The Wrath of Kitty One Eye
Another Reason Why Cats are Superior to Dogs
Gerbils, Hamsters, and Ant Farms
For as long as I can remember as a child, my family had a menagerie of pets. When we younger, everything from hamster, to gerbils, to ant farms found its way into our home. As we grew older, (and to my mother, more responsible), we moved on to more traditional pets like cats and a dog.
Endless Summer Days and Tourist Traps As she could afford it, on occasion my mother would take us to the beach during summer vacation from school. Our favorite destination ― Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. After spending long days sunning, swimmimg, and surf riding in the warm waves of the Atlantic, nights were spent playing arcade games at “The Pavilion”, huge scoops of ice cream on colossol cones, and carousing the endless rows of gift shops along “The Grand Strand” in search of souvenirs. On several occasion we fell for the many tourist trap purchases.
Terroized by Hermit Crabs
For my brothers, those tourist trap purchases were Hermit Crabs ― Those smail-shelled, creepy, mini-crustaceans, with their beedy eyes and seemingly random leg placement were no more than misanthropic shell stealing drunken squators to me, and I wanted them nowhere near me.
And of course, my obnoxious brothers just had to taunt me by letting the creepy-crawlers out of their cage as we drove home, after which they never were found again as they crawled into unseen places in the car, which only increased my already ever present Anxiety even more, as I had no idea when or if one or more of the horrendous hermits may come out of its hiding place to then unexpectedly crawl on me and scare the living s**t out of me at any moment. So, it was a long drive home to say the least.
Sea Monkeys Do, Sea Monkeys Don’t . . .
For me, and only on one disappointing occasion, I did fall for the ridiculous belief that Sea Monkeys were a real thing. And I just had to have them! I mean, what kid could resist? Check out the packaging: Everything you need for Instant Life! Wow!
Arent’t those little guys adorable?
Adorable my a**. After getting home, I rushed to my bedroom with a clear bowl full of water, carefully followed the instructions for care and feeding, and waited for a cute little kingdom of animated cuties to come to life. And I waited, and I waited, and I waited, carefully feeding them per the instruction schedule each day. I waited and I waited and I waited far past the time in the instructions, and all I had was merky disgusting debri floating lifeless in a glass bowl.
I was so distraught I cried. I thought I had killed them. As my older brother overheard my sobbing he came into my room and asked me what was wrong.
It was then that I became embarrassed, angry, and disappointed all at once as my older and wiser brother told me: “Those Sea Monkeys are a crock. First, they are not Monkeys, they are Brine Shrimp, they look nothing like the pictures on the box, and they always die! So, pour that digusting bowl of dead shrimp down the toilet before mom finds it and gets mad. And stop believing everything you read! Everybody knows that the companies who sell that crap lie just to get you to buy it. Everybody but you, that is. You’ve been had, silly girl. So, stop your whining, grow up, and go to bed.”
I knew he was right, because I had always been naive. I thought all people were honest, because I was. I knew I had been fooled over and over again, but I just never learned. Defeated, I went to bed like my brother told me to do. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that being overly naive is an Autistic trait.
A Pitiful Pony Ride And A Dusty Dog Finally the normal pets of cats and even one feisty car chasing dog named “Dusty” became part of the family.
Dusty came to live with us after what I thought was a horrendous experience that my mother arranged as my first pony ride at a local farm. Upon dismounting this farm stenched, slow as a snail, dung dropping, disappointingly poor representation of what a child hopes for in a pony ride, one of the farmers dogs ran up to me as if we had been best friends for life.
But dogs are like that, right? Heck, I could have been an axe-murderer and she still would have ran up to me wagging her cluelessly happy tail. She was trusting just like me, I thought.
Seeing how enamored I was with the little dog, the farmer let me have her! Dusty was a loving dog and easily transitioned to becoming part of our family, and I loved her for sure. But, sadly she came down with a severe case of the mange. We thought it was just a simple dry skin condition that would clear up on its own.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we later we found that mange can be a life threatening problem. In fact. at the time we had never even heard of it, that is until it was too late. When Dusty became obviously sick, we did take her to the vet, but as it had progressed too far by then, so she soon died.
What is a shame is that she didn’t have to die from it. But, being poor and with my mother having to chose between clothing and feeding us kids, she just didn’t have the money to take Dusty to the vet in time. Good dogs lose out too, and even an otherwise happy dog dying is always sad, no matter what the cause.
A Cat Only Family After Dusty, we became exclusively a cat family, yet we never picked one out from a pet store, or rescued one from the Animal Shelter, or even adopted one at the SPCA.
You see, they came to us. My mother has a soft spot for cats, so every time she saw one near our house, she always put out a bowl of water, milk, and whatever leftovers she could come up with to serve to the stray.
Cats are cautious, unlike most dogs. Cats don’t go from one moment snacking on leftovers left on the porch by a stranger, to the dog-like behavior of instantly parking themselves on the couch with the remote control in one paw, and the other paw balancing a tall-boy parked on their belly, like so many men I have unforunately known.
