Tag Archives: songs

Cat Songs

cats, etc., fun and games, funny things, humor, music, pets, , , ,

My husband and I have some silly traditions, some of which I’ve mentioned in the blog. There was naked cooking with Julia Child impressions, for instance. And we make up little nonsense songs. Well, Dan makes up most of them, mostly about me. (My nickname, which no one else may use, is Bunny, so they often have titles like “When Bunny Comes Driving Home Again.” They’re silly, as mentioned, but infinitely better than the NSFW song an ex-boyfriend once wrote describing my physical charms. But I digress.)

But this post is about cat songs. Not songs the cats sing, of course — their repertoire is pretty limited. Not songs about cats either (“Year of the Cat,” “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Stray Cat Strut,” “Honky Cat,” “Nashville Cats”). No, these are songs that we’ve made up about cats we’ve owned over the years.

Shaker’s song was really more of a poem or a chant than a song. It went:

Shaker in the park

Shaker in the pool

Shaker for dessert

Shaker after school.

Shake, shake, Shaker puddin’

Puddin’, puddin’, Shaker puddin’.

(Shaker was a very dignified tuxedo cat. She didn’t approve.)

The song will make no sense unless you remember a product from the 60s and its jingle (indeed, it doesn’t really make any sense at all, whether you remember it or not). The product was called Shake-a-Pudding. It was a brown plastic cup with a lighter brown plastic lid. If you put milk in the cup and added powder, then shook vigorously, hoping the top didn’t come off, what you got was something that at least resembled pudding. An interactive dessert. At the time, we thought it was neat-o.

Toby also has a song based somewhat on a commercial. It goes like this:

His name was Toby.

He used a Flowbee.

Obviously, this requires some explanation. First of all, it’s sung to the tune of Bary Manilow’s “Copacabana.” So far, so good. The Flowbee mentioned in the second line was one of those products you used to see on after-midnight infomercials from companies like Popeil or Ronco. Exercise equipment. Beauty products. That sort of thing.

Technically, I suppose you could call the Flowbee a beauty product. It was an attachment that you put on the end of your vacuum cleaner hose. It would make your hair stand on end so you could lop an inch or two off the end. I think it was mostly used on children who were too young to know any better and was responsible for the infamous bowl cut. It’s described by the company (yes, you can still buy them) as a “Vacuum Haircut System.” Need I tell you that we’ve never used one on ourselves, much less on Toby?

Louise had a song of a sort, or at least one line of one:

Every little breeze seems to whisper: LOUISE!

Naturally, the name was shouted.

Julia, the most beautiful cat in the world (she told me so) had a whole verse. Obviously, it was ttto “Julia” by John Lennon, which was written about his mother. Our Julia’s version went:

Julia, pinky nose

Pretty fur, naughty lips.

So I sing my song of love for Julia.

(No, I don’t know how the “naughty lips” part got in there. Cats barely have lips at all, and I don’t know how they could be naughty. That’s just the way the song went. So sue me. But I digress again.)

Dushenka had a tune that should be familiar to TV cartoon aficionados:

Shenka-Shenka-Doo

Where are you?

On your little kitty adventure.

Laurel’s song was melancholy.

Pooska-wooska-pooska

Pooska-wooska-pie

Pooska-wooska-pooska

It’s Laurel’s lullaby.

I even sang it at her funeral.

Of course, all the songs are doggerel (catterel?) and make us seem like idiots. But the cats don’t care. They’re used to us talking like idiots. (Does Toby want his noms? Pet, pet, pet, the incredible pettable pet. Mama loves kitty. Does kitty love mama? Ribbit.)

Wrecks and Resurrection

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Gordon Lightfoot died this week, which made me and many others sad. I remember listening to “Sundown” when I was in high school, which got me hooked on him. (The song had just come out. My friend Kathy was listening to Stevie Wonder and Elton John, so we heard a lot of them, too. And my friend Peggy and I were both listening to John Denver as well. Yes, I’m ancient. But I digress.)

One of Lightfoot’s best-known songs was “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It was one of the longest popular songs ever played on AM radio. The rhythmic swells of sound mimicked the waves on Lake Superior, and the level tone of his voice perfectly conveyed the sorrowful atmosphere of the story.

I gained even more respect for Lightfoot when, in 2010, he changed some of the lyrics to the song to reflect new evidence about the wreck and the men who went down with the ship. That was classy.

But there’s another shipwreck song by another Canadian singer-songwriter that has probably had even more influence on my life – “The Mary Ellen Carter,” by Stan Rogers, who died in 1983. It’s a folk song that packs a powerful punch.

“The Mary Ellen Carter” is another story-song as well. It’s about a group of men determined to raise a sunken ship from her “sorry grave.” They know that the ship is still worth money if they can raise her, but really, it’s a labor of love. And the chorus says, “Rise again!”

It’s the final verses that really pack a punch, though. It talks about rising from all kinds of wrecks – “No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend/Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again! Though your heart it be broken or life about to end/Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!”

I’ve known the song to be deeply meaningful to any number of people – a woman going through an unexpected divorce, a cancer survivor, and more. When our house was destroyed by a tornado, it buoyed up my husband and me. (Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) Whenever we’re having difficulties, we play the song. Sometimes we just play it when we need encouragement. And we always sing along at top volume. Sometimes we even put it on repeat and listen to it over and over.

The thing about the song is that, though the lyrics talk about all the rigors the sailors go through in trying to raise the ship, the song never says whether they actually accomplish it. In that way, it’s even more a song about hope than one about success. Hope, working together for a common goal, and persevering when everyone thinks you’re a fool for doing so.

I hope you listen to it. I hope it inspires you as much as it does me. Stan Rogers has lots of other songs, some of them humorous (“White Collar Holler”) and others heart-wrenching (“First Christmas Away From Home”) and still others slice-of-life ballads (“Lies,” which makes me and other of my friends cry every time we hear it), plus any number of folk songs.

Both “Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Mary Ellen Carter” are great. Both songwriters are phenomenal. One had a place on radio and the other at folk festivals. But I think they’re both worth a listen. Let me know if you agree.