Mr. Lawrence

MR. LAWRENCE

Mr. Lawrence, my first cat, was not all that loving. If truth be known, he was pretty stand-offish. He would let me, and only me hold him for perhaps 10 seconds. So I was always looking for ways to get him to stay close to me.

I discovered, I don’t remember how, that Mr. Lawrence loved salt. He especially liked to lick off the salt from a saltine cracker if I’d hold it up for him so it wouldn’t slide away when he licked it. For a while, I had gotten into the habit of arriving home in late afternoon from my position as an Instructor of Science Education at the University of Iowa, sitting at the dining room table with a box of saltines for a snack and reading the daily Iowa City newspaper, which I didn’t have time to do in the mornings. I’d first hold up a saltine for Mr. Lawrence to have his salty treat, and then put his licked and de-salted cracker down and pick up a couple of saltines for myself.

Once, as I was putting up the paper and the saltines when we were both done with our snacks, I couldn’t find Mr. Lawrence’s licked-up saltine. It wasn’t on the table. It wasn’t on the floor. Finally it hit me. It was in my tummy.

That ended the daily saltine cracker snack routine.