May 6, 1964
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. Things have been really hopping around here since Cat showed up. I'm beginning to believe he is from Jupiter the way Wes says. Zella says she doesn't care where he's from as long as he stays away from her and for heaven's sake, we're a newspaper. We deal in words so surely we can come up with a better name than Cat for the cat.
I don't agree with Zella about much, but I have to agree about that. Cat does need a name. So I took a poll of names at the newspaper. Wes says he thinks Cat is a boy cat, but he could be wrong. Not so easy to tell with cats. Zella heard him saying that and said of course the cat was a boy. Anything that irritating definitely had to be male. Cat likes to sleep in her chair, leaving his hair behind to get all over Zella's clothes. And at least once every day, he pounces at her toes under the desk when she's typing. I don't know if you can train a cat, but if you can, Wes has been busy with Cat.
We got some great name suggestions from our readers. Here's the names suggested. Gabby Hart, Holly, Asterisk (Aster for short), Smudge, Paige, Letters, Deadline, Inky, Typo, Byline, and Redspot. Wes says Holly and Paige are too nice names for Cat. I say Deadline and Byline are too hard to say. Here, Deadline, kitty. You have to try names out, you know.
Wes likes Redspot. That's not so easy to say when we're calling Cat, but you've got to remember Wes thinks Cat has Jupiter roots. It seems this giant storm has been raging up on Jupiter for hundreds of years and astronomers here see it as a great red spot they also call "The Eye of Jupiter" because of its shape. Wes says it's more than a spot to Jupiterians and that old Mr. Jupiter has been trying to figure out what to do about it forever. It's like a enormous hurricane covering a space as big as earth. Wow!
So while I really like Smudge and Typo and all the others, Redspot it is. Wes is the one who invited Cat inside, and he wanted a Jupiter name. Turns out we named him well. You have probably been wondering about that snake picture. Spring has come to Hollyhill and with the warm sunshine, certain slithery creatures start waking up. I don't much like snakes, but compared to how Zella feels about them, they could be my pets. Zella is terrified of snakes. Terrified.
She went out the back door last week. Who knows why? But when she looked up at the bushes running along the fence there, she was nose to nose with this fine snake. She started screaming and just stood there like she couldn't move. I don't know why she didn't run away. It was like she was afraid the snake was going to jump on her. Snakes don't jump, do they? But I guess it could have fallen on her. It definitely was hissing at her with its tongue out. Then Cat, I mean Redspot, stormed out of the press room door, and leaped up on the fence to snarl at the snake. That plus Zella's screeching convinced the poor snake he wasn't in friendly territory. He beat a hasty retreat.
The next day, Redspot was playing with a catnip toy in the press room. Zella wouldn't admit buying it, but who else? I
April 29, 1964
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. As always, things have been pretty boring (Dad says I should say calm, not boring) here on Main Street, Hollyhill. Dad says boring is better than stores getting robbed or wrecks happening. That might make the Banner headlines more exciting, but at the same time, somebody might be getting hurt. I wouldn't want that to happen. So I suppose I should embrace the ordinary and not wish for the strange. But I should have named my blog the Hollyhill Book of the Ordinary. Or the Hollyhill Book of Everything Boring.
Dad reminds me how I was wishing for something to happen last year and how we got slammed with everything at once. But that was last year. This is this year and boring is settling down on Main Street like a smoke cloud on our yard after we burn our trash.
Then something happened on Thursday last week. A cat showed up at the back door of the newspaper offices. A bandit looking cat with a touch of black on his chin and eyes that stare straight at you as if he's daring you to tell him to scat. So Wes didn't tell him to scat and now we have a cat here at the Banner offices.
Zella had a conniption fit about the cat. She is of the opinion that newspaper offices are NOT a place to have a cat. So Wes offered to let her take it home with her. That made Zella have a bigger conniption fit and offered the next opinion that no way was she going to take a stray, flea-infested cat into her house. The cat was so relieved that it wound in and out of Zella's legs, purring all the while. Zella did an odd little dance to get away from it. Wes says Cat must be from Jupiter like he is. It appears Jupiter cats have a special instinct about irritating people who don't like cats. So the cat got a bed in the press room and West told Zella she should put it on payroll as pest exterminator. Zella muttered something under her breath about hoping it got rid of Jupiter pests.
Yesterday morning, Zella found a dead mouse on her desk. I still don't know if the cat caught it and decided to offer it to Zella as a peace offering or if Wes put it there to make sure no peace was happening. I'm leaning toward Wes. What do you think?
We've been calling the cat Cat. Not much of a name. So we're giving cat names consideration. What name do you pick for a cat that knows its way around? Got any suggestions?
April 8, 1964
Jocie Brooke here reporting from her front yard a couple of miles outside Hollyhill. Out here this far from town, you can see the stars pretty good. That's what I'm doing tonight. Outside looking up at the stars. The moon is going into its dark phase so it isn't making any light to hide the stars. Hasn't even come up yet. The stars are great but that's not why I'm out here getting a crick in my neck staring up at the them. You can see stars most any night except when the clouds move in. But today NASA launched a spaceship. It's up there orbiting the earth. Nobody's in this one. But a few years ago we sent men into space.
Dad would tell me that if I'm going to be reporting, I should give some facts. I shouldn't be simply woolgathering. Whatever that means. You ever notice how older people say the oddest things. Woolgathering - what's that got to do with thinking about things?
But back to spacemen. Alan Shepherd was our first man in space in May 1961, but the Soviets beat us in that space race by getting their cosmonaut into orbit in April 1961. NASA didn't get a man in orbit until John Glenn went up aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. I looked up at the sky then too and imagined how it might be up in space. What would earth look like that far away? Would you be scared and thinking you'd never make it back home?
I don't know if that's why they're doing these new launches without astronauts on board. All the men that went up did make it back down. Their pictures were in the papers and on television waving after their space capsules were plucked out of the sea. Daddy says now the space people are just trying to get more information about sending things into space before they put more men in the spaceships. He says it will happen, that men will someday go to the moon. President Kennedy said we could make that happen before he was assassinated.
And so I'm looking up at the sky. I don't know if I can see the spaceship, Gemini I. But it's up there proving that nothing is out of reach. Well, not space anyway. Aunt Love is yelling for me to come inside. She says I'm going to catch my death of cold. She says man shouldn't be trying to go to the moon. That the Lord put us here on earth and we should be satisfied to keep our feet on the ground and tend to whatever work the good Lord gives us. She thinks the space people should get out their Bibles and read about the Tower of Babel before something bad happens.
She could be right. But it's exciting to think about reaching for the moon and maybe even someday the stars. Wes laughs about it all. You remember that he claims to be from Jupiter, don't you? Anyway, he says Mr. Jupiter, the boss up there, gave up on going to their moons a long time ago since they have dozens of them. It would have bankrupted their space program. Instead they just came to Earth. Only one of us and the crazy things the people here do make for great stories when the Jupiter spaceships head back home - zigzagging past all those moons.
I guess if I stick to facts like a good news reporter should, I might have to leave Jupiter out of the mix. But here on the Hollyhill Book of the Strange, it's fun to have a little strangely unbelievable news.
But wouldn't it be neat to be up there in a spaceship? I don't think the Lord would mind. He made space too. And the view has to be great. What do you think?
