What To Get Me For My Birthday: Part 2

In Which Your Intrepid Editor Explains How He Inherited a Cat, A Fiancee and Potential Lung Damage…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have allergies. One of the things I’m allergic to is cats.

My smart and sexy girlfriend fiancee wife is a lover of all animals and, being a recently single woman, naturally owns a cat.

Perhaps you can see the beginnings of what your English professor might have referred to as “the seeds for dramatic conflict.”

According to experts, if you do nothing else, the one thing you should do to minimize the allergic effects of living with a cat is keep the animal off your bed.

Paraphrasing from the experts, the basic chain of events is this: The cat rolls around on the bed leaving dander and hair clinging to your blanket and pillow. You settle in for a good night’s sleep. After breathing in various bits of cat funk for six or seven hours, you awake to discover your sinuses had a party during the night featuring an open phlegm bar. You stumble to the bathroom with a splitting sinus headache and after 20 minutes of hacking and clearing your throat your wife asks, “Hey, how many homeless guys are in there, anyway?”

One thing should be clear from all this: experts don’t have girlfriends, fiancees or wives.

Because, if they did, they would know your girlfriend wife lived with her cat long before she met you and she loves, loves, loves, to cuddle with a purring cat in the morning. This, of course, encourages the cat to make a morning pilgrimage to the bed to get petted and held.

It’s really no surprise that after this kind of training, a cat will behave as if it’s entitled to attention, affection and three-fourths of the bed at whatever hour it deigns to enthrall you with its presence.

If no one is awake when this creature of Satan decides to make a pre-dawn appearance in the bedroom, the hairy little beast will come up and lick your face or bat gently at your head with its paw.

Speaking for myself, I’ve been tasered for less.

So, there are a couple of issues here …

First off, there’s the jealousy. I am cute and cuddly and have only slightly less fur on my back than the cat but I don’t get held and stroked every morning. Unless I do it myself.

Secondly, there’s the whole issue of being involuntarily awakened at 5:30AM on a Monday morning. There are really only three reasons to be up at that hour on a Monday: you have a lousy job that pays the bills, you’re going to play basketball at the gym or someone is breaking into your apartment.

In each of these instances, it is perfectly acceptable to roll over and go back to sleep. The Starbucks empire won’t grind to a halt if you’re 15 minutes late; the guys will play four-on-four with a sub if you miss a day; and a thief will eventually think he broke into a garage sale when he sees the kind of stuff you own.

The one time you can’t get back to sleep?

When an insanely persistent cat is meowing and playing handball with your face.

All of which explains why I was wide awake at 5:25AM on a Monday and in a gloriously foul mood.

My mood was somewhat improved after I took an extra half-hour over coffee to read the paper and allowed myself the luxury of a long, hot shower instead of the usual commute-induced, run-through-the-sprinkler speed-bathing I normally practice during the week.

My wife was downstairs doing a crossword puzzle as I grabbed my coat from the upstairs closet and prepared to leave for work. Passing by the second bedroom, I glanced in to see the cat sleeping contentedly on the chair in the warm morning sun.

Trust me when I tell you I didn’t have even a momentary pang of conscience as I took three long strides across the room and batted the cat in the head.

For good measure, I said, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” in the cat’s ear to make sure she was awake.

Karma’s a bitch, kitty.

Strangely, manages to discourage heavy petting....

Read Part One of What To Get Me For My Birthday here. Stop back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of What To Get Me For My Birthday — The Final Chapter.

Image: Yukari on Flickr