THE PRANK WAR

Monty Zundel was 15 and I was his Sunday school teacher. I had taught young women for years but this was the first time I had ever been called to teach in a co-ed class.  Little did I know what I was in store for. Monty was the vivacious one, or in other words, the one that wanted to be entertaining the class on a regular bases. There came a day that he discover my passion and love for cats.  That was all she wrote.  He teased me constantly.  One day he told me that he saw my cat running across the street and tried to run over it but missed. Another time he drew cat paws on the black board with a big “splat” at the top. Normally a person is called to teach a class and the class moves on the next year. Well in this case they moved me on with the class. This happened for three years in a row.  It by far was a wonderful experience for me. There were about sixteen in the class and out of that group there were 12 that served full time missions.

Many years passed and of course we found ourselves living here in this fabulous community.  We have loved this area and the people.  We had lived here about two or three years when Monty Zundel and his wife April moved in with their two sons, Chance and Justin.  My first thought was to take them a welcome basket with two baby kitties in it. Later I told Monty this and he told me he would just had to drown them.  Monty is now in our bishopric as one of the counselors and the feud goes on. I was sitting in Sunday school class when someone passed me the role. Next to my name was written “Meow.”  I turned to find Monty sitting  behind me with a grin from ear to ear. One night while Monty was at the church I went to the church and put a bumper sticker on his front chrome  bumper of his truck, it read…..”I (heart) (side silhouette  of a cat). The bumper sticker was 5 inches tall. Bold black letters with a bright red heart, the cat was solid black. The next morning I received a call at 8 a.m. from none other than Monty.  He is a physical therapist and had a packed schedule of patients to visit at their homes that day.  Instead, he canceled his appointments, and spent the next fours hours at his mom’s scraping off the sticker. The warning came loud and clear, “It’s On!”

Things were pretty quite for awhile until Christmas day. I was relaxing in a hot tub when the door bell rang. Karl got the door. It was Monty with a gift???  He asked Karl if we wanted our CD player back, of course he had no idea what Monty was talking about. Seems that morning at 5 a.m. Monty and April were awaken by some cats screaming. Within minutes the two boys were in their room wanting know the cause of the noise. One of the boys went to the front door to find a CD player with Christmas music by cats screaming to the top of their lungs. WHO? Of course LINDA…….. Nada! I had nothing to do with it.  The next Sunday came accusations but I knew someone else was in on the game. Sure enough it turned out to be Steve Gossett, my next door neighbor.  The gift Monty brought  Christmas day was a “CAT-A- PULT.” It was a plastic gun with four plastic cats that were to be inserted into the gun and shot at a target on the back on the card. 

Josh, Lukas and Noah agreed to help me build a snow sculpture of Garfield. The plan was to make him life size and put a sign in front saying “Monty Loves Cats.” The local paper was having a contest and wanting pictures. Karl and I had build one of these years ago and he turned out spectacular. Well, there was a problem……..the snow was too dry.  Josh finally got a bucket and would carry water from the bathroom in the house. We would put  snow in it and stir it until it was the consistency of cement, then piling it on our object. Finally after three h0urs we had a pile of snow about 2 1/2 to 3 feet high.  When we tried to sculpted it we found it frozen and chipping apart as we craved.  In this case it became all about the journey and not the desatanati0n.  In the end all we could say was we had fun, which was plenty good for me.