A Fight with a Loved One, But I'm No Michael Vick

                I got into a fight with a loved one yesterday evening.  I am not proud to admit it, but that little shit just got on my nerves!  First off, let me say that I am not a violent person, nor am I abusive.  But last night, I did get into a fight with my little black cat, who has graced me with his companionship and constant presence for over ten years now.  He is 12-years old, cute as always, young at heart and spirit, and still youthful in appearance and physical ability.  The only step he’s lost that I’ve noticed is his interest and stamina to chase something (a cat toy on a string, laser light, etc.) around the room, which has considerably reduced.  Now that I’m thinking about it, he doesn’t do the “crazy cat” routine, which is when he makes a little cat-revving noise, then runs all over the place from room to room, floor to floor.  Maybe he’s embarrassed to perform such acts in the presence of his younger sister, who joined the household two years ago after the remnants of Hurricane Ivan blew through the region having been downgraded into a big ass windstorm.  She just came to the house and was like, “yeah, this is where I live now.”

                Such accolades for this fine young man, and what, pray tell, led to a fight, you ask?  Well, he is just a talker, who doesn’t shy away from lecturing me with a monologue of meows, which I’m sure are complex, deeply contemplated theories of his as to why he feels compelled to remind me to feed him immediately upon getting up in the morning and returning from work.  I have never forgotten to feed the cats, mind you, but it is a daily routine for mealtimes as well as at snack time, the latter which is typically around 8:30pm or 9pm.  Without fail, he just goes on and on about it.

                Yesterday, when I returned from work, we had normal conversation as I took my snow-wet hiking boots off and collected the mail.  (Snow days are novelty days for me and I like to wear my hiking boots to work because they make me feel badass.)  “What?  Did you miss me?”  “Meow! (yes!)”  “Did you have a good day?”  “Meow! (yes!)” 

                Just when the conversation was going well, he launched into his tirade of culinary demands.  “What?” I asked him.  “Are you starving?  Am I not feeding you?  Am I neglecting you, you poor thing?” to which he no doubt responded that I was a sorry son-of-a-bitch for being away so long at work.  I kissed him and petted him, ignoring his asinine attitude: You, my wonderful cat, are so cute, I will not fall prey to your attempts to manipulate my emotions.  I am going to have a good day, so there!

                I filled the cats’ bowls and proceeded to prepare dinner.  I bought chicken this past weekend, so I best use it up.  I looked through The Joy of Cooking for a new recipe, but resorted to my staple Chicken and Dumplings, a deliciously simple recipe. 

                I prepped the veggies as well as the dry ingredients for the dumplings.  I then took out the chicken to rinse and cook in the cast iron skillet (these are great.  Try one.  You will thank me later, as long as you never wash it with soap.).  Somehow, as always, he-cat was on to me instantaneously about having flesh in my possession.  It’s like Gary Larson’s Far Side strip where the husband cat tells his wife to turn off the can opener because the neighbor cat couple was coming over for tuna. 

“Meow-meow-meow-meow-meow…”  He was going off on me! 

I ignored him and continued to wash the chicken and then threw the pieces into the heated pan with some olive oil.  He knew chicken was in play.  Oh, man.  He was being incessant!  I removed the chicken from the pan and let it cool while I fried some onions.  I then decided to pull off the chicken from the bones and cut them up into small pieces, and returned them to the pan taking some liberties from the instructions given by Irma Rombauer and Co.   In the meantime, I decided to simmer the bones with some raw flesh clinging to it in a separate pan to make chicken stock.  My plan was to pull off the meat and give it to the cats later…

Later indeed.  I finished cooking and turned off the small pot with the chicken scraps and stock to let it cool.  I proceeded to mess with the computer, which was also being my enemy last night by getting precious Windows Updates, and wasted time while dinner was cooking.  Where was he-cat?  I went to the kitchen to refill on some wine and… NO YOU DIDN’T!!!  There was he-cat on the kitchen floor smacking his lips, having successfully fished out a meat-infused ribcage portion of the chicken!  I grabbed him from the floor, “MEOW!” he protested, and moved him away.  I was mad as hell, since he certainly fished it out with his paw, which also goes into the litter box and shit.  There goes the chicken stock, you little shit!  I was so mad I grabbed his little ass and tossed him outside into the wintery air so I could figure out what to do with the chicken stock, although I knew it was done for. 

