Hi. Mrs. Curmudgeon here. Thought you might like to hear more cat stories, especially because this one is stranger than fiction. And yeah-okay, I might have become a crazy cat lady if not for marrying the cat-despising Curmudgeon – but who are you to judge, huh? Cats are more than a necessary evil, they purr. Can you purr when you sleep? I didn’t think so! (and if you can – dude! you better get that shit checked out with a doc.)
Once upon a time, many years ago, when the Curmudgeon was not on the terrorist watch list and still allowed to cross borders, we adopted a street cat from a foreign city and brought it home to America. Perhaps it was its time on the streets as a kitten, or the drugs we gave it for the plane ride, or that secret ninja training program A.C. was working on… but it became an unusually aggressive cat. Even as a kitten it would run up and over a standing adult human being. It was cute to have a kitten run up a pant leg to perch on your shoulder or on top of your head until it weighed more than 6 ounces and its claws started carving out flesh as it climbed your body like it was a carpet-covered cat condo. Soon the kitten grew into a cat that did not just chase your bare feet in the morning, but jumped from the floor straight to your face and tried to bite your eyeballs out of the sockets. We had to carry weapons (a baseball bat and plastic laundry basket) to fend it off! As soon as you drifted off to sleep it would pounce on your throat and try to rip out your jugular. We had to lock it out of the bedroom at night. My co-workers were worried that I was a battered wife and A.C.’s co-workers suspected he had started an underground fight club!
We decided to take a vacation, possibly to escape the cat, and found a cat utopia (private rooms with litter box and views, a play room that included a cat walk with rope bridges and hammocks, an outdoor garden with catnip and a bird feeder – seriously this place was nicer than where we stayed) where we could kennel the cat while we were gone. When we returned we were handed back the cat in a small carrying case with metal bars and told we would have to pay vet bills for multiple other cats and we were never to return with that hideous demon we called a cat. On our way out the husband of the proprietress pssted to us, and motioned we follow him to a corner. “You didn’t hear this from me, but try adopting a kitten. If that thing doesn’t kill it, it will settle into a parental role and be much less aggressive.”
Well… I had this gorgeous just-turned-twenty co-worker who’s desperate-to-get-laid boyfriend had just bought her a generic pet store kitten ($169.99 with accoutrements) because of a sad story about how her childhood was ruined by a sister who was allergic to cats. She loathed it. It shredded her stockings, scattered her make-up, broke her favorite baubles and scratched up her most expensive shoes. It had to GO! The kitten, that is, not the boyfriend. Well maybe not the boyfriend… I think that depended how fast he got rid of the kitten. Taking pity on the boyfriend, and apparently not the kitten, I adopted it and took it home to face our wild beast.
Betting on the tiny kitten’s life may have occurred as plans for how to best introduce the two felines were discussed. Meanwhile the current homicidal household cat was hissing and growling and scrabbling inside the box with the metal bars and the kitten was gamboling on the floor in front of it. In the end we simply let the seething demon out of its cage. He immediately pounced on the kitten, wrestled it into a headlock, and systematically chewed off all its whiskers, once that was done he gave the kitten a bath and settled down for a nap with the kitten nestled against his stomach purring. Overnight he became a calm well-behaved cat. I guess sometimes your pet just needs a pet of its own…and that is how Zombie Cat came to live with us when he was an itty-bitty kitten.
Next-up “Zombie Cat the Formative Years”
My Lady’s cat, when I first knew her, would launch itself onto visitors from assorted high places. Not attack, exactly. It never bit, unless severely provoked, but being on the receiving end of a parabolic cat is unnerving at best.
I solved this problem, more or less by accident, by being far less concerned about the cat’s delicate health than everybody else. I reasoned that if IT thought it could survive a botched 12′ jump. it could survive a similar THROW. Not aiming to hurt the cat by throwing it into pointy objects, just returning unnerving force for unnerving force.
The Cat and I were henceforward firm friends.
Since then I have folioed the assumption that a cat of dog needs to be informed that you are dominant, and once that argues the issue too much will be happier elsewhere. It works a treat.