telophase | *ow*

ow

I was putting clothes into the washing machine when the cat jumps up there. I was expecting this, because the doors to the utility niche-thing in my hallway are kept closed all the time, ever since the cat jumped down into the space between the side of the dryer and the wall and got stuck there. She eventually jumped out, but she's gotten fatter and a bit less nimble over the past year and I'm not entirely sure she'd be able to jump out now. Anyway, the doors are kept closed so they are the HOLY GRAIL and she must try to jump up on the washer and dryer every chance she gets.

There's a shelf above the washer and dryer that taller people presumably keep detergent on, but I stuff things I don't need much up there because I are short. She likes to jump up there and look imperiously down on me.

Today her lack of nimbleness meant that she didn't get a really good grip on the shelf when she jumped there (not entirely sure why - it's less than the height to the bathroom counter, where her water is, and I've never seen her miss that jump), and fell backwards, twisting, onto the dryer. I'm standing there loading clothes in, and of course my natural instinct is to try to CATCH THE FUCKING CAT.

I shall spare you the gory details, but I think I've gotten off lightly. There is one long scratch crossways across the top of my wrist, which means that I look like an exceptionally incompetent suicide, and the cat stalked around for a while freaked out that some MYSTERIOUS FORCE had obviously thrown her down on top of the dryer because she couldn't POSSIBLY be that clumsy, and has now completely forgotten about it and curled up in her box lid asleep.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Heh. My friend's cat did something like that to me. She has three legs, and to get on his bed, she has to jump up, GRAB the corner with her foreclaws, and then pull her hind leg up to push herself on the bed.

So, one night I'm lying on the bed with my right arm at the corner, and she does this, and catches me about 2 inches below my elbow. Three inch long gash in my arm, everyone freaking out, blood... It was fun. XD I have a nice scar from it.

Of course, my cat is the one that burrows in the half-unpacked boxes and gets stuck because she's a little fat. *fond smile* All the better for a foot warmer, I say. XD

XD The one time my cat tried to get on my lap, she did it by placing her front paws on my thigh and then DIGGING IN to pull herself up.

She's never done it again, that's for sure. And I had two perfect half-moons of claw marks in my leg for quite some time.

Mine likes to knead her claws on my jeans. With me in them. I'll be sitting there in the morning, doing my makeup or something, when YEOWCH. Claws in my buttcheek. Between that, the "playing" where she grabs my hand and tries to skin it with her hind claws, chewing on my ankles when she wants food, and my natural clumsiness, I have yet to go a day without scratchmarks on me somewhere.

I just wish she'd quit vaulting out of my arms when she's tired of being held... my chest is starting to look like someone tortured me for a sex crime or something. ._.;;;

Yeouch! Glad you got off relatively lightly.

Heh, yeah. It was one of those things that halfway through the movement, I realize how truly stupid it is, but it's past the point of no return and I can't pull back.

I once got a pretty deep cut because I dropped a knife and automatically tried to catch it. You'd think I'd have learned.

Yeah, I found out my cat had gotten really hard of hearing after walking up on her and reaching down face-first to snuggle (as we had for years) and winding up with a startled cat hanging off my face with her claws. Luckily my hair, glasses and shirt caught three of the claws, the fourth left a large scar at the side of my mouth that luckily blends in some. The poor cat (who never clawed deliberately) was so shaken up and hysterical that she had hurt me that I wound up sitting there petting her and trying to calm her down while I dribbled a cup or so of blood out of my face. She was freaked for days and I felt horrible about it. So no more leading with my face around sleeping cats for me...

My mom's cat scratched my eyeball as a kitten - she was sitting on my shoulder and got absolutely fascinated by these frondy wiggly things moving in front of her when I turned to look at her. Ow. Went to a doctor, got an antibiotic that stung to put in it and told to come back if it got worse or I started seeing double. Heh.

James, is that you?

Heh. No I usually manage to avoid injury, unlike James. XD Although I've got a big bump of a scar on my left pinky finger from when I cut the tip of it off when cutting cheese with my finger, unbeknownst to me, wrapped around the blade*, and I managed to grate the knuckle of my thumb a year ago when grating cheese, and the scar is still faintly there. :D

* My dad always claimed that sharp knives made cutting yourself less likely, because the blade didn't slip. Not for me. I've never cut myself on a dull blade, because I don't cut myself when the blade slips. I do things like wrap my figners around the blade, or drop it and try to catch it, or have knives slip when I'm trying to pry a turkey carcass apart. In all cases, with dull blades I'd ahve been perfectly safe.

