The "I don't want your cat" story

I think it's about time I put this story out on cyberspace.

When I was young -- fifth grade or so -- my family had two cats. Tyler was allergic to them but could generally survive on Benadryl...until spring and the re-emergence of other allergens. It became an annual practice to try to get rid of our cats, who we loved, though we usually failed.

One year, after threats from our pediatrician, Mom got serious about getting rid of the cats: She put an ad in the local paper. It included our phone number and the relevant information about the cats, and indicated that they would be "free to good home."

That's when the calls started.

These were not typical calls from people faking an interest in our cats and then never showing up, or giving themselves away by asking if our refrigerator was running and then giggling maniacally before hanging up. Instead, these calls were from a woman -- by her accent, a Puerto Rican woman -- who, as soon as the phone was answered, would immediately begin to scream "I don't want your cat!" at whoever had picked up.

We were baffled.

"Well, we don't want you to have our cats," we said, trying to reason with her. (Certainly we wouldn't have put our beloved cats in the custody of this strange screamer, even if she had wanted them.) She did not or could not listen, and usually hung up after making her cat-related feelings known.

This continued for several days.

Finally, we got a call from a nice old lady who was willing to take both cats -- a stipulation we had made in the ad -- and could come pick them up the next afternoon. We kids were heartbroken and spent as much time with the cats as possible (though this essentially guaranteed that the cats would be glad to go when the time came). When the next day arrived, we sadly gathered up the cats, their litter, their food, their toys, and waited for the doorbell to ring.

It did, and Mom went to the front door.

To be greeted not by a little old lady, but a detective.

He had been hired, he said, by the "I don't want your cat" woman, to investigate a series of prank calls.

Wait. We were confused.

She was investigating her own prank calls?

Apparently, the "I don't want your cat" woman had been receiving calls in the middle of the night, at all hours, for weeks. The most recent set of calls had been regarding our cats, which the prankster insisted this woman take, and our phone number had shown up on her caller ID. She had finally called us in frustration, trying to get us to stop the campaign of harassment.

Well, we said to the detective, we don't know anything about that.

He asked a few more questions and thanked us for our time, then left. The "nice old lady" had been a ploy he had used to get our address and know when we would be home; she didn't really exist.

So we kept the cats for another year, and Mom never placed another classified ad.

Her phone number is now unlisted.

We never heard from the "I don't want your cat" lady again.