And the Cat Came Back

My eyesight isn’t all that bad. It wasn’t until after I could no longer watch black and white movies (because everything melted into a murky gray color and looked like a rippling muddy puddle) at age eighteen or nineteen that I decided to invest in a pair of glasses.

We are the rather chagrined owners of two cats. These kitties were our “children” until our actual babies came along. They were loved, petted, played with; now they have become more of a menace, leaving their fur lying around the house and tracking litter into the kids’ bedroom.

I don’t generally wear my glasses to bed because it just isn’t comfortable and I don’t think it is good for the frames. Very often, late at night or in the morning they are sitting on my dresser while I plod around the house. Many have been the times that I have come across a fluff of fur or a tiny wad of cat hair that seems to be placed just so as to give it the illusion of being something other than hair.

The other morning I stumbled into the bathroom and drew back from the toilet repulsed by what looked to be a small black spider on its back in the throes of death. Knowing my propensity for thinking every speck to be some sort of bug on its way to market, I squinted and peered more closely at it. Definitely not an arachnid; just a bit of kitty fur.

Sometimes the fluffs masquerade as stink bugs. I always very gingerly check for possible bugness before I pluck the hair off of the floor and throw it in the garbage can. Except for the one time it actually was a dead stink bug peacefully stretched out on the carpet; that time I bravely steeled myself and declared that I would not be silly and treat cat fur as something to be feared and would simply pick it up and toss it without checking it for legs first. Needless to say, I’ll never do that again.

For the most part my toddler has learned that cat food and cat fur are not good for eating. I can’t remember that last time he put something that belongs to the cats in his mouth. Ironically, as I was typing this he came to me with his mouth open because a wad of cat fur and fuzz had wound itself around some of his teeth and he had ground it into his molars.

Notwithstanding all of this, the beasts have wormed their way into our hearts and to some degree they feel like part of the family. I find this really annoying, because as much as I would like to pack them up and give them to some other family I can’t quite bring myself to do it. Yet.