Lee Moore - The Cat Came Back

Grumpy Cat is dead.  But since cats are said to have nine lives, we can hope that Grumpy Cat will be around for a long, long time.  You bet, there's a country song about that.

Lee Moore was Yankee born and bred, an Ohio boy.  He found himself in radio in West Virginia playing for coal miners in the 1930s before settling down for a long stint as a late night entertainer on WWVA AM in Wheeling.  WWVA could be heard across most of the eastern USA at the late night hours when Moore was on the air, and he built up a following among truckers and other night owls from Newfoundland to Bermuda.  Nighttime AM travels a long, long way.

Moore retired to Troy, New York and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000, three years after his death.  This was a song that he popularized (and which I remember from my youth).



The Cat Came Back (Songwriters: Harry S. Miller)

Well old Mr. Johnson had troubles all his own
He had an old yellow cat that wouldn't leave home
Tried everything he knew to do to get the cat to stay away
Even took him up to Canada and told him for to stay

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Well they give a boy a dollar for to set the cat afloat
And he took him up the river in a sack and a boat
Well the fishin' it was fine till the news got around
That the boat was missing and the boy was drowned...

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Well the farmer on the corner said he'd shoot him on sight
And he loaded up his gun full of rocks and dynamite
The gun went off, heard all over town
Little pieces of the man was all that they found...

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Well they finally found a way this cat for to fix
They put him in an orange crate on Route 66
Come a ten ton truck with a twenty ton load
Scattered pieces of the orange crate all down the road...

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Now they gave him to a man going up in the balloon
And they told him for to leave him with the man in the moon
Well the balloon got busted, back to earth it head,
And seven miles away they picked the man up dead...

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Well they took him to the shop where the meat was ground
And they dropped him in the hopper when the butcher wasn't 'round
Well the cat disappeared with a blood-curdling shriek
And the town's meat tasted furry for a week...

But the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

Well, they took him to Cape Canaveral and they put him in a place
Shot him in a rocket going way out in space
Well they finally thought the cat was out of human reach
Next day they got a call from Miami Beach and...

And the cat came back, the very next day,
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back
`Cause he wouldn't stay away

This song dates to 1895 (!) but was updated for the Space Age.  The song had nine lives as well, it seems.