I swore I would never have one in my house. Never again. Not after what I went through as a kid. All the allergy problems. All the sinus problems. The itchy, watery eyes. The sneezing. The constant runny nose and general feeling of breathing sand spurs.
Cats! I swore I would never have one, and if for some unexplainable reason I did, I would definitely never have one IN my house.
I’m allergic to cats, and yet as a kid grew up with several indoor critters who made sure that heavy, red bags hung beneath my eyes. Teachers used to ask if I had been sniffing industrial strength solvents.
When I went off to college, and the haze of the world seemed to clear up, I figured I was done with cats, especially indoors
And I made it almost 25 years … until last week.
That is when one of the adopted porch cats we inherited from a deceased neighbor needed a surgical procedure to take care of a tumor on his forehead. The cat is a domesticated stray, pretty old, deaf and only has four teeth. He also had this growth on his head that he kept scratching.
So somehow we got it in our heads that we should have the tumor removed. When you’ve had it rough, I guess we figured you deserve some little perk or pleasure in life, especially in your golden years.
Only, as our nice vet explained, this meant the cat would need to spend over a week in a cone … in the house. The outside cat would need to come IN-side. Like OUR side. Where we live. And breathe. And don’t allow cats.
The cat wasn’t so keen on the deal either. He’s spent his whole life living on the streets and was more than happy to voice his opinion in a way that sounded like haunted bagpipes.
We setup a large puppy playpen in a front room. It’s like a canvas crate with lots of mesh windows and a top that can be unzipped for easy access to feed and de-foul the enclosed critter. He’s never experienced mesh before. Or litter boxes. Or post-surgery cones. Or that after using the litter box you should definitely not drag your cone around in the gravel. It’s now a common sound in my house to hear someone screaming: “EMERGENCY … QUICK … POOP IN THE CONE!!! … POOP IN THE CONE!!!”
Since he’s deaf, he has no concept about his own volume or what constitutes acceptable levels. It’s hard to describe the yelps of a deaf cat in a post-surgery cone: something akin to a banshee and a cursing trucker having an argument.
The first couple of nights when this car alarm-of-a-cat would go off, we would run in expecting to find him in mortal pain or fighting off bandits. But this was just his way of saying he didn’t care for the litter box. (He found it uncivilized.)
So we started ignoring the nocturnal sounds of the cat wailing. “He’s fine,” I would say to my wife in bed. “We’ll check on him in a little bit.”
Only, one night it seemed to be growing louder, and closer, until …
“OH MY GOD!” I screamed. “HE’S IN OUR ROOM!!!”
It was full-on horror movie. My wife and I jumped from bed to find the deaf, screeching cat staring at us. Somehow he had managed to free himself from the puppy playpen. He wanted breakfast.
We’re over it. My sinuses feel like a piston engine mis-firing, I’ve never changed so many litter pans and the cone will need to be burned after all of this. I’m ready to go back to my pledge of a cat-free house. And luckily for me, the cat feels the exact same way.