By Trent Rosser
Marco the cat is upset with me. And I can’t really blame him. I messed up pretty bad.
Let me start from the beginning. Remember when I talked about sitting out on the front porch all day and evening? We love being out there. It is calm and relaxing. Sometimes both the dogs, Hunter and Hades, are with us along with Marco the cat. All 3 of them are crashed out on the porch and my wife and I sitting in the chairs just watching time fly. And speaking of fly, the flies have now invaded the front porch. It has become so bad that we can not be out there more than 10 minutes before all of us are run back inside the house. As most of you know, I have waited to get a big front porch and porch chairs for a very long time. I was not going to give up without a fight!
The first thing I did was buy a fly trap bag. It is a small bag that you fill with water and hang up. It stinks very bad, but the flies are attracted to it. It caught several flies the first week. Unfortunately, we have a very large front porch, so I needed more. Instead of getting a few more of the bags, I decided to try something different and go just a little bit cheaper. I bought a pack of fly strips. You know those yellow sticky things that hang from the ceiling? That was the first mistake! These things are very sticky and tricky to hang up. If it touches you while you are trying to hang it up, then it is stuck to you and if you yank it out, it will pull all your hair out! This is about the time that I realized how bad it hurts when a woman gets waxed. Needless to say, after about 30 minutes of cussing and losing most of the hair on one arm, I finally was able to put 3 of them up on the porch. One of the strips (the one that pulled all my arm hair off) was no good and stuck together, so I just left it on the porch until I finished. I would throw it away when I was done. But I didn’t throw it away. I forgot about it and left it on the porch. This was another mistake.
I was inside not more than 15 minutes when the neighbor knocked on the door. She said that something was wrong with my cat and her daughter was bringing the cat to me from the other neighbor’s house. She had a baby in one arm, and Marco in the other. When I took Marco from her, there was the sticky fly strip, stuck to his side and tail. She said that Marco was trying to get it off him, but he couldn’t. After I grabbed Marco, the fly strip was now holding us together. I pulled it off me first and what hair was left on my arm was now gone. I was able to pull it off him easily without a lot of fur coming out, but the sticky stuff was stuck all over his side and bottom of his tail. My thought was “Well, its time for a bath!”
Do you remember how I talked about Hunter the dog taking a bath? I thought that with being a cat, it wouldn’t be a problem. As soon as I put him in the kitchen sink, his claws came out and I instantly remembered that cats don’t like water! Yep, the fight was on. I was trying to get him wet under the running water with one hand and keep his claws out of my skin with the other hand. Did you know that the claws of a cat are not very long? But they can feel like dull knives and bring a lot of blood. Also, just water will not get that sticky crap out! I was able to get a little shampoo on Marco, and really did try to rub it in, but Marco was fighting me every bit and the sticky stuff would not budge. Marco has never bit me and only scratched me while we were playing, but by the time I was done trying to give him a bath, I was needing a blood transfusion!
I finally gave up. He will have to get it off himself. I tried anyhow. I sat down back in my chair and started watching tv. Marco was soaked from the middle of his back to his tail. He was on one of the dining room chairs trying to dry himself off. Just staring at me. I could feel the icy cold stare from across the room. I started to imagine him and coughing up quite a bit of hairballs due to my mistake of leaving the fly strip out. So, I looked it up on my phone and seen that the glue is toxic to animals. Damn, I have got to get it out myself. I don’t want him to get sick and die. I pick him up and we try again. I didn’t even get him in the sink before the fight was on. He jumped down and I had to come up with a new plan.
I thought about taking him to the groomers, but, trying to save money, I came up with an excellent idea. Groomers are like barbers for animals. I have a pair of scissors and a hair trimmer. I CAN DO THIS! So I grabbed a towel, helped Marco dry off, and went to cutting his fur. I, of course, am not a groomer in any way, form, or fashion. I did not know what I was doing so I stuck with the basics. Just cut the glue out. Finally, it was done. He has a long bald spot on his hind leg and up to his front leg. Another one underneath his tail and a few spots along his belly. I was told that it would grow back so I am not too worried. He now looks like he has mange on his hind ends. When we were done, he laid down, licked his bald spots, and finally glared up at me. The other cats will not play with him anymore and I know that they are making fun of him. Hunter is laughing at him. Even though I have already lost a couple of pints of blood, along with the hair on my arm, I know that Marco will get me back somehow. He just sits there, glaring at me, thinking, plotting my demise. I wake up in the middle of the night and he is on the nightstand, just staring at me. I have a few fly strips left, I really need to throw them away before I wake up in bed with them all over me! So if anything ever happens to me…. it was the cat!
