That Darn Cat!

Actually, change that to That Damned Cat!

So here we were - Hubby and I - a little after midnight on Saturday night, minding our own business, playing World of Warcraft not bothering anybody. All of a sudden we hear what sounds like crying outside our door, we assumed it was a cat, but I opened the door to check and a blur ran into the apartment. It turned out to be a full-sized frickin' frackin' cat who proceeded to howl like Satan's Fiendish Feline while running around our living room. I freaked out because, well, I hate cats on a good day when they're cute and fluffy never mind when they're shrieking at me for no reason - the damned beast didn't look like it was hurt and it was moving around just fine. It was making so much noise I thought it might be in labor - but no, it was thin and agile.

So Hubby, who like St. Francis of Assisi (and unlike me), loves all creatures great and small, tried to talk to it like he's Dr. Doolittle. Of course the devil-cat was having none of it and continued to howl like we were cooking it on an open spit. Luckily, despite my terror-induced catatonia I had closed our bedroom door because by now the cat was in our second bedroom looking out into the living room. Hubby told me to leave the apartment door open and get a saucer of milk so he could lure the cat out - except for the cat apparently didn't get the memo about how the plan was supposed to work. So eventually the cat - still howling like a furry banshee - backed into the guest bathroom where hubby placed the saucer of milk and shut the door. The damned thing continued with the screeching. It was horrible.

Next Hubby called the non-emergency police number and explained the situation to them. Much to our surprise they took down our information and told us that someone would be out to get the cat! In under 15 minutes four Miami-Dade County Paramedics showed up asking where the emergency was - even though one of them was carrying a broom (!). We told them we had not called in an emergency and told them what was going on.

After repeatedly asking us whether it was our cat, they began *the extraction procedure*. First they asked us for a broom - I wasn't even sure if we had a broom (we have a cleaning lady) but we did and we gave it to them. Then, they opened the bathroom door and asked us where the cat was. WHAT? The bathroom has no windows and it isn't that big, it's a bathroom! Apparently the stupid cat was in the tub! You can tell they thought we were giant wussies - until they tried to grab the cat up and it hissed at them - all of a sudden they recognized it was a problem.

So now we had four buffed paramedics, a hysterical cat and two brooms in my bathroom - the guys were yelling and the cat was howling, the brooms thankfully were quiet. They finally ushered the beast out of the apartment and as the fourth guy was walking out, THE DAMNED CAT CAME BACK IN! They quickly closed the second bedroom door, so where did THE DAMNED CAT go? On to the bottom shelf of my baker's rack full of knick-knacks - some valuable some not so much, but still, they're my knick-knacks! My husband, God bless him, got concerned because as he told the paramedics "If something breaks my wife is going to kill the cat and have it for breakfast after killing the rest of us."

I of course was very helpfully having a conniption on the other side of the room telling my husband, who was holding the baker's rack to keep it from shaking, to start taking stuff off of it and handing it to me - all this with the Keystone Paramedics doing their slapstick routine and THE DAMNED CAT standing *in* my baker's rack. The guys started talking about going downstairs and getting the gloves when one of them apparently got tired of the crap and grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and ran outside with it. They left with THE DAMNED CAT and my broom. Later however when I checked, they had left the broom by the door.

So, where was the oft-touted brilliance of cats? You know, how cat apologists always say cats are soooo much smarter than dogs? Well I don't think a dog would have run into an apartment if it was scared. If the DAMNED CAT was scared of us why did it come inside not once but twice? What was it doing out there in the first place? I thought cats never got lost.

Dumb-assed cat.