In Perspective - A Love Story Even Shakespeare Would Find Odd

By Rodney Hays


I love to hear romantic stories of two hearts becoming one. This ain't one of those stories.

Many of you probably read the story this week about a 39-year-old German man named Uwe Mitzscherlich, who I believe also used to be the place kicker for the Oklahoma Sooners in the 1970s, but I digress.


In the past decade, it seems, Mitzscherlich fell in love with his overweight, asthmatic cat. Just last week, he decided to act on his feelings and actually marry his beloved cat, Kate Gosselin.


Haha. That's a joke.


He actually married his cat, Cecilia. He was afraid his cat was going to die before he was able to tie the knot, so he wanted to squeeze the ceremony in between washing his socks and repairing a 1960 Waterpik.


There's was one slight snag. Germany, like most countries, has laws in place to prevent people from marrying animals, including their fat felines. The only countries that allow humans to marry animals are France, Guatemala and Iowa.


In order to skirt this law, Uwe had to hire a female actress to play the role of the marriage officiate.


The ceremony must have gone something like this:

Marriage Officiate: Meine Lieben, hat jemand anderes finden diese seltsame? (that's German for: Dearly Beloved, does anyone else find this weird?)
(Continuing): Is there anyone who believes these two should not be married?


Congregation: (enouragingly) Right here! Pick us! We do!


Marriage Officiate: I'll take that as a "no." Uwe, do you have the collar.


Uwe: (staring deep into the eye slits of Cecilia). I do.


Marriage Officiate: Do you take this fat cat, Cecilia to be your unlawfully wedded, uh, cat as long as you both shall live or at least for the next 30 days.


Uwe: I do.


Marriage Officiate: Cecilia, the butterball of all housecats, do you take Uwe to be your unlawfully wedded pet owner as long as you both shall live, which probably won't be that long?


Cecilia: (Responds by coughing up a giant hairball).


Marriage Officiate: I now pronounce you man and extremely obese cat. You may give the cat some Whiskas.

I guess it's not a big deal if a guy wants to marry his cat, but come on, at least find a young, thin cat, who has so much life left. Don't marry some 10-year-old cat, who is going to eat all your Brie and cough up phlegm on your couch.
But to each his own, I suppose.


It's hard for me to get behind falling that hard for a cat anyway. Cats are weird to me. I've only known one cat that was cool. His name was Ebony.

Ebony was a cat that strolled up to my parent's store one day when I was a teenager and never left. We began feeding him and he hung around and did cool things like walk between our legs, purr and catch mice. What a cat.


When my parents moved to Texas, we all took a three-day weekend and tried to get Ebony into a pet carrier for the ride to Texas. He didn't like it, but he left his native state of Oklahoma and became a citizen of the great state of Texas.


When we got to Texas, he continued to be cool, and left his mark on all the lady cats and, we suspect, my sheets.


When my parent's dogs had puppies, Ebony would tease them relentlessly by lying on the kitchen counter and swish his tail back and forth just out of reach of the new inquisitive pups.


Then one day, he stopped coming around. We all figured that maybe he'd been eaten by some wild animal or maybe met his match with another Tom Cat somewhere in the neighborhood. But now I wonder whether that weird neighbor down the street might have catnapped Ebony and kept him for her husband. It could happen.


No sir, I've always been a dog man myself. I like the way dogs love you know matter what and will easily roll over and let you scratch them on the tummy (with the one exception of Pepe the Chihuahua, who I swear I will pimp slap if he tries to bite my hand again).


I've had a lot of good dogs in my life. When I was in school, my family adopted Ruff and Reddy, they were brothers. Ruff was an extremely cool dog that thought he was a lot bigger than he was. Reddy was smaller and only liked my mom, but we tolerated him (translation: we tortured him without quarter).

When I got married, our first dog was a dalmatian named Chloe. She was the smartest dog I've ever known and I miss her on a daily basis.


She was always around my kids when they were little keeping them safe from harm. Occasionally she would do something crazy, like eat a whole pack of cheese that was supposed to go on the hamburgers, but most of the time, she was amazing.


If you were into that type of thing, Chloe was the marrying type.


But cats? No, I think I'll pass on falling in love with a cat. I'll stick to my dogs.


Animals do make great companions for us humans. Even cats. But it's probably a good idea just to shack up instead of making an honest mutt or kitty out of them.

By the way, on the honeymoon and I heard Uwe and Cecilia went to the National Feline Museum in Fayette, Iowa. They spent the night at the Motel 6 and had dinner at the local Dairy Queen. He had the Beltbuster Combo. And Cecilia? She had the three fish sandwich combos, a couple of tacos, and The Dude with a Dillybar for dessert.


Crazy cat.