Mama cat threw me a curveball
A cat and kittens owned by James H. Burns of Valley Stream. Credit: James H. Burns
James H. Burns is an actor-writer who lives in Valley Stream.
Who knows what makes us fall in love with the stuff we do?
I had cats and a dog from the moment I was born, so that particular fascination is understandable. But in the early '70s, while growing up in the Town of Hempstead, I also became a baseball fan, the first member of my immediate family to become so enamored.
My dad had boxed as a kid, during the tail end of the Depression, and still followed the "sweet science." (Muhammad Ali was a magical name in my house.) He always appreciated baseball and had watched a few innings here and there, but he became a fan when I did, for me.
As an engineer and trained scientist, he was able to come up with hitting tips that I still find helpful, all these years later, when playing amateur ball around Long Island.
I was a Mets fan, but even as a boy was well aware of how the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left our area in the late 1950s.
If those franchises had never left (and the Mets were never established), I'm pretty sure I would have been a Giants guy. I was fascinated by Willie Mays, and found joy watching Willie McCovey hit -- as long as those magnificent home runs didn't cost the Mets a victory!
The Mets were, by far, my top team, but in the West, I rooted for the San Francisco Giants. So I was intrigued late last year to learn of the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society, which meets a few times a year and stays in touch via the Internet. I was looking forward to finally meeting the group this past May at a Mets-Giants game at Citi Field.
However, five weeks earlier, I adopted a stray orange cat that had been wandering around my house in Valley Stream. (Or perhaps I should say, she adopted me.)
I'd had cats until a few years ago, but they were domesticated, and altered, and this one, it turned out, was pregnant.
The afternoon of the game, she was showing signs of going into labor, and I figured it was best to be around. In fact, just moments after announcer Howie Rose intoned the game's end on WFAN radio, the first kitten appeared, followed by two more.
In a coincidence, the three kittens were in team colors shared by the Mets and Giants -- orange, white and black!
So, ultimately, this is what I wondered: If the Mets have the "Bark in the Park" day where fans can bring their dogs to Citi Field, why don't they also have a "Kitty in the Citi" day?
