~ spoiler alert ~ Mrs. Curmudgeon says DO NOT read the following post if you are squeamish or prone to nightmares OR if you have read Steven King’s “Pet Cemetery” because this shit will freak you the fuck out, OK? You were warned! ~ spoiler alert ~
“Short Ears,” formerly “Short Bus Kitty,” got on well for a number of years. He was a pleasant cat in that drooling moron kinda way. He was not the best mouser, but not for lack of trying and he did catch a mouse occasionally. He cooperated well as a part of the squirrel-catching team with the other cats, and though we was at the bottom of the pecking order, even amongst the chickens, he didn’t seem to mind. He lost his flabbiness and took on that wizened old tom look at about his 13th year with us, and that was when shit got weird.
One night I came home and found Short Ears with his face completely covered with clotted blood, his fur matted with mud and streaked with scratches, and even more of his left ear missing. A closer inspection of the slumped, dejected, and hissing cat under the outdoor faucet revealed a bite mark on the left side of his face that had completely taken out his eye and a large chuck of his ear. It looked like a coyote or dog had grabbed him by the head, but Short Ears had wrenched himself free, and the teeth of his enemy had raked the side of his face gouging out his eye and a chunk of his cheek and ended in snapping off what remained of his ear. It looked like whatever it was had also gotten a taste of his haunch, but could not hold on. He was lucky to be alive!
I talked to the vet on the phone, but other than the missing eye, none of the injuries where deep enough to require stitches. The vet said there was nothing to be done about the eye. “What is gone is gone.” She told me to clean out the eye socket, making sure any lingering grisly details hanging on were plucked out and disposed of. (Gross!! Okay – maybe I didn’t do that part. I swiped in there with a finger once while holding my eyes tight shut and decided that was as exploratory as I wanted to get.) Then clean the socket once a day until it scabs over and it should heal on its own. So that is what I did (sort off) and it did heal just fine. “Short Ears” became “Pirate Cat” and we got used to seeing his scarred and lopsided ugly mug staring through the window of the chicken barn at night when we fed the chickens.
Then one dark night about six months later, right near Halloween time, when A.C. was out of town and the kids were staying overnight at a friend’s house and I was feeding the chickens all by myself, Pirate Cat transformed into “Zombie Cat!” I had just finished and was hanging the water bucket on the hydrant near the window, when a dark shape hit the window with a soft thud and I heard Pirate Cat’s rusty honking meow. I looked up and saw two bright cat eyes glowing at me through the window – TWO!! “Holy Shit!” I exclaimed and jumped back. I glanced at the designated cat area in the barn and noted the other two cats were right there where I had just left them a couple of minutes ago. Must be a cat interloper out there I thought and said “Go get the intruder boys – he’s beating up Pirate Cat – sic ‘um!” But the cats just looked insolently offended and when back to licking their own asses. So I went to investigate armed with a rake and a flashlight.
I locked up the barn and started shining my light around listening for cat-fighting noises, but all was quiet. “Here Kitty, Kitty…. here kitty, kitty…” I called. Then I felt something brush my leg and I heard Pirate Cat’s familiar rusty meow. “So you chased him off, huh? Good kitty!” I said as I bent down to pet him and he looked up at me with his two shining eyes! I screamed. I dropped the rake. I stepped on the rake, got hit in the side of the face with the rake handle just like in a cartoon, and then in fending off the rake handle got tangled up in the rake and fell down. I threw the rake off me and still lying on my back felt around for the flashlight which was actually still in my hand, yeah, the other hand. Zombie Cat jumped on my chest purring and stared me right in the face. I figured out which hand the flashlight was in and shined it in his face. I think I was hoping that it had been a trick of the light. Somehow in the low light things had reflected just right off his empty socket or the shiny scar tissue, but nope, nope, nope – that fucker now had two good eyes.
My bowels went all watery feeling as my sphincter puckered to 11 and all the hair on my body stood on end. I threw that cat off me a good six feet away (yes – I throw like a girl – duh!) and ran for the house. I raced in and locked the door and then sunk down with my back against it just like in the horror movies. Then I crawled to the phone and dialed the Foxinator. She used to be a vet tech so she KNOWS shit.
“Help! Pirate Cat grew his eye back! I got a good solid look and what was an empty socket is now holding an eyeball. And it moves!! I think he can actually see out of it. It was so creepy – like the cat from Pet Cemetery! I am totally losing my shit here!”
“Stop panicking and put on your big girl panties. Eyeballs do not regenerate. they just don’t! I don’t know what you think you saw, but you didn’t. It’s just not possible.”
“Maybe it’s the zombie virus and the zombie apocalypse is happening right now but we don’t know it yet. By tomorrow morning we may all be dead!”
“You have been watching too much Netflix and listening to your husband’s dumbass conspiracy theories a little too closely haven’t you honey? Take a stiff drink and call me in the morning, k?”
“OK. But I am telling you that cat has two eyes!”
Next up “Zombie Cat Epitaph”
