The Aerie

Christmas Catulence Cat Ass Trophy

Santa has come and gone. In his wake, a torrent of presents under the tree. So many, in fact, that The Boy was moved to say "Wait, this seems like too many presents."

Noted. The list is on the computer: next year, fewer presents. But as I pointed out to him, the life of a contractor is uncertain - next year I may be unemployed, and the gifts may be limited to what we can fashion from items around the house such as uneaten ramen noodls, paper plates, and old car tires. Enjoy it while you got it.

One of the presents that was most notably NOT a hit was the cat's new "safety collar."

The safety collar came with an engraved name tag bearing the telephone number of the cat's owners, and a plastic "safety" clip designed to release if the collar became hooked on something and threatened to choke the cat. I carefully adjusted the size of the collar, making it a little more snug than seemed intuitively reasonable. Cats can escape almost anything, and that a cat's neck is actually rather narrower under its fur than one might suspect.

We put the collar on the cat, and he seemed fine with the fit, fully able to breathe and move his neck. We watched with amusement as he tried to locate the bell tinkling just beneath his ears. Soon, we figured, he would grow accustomed to the tinkling noise: for now he was so overstimulated by all the presents with their sparkling, crinkling papers that he barely noticed the bell.

Unfortunately the cat has recently started producing something called "catulence:" what one Internet poster calls "a lethal and voluminous" form of cat flatulence. We're not sure what's causing it, although it may be the result of nibbling on pine needles. We'll see if it goes away when the tree does.

Anyway in the midst of the gift-opening, the cat began releasing clouds of catulence: needles on the side of the tree turned yellow and dropped off, and some of the wrapping paper began to smolder. Eyes watering, we exiled the cat to the basement for the duration of the unwrapping.

About half an hour later, gift opening completed, we opened the basement door to a plaintive mewling... to find the cat bleeding on the floor! The cat had attempted to slip off its new collar, and the "safety collar" had become lodged in its mouth like a horse's bit. Somewhere, something got cut, whether a tooth was pushed through its cheek or a claw cut its face we don't know. Shears were quickly located and the offending collar cut away.

For a few minutes the cat seemed dazed, and wasn't interested in being touched. But we kept a close eye on it. He began eating immediately, and was shortly walking normally.

After a while I got some paper towels and warm water and began washing the blood off the cat's face and whiskers. Given the size of the cat, there was a lot of blood: on the floor, on various basement surfaces, in the collar, and in his fur.

I spent about an hour with the warm paper towels, first daubing the blood out of the fur, then drying the fur by scratching the cat normally on the sides of its face. The cat was absolutely in heaven about this treatment, which I found reassuring - if he had been more badly cut I doubt he would have wanted to be touched anywhere near the injury. Cleaned and dried he nuzzled his nose between my arm and my hip and fell asleep in my lap.

I sat there for a while feeling guilty about leaving him in the basement with a scary new collar, and willing to indulge his catnap. He'd been through a lot.

Around me the house was quiet. The family had retreated to explore their various gifts, and there was nothing to do except sit and watch the tree blink, as the cat's purring slowly subsided into silence, punctuated by the occasional sigh of contentment. Forgiveness is so easily obtained from an animal with a brain the size of a hazelnut. It was a lovely, peaceful moment.

Then the cat gave another soft sigh, this time from the opposite end.

On another day, at another time I would probably have leapt to my feet, swearing, dumping a startled cat to the floor. But it was Christmas, and I still felt guilty. So I sat there, eyes watering, wondering if, like Newark, catulence was just something one could become used to.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Posted by Albatross at December 25, 2006 8:23 PM | TrackBack