The Wind-Up

The cat is driving me crazy. He kicks his food all over the kitchen floor, and stands in his water bowl and then tears around the house. He dives under the carpets and attacks them from the underside. One moment he is sleepy and fat and purring into my face, and the next he is possessed: growling, even, to himself. In the mad state, he claws everything: furniture, books, toys, humans. He's shredded two bears and a pair of my shoes. Last night the madnesses were too many, and too frequent, and when he raced between me and the closing refrigerator door and the door closed on his head, I didn't feel even a minute of regret. I felt, to be perfectly honest, a little satisfied. I felt that he was lucky I didn't see him coming because I might have slammed the door instead.

Liam flipped out on me. "You could have KILLED him!" he screamed. I've been threatening to filet the beast for some weeks now, so I'm fairly well innoculated against grief in the event of accidental death.

Later on Liam and I were sitting on the couch and the cat leapt up and clawed Liam in the arm. I went to slap the cat, but he took off too fast and I slapped Liam instead--right where he'd just been clawed.

At the dinner table he recounted it to Maisie. "And then Mom wound up her arm and punched me!" (Wound up my arm!) I laughed. "I didn't mean it!" I said. "I'm sorry!" He wasn't letting it go. "If you're laughing it doesn't matter if you meant it or not," he says, and I know he's right but I can't help myself. Maisie asks what kind of animal we'd be if we could be anything. "I'd be an elephant and I'd eat the cat for lunch," I said. Liam says, "I'd be a jaguar and I'd eat anything that wound up and punched me."

The cat is getting neutered next week. It's his last hope.