When you have a pet – cat, dog, bird, whatever – you quickly learn to listen to and interpret their telltale signs to know when things are normal and when they’re not.
Our cat has some very natural, distinct sounds. He purrs like a motorboat when he’s happy; meows vociferously when he’s hungry; barks like a dog when there’s a squirrel in the yard. Even his non-verbal sounds, so to speak, are very distinct. He wears a bell on his collar, so even when he’s prowling the house we can hear the ting-ting-ting of the bell; he has a metal nametag as well (that reads “Fast Eddie: Badass Cat.” I’m not making that up) that can be heard throughout the house banging against his metal food dish, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding; the pitter-pat of his clawless front paws as he walks about, pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat; the click of the claws on his back paws, click-click-click-click-click.
When you understand your pet’s natural sounds, you become keen to the unnatural ones.
For instance, the cat drinking out of the toilet bowl, slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp; the sound of a stream of liquid at 45 psi, striking anything but a plastic litter box as he pisses on the comforter, or in my shoes, sssssssssssssss; the howl that precedes the hack that precedes a hairball, YEEEOW-YEEEOW-khack… khack… khack…. Blurph; the casual, curious, almost whiny meow preceding a huge deuce, wha-whaaaa-wha… hmmmm… schlop-schlop…… schlop…
So Sara and I were both awake instantly this morning when the cat was out of the bed like a bolt of lightning, an hour before the alarm was set to go off. That in itself isn’t uncommon, but the sound he was making was. Instead of the tell-tale pitter-patter to the litter box, generally his first activity of the day, it was a more labored and deliberate pu-puh-pu-puh-pu-puh, almost like he was limping, which could mean only one of two things: 1. He was limping; 2. He was simultaneously chasing and beating down some sort of insect.
The second is a very common scenario. Whenever he finds a spider, or a moth, or (yikes) a cockroach, he tracks it down and beats it mercilessly into submission with his paw. Lacking an opposable thumb to pick up the prey, he’s forced to pin it to the floor. Lacking the strength to crush it on the ground, he keeps it trapped while he decides whether he wants to eat it – a decision that always takes about 2 seconds and always results in him eating it.
When I heard him stop this morning, I jumped out of bed and turned the light on to see what he’d captured. I found him belly-down on the floor, his right paw firmly pressed to the ground. I didn’t see an insect but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. I waited patiently to see if he would go for the kill, but he didn’t. He just laid there.
Then he shifted his paw, and I realized he didn’t have the insect trapped at all, and that’s when I got scared. No insect under the paw means it’s still roaming about, and as I’ve said before, the only thing freakier than an insect is a missing insect.
I started to look around the room myself to no avail, and that’s when I realized there was no insect at all. The cat tried to stand but couldn’t and fell back to the floor. I thought, dear god, it's option 1 - he's broken his leg. I quickly scooped him up to see what the problem was…
To my relief, he wasn’t injured at all – somehow, inexplicably the sonofabitch got his foot stuck in his collar. His entire goddamn leg was wedged in there, pinned against his face. Despite his obvious discomfort, it was the funniest thing I’d seen in awhile. Cradling him there like a baby I just started laughing while he was looking up at me like, “Ha, ha, ha. I get it; I look like a jackass. Now help me out here or I’m going to be pissing in your shoes this morning!”
I can only assume this whole scenario is why collars have never really caught on as a fashion for humans. Can you imagine waking up with your arm pinned against your face, unable to move or do anything. That’s like when you sleep with your arm under your body and it falls asleep. You wake up with that phantom limb feeling except it isn’t a phantom limb; it’s just a useless piece of meat hanging from your shoulder. Somehow both my arms fall asleep once. I woke up like, “Ahhhh! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! My arms! I can’t feel my arms!” It was the worst 2 minutes, flailing about like a fish out of water, knocking shit off the nightstand until the feeling was finally restored.
The wife and I laughed for quite awhile about the cat. Then she said, “I thought he had a stroke!” Dear god, woman, that’s the most macabre thing I’ve ever heard. I was worried about a fucking cockroach and you’re worried about a stroke!?! I didn’t even know cats could have strokes.
Suffice it to say, everything is back to normal and I haven’t found that pair of shoes yet.
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