I only have the Kit-Cat Klock company to blame, but I won’t even do that.
I’ve held onto my Kit-Cat clock for long enough. I’m giving up. I won’t throw it away, mind you, but I’ll relegate it to the back of a shelf in the laundry room.
In 2014, my daughter gave me the clock as a birthday present. It operated beautifully for about two years and then stopped. After consulting the trouble-shooting website, none of the possible remedies for the malfunction fit. The only one that seemed plausible was to replace the batteries, so I did. Still no success.
So I put the dang thing away for another day. That day came and after piddling around a little more, I figured out that I had earlier replaced the batteries incorrectly. After correcting that, my Kit-Cat Clock swung again and it was just peachy… until it wasn’t. About a year later, those eyes and that tail stopped again. The clock still worked, but the eyes and the tail—the reasons one purchases a Kit-Cat Clock in the first place— didn’t.
So I replaced the batteries again. Nothing. Dorked around with the eyes again. Zilch. I took the batteries out again, and then put in different batteries. Nada. Tapped and moved a few internal parts and still no go. Then I looked a little closer at the clock. No, it wasn’t working after all.
This was more serious than I thought. The Kit-Cat clock might actually be finally dead, I thought, ready now more than ever to just chuck the whole thing in the trash.
But I didn’t. I left it, still and silent, on the wall.
About a year later, we moved. And since I’m never one to give up, I packed the clock (all the while asking myself why am I doing this?!) and moved it into our new home, where I eventually tried yet again about a month ago to revive the pile of plastic. Still no luck.
By this time, my devotion to the clock began to wane. I had lost patience and chucked the poor, cute little clock into the trash. (Okay, it’s not as cute as it used to be. Could that grin actually be a smirk?!)
However, half an hour later, I knew I couldn’t leave it there. So I went back, lifted the cat from the garbage can, dug around for the tail, and found it. And then I placed the clock and its accompanying tail in the laundry room. It’s sitting there at this very minute.
And there you have how much I like Kit-Cat clocks. Even when they don’t work, I still keep them for two possible reasons: 1) I like old things; hence my collection of twenty-four vintage metal recipe boxes that looked really awesome alongside my Kit-Cat clock… when it worked, and 2) the clocks remind me a little of my childhood and a board game we kept in the hall closet based on Felix the Cat. I remember looking at the game, but not really knowing how to play it. Or maybe I did know how to play, but didn’t have someone to play it with. (Who knows?! This was a very long time ago and I couldn’t have been more than six years old.)
It doesn’t matter. My Kit-Cat clock is now officially dead. I tried to save it. Several times, in fact.
I can’t even blame the malfunction on Chinese manufacturing. The Kit-Cat Klock Company (yes, they spell clock with a K) is based near Los Angeles in Fountain Valley, California and makes every clock right there as it has since 1932.
I only have the Kit-Cat Klock company to blame, but I won’t even do that. Even though it doesn’t work, I still like my crazy clock, and even though it makes me a little sad to see it staring lifelessly back at me in the laundry room, I probably won’t get rid of it anytime soon. Call me sentimental.
Marilyn Yung 