lynn wanted Millie. From the title of this piece, you could see who won.
MY LATEST PUBLISHED STORY
MY STORY, PETS, PUBLISHED IN THE CORNER BAR
As I mentioned in my post on April 7th, The Corner Bar had accepted my short story, Pets, for publication. It has now appeared and here is a link to the sto
“PETS” by WALT TRIZNA
Copyright 2025 Walt Trizna
Ronald Corey was a mean son of a bitch. His foul nature increased over years of personal disappointment. His life was now going nowhere. His anger was relentless since his wife had walked out the door. Just about everything that breathed hated him and he returned the favor. Turns out, there would also be some beings which didn’t breathe would share that hate. Tall, overweight, a monster of a man in size and personality, he had a rim of graying brown hair bordering his bald head. At 49, Corey was ten years older than his departed wife. He was educated, with an associate degree in engineering but held firmly to his blue-collar upbringing. Unfortunately, he did not hold firmly to employment. His favorite response to management ‘Go fuck yourself,’ resulted in rapid and direct membership to the ranks of the unemployed. His wife, June, was a complete opposite of Corey. Highly educated, holding multiple degrees, she was petite with dark hair and eyes so blue they merited a double take by the observer. Their temperament was also at opposite poles. How they became attracted to each other, never mind married, was a mystery to all who knew them, and eventually became a mystery to June too. June was aware that Corey drank and came to consider it to be just part of his makeup. When not drinking he was different, loving and kind. But once they married his drinking increased, being loving and kind flew out the window. Then came the start of physical abuse. June finally saw the handwriting on the wall, and what she could not see was knocked into her. Corey desperately wanted her to produce a son, but after one year of marriage, June came to realize that bringing a child into the world with Corey as the father would be a disaster. How would he treat a child when he treated her so terribly? Her imagination reeled and her mind produced images that left her disgusted. While he tried to become a father, June adhered to birth control. Corey would yell, “I don’t understand it. The rest of my family is popping kids left and right. What is wrong with you?” June replied, “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you. Go get checked.” She knew Corey had a deep-seated fear of doctors, his entire family did. “Why don’t you get checked?” he shouted back. “Fine,” June said. “We’ll go together,” and that was the end of that. Finally, after five years of enduring the hell of their marriage, June had had enough. Sporting a black eye, she began packing. Corey threw his glass of cheap scotch at their closed bedroom door and felt nothing, no loss – no regrets. Experiencing emotions, other than anger, had long ago departed his being. As she turned to leave tears moistened her eyes. Seeing this, Corey was sure she did not have the guts to go. He waited for her determination to wither, was surprised when she 10 Corner Bar Magazine said, “I can’t take the pets. You’ll have to take care of them until I find a place for them.” The pets were now his responsibility, and he despised them – always had. The dog, Molly, a medium size brown and white mixed breed, was an SPCA rescue. Sally and Sam, the result of friends of friends whose cats produced litters, were two grey tabbies who looked identical, although three years of age separated them. After June was gone his drinking increased and the more he drank the more his rage grew needing an outlet, and that outlet became the animals. If one should chance his way, it would receive a kick or powerful slap sending the poor animal sprawling and running for safety. After Corey had enough of their neediness, he looked at the animals and said, “Now to get rid of you little bastards.” But a short-lived moment of sanity filtered into his brain. The entire neighborhood knew about the pets and would become suspicious if they all suddenly disappeared. “Christ, people are going to jail for shit like that,” he said to himself. You see, he did not even consider putting them up for adoption. He only considered death or abandonment. But then he realized the plan to just drive them to some field and leave them was also out. Damn, he couldn’t remember if Molly had one of those new fucking chips im planted. “Damn animals are turning into computers now,” he mumbled. From then on the animals lived in fear of Corey. In time after constant abuse, fear gradually turned into anger, an anger they communicated to one another as only animals can. Poor Molly spent most of her day huddling in her open crate, seeking the false sense of security it provided. If she left the cage, in Corey’s presence, she would suffer a kick sending the dog running back for shelter. The abuse was relentless and soon resulted in a permanent limp, and also something else, a hate which crossed a subtle boundary. There was another bone of contention, the cats’ litter box. The cats, constantly hiding, ventured out only to eat and use the litter box. The abuse they received when hunger or nature called was relentless, journeying to the levels of Molly’s rage. The source of the cats’ abuse was that Corey felt degraded every time he had to scoop up the cat’s waste, as if he was some kind of servant. One day he thought, I’ll show the little bastards and stopped cleaning it. Soon the box was nothing but a huge mass of lumps of congealed urine-soaked litter and cat turds. When the cats began