09.29.06
Bonus Round, Final Score: Fez 14, Me 0
While I was answering some e-mail Fez got a claw caught in the screen of my office window. I attempted to help her, putting one hand under her to hold her steady and still while I unhooked her claw.
She freaked out for no discernable reason and went full-bore Tasmanian Devil. She managed to badly lacerate both my palms, my left wrist, and my chest just below the collarbone on the left side. She also managed to drive a claw so deeply into my left index finger that the outermost layer of claw (cats shed them normally as the claws grow, it is one way they keep their claws sharp) stayed embedded in my finger up past where the quick of her nail would be.
I just spent half an hour bawling from the shock of having my cat turn into a furry screaming shrapnel bomb in my hands, carefully nipping the worst of the lacerated shreds of skin away from the cuts with (alcohol-rinsed) cuticle scissors, extracting a claw from my fingertip, cleaning the wounds with hydrogen peroxide, and putting on innumerable Band-Aids.
Well, maybe not innumerable. 14, to be precise. Including an “Elmo & Friends” one because I ran out of the regular kind and that was all we had left.
Fortunately, with the exception of the left index finger, the other fingers are fine and it isn’t too bad to type as long as I use my wrist rest. Though you’d be amazed how many letters you normally type with your left index finger, really.
So now I am venting online, because M isn’t home yet and the dog just wants to try to lick my hands, which strikes me as counterproductive.
I feel compelled to note that under ordinary circumstances I am opposed to declawing cats. Today I could make an exception.
Wow, these really do sting like hell.
(Note use of native Midwestern understatement here. My hands are on fire, and there’s nothing I can really do to make them stop.)
Fez, by the way, is just fine and does not seem to have any recollection of having gone ballistic. I should also note that Fez has done this sort of thing once before, to Malcolm, about 2 years ago.
Every once in a blue moon she seems to just lose it if someone is trying to hold her, particularly if they are trying to hold her midsection (as I was and as I seem to remember Malcolm was when she did something similar to him). She is not a cat that likes to be picked up or held normally, and when she does let you pick her up she likes to be held in a very particular fashion (one hand under the back feet, one hand under the ribcage very far forward with a finger or two coming up to support her chest). Anything else is not acceptable and she struggles to be put down. Mind you, this is a cat who requires 3 vet techs to hold her still when she has to have an injection or a blood draw (two to hold her still, the third to distract her with pureed veal baby food while the vet does the injection). She is made of Slinky toys and barbed wire and I seriously think that she has the ability to turn into liquid mercury and fish-hooks as necessary.
Q.E.D.
This day can get the hell over itself any old time. And I am putting tomorrow on notice: don’t screw it up, got it?