I managed to grate the knuckle of my thumb a year ago when grating cheese

Oh my GOD, I've done that about a dozen times. *dies* And we have super-industrial-extra-sharp cheese graters, so, um, ow. I'm afriad to grate cheese these days, because I usually end up grating myself instead. XD

I"ve finally got a system. I ahve control of the grating if the sheese and the grater are below the level that the coutner is on, so I carry them over to the sofa, put them in a big bowl on the ottoman, and grate while sitting on the edge of the sofa. I can get into a sort of Zen meditation that way - it's a mindless repetitive movmeent, and yet you have to remain alert and attuned to every detail of the environment if you don't want to get hurt. I think my grandfather used to do the same thing with shelling pecans.

I thought the point about sharp knives was that you didn't have to use excessive force, and that was what reduced the likelihood of a slip.

I've taken off part of my fingernail with a peeler a number of times.

I've also walked into an oven. Well, ok, I was walking by the oven, swinging my arms, and the oven door was slightly ajar and I hit the handle with my hand. Ow, ow, ow. (Just from the impact; the oven was not on, and anyway the handle generally stays reasonably cool.)

Oh. Once I heated up a tiny rock by focusing the sun on it with a magnifying glass. Then, clever boy that I was, I wondered how hot it was and picked it up. I had a tiny scar for months, maybe years.

I thought the point about sharp knives was that you didn't have to use excessive force, and that was what reduced the likelihood of a slip.

Hell if I know. All I know is that I don't injure myself from slipping, and frankly, I'm not sure I've ever experienced a knife slipping, dull or sharp. It's stupid stuff that injures me. Like, say, trying to catch a falling, frightened cat.

Ouch! Cats are so silly sometimes.

Owie! Hope she didn't get you too deeply! Er, at least you saved her from falling in the dryer?

Didn't save her form much of anything - she was falling from a distance of about two feet, onto the top of the dryer. XD I probablys cared here worse, as a matter of fact. She doens't seem to ahve taken any harm, and I hope she now associates that closet with OMG TEH HORROR and doens't want to go in there anymore.

You do such a good job of getting into the Cat Mindset. :-)

The book on cats I checked out of the library a couple of weeks ago talks about studies designed to test the spatial perception of cats and dogs.

It basically goes: show a dog a ball, and place it behind a screen, then take the dog out of the room. While the dog can't see the room, move the screen and ball over to one side a few feet. Bring the dog back into the room, and see if it can find the ball. Usually the first place it looks is behind the screen.

Do the same thing with a cat. When you bring the cat back into the room, the cat looks for the ball in the spot where it would have been had you not moved the screen and ball over.

The general conclusion is that dogs structures space and the locations of objects in space in relation to other objects - it associates the location of the ball with the concept of "behind the screen." Cats, OTOH, structure space and the locations of objects in space in relation to the cat itself - the ball's location is associated with the concept of "this far from me in this direction."

which does scientifically proves that cats are the center of the universe, but it's still fascinating anyway. XD

*snicker*

I am reminded of The Saga of Toilet-Training The Cat, in the early phase in which the litter box is being moved by stages from its old location into the bathroom...

The cat looked at the empty corner of the kitchen, then at the litter box at the base of the stairs. Then, staring indignantly at Dave the whole while, she stalked over to the kitchen and did her business in The Corner Where Her Litter Box Was SUPPOSED To Be.

i have some fantastic battle scars, but my favorite is the two sort of parallel dotted lines (more like dashes) on my shoulder from where my cat attempted to launch herself off of me when i was trying to keep her from going outside.

Ooh, ooh, battle stories!

I was bathing once, many years ago. The cat, as was his wont, was perched on the edge of the tub in morbid fascination at the idea that the human was !!completely immersing himself in water ON PURPOSE!!--when my then-wife (now ex) walked in. And saw the cat perched precariously over water with butt raised high.

She couldn't resist the temptation. *nudge*

What she did NOT think about until it was too late was what would happen if the cat actually fell rather than merely get terrorized. The bit in which he did his impression of Wile E. Coyote trying to run on air back to the cliff face really *was* hilarious. The part (a moment later) when gravity reasserted itself was...less so. At least for me.

Because the cat landed, spread-eagled, in wide-eyed claw-splayed panic, directly on (euphemizing wildly) my...uh...lower abdomen. *Extreme* lower abdomen. Which was then used, of course, to scrabble for traction preparatory to launching the Cat Missile.

I appear to have escaped actual scarring from that, thank goodness. (Other than those to my psyche, of course.)

my cat used to always perch on the edge of the bathtub, and then of course, she always fell in. and each time she managed to look more indignent that the laws of physics actually applied themselves to her.
of course, i was much smaller then and didn't quite fill up the bathtub, so she almost always ended up splashing around in the tub until i ceased laughing and actually scooped her our of the tub.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ow

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject