The Sunday Poem: The Cat Came Back and Back and Back and Back

This is probably my kids’ favorite song. I didn’t write it, of course; credit there goes to a guy named Harry S. Miller, in 1893. But it’s one of those songs that won’t die. A lot of kids come to it via the singalong version in Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook, which is kind of the default carry-around folk fakebook used around campfires. Some kids of a different vintage might remember the Muppets version.

As with many of the tunes that have gone through the folk process, the melody exists in many different versions as well. I am positive that the version I do bears little resemblance to the original. And of course, once I learned that there were a lot of different versions out there, I had to go out and scour the Internet for all the verses I could find. What I found far exceeded the cat’s official quota of nine lives. And then, of course, I had to add my own.

For comparison, here I present a few different versions so you can see how it’s changed…

First up is the most different version I know, which is the Muppets one. This, as you’ll see by the notation, is a version I found on the Net, but you can find the Muppets Online version here.… Notice the chord structure. To catch Rowlf’s classic performance, try YouTube.

Little Bennie had a cat that they wouldn’t let him keep
So he put her up for sale at a price he thought was cheap
He took her to a neighbor to ask him for advice
He said, “Leave the kitty here, she can help me with the mice”

/ E – B7 – / – – E – / A – E – / B7 – – – /

But the cat came back, she wouldn’t stay away
She was sitting on the porch the very next day
The cat came back, she didn’t want to roam
The very next day it was Home, Sweet Home

/ ” / ” / ” / B7 – EA E /

Then Bennie met a man who was driving way out west
He would take the cat along as a special honored guest
The steering wheel was wobbly, he drove into a tree
The car was just a total wreck as anyone could see

So Bennie bought a gun from the Human Cannonball
He put the cat inside with tri-nitro-toluol
When he pulled the trigger, the cannon made a roar
The neighbors all surrendered ’cause they thought it was a war

Then Bennie gave the cat to a man who had a bomb
When he took the cat away, she was acting cool and calm
And then the bomb exploded, it made an awful sound
They searched and searched for ages but the man was never found

The Muppets, much as I love them, seem to have basically rewritten the entire song. 🙂 The version I do is based on the Rise Up Singing one, and it’s got a shuffle progression (if you don’t know what that sounds like, think The Stray Cats, and specifically “Stray Cat Strut” — it sounds very similar). In the book it looks like this:

Old Mr. Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which just wouldn’t leave his home
He tried and he tried to give the cat away
Gave it to a man going far far away

I’ve also seen this for those last two lines: “He tried in every way to keep that cat away / Took him up to Canada and told him for to stay.” In fact, the specific words to every line are treated kinda casually, with lots of variations.

But the cat came back, the very next day
The cat came back, thought she was a goner,
But the cat came back, she just couldn’t stay away

The man around the corner swore he’d kill the cat on sight
Loaded up his shotgun with nails and dynamite
He waited and he waited for the cat to come around
97 pieces of the man is all they found

He gave it to a man with a dollar note
Told him for to take it up the river in a boat
They tied a rope around its neck it musta weighed a pound
But they had to drag the river for the fisherman was drowned

Older sources have the fisherman as a little boy instead — I’m guessing the boy got changed into an adult because modern audiences didn’t like killing children.

He gave it to a man going up in a balloon
Told him for to take it to the man in the moon
The balloon came down about 90 miles away
And where he is now I dare not say

He gave it to a man going way out west
Told him for to take it to the one he loved the best
First the train hit the curve and then it jumped the rail
Not a soul was left behind to the tell the gruesome tale

The atom bomb fell one bright summer day
Then they dropped the H-bomb the very same way
Russia went, England went, and then the USA
The human race was finished without a chance to pray

That last verse, as you might guess, was probably added during the Folk Scare, in the 50s or 60s as part of the protest movement.

