Karl the Kool-Smoking, Chain-Smoking Kat
January 30, 2025By Tom Poland
Can Your Imagination Turn Real?
Summer 2022, St. Simons Island, I was sitting around the pool when my niece, Harper, and her friend, Stella, asked me to tell them a story. I had just seen a photograph of a “tuxedo” cat smoking four cigarettes at a time. “Girls,” I said, “Karl, the Kool-smoking, chain-smoking kat is a ne’er-do-well scoundrel who stays in trouble. He had a wife and home but Mrs. Karl booted him out because he couldn’t keep a job.
“What did he do, Uncle Tommy?”
“Looked for a job. After a long trek through rain and lightning he found himself playing eight ball one night in Cayce, South Carolina. A cat named Roscoe told Karl he could get him a job packing doughnuts at the local Krispy Kreme.
“It’s a sweet deal,” said Roscoe. Too sweet, it turns out.
“What did Karl do next, Uncle Tommy?”
He struck out for McClellanville to work on a shrimp trawler. He landed a job icing down shrimp in the Lucky Tuna’s hold from midnight to dawn. Karl found out that cigarette smoke and diesel fumes make a bad combination. Karl had bouts of seasickness. So he said. He’d go to the hold and hide. Pretty soon Capt. Jack noticed a lot of shrimp heads in the hold. What the heck’s going on here? Capt. Jack didn’t smell a rat. He smelled a cat. He called Karl up to the wheelhouse where Karl’s breath made for a bad wind. The next morning Capt. Jack put Karl out on the dock. “Don’t come back here you lazy cat.”
“What did Karl do next, Uncle Tommy?”
He hitchhiked to Myrtle Beach where he got a job setting pins at an old bowling alley, and for once it didn’t involve food. No way he’d mess that job up, but you know Karl. And so my stories went. “Girls,” I’d always end a tale, “don’t be like Karl. Do the opposite of what Karl does, and you will turn out fine.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle Tommy, we will.”
For a long time my niece would ask me what Karl was up to when I’d see her. I liked that, and was thinking of writing a book about Karl. At a book signing I sat next to a children’s book author one afternoon.
“I’m thinking of writing a children’s book,” I told her.
“What’s your book about?”
“It’s about a cat who teaches children good things by his example.”
“That’s a good approach. What’s the title?”
“Karl, the Kool-Smoking, Chain-Smoking Kat.”
“Oh that’ll never fly,” she said.
“Well I’ve tested it on some young girls and they love Karl, the Kool-smoking, chain-smoking kat.”
Unconvinced, she gave me an incredulous stare.
Well shoot, things change. The girls have grown up and forgotten Karl the Kool-smoking, chain-smoking kat. Not me, I’ve come to believe Karl is real. And he is. Karl, the Kool-smoking, chain-smoking homeless kat showed up on my deck three weeks ago. He’s slim (hunger will do that) and he no longer smokes. (No money = no smokes.) He comes meowing around twilight with his paws out. His favorite dinner is Fancy Feast Shrimp Pâté, and I don’t mind buying it. He may be homeless but he won’t go hungry.
He’s skittish. I’ve managed to get just one photo of Karl, the no-longer Kool-smoking, chain-smoking kat. Now I need to tell my niece and her friends that “Karl the Kat is real. Real as can be, and I hope to make him a better kat. Maybe send him to college, but he best be willing to work. No krazy kat shenanigans and no jobs involving food. And most of all, Karl, be a good role model for the girls.”
Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.
Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email him at [email protected]