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Nine Lives

Even though this isn't the obit page, I feel compelled to mention the passing of "Kitty", a small stuffed tabby cat, a gift to Emma from her friend Rich. Kitty enjoyed celebrity status as one of Emma's favorite stuffed companions, sharing the honors with "Darla," a floppy little tart in the Raggedy Ann vein who catapulted to stardom after being discovered in the bottom of a bargain bin in a South Dakota thrift shop.

According to the tag on her leg, Kitty's given name was Tabitha, a moniker as pretentious as it was inaccessible to the infant tongue. Show business legend has it that a four month-old Emma, first laying eyes upon the Fabric Feline, as she known affectionately in the trades, pointed and actually said "Kitty," or at any rate, some gutteral one-syllable utterance, and the nickname stuck.

With a deadpan expression to rival the great Buster Keaton, Kitty brilliantly portrayed Emma's trusty sidekick in dozens of slapstick episodes in which she invariably endured the comically brutal trials and tribulations associated with being owned by a baby. She was squeezed, bitten, swung by the tail, dipped in creamed spinach, and fed to the dog.

Onscreen, her stony countenance never registered a flicker of emotion, but the demands and pressures left their mark. Her private life was said to be a shambles; there were hushed whispers about her excesses. Repeated visits to the washing machine to "get clean" were only more grist for the rumor mill.

Kitty's greatest role was co-starring opposite Emma as the Non-Seatbelted Stroller Pasenger in the still-running serial "Emma and Papa Go To The Store," an action series light on plot and heavy on cheap stroller stunts. In each episode, Emma waits till Papa is not looking and then drops Kitty over the side of the stroller. Comic tension builds as the audience waits to see how far back towards home will they get before Homedaddy discovers Kitty is missing. Then, how far back will they have to walk to find her?

Sometimes she's sitting in the middle of the sidewalk ten feet back. Sometimes she lands in the middle of the crosswalk. She turns up in gutters, in the middle of parking lots, and in Kant Spel drugstore sitting astride the little cigarette shelf behind the cashier.

No such luck this time. We re-traced our steps all the way back to the store and through the aisles. We even asked the cashiers if anyone had seen her. No dice. We stumbled home in a daze, struggling to make sense of it all.

But wait a minute, is that ... could it be ... Kitty! With her head jammed through the spokes and her body wrapped around the stroller axle! I guess I shouldn't be surprised. With a show this popular, they'd never kill off one of the main characters. No wonder that stroller was geting so hard to push ...

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.