She-cat was all jealous, like, “Why’s he get to go outside in the snow and I don’t?”  So I relented and let her go out, although I was planning on giving her plenty of chicken as a reward.  (She-cat is never bad like that.  She’s bad by clawing at furniture, but not jumping up on the stove…)  After about three-minutes, I let the cats back in.  It gave me enough time to pull off the meat from the bones and onto a plate.  I gave up on the stock and decided to put it away in the fridge for the cats on a different day.  I let she-cat eat while I held he-cat to watch as a consequence.  I’m afraid it taught him absolutely nothing, and the silliness of what I was doing did strike me, but I had to admit that it felt somewhat satisfying.

After she-cat had her fill, which is never very much, I let he-cat have at the meat, which he demolished in seconds.  Ridiculous.  He didn’t even seem to appreciate it much.  Gone.  Just like that.

Later that evening, I heard he-cat trying to break into my chicken and dumplings.  That was it!  I grabbed him and took him upstairs and tossed him onto my bed.  He protested with meow-growls as I kept tossing him onto my bed every time he would jump down, in hopes that he would stay upstairs instead of going to the kitchen to attempt more break-ins to the vault-full of leftovers.  I don’t know why my patience waned so quickly on him, as I knew he couldn’t get the heavy cast-iron skillet lid off to get to the food.  But then he batted at me!  What?  You little shit!  I held him and kissed his head, while petting him, still mad as hell.  Maybe I was petting him a little roughly, but I was intent on calming down.  He was mad as hell, too.  “Asshole!” we seemed to say in unison, as we danced our elaborate love/hate-petting/growl tango. 

I laid on my bed with him as we both calmed down and I petted his head as he would push his head into my hand, purring, but still hyped up a bit.  We both calmed down and I realized that on this very day I had read about Michael Vick wanting to have a pet dog.  I had left a comment saying that he shouldn’t because I could see him cussing out his dog and hitting it for getting up on its hind legs and reaching the kitchen counter to eat human food, which would no doubt piss off the dogfighting champ-turned convict-turned comeback player of the year candidate.  My bad, Vick.  Do as I say, not as I do.  You still don’t deserve a pet dog.

A Late Night Visitor

                I generally get to bed at a reasonable hour, but on Saturday night, I indulged in watching mindless television, starting at what is typically my bedtime, 11pm.  The programs I watched were surprisingly entertaining, one series with a Sci-Fi storyline, the other, a relationship/comedy series which made me laugh with a guffaw at times.  I wasn’t sure if the programs were newly syndicated or not, but the end of the credits for the first show indicated that it was moving to a new day and time come January, so at least that one is a primetime show that was catching late-nighters such as myself that was doing nothing social on a Saturday night. 

I hate to get pulled into television shows because I always feel like I’m wasting my time in front of a box (I don’t have a fancy flat screen and use rabbit ears whose wires are held together with Scotch Tape and one of those heavy duty black metal office paper clips with the two metal squeezy-thing-a-ma-jigs that open and close the clamp) when I could be doing other things.  But these two shows were on late (for me) Saturday night, too late to do anything productive with exception to fixing me a cup of hot chocolate or a bowl (or two) of ice cream.

                One of my cats lovingly sat on my sprawled out blanket-covered legs as I watched television, but the other had slipped out and gone upstairs.  I could hear her occasionally jump to the floor with a surprisingly loud “thud”; nothing unusual as that is the typical sound cats make when they jump off a bed or dresser and land.  Maybe they're surprisingly loud when they land because they have small feet and they concentrate their weight onto their four small paws, landing on all four at the same time.  Come to think of it, they seem to land on all four paws together more often than not, rather than consecutive “thump-thumps” as if in step.

                What was unusual, however, is that I heard her jump off and land several times.  Typically, at such an hour, she might go upstairs and be sleeping on the bed or more likely, be on the couch with me making occasional cute noises as she yawns.  I thought it odd, but inevitably lost myself in the television shows.  See?  The evils of television?  Not only does it rarely promote one to think, but it has a sedating effect that distracts.  More on the evils of television at another time, because the shows served its purpose for the night: distract and entertain.  Thank goodness!

                I went upstairs and got ready for bed much later than I was used to: 2am!  Damn that television!  I started to undress when I caught a quick flitter in the corner of my eye, as my she-cat sat on the bed tracking this very same shadowy element.  What in the…?  Oh, geez!  This is no shadow or late-night induced illusion!  I ducked and moved away to avoid this wraith as my heart started to pound, adrenaline excreting thanks to the unexpected startling. 

It’s a bat!  Man, it’s winter, and cold outside!  Don’t you have a cave to go hibernate in?  I immediately put my shirt back on because I didn’t want some bat disease, you know?  A similar thing happened once before about five or six years ago in the summertime, and a bat that managed to get into the house landed onto my bare back while I was trying to capture it to release it!  Not again, Mr. Bat.  I will not fall for such trickery!  Since that incident several years ago, I recall coming across information that bats tend to carry diseases.  I suppose I could look it up and add a link as proof, much like I’m finding many of the proficient bloggers do as I join in this exhibitionist act of web logging.  But I don’t have the patience to figure all of that out right now.  Maybe once I start writing more socially consequential blogs I’ll give it a try, but this one is about a bat and my personal rants and raves for Pete’s sake.

I was surprised at the silence of the bat’s flight.  I expected to hear it chirp to echo-locate objects such as myself, the walls, etc., but it just fluttered around in circles silently.  The other remarkable thing was how long it just flew around in circles.  Round and round it went, like a child’s toy plane on a string that’s twirled around an axis.  It didn’t seem to run out of steam. 

Luckily, almost immediately when I came upstairs, she-cat left the bedroom, allowing me to close the door and trap Mr. Bat in the bedroom.  I truly have no idea if the bat was male or female, but I'll just make him a boy bat.  Mr. Bat continued to fly around, back and forth along the length of my bedroom, at times appearing to be making a beeline for my face, as I would back away or duck.  I finally got used to his false-charges and trusted that the bat would veer away at the last moment, which he did.  I proceeded to open a window, hoping he would somehow realize that freedom existed just beyond the two-foot opening.  No such luck.  He just kept circling and circling, hovering along the ceiling for the most part.  I grabbed a shirt hoping to catch him in mid-air as though with a net, but damn, this thing is not only elusive, but exceptionally agile in flight.  I guess that’s why bats can snatch insects in flight so proficiently. 

After over 10-minutes of constant flying, the poor chap started to lose his energy reserves.  He finally landed onto the right-hand corner of the door jamb after three attempts of bumping into it and fluttering about, doing more fly-bys around me.  But the instant I turned toward his make-shift perch, off to the races he went once again.  The next two times he landed and flew again it became increasingly obvious that he was getting tired, with his flight path veering closer and closer to the floor.  Finally, he landed on the floor – a bat’s landing is rarely graceful - and nestled beneath the electrical cords to my lamp and clock by my bed.  I tossed my shirt on top of him, and could see his folded wings and little hands exposed, laying still. 

I gently picked up Mr. Bat, who was negligible in weight.  As though an antitheft alarm, he started to chirp in constant staccato fashion that reminded me of some kind of secret government transmitter.  Peep!  Peep!  Peep!  Peep!  I hurriedly carried him to the open window, hoping that he would fly out to freedom, which I assume he did, because he did not fly back in.  I quickly closed the window and was pleased with a job well done.  I just hope he didn’t die in the night by freezing to death…  I think I will avoid learning about the winterization techniques of bats out of fear that I sent him to his death, although he would have met certain death had he remained in my house.  Good luck, Mr. Bat.