The Minister's Cat

by PEG BRACKEN

PEG BRACKEN is the pseudonym of Mrs. Roderick Lull of Portland, Oregon. Her verse, articles, and stories have appeared in many magazines.

THERE are probably as many ways of going back to sleep as there are of staying awake. It is a personal thing; and perhaps the techniques I’ve worked out for myself — 3 to 5 A.M. is my personal beat — won’t work for anyone else. However, in this matter as in the telling of after-dinner stories, it is always nice to enlarge one’s repertoire.

One thing first; disregard the experts. They always tell you to take a walk around the block, drink hot cocoa, and read Milton. This is all very well before you take your first crack at the sack. But it gets you nowhere except up when you wake at three in the morning, because by the time you’ve finished, the bright glad day is dawning and you might just as well dawn with it.

Then there is the one about relaxing your muscles one by one, which sounds very good, but I’ve known only one person in my life who could really do it. (She also made straight A’s in gym.) Practically the only muscles I’ve ever been able to locate on me are my biceps. If you lie there at 3 A.M. slowly flexing your biceps, it’s going to scare your husband something terrible.

As a matter of fact, I have found that the negative side of this goingback-to-sleep business is quite as important as the positive. There are certain things you don’t dare think about. For instance, your husband. There he lies, happily unconscious beside you, the big peasant. It is only a short step from this to bitter reflections on the way he always disappears to wash his hands at the precise moment you put dinner on the table, and the way he — but perhaps you follow me. Undoubtedly the reverse of the coin is the same, though I can speak from only the wifely viewpoint.

Children aren’t a comfortable subject for early-morning meditation either. While you may start out comfortably enough, sooner or later you run into duck-tail haircuts and Presley fan clubs, and that way lies no peace. Nor can you think about your friends. Start thinking about faraway friends and you end up thinking about the letters you owe them. Think about near-by friends and either you think, “Now just exactly what did So-and-so mean when she said my new blouse-back dress was wonderful, especially for my type of figure? Why, that so-and-so!” or you think about the Doakses and what nice people they are and you really do owe them a dinner, let’s see, perhaps a nice roast and that Parmesan rice business, or, no, you had that last time, let’s see now. . . . And there you are, bright-eyed and bushytailed and probably going through your recipe file.

Of course you can’t think about the international situation if you ever intend to get to sleep again. And I have found that money is equally bad — because if I don’t have any, I stay awake thinking of how I can get some; and if I do have some, it is too exciting to think of how I’m going to spend it.

No, there is a certain T-for-Tranquillity zone which one must stay within. Soothing, soporific, sleepmaking gimmicks are what you want, and it is these that I propose to list here.

One of the handiest is a good dependable Mental Block. If you don’t have one, get one. My own is the name of my best friend’s doctor. I just can’t remember it. She has mentioned him several times, and each time I think, ruefully, “There goes my mental block because this time that name will stick.” But it never does. It’s a longish, rather awkward name, like Bechhofer. Or is it Baumhalter? No, that isn’t quite — maybe it doesn’t begin with a B after all. Kiekhofer? Feuchtersleben? Volkswagen? About five minutes of this puts me to sleep out of sheer exasperation. I recommend the mental block unreservedly.

I recommend thinking up Mystery Titles too. One day, as I stared at a drugstore pocket-book display, it occurred to me that the way mystery writers get their titles is simply to take any common phrase and ugly it up. This turned into a fine going-tosleep game. A Corpse of Another Color. Three {Winding) Sheets to the Wind. Two’s Company, Three’s a Shroud. Murder Machree, a fine old Celtic tale full of peat bogs and Irish whiskey. This mystery title game works in a devious way. When one of them strikes you as funny (it is remarkable what can strike you as funny at three o’clock in the morning) you can always nudge your husband awake and tell it to him. Then, for some reason, you always go promptly back to sleep while he takes the conn.

Best of all, though, are the Alphabet Games. I’ve often thought that the kindly old Phoenician who invented the alphabet did it with us 3 A.M. people in mind. Just think how dull the alphabet is— twenty-six letters following each other endlessly in the same stupid order! What a bore! And just look at all the things you can do with it.

For instance, the Name Game. Somewhere I’ve read that the people whose names come most trippingly off the tongue are those whose Christian and surnames begin with successive consonants. Aaron Burr. Charles Dickens. Eddie Foy. So the game is this: starting right out with A, make up just any old people. Art Billings, Bob Collins, Chet Davis ... do you notice the smooth, hypnotic, effortless flow ? And don’t worry if you’re not asleep by the time you hit Yehudi Zalaha, because you’ve still got the girls. Here come Annie Baker, Betty Cramden, Cathy Drake. . . .

All right. So you’re still awake. The next thing is to start a sentence with A and see how far you can go. A Beautiful Chicago Doll, Entertaining Friends, Grew Hazy. . . . You take if from there, and if you can get past Q you are a mental giant. Even if it doesn’t put you to sleep it gets you nicely acquainted with your ABC’s.

Next, you can always start a McGuffey’s Reader Alphabet, if you like to rhyme things.

A is for Apple, so red and so round.
B is for Bacon, a dollar a pound.
C is for Corned-beef, so tender and good.
D is for . . .

But you’d better change the subject here or you’ll find yourself out in the kitchen building a triple-decker sandwich. The rhymed alphabet has its virtues though, and with little effort you’ll have a flock of couplets that sound every bit as silly as McGuffey’s.

However, the most satisfactory alphabet game from all standpoints is doing a Minister’s Cat. I’m not sure whether Minister’s Cat is just a family term or not . My grandfather was a minister all right, and he loved cats and he suffered from insomnia, so he may well have invented it. No matter. Your classic Minister’s Cat is purely simple, and it is hysterically, screamingly dull. Furthermore, it works every time.

The Minister’s Cat is an aristocratic cat who adores anchovies.
The Minister’s Cat is a bad cat who bites birds.
The Minister’s Cat is a curious cat who cuddles canaries.
The Minister’s Cat is a dirty cat who digs ditches.
The Minister’s Cat is an earnest cat . . . who . , . emulates Emerson.
The Minister’s Cat is ... a Fundamentalist cat . . . who . . . faces facts.
The . . . Minister’s . . . Cat. . . .