Natalie
	I just saw on television a trailer for the movie, "The Secret Life of Pets." It showed a scene that plinked a memory cord of mine from thirty years ago. It's the one where the dog turns on a MixMaster and instead of a couple of beaters in it, there's a whisk. The dog lies under it and uses the rotating whisk to scratch his back. It's pretty neat. Thirty years ago, my supervisor and good friend at Busch Gardens was dating a woman who was a receptionist at a veterinarian clinic. I was with them one day and they showed me this tiny calico kitten that was on a little towel in a brown paper bag. A man had just brought it into the clinic. Something had eaten one back leg and the other back foot off. He left her to be treated, paid, and said he'd be back to pick her up. The doctor said after the man left, "He's not coming back." And he was right. She was the sweetest little thing with the brightest eyes and when I looked at her my eyes turned into Valentine shapes and I said, "I'll take her." The reason I said her is that all calico (orange, white, and black) cats are female. So are all orange and black grizzled ones, without white. They are called tortoiseshell. I brought the kitten home and raised her and she became a strikingly beautiful adult cat that was as happy as she could be. She got around as well as any three-legged cat does. I named her Scoots. My best friend, Sharon, said, "I am not calling this little cat Scoots. She deserves a beautiful name. I'm calling her Natalie." So from that day on she was Natalie. As Natalie would scurry around all over the house, there was one thing that I hadn't thought of. She had no hind legs to scratch her neck and ears. When I'd get home from work and pet her and scratch her head and neck, she couldn't get enough of it. Whenever I'd say to anyone, " My cat only has two front legs," sometimes they'd say, "But they're only supposed to have two front legs." I decided to concoct a "scratching machine" for Natalie. It consisted of an electric drill and a round, cylindrical hair brush with stiff bristles. She LOVED it! One day the bristles got caught in her fur, which was medium length hair, and she made about three revolutions, like a circular blur. It didn't hurt her, but I knew that this wasn't going to work. So I revised it. I changed the machine so the brush would go back and forth instead of around. How I did it is at the end of the story in case you're curious. When she heard the sound of the drill turn on she would come scrambling as fast as she could. I swear that when that brush was scratching her neck she had a giant smile on her face. Natalie lived a long, happy life and I enjoyed every minute of it with her. I think it would make the man who dropped her off happy to know that. Lash Out Loud I took a four ft. long 2X10 board and attached the drill, laying on its side, crossways, at one end of the board. Instead of a drill bit, I inserted a 4" long wooden dowel. On the end of the dowel I mounted a metal flange. That's those things that you see at each end of a closet that holds the ends of the pole that you hang your clothes on. Then I took a two ft. long pencil-sized dowel and attached one end to one of the screw holes in the flange. This long wooden dowel rod ran longwise with the board. At the far end of the long dowel, it went loosely through a metal eye hook that held the dowel up off of the wide board. On the other side of the eye hook I attached the same round brush to the end of the dowel. This time when you turned on the drill, the flange would rotate, and the rod would go back and forth, parallel with the board, just like the wheels and rods on the old locomotive train steam engines. Now the brush would go back and forth instead of around. It worked perfect and she loved it.