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CATS

14 November 2015, 21:47

crreeeekkkkkkk. (bedroom door ajar)

MEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOW MEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOWMEEOWW MEOW meeeeowwww MEooww MEEOOWW MEEOW

I dislike cats. It’s not an active dislike, where I think about it much. In fact, I think I’m using the word “dislike” rather oddly here. It’s a dislike in where I don’t like them enough not to give them the benefit of the doubt about anything. I tolerate the kitties I have, and occasionally even LIKE them in the real sense of the word. Until they piss me off. And then the big ole’ FU comes out for them.

I like dogs. I like that dogs are so open about how they love you, and how they want to be with you. I like how they are predictable somewhat, and just mostly are good natured and goofy. Even my persnickety brown dog has a goofy neurosis that you can’t help but just love. They can do no wrong that will get them into any sort of serious trouble. I think they would have to kill a baby or something before I’d seriously be miffed. And that depends on the baby, I think. Dogs have always been, in my book of life, highly placed on the scale of acceptability with me. Humans, are FAR lower. Only very few humans I consider not painting with the “just no damn good” paintbrush, and most of them can maintain that distinction because I don’t see or interact with them much. Sociopathic? Misanthropic? I used to worry on how horrid a person that would make me, but now I don’t give a damn. I like you humans well enough. You rank above cats, at least.
I love animals. Just some animals more than others. I like MY cats well enough to feed them, medicate them and let them live in my house. Usually, I maintain a detente with the cats in my life. Only one or two of them have actually acted in the correct way to garner a more affectionate relationship with me. Not enough to give them unique names, but I do differentiate between them a bit. My best cat was Big Kitty. He was a big, black main coon cat that was laid back and never scratched or bit me. Folks think it was because I manhandled and messed with him so much, I broke his spirit. He let me play kitty paw drums with him, I could rub his head with my hands and pin his face skin back until he looked like an alien. I would get bored and make toilet paper garments for him or put his head in a dirty sock. In thinking of all the things “we’d” do, I have to admit it was a one sided interaction, in that I would do shit to him and he’d sit there and wait until it was over. Never scratched, bit, or squealed. Most of the time, I think he just did the equivalent of a feline eye roll. Poor Big Kitty went to Kitty Heaven, or put on his Nikes and rode that comet to the next plane of existence, or became worm dirt, or whatever happens after we cease to be. I miss him. He was all right.

HE was what kitties should be, and HE acted like how kitties should act.

We got some other kitties. Well. We got one kitty and the other just showed up in the air conditioning one day. Black Kitty, whom we adopted and Orange Kitty who just showed up and we kept, because, well…. I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t feeling THAT evil when we decided he could stay.

Black Kitty is fine. She’s actually a little ball of wonderful. She loves to be pet. She’s not scared at all of all the dog chaos we have going on around here. And she use to like me. We’ll get into the reasons why she has the cat contempt for me here in a minute. It’s the same reason why the other cat is not too fond of me either. Black Kitty acts like a dog. When the dogs run outside to bark at nothing, she runs out there with them. She cuddles with them, she follows them around the yard, she hangs out with them. She’s just groovy. Except. She has herpes. Feline herpes. It’s some chronic virus that causes her eyes to booger up and get gooey. She also gets like a respiratory condition thing. The vet said it was chronic and she’d have it all her life. When she has it bad, it gets pretty sad and gross. She gets eye drops and antibiotics for it. I’m not sure if the chronic part of it is contagious, but I think she gave it to the other cat. Orange Kitty. Orange Kitty, who until fairly recently, was a skitty asshole who treated this place like his own little bed and breakfast. He needed to get with the program and give me some lovin’ for his Friskies cause, I ain’t his landlord that poops out cat food out of the goodness of my black heart. I took it upon myself to grab this cat and make him love me every time I could catch his road running little ass. I like to think it was a successful line of behavior modification, because he now hangs out and acts almost like a pet. It may of worked too well, because he’ll show up early in the morning to walk all over my face as I sleep and bite protruding parts of me that aren’t covered by a blanket.

