text: My great uncle peed on a cat whose tail was on fire. In this town, that’s what having the last name Holland reminds people of. I see it in the new bank teller’s face when I swipe my card to make a deposit. “Ava Holland? You wouldn’t perchance be related to-” I cut off the chipper box dyed blonde with the Maybelline Scarlet Flame lipstick smudged on her front teeth. “Henry Holland. HH. Yep, he was a great uncle.” I wait for the onslaught of weird secondhand hero worship to engulf me, and I’m not disappointed. Or, I mean, I am kind of disappointed. Just once, I’d love to not have to hear about this story while I’m just trying to run errands. Thinking about my great uncle HH peeing in general, when I’m trying to check out at the Pig is just a little unsettling, you know? You see, HH didn’t just pee on any cat’s tail. This cat was Ollie, basically the town of Magnolia Ridge, Alabama’s mascot. Ollie was beloved by all, even dog lovers. The hero worship that the people of this town have for my great uncle is nothing compared to the undying love they have for Ollie. And, of course, he’s long gone now; but people still remember him fondly. Almost every home in Magnolia Ridge has a photo somewhere of their great great grandmother or great second cousin twice removed, posing with Ollie back in the day. Ollie was cute, I’ll give him that. He was huge, but still lithe on his feet, or so I’m told. He was black all over with a little white patch over his left eye and ear, and he had huge, bright green eyes. Ollie didn’t have a home, unless you counted all of Magnolia Ridge. He stalked the nights from front porch to front porch, chowing down on the canned tuna and milk left out for him. Why was a fat cat named Ollie so famous in our town, you ask? Well, depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I think people in this town are just a little bit bored. But, I’d get boos and hisses if I ever said that to a resident here. If you ask just about anyone else, they’d immediately start out, “this one time...” “This one time, I was sleepin’ in my crib, and ol’ Ollie came stalking up to my screened in window,” Gertie Johnson would say conspiratorially. “Somethin’ wasn’t right, and that cat knew it. He went around to the side of the house to my parents’ window screen and started yowling something fierce. And scratchin the screen. At first, they thought Ollie was the one who was hurt. My daddy went outside to go check on ‘im and Ollie went back to my window, quick as lightning, yowling all the way. That’s when my daddy saw it - my blanket was suffocatin’ me! I owe that cat my life,” and then Gertie would get misty-eyed. Jason Plick had a similar story that he’d always tell his fishing buddies. He was little Jacey when he was a kid. And little Jacey happened to wander off into the woods behind his house one day when he was four years old. He sent the entire town into a panic. His mother, wringing her hands over and over saying, “I just looked away for one second while he was playing in the backyard! I looked away for one doggone second to answer the phone,” with a wail. Of course, a volunteer search party was immediately drawn up. Everyone and their brother joined in, determined to bring Jacey home. Jason had fallen asleep in a big, hollowed out rock in the woods not too far from his house. His little outfit blended in with the browns of the October leaves, but Ollie the cat sniffed him out just fine. He started pacing back and forth in front of the rock and little Jacey, yowling his peculiar loud meow, over and over until some from the search party found them. “If it wasn't for that cat, who knows,” Jason Plick would say ominously during the 100th retelling of the tale. And when one of his buddies would point out that they had almost the entire town looking for him, and that he was only about a little ways from his backyard, he’d whack them across the back of the head. Carol Musgrove had a less daunting tale to tell, but if you asked her, the fate that Ollie saved her from was the most vicious of all. When Carol was in high school, freshman year at Magnolia Ridge public high school (go Magpies!) she wanted more than anything to date Wyatt Michaels. Every girl in school wanted Wyatt, even the seniors - when he was a junior. His mama was the best baker in town, his daddy worked in the steel mills, and Wyatt was quarterback for the football team. Carol became a cheerleader just to be closer to him during football games. Most of the cheerleaders did. During one of those games, Carol decided to be sweet and take Wyatt a paper cup of water at halftime. And she decided she was going to kiss Wyatt Michaels, right there for everyone to see. She got up real close to him, tapped him on his beefy shoulder and when he turned around and accepted the water with a goofy grin, Carol made her move. Or, she tried. Once she was an inch from his face, Ollie sprang up out of nowhere and jumped right in between the two would-be lovers. He knocked the water out of Wyatt’s hand as he bounded off, not a backward glance toward his bottlebrush tail. Well by then, halftime was over. Everyone had seen Carol Musgrove attempt to plant one on Wyatt Michaels, and fail because of a cat. A week later, Wyatt and Hattie Somers started publicly going steady. How is this a story of how Ollie saved yet another Magnolia Ridge resident? Because Wyatt and Hattie got married right out of highschool and started having kids right away. Wyatt lost his looks, his hair, his job (which he never tried to get back) and most of his hearing at a really young age, and Hattie was always in a constant state of harried frenzy, trying to care for their five kids and clean houses to provide for their family somehow. “It coulda been me,” Carol would say somberly. Nobody knows how ol’ Ollie’s tail caught fire that night. Most say that he was likely out doing some good deed, saving a child from a fire in a neighboring town or something. Between you and me, ol’ Uncle HH was blitzed out of his mind when he peed on that cat. He didn’t realize he was saving a life by relieving himself while walking home from O’Toole’s Tavern that night. He just really, really had to go.