relieving themselves in the vicinity of the box, Corey cursed them to hell and was forced once again to keep it clean. “Fucking cats,” he would mumble every time he had to clean up after them. With his wife gone, Corey stayed drunk most of the time. During this ‘relaxed state,’ in the far reaches of his muddled brain was the realization that he needed to find a job soon. Alone with the pets, that’s how Corey lived, but then his twisted reasoning would replace logic, and he would mumble, “Find a job for what? To feed the damned animals.” Due to the stress of their lives, the behavior of the animals changed from the normal response to a lone master, following that person from room to room to occupy the same space. This was not how life for the pets in the Corey household went. Here they avoided their master and stayed hidden, and Corey liked it that way. And when Corey finally passed out from a day of drinking, they would form a tight group glaring in his di rection and attend to their needs. One day, after one particularly violent attack on the animals, from the corner of his eye he detected movement. In his drunken stupor, he could not tell if he was seeing things or not, the movement was accompanied by a soft rustling sound, as if the softest of materials was being dragged across the floor. Was he now hearing things? Sure, he would find an animal lurking, but all that he saw were piles of pet hair constantly increasing in size and quantity, another by-product of the animals Corey loathed. That was a major problem, the hair. Shortly after June left, Corey noticed small balls of hair accumulating at the edges of the rooms and eventually they appeared over most of the floor. The rest of the house fared just as bad with the sink filled with dishes, a heavy coating of dust on every surface and the refrigerator full of rotting food, but the hair was the filth that maddened Corey the most. June had kept the floors swept and, of course, Corey never appreciated the effort. Now the hair accumulated, it seemed, with a vengeance. If he only knew. Corey swept up the hair every few weeks, filling plastic bags full of the fluff. He would be in an especially bad ‘pet mood’ after completing this chore. One day, after a particularly long time between sweeping up the hair, he had two bags full of waste. He was about to take them out to the trash when his usual anger turned to shock. Piercing the depths of both bags, he saw two glowing points of red resembling glowing cigarettes seen in the night or the last embers of a dying fire. He shook his head, looked away, and when he looked back the glowing points of light were gone. “What the fuck?” he muttered and soon forgot the incident. Corey stretched the hair cleaning, and at the same time, the hair seemed to accumulate at a faster rate, appearing as small tumbleweeds, ready to move with the slightest breeze. After the next cleaning, he had three bags of hair. Corey stooped to pick them up when he stopped. He shook his head to clear his brain because he could not believe his eyes. In each bag, in addition to the two small glowing spheres, there appeared a crimson crescent shaped like a smiling mouth. Corey stepped back and then stumbled forward for another look. The specter in the bags was gone. Weeks later, cleaning yielded four bags of hair. Once the job was completed, Corey cautiously approached the bags and vaguely remembered the previous specter. It was then he beheld a sight filling him with terror. Along with the now glowing eyes, the smiling crescent reappeared slightly parted and filled with a vicious set of pointed teeth. The balls of hair began to move within the bags, which was impossible. Soon the bags tipped, spilling their contents on the floor. Ever so slowly, to Corey’s horror, the spheres of hair began to move toward him. Within the fluffy balls there appeared to be a solid presence, a substance where none should exist, as if something unworldly had taken on a physical aspect. Corey backed into the corner of the living room, stumbling over accumulated trash. While their master faced this unknown terror, the pets appeared, Molly, limping from her protective crate, Sally and Sam from beneath beds. Corey’s eyes flicked from the animals, sit ting in a group gazing at him to the slowly creeping maleficent spheres. The closer these hateful entities moved toward Corey, the more at ease the animals seemed to become, as if a great weight were being lifted from their lives. It was then that neighbors heard ungodly screams coming from Corey’s home and called 911. The responding police had to break down the door to gain entrance and were met by a grisly sight that they would never forget, haunting them for the rest of their days. Corey lay – they assumed it was Corey – in the middle of the living room. Where his face had once been was nothing more than a blood-soaked mound of flesh. The rest of his body was horribly mutilated. Once they overcame their initial shock, the cops noticed Molly and the two cats sitting close to the body intently observing it. One officer said to the other, “I wonder if they tried to stop what ever happened.” His partner responded, “Do you think the animals could possibly have do this?” “No way. Look how they are keeping watch over their dead master. They must have loved the guy,” said the other officer.
v 13 Copyright 2025 Walt Trizna Corner Bar Magazine
Here is a link to The Corner Bar
CAT’S EYES, PART IV
CAT’S EYES, PART IV
Joe was in the middle of writing a story. His phone rang, which he never answered, waiting for his machine to take care of the chore. The voice coming through the phone said, “Joe, it’s Howard. Pick up.”
Running to the phone, Joe answered and said, “Howard, what’s the news?”
“Let’s meet at the bar, Joe. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“I’ll see you there in an hour.”
When Joe walked in, he immediately saw Howard sitting at their usual table nursing a beer. Joe went to the bar, placed his order, and then went to sit with his friend, waiting for him to speak.
Howard looked into his beer for a while, and then looked at Joe. Without saying a word, Howard reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper which he pushed toward Joe.
“What’s this?” Joe asked, although he could see it was a prescription script.
Howard answered, “It’s a script for a heavy-duty anti-rejection drug.”
Joe’s face lit up.
“Listen, my friend, there may be some as yet unknown side effects associated with taking this. To say nothing of the tons of legal requirements which have to be met making sure you won’t sue if things go south after the surgery.” Howard then ran through a list of things that ranged from mere annoyances to life threatening.
Joe listened intently as he pocketed the script. “Howard, I’m having periods of wavy and blurred vision, bad enough at times to stop me from writing. I’ll do anything to be able to see perfectly again.
“Hold on, Joe. I’ve done some research too. You won’t be able to see as a human. You will have the vision of a cat.
“First of all, you will be nearsighted. Nearsightedness enables cats to catch their prey. That can be easily corrected. You will also be able to see extremely well in the dark, but with the absence of color. The big difference is what you see in the light. The only colors you will see are purple, blue and green. It will take some time for you to adapt to having the vision of a cat.
“My friend has agreed to do the surgery. He even got permission from the N.I.H. to do it as an experimental procedure. Of course, you’ll have to sign a ton of forms as I already mentioned.”
Joe was ecstatic. “This is great news. When can we do the surgery?”
“In a few weeks. You must take the course of anti-rejection drugs, and my friend has to find a cat totally free of disease.”
CAT’S EYES, PART III
CAT’S EYES, PART III
Joe met Howard at their usual spot and shared small talk through the first few rounds. Howard noticed that Joe suddenly became quiet and stared at him. Finally, Howard asked, “What’s on your mind, buddy?”
“Howard, I’ve been thinking about the eye transplant procedure you told me about.”
“Stop thinking about it, Joe. You have to take the person’s eyes out while they’re still alive. Except for some kidney and liver transplants, most transplants are not done until the donor is declared dead. Even for someone brain-dead, they do not begin harvesting until they pull the plug, and by then it’s too late for an eye transplant. I can’t imagine a family consenting to a transplant of a loved one’s eyes while the patient is still alive.”
Joe hesitated, and then said, “I don’t want human eyes.”
Howard cried, “What the hell, are you nuts?”
His raised voice brought stares from the other patrons who then rapidly returned to their drinks.
Joe continued, “Listen, Howard. I’ve been doing some research on my own, along with something I’ve observed in cats.”
Howard laughed, “This has got to be good,” but his body language indicated a total lack of ease.
Joe said, “I was looking up research involving cats and ran across an article published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concerning the cat’s central nervous system: how it easily repairs itself. Maybe this is true of other nerves, like the optic nerve. Maybe the optic nerve could join with that of another species and restore sight.”
Howard began to feel uncomfortable. “Where the hell are you going with this, Joe?”
“I’m going blind. That’s where I’m going. I know I won’t be totally blind, but in my profession; I might as well be.”
“Now listen, Joe. There are plenty of options you can use to continue writing. Look into them.”
“Howard, I want to continue writing as I do now, just me, a pencil and a piece of paper. I don’t want a life where I can’t sit down anywhere I want and write. I’ve also become acquainted with what is known about how cats see. There’s something else, and you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Joe, I’ve passed that milestone some time ago.”
“I think cats can see something I can’t, that humans can’t. I want my eyes replaced with that of a cat.”
“Shit, Joe, you are nuts.”
“No, listen, Howard. A baboon heart was once implanted into a child when there was no hope of the child surviving. Pig valves are routinely used in heart surgery. Why not transplant cat’s eyes?”
They drank another beer in silence. Joe was talked out and Howard was pondering about what Joe had said. Howard broke the silence. “Damn it, Joe. I’ll talk to my friend. I also want to find out more about cat vision. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll see what I can do. And Joe.”
“Yes?”
“I still think you’re nuts.”
