Bad Manners

I'm looking at my battle scarred hands, my right one in particular, as I put the third and final bandage laced with Neosporin over that bleeding claw gash on my third finger.  I've entered the twilight zone of battles with a little half grown cat, over which one of us has the rights to the food that is sitting on my dinner plate.  I'm losing...I'm losing big time to a little six pound furry fluff with the determination of a hundred gnashing piranhas anytime the concept of food turns on that light bulb in her head.

Restless Andee pins this youngster flat with the threat of gnashing teeth whenever she crisscrosses over him in her mad erratic rush each mealtime, trying to claw food from the can I hold just out of her amazingly lengthy reach.  She gets pinned to the counter top quite often during meal time, slowing her down each time for maybe a few seconds...maybe.  Zoe just runs for cover to her underworld of beds.

This cat, Lacey, will follow me to the ends of the earth...if I have food.  I've become the wild eyed piper of cat town dancing each morn and eve with a tantalizing dish of eats, leading this frenzying yowling fuzz ball down the carpeted path to bedroom to inhale her meal behind a hastily slammed shut door.  Andee and Zoe thank me.

Zoe declined to be a player this eve, and opted to just stay put in her comforting underworld of beds.  Andee poked along as usual causing half-pint to stay in her bedroom prison an extraordinarily long time, as usual.  Now all was calm...Lacey, gorged on eats and asleep on the top perch of cat tree; Andee, stuffed with lots of slow munching treats; and Zoe with her empty belly, half an hour later, sad eyed waiting for her meal in kitchen.

I fill the electric coffee pot and turn it on, little bubbles becoming big bubbles, creating my wall of sound that will drown out the silent preparation of Zoe's eats.  Zoe, Zoe, Zoe...a bit dim with that space between her fuzzy ears, blew my cover with three short loud meows before I could rush her dish to her favorite dinner spot.

My hand still on the dish; a wild glob of flying feet and chomping teeth, which sometimes goes by the name of 'you little shit', attacked Zoe's meal.  Zoe evaporated to her safe place while I unthinkingly picked the #!!$%&# fuzz ball up...let me rephrase that...while I unthinkingly tried to pick the #!!$%&# fuzz ball up.  Three puncture wounds and a zillion scratches later I gave up and let fuzz ball lick the dish clean.  Zoe just may not eat tonight.

I've found my threshold of misery...it's just two short steps that way...then my brain will fry and I'll be in loony heaven.  How could I let a little six pound furry fluff get the best of me?  Last night I just wanted a small toasted piece of sesame bread with a bit of butter melted over its surface...that's all...just a measly dumb idiotic piece of simple buttered toast.  Warm toast on plate, knife in hand, I peeled off the plastic lid and whoosh!!!  I know I saw a blur appear and disappear!  My butter tub was empty...what?  There was no one in sight.  Did I already go bonkers?  I walked around the counter island to see a growling fluff of fur gulping down the cup of butter she had snagged.

Last week I had my broiled fork-skewered chicken and apple sausage sitting on my plate minus the chewed end that I was happily swallowing as I began my meal.  A faint flash of something streaked across the table and my plate was empty.  Why, that little!!!!!  I chased her into the living room, then back into the kitchen, then back to the living room, then back to the kitchen, then under the dining table.  I wrestled her to the floor and was only able to rip that chunk of sausage from her clinched teeth because it was still skewered with my fork.  I won...yahoo!!!  I had my chewed up linty sausage back.

Two weeks ago a pungent odor attacked me as I unlocked my front door and stepped in.  What's that smell?  Ewuuuuu!!!  Why can't I remember what that smell belongs to?  Dustin got sick, the dog walker's note says; and she found two empty chewed up NuCat vitamin packages of 60 treats each on the floor...empty.  Dustin must have consumed a quart of water, pee peed many more times than usual, and upchucked in the living room, a very large upchuck.  Oh, goody.  One more in the hall and three in the bedroom I later discovered.  It was determined Lacey opened the cupboard and tried to eat the treats, but Dustin finished off most of them.  All edible cat paraphernalia was then begrudgingly transferred to pantry with a door that latches.

No thing's safe.  She knows new food is about to appear when the oven timer signals with its buzzing.  She's been caught numerous times trying to open that butterfly lid closing trash can in the kitchen.  The day she figures out sitting on one side and prying up the other works, we are so doomed; so we switched it with a top lid closing one only to find her later hanging by her front toes with her head under the lid, scratching the stainless steel in vain with her hind feet to get a boost into trash heaven.

She's finished off several half cans of pumpkin, dragged loaves of bread and packages of cheese off the counter with me in hot pursuit, ravaged biscuits and turnovers before they can cool on their wire racks, inhaled broccoli and salad fixings raw before I can grab her (although she seems to prefer her veggies al dente, from what she has stolen off the dinner plates), and races from counter top to freedom with anything that smells of food...plastic cat food lid covers, syringes used for the cod liver oil bottle, used forks and spoons, you get my drift.  She's a regular pain in the butt...causing us to flip coins to determine which of us will be unlucky.  Which of us will have to take their turn to check out the new sound coming from the kitchen that Lacey was just sited entering.

It's with heavy heart and a slight smile that I resort to this final act of desperation.  Do you think she'll fall for it?