Let the Autopsy Report Show He Did it to Himself

My friends, I have not had a healthy few days.

Oh sure - it started off with great promise. The Bruins won game 2 of their series, which meant my game 5 tickets are now in play. Yay! To celebrate my windfall I decided to have some chicken wings delivered to the house from this wing joint I just discovered whose wings are those of the mighty eagle, or the phoenix, or some other, proud noble bird that's bigger and juicier than a run of the mill chicken. And no, before you ask, I have ZERO compunction against eating eagle wings.

Anyway, the delivery guy comes to the door and I deviate from my normal M.O., that being to ask the guy to step in, because as I always say, "we have a cat that likes to go walkabout." Well I guess I didn't want to spook new guy and I had faith in my cat, but it turns out those thoughts were ridiculous and unfounded, respectively. I hold the door open to complete my wingy transaction and out flies Pearl, like a fuzzy phantom, into the afternoon mist.

I pull on the nearest pair of shoes I can find (I swear to God, Toot's fuzzy slippers) and look for her. For a miracle, in about twenty seconds I find her.

Now the thing is about Pearl, she just loves me so much she doesn't even know how to express it most days. She'll nuzzle up against me, curl up next to me, let me pick her up for as long as I feel like, all the while never giving Toots anything but the time of day. Cat people, you know how it is. She picked me, and rather than being my pal, as my previous best kitty buddy, Sarsaparilla was, she is more like in love with me - such is the depth of emotion and respect coming from this cat in my direction.

I tell you this because it informs what happened next: I told her to stay right the fuck there so I could get her into the house. She didn't dare disobey me but she did NOT want to end her adventure out of doors. I picked her up and she screamed, and growled, and scratched me. When I say she scratched me, I don't mean that she gave me a run-of-the-mill ouchy. She gave me this:

Yes, that's chunks of raw meat that used to belong to me on my hand

If you don't think that's gruesome, blame the picture. It looks for all the world like I tried to kill myself, which, Mom, I did NOT FUCKING DO. After she scratched me she stopped fighting and just growled at me like I was the feline equivalent of Hitler. In return I...

I...

Well, look: If you want to have cats understand you, if you want them to pick up what you're putting down, you have to ACT LIKE A CAT. Do what a cat does when he's angry and cats will get that you're angry. Sounds foolish but it works every time. So I put a low growl in the back of my throat and let her know how pissed off (and bleeding) I was. It worked - she stopped bitching immediately.

I got her in the house and, I swear to no god, I snapped. I screamed at the very top of my voice, a voice reserved only for Tootsie when we're in our twice-per-decade blowout fights. What did I scream at her? Simply this: "I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!!" And even though I didn't bother to translate THAT little vignette into cat-speak, she understood and hied herself as fast as her little kitty legs could carry her downstairs and under the pool table. Goddamn right. Now stay there until I decide to make up with you.

So that's the first injury of the day. The second one, indirectly was due to a poker tournament I won some years ago. It was the first one I ever won, and I made the rookie mistake of telling Toots about it. She in turn used EVERY PENNY of the windfall and bought natural wood blinds, like bamboo tubes I guess to cover a gigantic picture window in my living room. Well, I was looking out the window waiting, I think, for Toots to come home so I could tell her that Pearl had been a BAD KITTY, when I turned my head and and end piece of bamboo slashed my forehead right at the hair line. It looked like I received a dueling scar from the most myopic motherfucker ever to hold an epée.

So, after dousing my arm in hydrogen peroxide (motto: "sure it hurts."), and my forehead in bactine (motto:"if you use this you're a pussy"), I settle downstairs to watch a great pitcher's duel between the Sox and the Tigers. When, in the eighth inning the Sox break the scoreless tie and score a run, my fist-pump was slightly interrupted by the fact that I had the remote in my head, sticking out of my fist by a good six inches, and with it I whacked myself in the other side of the forehead, but good. I missed giving myself a shiner by about 2 inches.

Then I had a screaming match with my mother and as a "joke" told my brother I tried to kill myself and showed him the wound and he god so upset it was 10 minutes talking him down. So I injured myself three times and alientated two members of my immediate family.

All in all, one hell of a day.

So until next time, please remember I'm not the kitty equivalent of Hitler. That's this guy:

After my nap I think I'll march into Poland

Also, read my other site, Red Sox 101, or you'll get shingles.