Cat Scratch

My cat is a bit of a spaz. She never learned to use her claws properly, so she sometimes gets stuck to a blanket after kneading it, or a shirt, or the carpet. But mostly, my cat is not a scratcher. Occasionally, she'll walk across me while I'm sleeping, lose her footing, and an untrimmed back claw will get me. But even when she freaks out, I tend to make it away unscathed. Because she's such a good kitty, I had forgotten what a really bad cat scratch feels like. On Friday morning, I was reminded.

You see, I've been volunteering at the local animal shelter (though, because they have a glut of volunteers at the moment, I've backed off my hours... we'll see how their schedule looks once bad weather makes it harder to get out there). On Friday, I was cuddling with a new cat named Ricky, who looks a lot like a more masculine version of my cat (right). He's an absolute sweetheart, but there's a bit of construction going on right next to the shelter right now, and as we cuddled, a very large machine switched on and Ricky flipped out. If I'd been at home, I would have let him wriggle free and hide somewhere, but at the shelter, you can never tell when someone's going to open the front door and an upset cat will dart off into the bushes, never to be seen again. So I held on to Ricky.

I guess no one had gotten around to trimming Ricky's nails, because he really gashed up my arm and throat--or, it seems like "gashed up" to a spoiled brat like me who hasn't been injured by an animal in years, even though my mother's love of animals and the fact that we once had eleven cats (two cats at first, then they both got knocked up and had large litters) has meant a lot of scars over the years. Blood was drawn. For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt the need to use isopropyl alcohol to clean a cut. I'd forgotten how much that stings.

So, as simple as the even of being scratched by a cat might be, all this made me think about some interesting stuff. Like: how spoiled am I? Not only does my cat not scratch me, she cuddles me on a regular basis and only snubs me when I've been away on vacation--and that only lasts a few hours, max. And, though I have been a little annoyed that I'm getting muscled out of volunteer hours by the many, many college kids in this town who can't have pets and so volunteer with them, how nice is it that I am not stuck in a job where I get scratched all day--if I get injured volunteering, I can just go home and lick my wounds. I don't have to go back to cleaning cages once I'm bandaged up. Yeah, this means I also don't make any money--a fact that nags at me day and night--but I have a husband who does. I am spoiled rotten. Which I also worry about. But I must also acknowledge that I'm lucky to be spoiled. And maybe "spoiled" isn't the right term, because if I was really, thoroughly spoiled--as in wrecked, ruined, unfit for real life--I wouldn't worry about being spoiled. Would I?

Also, my cat scratch reminded me of this Nickelodeon cartoon that, sadly, was cancelled before it got off the ground: