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Whiskers LeMieux playing dead. (Actually
the Aronin's sleeping tabby, Kitt).
Image: Sydney Aronin
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Things were hopping and I don't mean the fleas. The grounds around City Hall were muzzle to muzzle with revelers celebrating Squawktoberfest.
Squawktoberfest is a three-day celebration marking a night in 1692 when a mob of angry villagers flipped their mental kibble and rounded up three ravens rumored to be witches.
"Burn them at the stake!" screamed the mob and the whole time they're yelling, they're dragging those birds into the village square. According to city lore, the birds were roped to stakes by a trouble-making bunch called the Cocker brothers while a gray tabby got busy preparing to set fire to the birds' tail feathers.
Then the ravens did something nobody expected. They hypnotized the tabby and the Cocker brothers into thinking they were the ravens. Those dogs and that cat started squawking like birds then ran around the village square setting each other's tails on fire.
Meanwhile, the real ravens hypnotized each other into thinking they were axes and chopped through the ropes. The rest of the villagers saw what was happening, screamed and scattered.
When the fur and the feathers stopped flying, the tabby and the Cocker brothers were sporting singed stumps where their tails used to be.
Now my friends, get a load of this: that cat and those pooches are supposed to be the ancestors of the present-day Cocker Spaniel and the present-day Manx cat. Never mind that Cocker Spaniels with stub tails have undergone a procedure called "docking," people fall for that old yarn anyway and it's been the backstory on Squawktoberfest since it started more than 30 years ago.
But wait, folks; it gets better: These days people say that the ghost of that match-happy tabby haunts the town square one night every year during Squawktoberfest. They say they've seen him prowling the steps of City Hall, flapping his arms and squawking. They'll tell you that not only is he doomed to climb those steps one night each year but that he has to do it with his shroud forever hiked up over his nub of a tail.
Something about this whole ghost tabby nonsense smelled fishy so I set up a stakeout behind a bush at the southeast corner of the City Hall building. By 10 p.m., I was all tucked in nice and warm behind the bush - and the flask of Jack Russells whiskey I'd been sipping from helped keep me toasted - I mean toasty. Since the ghost tabby wasn't due to appear till around midnight, there was plenty of time for old Jack and me to do some serious paling around. But I'd still have to keep my wits about me in case the ghost did show.
Midnight struck, there was no ghost, Jack was gone, and I had nothing but my hiccups for company.
Just then I heard something squawking. I looked in the direction of City Hall and there it was: a shadowy feline shape, its gauzy shroud hitched up over its stumpy tail. Its paws were tucked under its armpits as it flapped its arms up and down, more like a chicken than a raven.
I took off at a run and the cat saw me coming. Unfortunately even ghost cats are faster than a dog full of Jack Russells tripping on a trench coat. I threw the coat to the winds and closed in. The cat, in the meantime, hiked up his shroud and ran faster.
I was on that pussy in a New York minute and we fell. Down the steps of City Hall we rolled and when we finally stopped, I was on top. The cat was no ghost and it didn't take long to get the whole story once I twisted his arm, growling at him to cough up that fur-ball called the truth.
"Okay! Okay!" he yelled. "I'll tell you everything!"
Turns out the "ghost" was Whiskers LeMieux, a tough little Manx whose only claim to fame was that he was the founder of Squawktoberfest.
"Aren't you too long in the tooth to be flaunting your rump and your stump?" I asked. He wouldn't stop struggling so I muscled him a little harder.
"You idiot!" hissed LeMieux. "A thing like Squawktoberfest doesn't just run itself! It needs publicity! It needs mystique! It needs - GHOSTS!"
I didn't appreciate being called an idiot, but Whiskers had a point. Attendance at Squawktoberfest had been lagging until the ghost made its first appearance last year.
I looked around, didn't see a soul and was glad I hadn't blown Whiskers' cover. Face it, drumming up interest in Squawktoberfest by showing folks his backside is pretty harmless in the scheme of things, and Squawktoberfest does have a certain educational merit.
After all, a flash in the dark can be pretty enlightening.
