My cats are, in general, demon felines spawned of malice and mischief and set forth on a mission of destruction aimed in my general direction, but recently they have stepped up their games and reached new lows, even for them. As if the normal amount of clawing they normally inflict upon me was not enough, their torturous little minds have now devised new and better methods of torment, and I may have to go into hiding soon.
Now, look, my cats like to claw and bite me. I know this. I am used to it. Generally this happens when I try to pat the one (Mouse) or am in the path of the terrified other one (JJ). One of Mouse’s favorite games is to chase JJ in such a manner that he tears directly across and through me and whatever I am doing. Needless to say, the claws are out at these times. And of course we have the traditional foot clawings when one is lying in bed trying to sleep. One little twitch of a toe and you are sure to have a cat claw in your foot.
Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the other night, when I was laying in bed next to my wife getting ready to sleep. We were snuggling down and chatting a bit when it happened. And it happened so fast that, for a short time, I wasn’t even sure what had taken place. All I knew was that one second I was saying something to my wife, and the next minute something was in my mouth, and suddenly I was bleeding and screaming.
Obviously my first thought was that I was being killed by aliens. This is not entirely accurate, although not entirely inaccurate either. What had happened was that Mouse was playing her favorite game of chase JJ until he runs at me, but it was dark, nobody saw them coming, and as JJ clawed and scrabbled his way over my wife he made a short leap and landed directly onto my face, his clawed foot going right into my open mouth.
The outside of my lip had two long cuts on it that started bleeding quite a bit, and I had another cut on the inside of my lip and one on my tongue. And I still had no idea what was going on. Something pointy was on my my face and in my mouth, but it was pitch black in the room and I was confused. I grabbed my furry attacker and flung it across the room, roaring in pain and sitting bolt upright, trying to discern what was going on. I knew there was pain, and as I felt and tasted my lips, I knew there was blood. My wife responded to my shouts of “What the @#$% just happened!? What the @#$% is going on?!” with the information that there had been a cat attack, and so I also knew that there would be cats dining in hell very shortly.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror surveying my injuries I reflected on the decisions in my life that had led me to this place. Why did we even have cats in the first place? I hate cats. I especially hate cats effective immediately. And we had kids if we wanted something to feed, clean up after, and get attacked by, so what did we need cats for? I’m so over the cats.
You will be happy to know that I survived my injuries and still retain full use of my face, although it really, really stung for several days, so that sucked. And I did not kill my cats, even though they clearly deserved it. In fact, I gave them pats and cuddles. But not that night. Stupid cats.