Now that Walter Elias Disney’s influence on the multi-faceted corporation that bears his name is finally waning (Walt died in December, 1966), I think I have a new Disney movie plot.
My movie would be called That Damn Cat! Of course, my movie would not be like one of Walt’s last, That Darn Cat! which was released in 1965. That Darn Cat! starred those whacky Disney regulars Dean Jones and Hayley Mills. Also in the cast were those two groovy guys Roddy McDowall and Frank Gorshin, of ‘Riddle me this, Batman . . . ? fame. The plot of the zanniest movie of 1965 is summed up like this, ‘It takes a Siamese secret agent to unravel the purr-fect crime.?
Swingin?, daddy-o, swinging!
Somehow I just don’t see my feline flick being as nice, pure, nor family friendly. Definitely not, zanny, crazy, groovy or swingin?. In a word, it wouldn’t be so, Disneyesque. And, since I’ve already cussed at the cat, I reckon it wouldn’t be so politically correct either.
In my ‘thriller,? a group of pesky saboteurs, bent on the downfall of the western world, hop on board an airliner with their secret weapon stowed away in one of their carry-on handbags. About 20 minutes after take off, when the plane is way up in the air, the secret weapon is released. The weapon, using its huntress skills, slips (unnoticed) into the cockpit when the sexy blond stewardess, in a tight-fitting miniskirted- getup, delivers meals to the pilots.
The secret weapon of course is a feline — a common Siamese house cat. When the bombshell stewardess leaves, locking the cockpit door behind her, all hell breaks loose. The cat goes to work by taking out the pilots, who are helpess against her.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
I haven’t worked out the rest of the story-line, nor the plot, nor the ending (Maybe a passenger can save the day by flushing the cat to a blue swirly death in the plane’s lavatory . . . . or maybe one of the pilots, say the suave and courageous captain, can draw out his pistola and blast the cat to smithereens. But that can’t happen because pilots aren’t allowed guns to protect the flight). Dang-it, I can’t think of a good ending because the thing is in real life cats can’t attack pilots, right?
Wrong!
Dead wrong, my friends. On August 10 of this year the Associated Press reported, ‘Cat loose in cockpit causes emergency landing . . .?
Yep, it’s true, and I quote: ‘BRUSSELS – A Belgian airliner made an emergency landing after an agitated passenger — a cat — got into the cockpit and attacked the copilot, the airline said Tuesday . . .?
According to the airline statement, ? . . . it was noticed that a passenger’s pet had escaped from its cage . . . once free the animal proceeded to wander around the cabin, slipping into the cockpit when meals were being delivered to the two-man flight crew . . . At this stage the animal became agitated and nervous.?
That’s when the cat attacked and scratched the copilot’s arm. The pilot then turned the plane around and high-tailed it back to Brussels.
That damn cat!
Which leads me to think the pilot and copilot must not have been brainiacs and surely must have been, as the governor of California says, girly men. Come on. They cancelled a flight and caused all their passengers to be hours behind schedule because of a cat? They couldn’t shoo one, itty-bitty, four-legged furball out into the cabin?
I’d hate to be aboard one of their flights if a spider or bumblebee happened to sneak into the cockpit. I don’t know if the plane would have made it back to the ground in one piece.
After reading the Brussels story, I guess the only advice I can think of is this: Folks, be sure always to fly American airlines with American pilots because American pilots aren’t afraid of cats and they only occasionally drink and fly.
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