You may have noticed the slowly accumulating cat iconography all over my page. And the frequent references to cats. This is actually inexplicable because 24 years of experience tells me that I don't mix well with cats. At all.
As the least of my worries, I'm fairly allergic. So it makes not a lick of sense that I frequently browse petfinder, look for them, or ask other people to give me one. I like my friends' cats. And they like me for a pin cushion.
I slept over a dear friend's house last year and spent some quality time cuddling her newly acquired (spoiled) kitten. This cat had more toys than a Toys R Us. AND they were technologically fun for humans. There was a thing called a "panic mouse" that I got to be present for the christening of, and it was fascinating. It even kept the cat entertained for like an afternoon. You attach a feather to the end of this thing and it whips it around at whatever speed you want.
Anyway, I slept over and kitten had been pretty calm all day. Right after I fell asleep I woke up in a perceived warzone. The "kitten" had spent his day sleeping, so he was full of energy for the rest of the night and catapulted (hardy har har) at my face and landed paws down, nails out. Alarm clocks are effective, but if you could put a timer on this thing that didn't go off at 3 am, I'd say you'd never have problems with wanting to hit the snooze button ever again. Here's a mild re-enactment, with most of the violence cut out:
Come to think of it, I've had a lot of fairly unfortunate run ins with cats. The first was when I was 8. I had a cat named Holly (We found her around Christmas, and being 8 I thought I was pretty clever matching her name with her "birthday"... I'd shown similar genius a couple years later that when unrecognized by my mom when I suggested we name the dog Petunia. Since it was spring and all.). So we had this cat that was actually pretty friendly. Nice. Aesthetic enough. Incapable of recognizing the litter box but hey, everybody's got something. She disappeared in the middle of winter, and showed up several weeks later in a blizzard. I was decked out in all kinds of dress up clothes (again, I was 8) in multiple layers because it was cold. So I scooped up the cat and brought her to the basement. We hoped that putting her on the same floor as the litter box might jog her memory as to "this is a litter box, use it". A few weeks away, she was more likely to have forgotten than usual but we were optimistic. Whatever the idea was, it concluded with me stuffed into a concrete wall at the bottom of the stairs. One broken arm, two ambulances (the first one got stuck in the snow), a newly discovered (ridiculously uncomfortable) allergy to morphine and 3 pins later, I came home to discover that that cat was no longer taking residence at our house, but with a nice farmer some towns over.
The other incident happened a few years later when I tried sleeping at a neighbor's house. I ended up in the top bunk that night, which was pretty neat, I liked heights back then. By morning, however, the cat decided that there wasn't room up there for the both of us and after a rude, multiple clawed wake up call, I found myself evicted and relocated (rather abruptly) to the floor. Her parents came in because I shook the foundation.
Therefore, there is actually no logical reason that I should have a cat. It's been proven fairly well that I can't handle cats (and in previous posts, children, dogs or even fish). And yet, I still find some appeal in having a fuzzy thing around. Maybe I'll get a rat.
I am Better
12 years ago
