The Cat And I – Part II

Yes, I made kitty scared. It didn’t do me any favors, either. When it got to the top of my head, it grabbed on and did the dog-shaking-a-dead-rodent routine. It wanted to be SURE I knew it was serious. I knew. Hence, the screaming.

Head wounds bleed - a lot. And bleeding from an attack causes strange utterances that bring children flying. Bo and The Wild Man stood at the top of the stairs crying. I hollered at them to stay put as I considered my options in two seconds flat. The cat had made for the front door – which was now closed – but it seemed not to recognize that fact. I was right behind it to try and catch Grizzly before he drove away and there it was, spread eagle and plastered like something right out of a Tom & Jerry cartoon. All I could think of was to get that cat OUT of my house. It felt the same way. I grabbed the door and, just before we parted company forever, I looked into those eyes and realized they were yellow, not green, like Bess’s. Wishful thinking makes you slow on the uptake apparently.

Grizzly was pulling away from the curb when a crazy woman with streaming blood started yelling for him to stop. He pulled his truck over and came flying out.

“Oh my LORD, Robynn, what HAPPENED?!”

“The cat wasn’t Bess!” I managed to offer from somewhere behind my veil of gore. Grizzly said later he was afraid to look because he thought my eye had been ripped out. Why it wasn’t was absolutely Providential. I had a puncture below my eye and above it.

“Get to the kitchen sink!” he roared while bellowing at the kids that mommy was gonna be okay. They were unconvinced and howled pitifully. I grabbed a dish towel and shoved it onto the top of my head trying to staunch the flow. It worked. When we thought it was safe we took it off to try and clean things up and survey the damage. It was obvious a needle and thread were in order.

Now, if you ever have an emergency, DON’T call my mother. She cannot leave the house without an appropriate pantsuit and makeup on. I forgot this small detail when I grabbed the phone, towel pressed to my head.

“Uh, mom? I need you to come over right away. A stray cat attacked me, I’m bleeding and need some stitches, and I need you to stay with the kids.” Seemed straight forward.

“What happened?” she responded and I repeated myself. “Mom, I need to go to the emergency room so come right away.” It was 6:45 in the morning. My mother lives four miles away. By 7:30 she still hadn’t come and we decided we could just wait until the doctor’s office opened at 8:00. I hadn’t bled to death yet so that seemed promising.

She pulled up at 7:45. Had to feed the dog, too, she explained.

While we waited we took advantage of the time to comfort the kids, calm them down, and explain that their grandmother was insane. It had to come out sooner or later.

When we arrived at the doctor’s office he pooh-poohed the whole thing and said I probably just needed a band-aid. Then he pulled the towel off and suddenly changed his mind. And he stitched my scalp back together. Then I contemplated sewing his cheeks together, and I’m not talking about the ones that framed his unsympathetic mouth. Hubris in physicians definitely highlights my sweet Christian nature.

“Where’s the cat?’ he asked as we wrapped up.

“I have no idea,” I replied.

“Do you think you can catch it?” he astutely inquired.

“I’m thinking NOT since I have no idea, uh, WHERE IT IS, and I’ve never seen it before today.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate. Because we can’t observe it to see whether it’s sick or not. It’s probably fine but you may need to think about rabies shots. You better call the Health Department. They administer rabies shots in people.”

So I called.

They informed me our area had an unusually high rate of rabies in skunks. Nothing reported in cats but they couldn’t be sure. And since the cat couldn’t be located – and we tried – it seemed best to proceed.

All I could think of was the old horror stories about shots in the abdomen. It wasn’t nearly that bad. These days, all they have to do is give you a series of shots, on three or four different occasions, RIGHT in the wounds, wherever the animal bit you - three on my face and one on my head. But the doctor was really nice so nothing happened to his posterior.

However, the pain during healing was phenomenal. I know because every time Grizzly passed by me he scratched the top of my head with his fingers in that loving way parents do with children. The first time he did it I cried for ten minutes. He felt terrible and was beside himself. He had done this to me for years and just reached out from habit. I recovered and forgave him.

And then he did it again the next day.

I decided to lay on the couch with a shotgun across my chest.

The good news is, I won’t get rabies. I’m probably due for a booster, though. And tags. And a license. And I like to think I modeled bad behavior for my children so they could see that it’s not always wise to grab stray animals.

Like my refrigerator magnet says, “If you can’t be a good example, be a terrible warning.” After all, what are mothers for?

If you’re not sure, just ask mine. But not right now. She’s looking for her makeup.

Copyright 2009

Please drop in to my other blog 30 Day Throw Down for the latest on our efforts to exercise so we can speed away from marauding stray cats.

And THEN It Ripped My Head Off...

To celebrate my 200th post. I think I deserve cake. :)

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Last winter, when I wrote about Punxsutawney Phil and Gopher Guts, I said I’d save the cat story for a more appropriate time, like Halloween. Maybe you didn’t believe me. Maybe you were lucky enough to have never heard of me last winter. Those halcyon days are over and October is now here. And I feel obliged to purge myself of another animal story.

