Wait Till Martin Comes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just how well-known IS this story?

It appears in nearly every anthology of African-American folklore, US Southern folklore, or spooky tales for fireside use. Yet every time I spring it on a kid, or make a reference to it with an adult, I get a blank look.

Briefly, it’s the story of a man who takes a bet to spend the night in a supposedly haunted cabin.

Things are going fine until about midnight, when a little black kitten comes in the front door and sits by the fire.

Shortly, a big black tomcat enters and joins the kitten. The tom asks, “Should we do it now?” and the kitten responds “Wait till Martin comes.”

Progressively larger felines come in, big as a hunting dog, big as a calf, big as a horse, etc…each one asks “Should we do it now?” and the response is always “Wait till Martin comes.”

The man sits watching this, his eyes getting bigger and bigger, until finally he can’t stand it any more, leaps up and out the door into the woods, yelling “You tell Martin I couldn’t wait!”

(All right, it isn’t much of a punch line…call it a shaggy dog story.) So how many of us know this narrative, and how many just read it here for the first time?

Uke

2

This is the first time I’ve ever heard it.

I’ve learned that if someone says something unkind about me, I must live so that no one will believe it.

3

I read that in a book called The Thing At The Foot Of The Bed when little! Loved it! Doubt if anyone can prove it true; maybe the story teller had some quality ganja!

4

I’ve never heard of it. And I don’t get it. What are the cats gonna do? Who is Martin? And what was it the guy couldn’t wait for? I’m so confused now.

I’ll buy that for a dollar.

5

I heard it in the early 60’s on a comedy album by Brother Dave Gardner. Don’t remember if Martin was the one coming or not but the story was basically the same.

6

I first heard this story maybe 20 years ago on an audio record of ghost stories (along with Monkey’s Paw, Thing at the End of the Bed, Telltale Heart etc.) except there it ended with the guy running outside, screaming, and the narrator saying, “Martin got home!”

I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman

7

I’ve heard this one! Only in the version I read many many years ago, the big kitty’s name was Samson. I don’t think Samson ever did show up, but the details are the same in every other respect.

Gamera is really neat, he is full of turtle meat, we’ve been eating Gam-er-aaaa…

8

I dunno, but I (and it looks like our hero) fear it’s gonna be nasty. This is, after all, a haunted cabin. Nasty things always happen in haunted cabins.

Presumably one biiiiig puddy-tat.

Whatever nasty fate he feared the cats had in store for him.

To answer the OP - It seems familiar, but I can’t say from where.

Eschew Obfuscation

9

Like Hail Ants, I had this story on a record as a kid. It even ended the same way he described. I remember that the record also had the story about the kid with a pen-knife that was dared to sit on some wicked guy’s grave all night. Was that on your’s Hail?

God is my co-pilot. Blame Him.

10

Yeah, I think I too first read the story in The Thing at the Foot of the Bed by Maria Leach. Leach is terrific…even her anthologies for kids contain great background info on the folktales, collecting stories, motif linkings, etc.

Anyone with kids out there, I recommend doing a web search for her out-of-print Rainbow Book of American Folktales and Legends, one of the finest big collections of US folklore ever printed.

Thing at the Foot of the Bed also included the penknife-through-the-coattails-and-into-the-grave-and-the-kid-died-of-fright story.

11

I read it in a children’s book entitled This Boy Cody, and until now, I honestly thought it was unique to that. The version I read, Cody is lost in the woods, not hurt or hungry or rained on, but definitely lost, and luckily finds a cabin he can stay in till daylight, so as not to get more lost. He’s overwhelmed with curiosity as to what a talking cat, possum, fox, and bear would have to say, but all they say is “We can’t do nothin’ till Martin comes.” So, funny thing, his feet start to itch. Bad. And the only thing that will cure the itching is to walk. Out of the cabin. And miraculously, right back home.

I guess I’m just better off living with my inner tensions.
—Snoopy

12

Yeah, I read it. Only it was a little different. The cats were supermodels, and they got progressively hotter, all saying “should we do him now?” “Wait until Kathy comes.” But sadly the man prematurely ejaculated, and he sad “when Kathy comes you tell her I couldn’t wait.” Then they all jump in and have sex… OH SORRY! Y’know what? That was a wet dream I had when I was fourteen. I was hot supermodel number 6. Sheesh!
Seriously though, I read it in “Scary Stories to Read in the Dark 3”

Where’s my side of FUN!?

Kisses!
Ophy

13

Damn, I was hoping for the climactic finale where Martin Lawrence comes out of nowhere screaming “WHAZZZUUUUUUUUPP!”

Gypsy: Tom, I don’t get you.
Tom Servo: Nobody does. I’m the wind, baby.

14

I had never heard that story. It’s strangely unsatisfying.

I do know another about how this man comes home, all shaken and mystified. He sits by the fire, where his cat sits warming itself, his daughter is playing with dolls, and his wife is getting dinner ready.

“You won’t believe what I just saw, dear” he says. And he proceeds to describe how he was walking through the woods on the way home when he heard some footsteps approaching. He walked off the track a bit to let them pass, and he was just out of sight when what did he see, but cats. Thirty or forty cats, all on their hind legs, carrying a coffin.

“Old Tom is dead!” they cried, “The King of the Cats is dead!”

And the funeral march walked right past him as he hid in the trees, watching, stunned, amazed!

“Old Tom is dead!” they cried again, “The King of the Cats is dead!”

They walked deeper into the woods, and the man just ran, and ran, and ran home.

He looked at his wife. “Can you believe such a thing?”

Unbeknownst to him, his own cat at the fireside had woken, was staring at him, eyes ever wider, until suddenly he spoke.

“Old Tom is dead? Then I’m the new King of the Cats!” and the cat bounded out of the house never to be seen again.

The Legend Of PigeonMan

  • Shadow of the Pigeon -
    Weirdo of the Night
15

Guano:

Stephen Vincent Benet wrote a terriic short story based on that concept, also called “The King of the Cats.”

It was about an orchestral conductor who had a tail, and who used it in his conducting. The hero of the story, a Bertie Wooster type, is in love with a beautiful young woman with pronounced feline qualities, and whom he sees is attracted to the handsome young conductor…he tells the King of the Cats story at a dinner party (says he saw it happening in Central Park) to the bafflement of the other guests, but then the conductor actually goes for it, and vanishes.

Fantasy story, obviously.