Grandfather Cool And The Uncool Cats

I don't remember publishing this, so I'm going to do it all over again!

"You might have to start kissing up to your relations and your friends so you won't get eaten by your cats." My grandfather on my father's side didn't die surrounded by cannibal cats, but only because his very adult children were worried about it—they hounded him to get rid of all the cats (both tame and feral) that he fed—there were dozens! He lived far out in the woods with no really close neighbors and no one to clean the house every day! So his kids worried vividly about some scenario involving the cannibal cats, but also they worried about the dust, allergens, and germs that were being brought in by the cats 24 hours a day! I was still in my early twenties and I thought it sounded pretty cool, but that grandfather was very cool. Calm, cool, and collected. After my grandmother died (many years before my long hair), there was no one in that house who worried about much of anything. My other grandfather was a drip, unceasingly loud about religion and politics. And dominoes. He always got in my face and offered to give me money for a haircut. I have never liked anyone getting in my face! He would persist until I walked out of the house to get away from him. He didn't know, or wouldn't face it, that the world had changed. (Now I've gotten old and the world has changed again! Although I don't care much if the young people have no morals or look funny—how else am I to be amused?) The cool grandfather only grinned and asked, "How long did it take you to grow your hair that long?" VERY cool. I miss that old man and the visits to his lonely house. Two guesses which grandfather's death made me sorry to hear about! I don't think much any more about either of my grandfathers. My grandmothers, too, are both gone now, but that, too, has been a very long time. That's another story.