Kirby: The flying cat who saved Christmas

Ever buy yourself a Christmas present? Most adults have. Normally it's something outrageously extravagant, like a new car, gun, Alaska fishing trip, Prada bag, etc. It's an item so expensive that it's reasonable to assume no one in their right mind would buy it for you.

The first Christmas present I bought for myself — at least the first that anyone who mattered might object to — was a skeet thrower. I didn't shoot skeet, but I wanted a thrower because of the neighbor's cat.

At least once a day, Sugar Baby would creep through a hole in the fence and drop a load in my wife's flower planter (of which I was the sole caretaker). Complaints to the cat's owner, a goofy, hard-of-hearing widow, failed to resolve the matter.

I figured that by setting the thrower just inside the hole, over which the cat would have to ooze, I could then pull the cord and give Sugar Baby a very brief 90-mph ride into the side of the garage.

It almost worked. As with most great ideas, it had its detractors. Before I could put it to its proper use, my wife declared marital law.

I had to settle for something a little less entertaining. One afternoon, I sent Sugar Baby home sporting what would become known as a "Texas diaper." Essentially the same thing as a regular diaper, but made out of duct tape.

Having to pry her cat out of this contraption hurt the widow's feelings (and Sugar Baby's butt) and contributed to a decline in neighborly goodwill.

For this, I was sentenced to a punishing lecture from my wife. She pointed out that the cat was the neighbor's only companion, that it was cruel to make a diaper out of duct tape, and that Sugar Baby using our planter for a latrine was a small price to pay for making life easier on a lonely old lady.

As they invariably do, these lectures serve to make me feel small and wretched. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt about myself.

In the end, I got myself a Christmas gift that actually meant something. I got forgiveness. It wasn't easy. I had to ask for it. But I stood a better chance of getting it for Christmas than I did a rocket launcher.

Just before Christmas, I knocked on our neighbor's door. She was a genteel woman, a lady, and not the sort who would immediately pull a gun upon seeing someone she didn't like. But it was clear she was suspicious.

I apologized. I went even further and admitted that it was rather childish of me to treat her cat so poorly. Sugar Baby was welcome in our yard any time he got it into his vicious cat brain to pay us a visit.

The more I apologized, the more I realized that I actually meant it. I was a jerk and she was a nice lady. In the end, she forgave me. Right there on her porch.

It paid off. One day, after finding out that I enjoyed history, she invited me in and showed me pictures her husband took when he was a B 17 gunner in WWII. We talked about how she felt when she got a telegram notifying her that her husband was missing and then later found.

I shoveled her walk. She made us treats. She knitted booties for our first baby. I worked around the cat deposits in the planter.

All of that because I wanted forgiveness for Christmas. You won't always get it, but it doesn't hurt to ask, especially if you know you did something wrong. People generally want to forgive others, at least the people worth apologizing to.

Not cats though. They don't apologize and they don't forgive. Sugar Baby hissed at me until the day we moved away.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.