You may have heard Dionne Warwick sing “…What’s it all about, Alfie?”
You may have seen the movie “Alfie”.
We remember the cat Alfie.
Met Alfie in 1975 when I moved into a 15-story Honolulu condominium. Alfie lived on the fourth floor, and he was famous for falling four floors. And surviving. Alfie leaped for a bird that lit on his balcony, missed the bird, landed in a tree beside the swimming pool. Swimmers helped return the staggering cat to his family.
The next time Alfie went airborne, he followed Margaret and me to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After our wedding, we flew to San Diego and drove to the East Coast where I started my job as chairman of the broadcast and film department at the university. Soon after, son in Honolulu booked Alfie to the Raleigh-Durham airport.
Unfortunately, Alfie arrived the night we were invited to meet and dine with an important TV station owner. Years later, he still remembered, and chuckled about Margaret’s explanation. “Honored to meet you. Sorry, we have to eat and run, but we must go to the airport. Our cat is flying in from Honolulu.”
Alfie became a favorite pet with Georgia, the elderly lady who once a week cleaned house and told us about her family members who worked at the White House. Even more memorable was her story of the crying baby.
“We’ve got a teething baby in the congregation. If I could catch a mole, I would cut off its leg and put them in a pouch. Tie that pouch to hang under the baby’s neck, and I know she’ll quit crying.”
“Alfie, catch me a mole, hear?”
Alfie didn’t come in that night.
Margaret called Georgia in the morning. “Georgia, Alfie was waiting on the back steps this morning. He caught you a mole. I’ll have Professor Elam drop the mole off to you on his way to the university.”
Next week Georgia reported the pouch worked.
“Thank you, Alfie. That baby quit crying.”
Image by Bessi from Pixabay
