Category Archives: Young Betans

Posted on October 29, 2021

Story submitted by Rick Millward Class of 1980

In my junior year, I lived on the first floor of Curtis dorm in a tower room. I was a Biology major. Two brothers, Kevin and Greg, lived in the room above me.  In the spring of 1979, Kevin, who was also a Biology major and I were taking Vertebrate Development, the only 5 credit course on campus, and we were lab mates.  He and I needed to pass a lab practical on the cat we dissected, and this involved a lot of review of cat innards and memorization of the same.  We did not spend enough time in the lab to feel ready to pass the test, so we spirited the cat out of the lab the week of the test and kept it in Kevin’s room to study it.  This was, of course, highly forbidden, but we were clever, and we were Betans, so the cat made its way to Kevin’s room in Curtis, and we were able to cram right up to test time (we passed).

After the test was over, the cat remained in Kevin’s room.  It was a beautiful weekend day, but Greg was inside at the time with the windows open.  There were several Betans congregated outside in the grassy central area where we would use the corner on the grass as an outdoor living room.  This was at the corner across from Reimert Hall.  This was when a road still ran through campus along the back side of Old Men’s Dorm.  While Greg was looking out the window, his sister’s boyfriend, who he couldn’t stand, drove up in a convertible and stopped to let someone cross the road.  Greg acted quickly. He grabbed the cat and threw it out the second story window in the direction of the convertible.  The cat landed squarely on its back legs and facing forward in the empty passenger seat.  The cat was stretched out with paws down and up, and the mouth was open in a snarl due to the killing and embalming process.  Because of the dissection process, the chest skin was in two wide separated flaps. and so were the separated ribs……. So, there the cat stood in the boyfriend’s passenger seat, with a snarl and all its chest flaps flapping in the wind, opening and closing.  The Betans in the grassy area were practically rolling on the ground laughing as the boyfriend, with an indescribable look of disgust on his face, gingerly lifted the cat with a thumb and forefinger, dropped it out of the car, and sped off. Of course, Greg was celebrating his perfect shot in the second story window.

Super Cat was born.

Some other brothers retrieved the cat.  They fashioned some wire hooks and inserted the wires into the cat’s back with the hooks up.  They fashioned a red and blue cat-sized cape and fastened it around its neck.  They tied a long piece of fishing line around the end of the cat’s tail.  Lastly, they ran another piece of fishing line from a second story brother’s room down to a tree across from the main walkway that ran parallel to the front of Old Men’s dorm.  For two days, the brothers had fun waiting for the break between classes, then attaching the hooks onto the fishing line and letting the cat slide down the line with skin, ribs and cape flapping in the wind and face snarling, and yelling, “Super Cat!”, as it flew over the heads of unsuspecting and disgusted co-eds heading to Pfahler or the new Biology building. It would then stop at the end of the line, shaking and vibrating while the victims hurried on.  Then they would pull it back up by the line attached to its tail and wait for the next unsuspecting victim(s).

After two days, word got back to the administration, and they came and confiscated the unfortunate and misused cat.  This story, however, is one of my kids’ favorite college stories.