And a cat once gave me a wound that took months to heal. Crushed the cartilage in the joint of my thumb right through a welding glove, and believe me it didn’t feel minor at the time.
So yeah, Puddytat can be more of a badass than you may have suspected, given the right (wrong?) incentive.
On the other hand, I can personally guarantee that that cat never did that again. And seriously: You called 911?
We are the apex predators of the frickin’ planet. Cats are our pets. Act like it.
H/T to Sebastian.
My Aunt Kay had a 32 pound white Persian named Snowball. If she had her nose tucked in and tail wrapped, she looked like a giant cotton ball. She was also mean and NOBODY touched her except Kay. Bit my sister badly once and we all got scratched at times. No idea what anyone wants with such a thing… totally useless.
Call 911? Good grief.
Cat might of been dealing with rabies or distemper. Good idea to get the kids away from it while dealing with it. Had a feral cat on the ranch behave like that once, missed it with the first shot and it charged. Got it with the next few rounds. No need to call 911 (no phone then anyway). Burried it deep.
What the heck is it about welding gloves that strange cats find so delicious. ‘Specially when your trying to help point them in the right direction without hurting them. I got bit through my glove and after that, all bets were off. Didn’t crush any cartilage but damaged a nerve and it took many moons before I could shoot right again.
Matt, I like to think concern about rabies and not anger was the reason I killed the cat. It was a feral that had been living in the tire shop where I worked (this was MANY moons ago) and kept yowling and shitting all over the place. Boss wanted it gone, and so did we. So we opened all the doors and tried shooing it out and it Would! Not! Leave!
It ran up a ladder, I shit you not, and disappeared into the suspended ceiling over the showroom. There was a crash and an unholy shriek from the office manager, upon whose desk the cat (and part of the ceiling) landed. Obeying an intuition, I grabbed my welding gloves before running into the showroom. The cat had taken refuge on top of the cigarette machine (did I mention many moons?) and dared anyone who wanted to come and die.
Guess who took the bet?
I grabbed it around the midsection, intending only to throw it outside. It turned in its skin, got its canines on the joint of my left thumb and punched two neat triangular holes in the leather. Then it proceeded to squeeze.
And so did I, I assure you. I squeezed until it had to gasp and let go, and then I squeezed until I felt things break, and then I snapped its neck and personally took the corpse to a hospital for rabies testing.
You ever try to work as a mechanic without a left thumb?
ETA: That was a relatively badass cat, but I don’t recall anyone suggesting we call the cops. In hindsight we didn’t deal with the situation particularly well, but we did deal with it.
Those cat bites can be wicked. Got bit by a feral cat about the same way, trying to throw it out of the house. Long story short, got cellulitis in the knuckle where the cat’s tooth punctured the sheath of the knuckle. First the finger, then the whole hand swelled up the size of a boxing glove. Four days in the hospital with inter-venous Keflex later, I didn’t lose the finger, or the hand. The Doctor seemed to think we’d been lucky.
So, if you get bit by a cat you might be smart not to jump in your truck and head out on an out of state trip for a couple days.
That Gawker article left out a key piece of info that was published elsewhere. Cat scratched baby, then man started trying to kick cat around house. Cat went into predator defensive mode.
I doubt we’ll ever get the full story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this started when idiot parents thought it would be cute to let baby squeeze the ever-lovin’ sh!t out of the giant fluffy kitty.
Still… locking himself in the bedroom and calling 911?
Never. Hug. a Himalayan.
(Cat, that is. Hugging Himalayan people is probably fine, if they don’t object.)
Cats. Only two functions in my world: a) Mouse control or b) target
“Cats. Only two functions in my world: a) Mouse control or b) target”
Stay classy, dude.
I swan, my list of “People who are only alive because of that whole ‘Rule of Law’ thing” gets longer every day.
If instead of the nuclear-armed border ambitions that I’ve been fretting about for some time, the web sparks war between the cat people, the dog people, the dog-and-cat people, and the world-population-is-at-least-four-times-too-large people, I estimate a chance approaching 25% that I will be nonplussed.
Tam, take some Midol and call back net week.