I have to start by telling you that absolutely nothing good happens when people approach my side of the bed and wake me up.

We’ve all had the middle of the night declarations from our precious bundles that go something along the lines of:

“I have to frow up.”

“My froat hurts.”

“The cat frew up.”

“The dog halves diareeeeeuh.”

(My children just stopped talking like this last week. I still do.)

But declarations from my husband, Grizzly, have been FAR worse.

We have a morning routine that rarely changes. It varies between excessive snooze alarms (him), and pillows on the head (me). I go to bed much later than he does so I ATTEMPT to get up after him which works a couple of times a week. If I am successful and sleep through the fire station alarm clock, I wake up shortly after he leaves. However, the handful of times he has appeared at my bedside to purposely wake me, it’s never been to tell me how fetching I look in the morning or to declare his undying love. I feel it should be accompanied by nitroglycerin pills to get my heart started again.

“Someone bashed out your car windows.” (Two of them. On my birthday.)

“Something’s stuck in JoJo’s stomach and she’s trying to eat the carpet. I’ve gotta go but you better do something.” (A rawhide bone and she ate three square feet of an area rug trying to shove it on through.)

“The cat got a bird and there are feathers and blood all over the living room.” (Which time?)

“All the animals are standing around the couch staring at the floor. I think there’s something alive under there. Gotta go.” (There was, but that’s another story.)

But once, ONE time, there were sweet words. Longed for words:

“Robynn, I think Bess is home.”

Bess? Our treasured and much mourned cat?!

The very words had me on my feet and flying down the stairs, with random clothes being thrown on backwards. Grizzly said he had been leaving for work when he suddenly spotted her sitting in the yard. Our dear, beloved cat. The five-year-old Wild Man’s dear, beloved cat. She had vanished into thin air three months earlier. He cried for a week. We had walked miles and posted countless fliers with her photo front and center.

Bess loved the Wild Man passionately and she considered me a close second. When we slept she would go from bed to bed, curling up next to our faces and falling asleep with an outstretched paw touching our cheeks. And now his cheek and his bed were desperately lonely and he could barely talk about her.

But here was Grizzly telling me she was back. I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to lay my hands on her as I carefully crept out the front door, trying not to alarm her. Grizzly had warned me that she looked a little spooked and disoriented.

“Go easy,” he advised. “She seems a little out of it. It is her, isn’t it?”

“YES, it’s her!” I answered. “And of course she seems out of it. She’s been gone all this time.”

“Well, be careful. She might freak out or something and I’ve gotta go to work. Let me know.”

I approached slowly and bent down to collect her in my arms. She’d always been a gorgeous cat with luxurious snow-white fur. Now she looked a little worse for the wear and I wondered where she’d been. She was definitely wild-eyed but let me hold her to my chest while I made my way back into the house.

“Robynn, be careful!” Grizzly warned again.

“She’s fine!” I assured him. “Just a little shaken up,” and with that I said good-bye and shut the door.

Bess was home.

If I was smart I would just write “The End” right here.

The problem is, I’ve never really struggled that much with smart, which became painfully evident. I was an old-time cat wrangler. I had never met a cat I didn’t want to keep, hold, rescue, or spend a small fortune on. I thought loving every cat in the world would make every cat love me. I was fearless. Besides, why would I be afraid of my own cat?

I sat down on the couch and cradled her in my arms. I talked baby talk to her. (Doesn’t everyone talk to animals in baby talk?) Her body remained clenched. I gently scratched the sides of her face.

Bess had been one of four kittens Grizzly had rescued from a drainage pipe one day, while he was working. Heavy equipment roaring past guaranteed their demise as they wobbled out on shaky legs. Mama cat had been frightened off so what could he do but bring them home? Two white females and two gray tabby males. He said we’d raise them through kittenhood and then find homes. Oh. Okay. Our two cat household became six.

Three years later, I sat on the couch trying to reassure a terrified Bess. Her litter mates made their way into the living room. Lifted noses sniffed the air and stopped dead in their tracks. They absolutely didn’t know her. She suddenly realized they were there. And just as suddenly, she realized she absolutely didn’t know them, either. Apparently, I was the only one present who didn’t know the cat I held was NOT Bess. What happened next is hard to explain unless you’ve ever been attacked by a mountain lion.

I felt her lurch and I tried to hang on. That was a mistake I figured out later - during recovery. She attached herself to my face. I tried to peel her off which she apparently interpreted as my attempt to throw her into a volcano filled with wolves. She chomped my cheek, climbed by nose, dived between my eyes, and landed on top of my head. In a frenzy, I still grabbed at her, trying to stop the attack. She figured I was now trying to personally consume her so she sank her fangs into my skull and ripped. She won. I let go. And I screamed. Not on purpose. It was just sort of natural and organic, you might say, under the circumstances. The circumstances included child-birth-like pain, the sound of tooth on cranium (think T-Rex eats lawyer in Jurassic Park), gushing blood, and a cat recently launched off my head.

…….To Be Continued

Copyright 2009