Joe’s mood lifted, “Thanks buddy. You’ve given me some hope.”
After the two friends parted, Joe went home to write. Howard went home to research cat’s eyes and how their vision differed from that of humans.
CRITICS
I’m working on a short story, Cliff’s Note, recently rejected but with a good comment and helpful suggestions. I have a rewrite and decided to try the story on my roommates.
First I tried the story on Sammy (Samantha). Here is her response, not good, but she wanted to get close to my work.
Jpeg
Next I looked to Millie for an opinion, hoping for a more positive response. After pondering their reaction, I decided I had more work to do.
A FRIEND GONE, SALLY
A companion, living most of the past months on my lap, Sally is gone. I have mentioned her in this blog before.
Originally my daughter Lynn’s cat, an SPCA rescue, but as education and work took Lynn to other locations, Sally stayed behind
At the age of nearly 16 her kidney failure overpowered her. She left this world on March 8, 2016, barely able to stand. I had to make the final decision. She had bounced back numerous times in the past, but this time was different. There was no bouncing back.
I never thought I would be become a ‘cat person’, but I did become a ‘Sally person’. We shared many nights together on my recliner, and many mornings when her hunger wanted me awake. I miss her. She won my heart, and I will always remember her.
OUR TERMINAL CAT
From the moment we take our first breath we are terminal, that’s reality. It is what we do between that first breath and the last that is important. Life is a crapshoot. I was reading the obituaries one morning, you do that as you age, when on the same page I found one for a four year old boy and one for a 103 year old woman. If that doesn’t make one stop to ponder this gift we call life, nothing will.
Back to the subject of this article. As I sit here writing I can hear the coughing and wheezing of our asthmatic cat, Sally. I’ve never been a cat person. I’m a dog person and love the companionship and love a canine returns. I find cats to be aloof and wanting only your service. You fulfill their needs and then you get that look, ‘You can leave now’. But as with all generalities, there are the exceptions that prove you wrong.
My family has a history of owning cats, primarily due to my daughter, Lynn. That history began with a pure white kitten name Stimpy. He was found standing next to his dead mother, a recent victim of a run in with a car. So young, he needed to be fed with a bottle. The woman who found him, my wife’s coworker, discovered she was allergic to cats so we adopted him.
Perhaps due to his early association with humans, he was extremely sociable, wanting to be where the action was. Our neighbor swore that Stimpy was unaware he was a feline and chose to be human. As with most of our cats, Stimpy developed health issues, three years of injections for diabetes and finally succumbed to a mouth tumor.
Then there was Zosia, Polish for Sophie, the name of my beloved aunt, Auntie Zosia. This mature cat walked up to my wife and Lynn while they stood in a schoolyard. After many attempts to locate the owner with no results, she stayed but not for long. Zosia developed a lung tumor and went downhill fast. A prolonged stay with the veterinarian was little help. I took Lynn with me to bring Zosia home and was presented with a bill for $450. With a shaky hand I made out the check. Lynn could tell I was more than surprised. Sensing my shock, she looked up at me, she was about eight or nine at the time, and said, “Would you rather she died?” Lynn could always, and still does, tell it like it is. Zosia died, then our dog, Whitey, died and we were left pet less.
After a while, Lynn decided that condition needed to be remedied and one Sunday afternoon she and my wife visited the local SPCA. There Lynn found ‘The Kitten’ and named her Lucy. Due to a bureaucratic detail, Lucy could not come home until Monday. Monday afternoon I took Lynn to pick up Lucy, but Lucy had been adopted. There was supposed to be a hold on the kitten, but she was gone. Lynn lost it there at the SPCA. I suggested a look at the remaining kittens and, with a tearful Lynn, went to have a look. That’s when Sally came into our life.
Lynn chose the names based on Charlie Brown characters and Lucy was gone and could not be replaced, hence Sally. That was 14 years ago. Sally is a grey tabby with a white-tipped tail. Late last year she began losing weight; asthma has plagued her for years. A trip to the vet diagnosed renal failure with the prognosis of not making it to the New Year, but Sally proved the vet wrong and continues to hang in there. Due to her kidney problems she now resembles a holocaust survivor, skin covering bones, but is active and constantly hungry.
Whenever I sit in my recliner she will jump into my lap and look up with her big green eyes thanking me for the care and love.
I still don’t consider myself a ‘cat person’ but I’ve become a ‘Sally person’. I’ll miss her when she’s gone, but I don’t think she’ll be going anywhere soon.
Then there’s Sammy. . .
Here’s Sally
Walttriznastories's Blog 