Bluff Cat

“Bluff Cat!”

Winter 1959, cousin Joe was staying over for the weekend at our house in oak cliff.
We were going hunting and I wanted to introduce Cousin Joe to my new friend Randy Gibson. We got up early, the weather was overcast and cold, good hunting weather.
We walked down to Randy’s house and his mom said he had already gone to check his trap lines.
So Joe and I kept on walking down the long alley that took us to five mile creek. We got to within one hundred yards of the last road, loop 12, the creek was just over on the other side.
Five mile creek and what seemed to be a continent when we were in the fourth grade,
but was actually 400 acres or so.
It was thick, wooded, with big rock piles and an old trolley car in a field, another creek going perpendicular to five mile and northward parallel to IH35, lots of coon, fox! as it was too close in to town for the coyotes to bother with, and lots of cats as it was surrounded by houses.
Joe and I were walking down the long alley there were no houses now as Randys was the last house before we got to the woods.
Joe was asking me about Randy as they had never met,
and Joe was from pleasant grove which was more built up and populated.
We were talking about thing’s trappers and hunters talk about, carrying our pellet guns and walking along.
When something caught my eye and I took a good look and saw Randy running across loop 12 and up the alley we were on. He was running like crazy and hollering every jump!
I couldn’t hear what he was yelling about but the look on his face was excited and desperate.
As he got closer “Bluff Cat! Bluff Cat!” Caught my ear.
Joe said what the hell is a Bluff Cat?
And I retorted well, we are about to find out!
Randy ran up to us and grabbed my gun without saying a word, tore it out of my hands and turning ran back in the direction he had come! I looked at Joe and he looked at me, and we both started running too!

We all crossed loop 12 and ran through the wooded field till we came to the creek and climbed down to the water and as the creek was kinda dry now we crossed to this giant brush pile where Randy was already easing up to with my Benjamin .22 caliber.
He was looking like a real hunter and creeping up to this brush pile where he had his trap set.
Now I really don’t know how big the brush pile would seem to me now but when you are in the fourth grade it seemed huge! Randy was ready to shoot,
there was blood in is eye,
and he was sneaking up on it when out jumped a giant squalling and profoundly mean and viscous black house cat.
It jumped out to the end of the trap chain screaming and was showing his teeth, attacking Randy.
But for the chain I don’t know what would have happened.
Randy was a hunter and a killer and was not scared by the Bluff Cat however, he held his ground, he aimed and fired the old pellet gun and shot the cat right through the head!
Pop! And finished him off with another shot, pump-pump-pump-pump-pump …pop.
And the Bluff Cat was dead.
Joe said “that is just a house cat!”
Big, sure but, just a damn cat!
Then Randy told us a house cat that is dumped out in the wilderness and has to fend for himself, becomes wild and can do quite well as a predator, just like a hog can.
It is not a house cat anymore
as it has crossed the line and become a wild cat,
a feral cat,
or as his relatives in Arkansas say…
a Bluff Cat!


J. Winters Knife
and Sandymay