Then when I went looking on the Net, I found these additional verses. Trout Fishing in America does a takeoff on these verses, which were apparently added by Cisco Houston:

Well he finally found a way this cat for to fix
Put in an orange crate out on Route 66
Came a 10-ton truck wiuth a 20-ton load
Scattered pieces of the orange crate all down the road

Took it to the butcher shop where all the meat was ground
Tossed it in the hopper when the butcher wasn’t round
The cat disappeared with a bloodcurdling shriek
And the town’s meat tasted furry for a week

This verse obviously does not date to 1893:

He took this cat to put it in its place
Down to Cape Canaveral and shot it into space
Just when he thought the cat was out of human reach
He got a collect call next day from Miami Beach

Lots of sources have these verses:

Away across the ocean he did send the cat at last
Vessel only out a day and taking water fast
People all began to pray the boat began to toss
A great big gust of wind came by and every soul was lost

The cat it had some company one night out in the yard
Someone threw a boot-jack and they threw it mighty hard
It caught the cat behind the ear, she thought it rather slight
When along came a brick bat and knocked the cat out of sight

On a telegraph wire sparrows sitting in a bunch
The cat was feeling hungry thought she’d like them for lunch
Climbing softly up the pole but oh my the wire was hot
Turned her insides out and tied her tail in a knot

The cat was the possessor of a family of its own
With seven little kittens and along came a cyclone
Blew the houses all apart and tossed the cat around
The air was full of kittens and not a one was found

I wrote this verse for it:

Put it in a ten foot room with 14 dogs
Blocked the door with stones and logs
Came back in a week to get the bones
And there was the cat all alone

Just to later find that this verse already existed:

They threw him in the kennel where the dog was asleep
And the bones of cats lay piled in a heap
That kennel burst apart and the dog flew out the side
With his ears chewed off and holes in his hide

In searching about just today, I discovered the following new verses which now I will have to add to my collection; this is troublesome, because it no longer fits on a single-spaced double-column sheet of paper.

They put him in a cotton sack and gave him to a girl
Who’d started on a bicycle all around the world
Well, over there in China a terrible wreak was found
She’s singing now in heaven with the angels all around

They put him on a boat bound for Sidneytown
They thought with all that rain there he’d surely drowned
When the rain came down for the 92nd day
That whole darn city just a floated out the bay

They put him on the White House lawn, I’ll tell the reason why
With all the golfballs flying, they thought he’d surely die
Well the very next morning, what do you think they found
64 squirrels lying dead upon the ground

My lone verse that I feel pretty good about, and this week’s token Sunday Poem:

Dropped it in the swamp in an alligator farm
And stayed and watched ’til it came to harm
In Iowa a woman bought a gatorskin purse
Heard a meow and dropped it with a curse

Of course, the whole premise is that the cat has to come back. That hasn’t stopped more recent wags from ending the tune this way:

Hit the road, Cat,
And don’t you come back no more no more, no more, no more,
Hit the Road Cat, and don’t you come back no more.

Mi-i-ia-aa-o-ow

Or killing the cat for political reasons:

Now the cat sat on the porch and he ate a piece of cheese
An Irishman came by, he was feeling well at ease.
The cat he was a-smiling, for he was fully fed;
The Irishman sang “Britannia!” and the cat fell dead

Or trying to make kids happy:

There were twenty-seven girl scouts a camping in the woods
And that kitty came around just a-looking for some food!
They fed him fifty-seven Smores, but he wasn’t satisfied
But after he ate ninety-three, that cat blew up and died!

And he never came back, and he never came around
That kitty was a goner, ‘cuz he couldn’t come back,
He was spread all over town!

What was it like originally? Well, the sheet music is actually up on the net as well. Where it’s revealed as “A Comic Negro Absurdity” according to the sheet music publisher. Overall, it’s rather offensive. We can see that the original verses are Mr. Johnson, the bootjack, the sinking boat, the telegraph wire, the balloon, the kittens, the train wreck, the musket, and the little boy and the river.

On the other hand, it does actually offer an ending to the travails of the poor cat:

While de cat lay a-sleeping an’ a resting one day
‘Round came an organ grinder an’ he began to play;
De cat look’d around a while an’ kinder raised her head
When he played Tah-rah-dah-boom-de-rah, an’ de cat dropped dead

But its ghost came back to tell you all about it;
Yes, its ghost came back, between you and I.
Its ghost came back, may be you will doubt it,
But its ghost came back just to bid ’em all good-bye.

The folk process is an amazing thing. Perhaps over a century and some, we all collectively decided that the cat really deserved to live. Heck, if in the 60s we decided that we should kill the entire human race instead of the cat, that goes to show how important she has become to our culture!

FWIW, I play it Em-D-C-B7, like in Rise Up Singing. And I do a whole scat thing on “awaaaaaaaaaaaay.” Other versions stick to straight Am7-E7 alternating, and so on. I think the lesson here is that you can probably play it any way you want.