Both these cats got dah herpes. Gooey eyeballs, snot rockets and coughing. It was disgusting kitty city around here. Dogs were slurping up kitty boogers off their faces. They were sneezing into my hair and being quite sick.

As a good kitty mama, of which I’m not too enthused to do, I got them antibiotics. I feel that deep obligation to keep them healthy and amused so that I keep the good karma going and to keep whatever evil plans they are hatching against me on the back burner. No matter how sweet cats seem to be, I know enough about them to know they despise me and all that I represent. Their plans for dominion over me are always being refined and perfected. I know this because they stay gone all day, in the hidden corners, plotting and scheming and when they come back into the house. they look at me like I am just an obstacle to their eventual coup d’etat. I feel similar to the Shah of Iran on February 10th, 1979. I don’t let the kitties know that I’m on to them.

The dogs just want any errant bits of cheese and belly rubs.

The antibiotics are pretty gross to cats (dogs, humans, monkeys, etc.) It taste pretty nasty, and the capsule thing melts pretty fast so the white powdery crap is only contained for a short period of time. The really only experience I have with medication and animals is giving pills to dogs. If you wrap the pills in bacon, the dogs will eat it. But truthfully, I think I could wrap anything in bacon, and most anybody would eat it. So, as the medicine giver, you have to get the pill DOWN the gullet as fast as possible without too much pain, blood or stress.

And, aye, that is the rub my friend. The first couple time I poked these things down the cats throats, they just swallowed and acted annoyed. I thought “HELLYA. This is EASY PEASY!!”

I was never more wrong than this.

Both cats learned quickly that me coming at them smelling like bacon grease was the signal for both of them to scatter. They ran like their asses were on fire out the doggie door to parts unknown and wouldn’t come back for a LONG time. Since I’m not as smart as a cat, it took me a few times to start putting that doggie door in before I tried to medicate these animals. I have to admit, the first time Orange Kitty ran full force into the plastic door, bounced off and flew spread eagle across the floor, I laughed. Don’t judge me. Sometimes stuff is funny.

Anyhow, the difference in giving a cat a pill versus the dog a pill besides the time, injury count and success rate, is that cats fight back in a BIG way. Even though we had a couple of sessions where the cat just took the pill and swallowed it, they didn’t learn that if they would just DO that, there would not be 15 minutes of saliva, blood (mine), injury (mine), howling (cats) and stress. If I got the pill into the back of the mouth and shut their maws, they would just swallow it and we would have a little love session where I gave kisses and told them how good of a kitty they were.

Sometimes I would get bit. A lot of times, I would get clawed. And unlike dog claws, cats have flesh ripping needles on the ends of their feet and miniature shark teeth that really fucking hurt. I usually ended up with a bunch of holes in my arm, and back, and one time, my head. There’s pill paste made from the powder and kitty drool that is smeared all over my face. Sometimes the pill would partially dissolve and get stuck in kitty fur. I had pull a pill where it had attached itself under the cat’s armpit while it was scratching off my face off. One of the kitties had hopped on my back, dug all four paws in deep to use me as a launching pad for its escape.

I have about a dozen or so welts from cat punctures (because I have an allergy to cats, the scratches and punctures tend to develop into something akin to Freddy Kruger claw marks). On top of that, the cats have decided that I don’t get lovin’. Fuuuuucccccckkk….

I’ve been doing this shit for about two weeks, and I’m happy to say everybody is on the mend from their herpes. Orange Kitty looks almost all better and Black Kitty doesn’t look drippy gross like she use to, though I think she’ll never fully get rid of whatever this is, I’m just hoping for a lower level of mucus.

But. I’m persona non-grata with kitties now. Spiffy. I can’t really say I’m surprised. I’m trying to decide whether this is good or bad, considering…

I do like kittens though. If only they just didn’t grow up….