Meet the Duck-Cat

By PETER DUFFY, G! contributor

Here at the Blueberry Patch, we are proud to be the host to a big-time celebrity cat. He is one of the Ernest Hemingway “six-toed” breed out of Key West. He is our mascot and our guard cat. He is in charge. He has an extra claw on each huge paw. Plus, he is web-footed as a duck would be.

Maybe he’s not an emperor, but don’t try to tell him that. Doesn’t he scare the full-grown hawks away from our chickens? And don’t all dogs, large and small, wear reminders of encounters with Duck-Cat on their noses, ears and cheeks?

He is as regal and aloof as the most profound of literary scholars. When we bring him an offering of food, he receives it with haughty disdain as, with a glance, he seems to say, “Is this the best you can do?”

Bless his heart, he is superior, demanding, and majestically ungrateful.

Wherever he walks, he appears to be the paramount leader of a procession of underlings, striding before all as if to say, “I, Duck-Cat, am the direct descendant of a Nobel Prize winner in Literature.”

Here at the Blueberry Patch, we are his proud, though humble, subjects. He deigns to abide with us. He graciously withholds his disapproval. He tolerates us, lowly creatures though we may be, as if to say, “Been there, done that.”

He makes us think that we are lucky to be in his presence. He is only stopping by here on his way to Publisher’s Row in New York City, where he will live out his years among his lofty peers. “I ain’t gonna hang out with you light-weights anymore. I am Duck-Cat.”

Author Peter Duffy and Duck-Cat at the Blueberry Patch

*** NOTE: This article first appeared in the Winter 2011 edition of Gulfport! Magazine Save