Cats, on the other hand, take things slowly, like respectable women do. If you give a cat some space and let them do things their way, little by little they will take one step further getting closer and more comfortable with you and the new surroundings. Over time, and before you know it, you will have a new devoted loving family pet cat.
That’s the background, and with that said it’s time to tell you the tale of:
The Wrath of Kitty One Eye
When I was 13 years old, my family had a female cat named Millie. She was a small cat, and she was pregnant with her first litter.
Our next door neighbor had three Rottweilers that they kept in a fenced cage, but one or more of them frequently dug under the fence and typically all three escaped to roam about and terrorize the neighborhood.
Now, I have nothing against Rottweilers, and if treated properly by their owners, they can be loving affectionate family pets. With the occasional exception of trips to the veterinarian, keeping dogs in a cage, crate, or pen is by far not the proper way to treat dogs, or animals of any kind for that matter.
Authors of the book “Dogs Hate Crates”, canine psychology specialists Emma and Ray Lincoln, believe that over-crated dogs can suffer complications such as “cage-rage”, anxiety, fearfulness, and depression.
On this one fateful day for Millie, I was sitting on the porch and witnessed the three Rottweilers escape their fenced in cage and charge straight into our yard, and begin to attack Millie.
Like escaped prisoners in a prison riot, these three Rottweilers had a case of “cage-rage” of the worst kind as they tore into Millie biting and throwing her about like a rag doll.
I thought they were going to kill her for sure, but I was determined to not let that happen, so armed with my brother’s baseball bat, and with fear, anger, empathy and a bucket of Adrenalin pumped in my veins, I repeatedly swung and swung the bat hitting the three Rottweilers with each forceful blow with what felt like the very power of Babe Ruth incarnated into me at that terrifying moment, until I finally sent the three of them bloody and limping home.
It was a miracle that Millie was still alive after this vicious gang attack, but she was able to scurry into the safety of our home, as my mother was standing at the open front door after hearing the ruckus.
Pregnant and outnumbered, the dogs got the best of Millie that day; but in an unfair fight. I searched and found her under my bed, and she was in bad shape. Really bad shape. She was barely breathing, bloody, and was missing an eye and half her tail.
As carefully as I could I lifted her and cradled her in my arms, and the whole family circled the station wagon we all piled in and made a bee-line to the Veterinarian Emergency Room.
It was a scary time as we waited for several hours to hear from the doctor, but unbelievably the vet was able to patch her up and sent her home with us with instructions for her care. The vet was uncertain if the kittens inside her womb were hurt or killed in the incident, but he did believe she would eventually be well enough for delivery. It was just such a relief, and a miracle of hope.
As we nursed her for several weeks, one day she disappeared for a while, but was quickly found in a closet where she had given birth to four beautiful kittens, all in perfect health.
But, the incident was far from over. The ER bills were tremendously costly. We were very poor, as my mother raised the four of us children on a meager salary working for 4-H (remember them?), plus what little money my abusive dead-beat dad sent her “whenever he felt like it”, which was not much, and not often. In our house growing up, dinner meant Fish Sticks, Macaroni and Cheese (The Powder Kind), french fries, pork-and-bean,and KoolAid ― literally every night.
So, my mother was determined to get the owners to pay the vet bill, so she charged over to the neighbor’s who owned the dogs, copy of the bill in hand, and demanded repayment. They hemmed and hawed about it, but my mother stood firm in her insistence that they pay-up for what their jail-breaking dogs had done to our innocent cat.
The neighbors continued their rebuttals of why they wouldn’t pay the vet bill, that is until my mother had had enough. And be warned, you better get a good running start running long before my mother has had enough.
Her final summary judgment was not unlike one I had heard many times as she shoved the bill in the neighbor’s faces: “I work my ass off every single day with little reward, and I’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day to feed four hungry kids, and I’ve had it up to here with your jackass asinine excuses, and you’ve just got on my last nerve, so either you pay up now, or I call Animal Control to take your wolf pack away from you, in which case they likely will be euthanized, and if that don’t happen, I will take matters into my own hands and with my ex-husband’s thirty ought six and a full metal jacket, I will unload every round on those three beasts until they’re dead as a door nail. So you decide right now because in either case you end up with three dead dogs, unless you pay up now!”
Quickly contemplating the obvious seriousness of my mother’s threats, the neighbors put a check in her hands for the full vet bill.
But the story doesn’t end here. Not by far. Millie had fully recovered by now, or as we children then referred to her as: “Kitty One Eye”. Yeah I know that sounds kind of mean, but we were just stupid kids then.
My mother was satisfied that Millie had fully recovered, all the kittens were thriving, and we were at least amicable with the neighbors again as they had reinforced their dog pen, but there remained one family member left who was still not satisfied. Guess who?
That following summer, I’m playing in the front yard on a sunny weekend afternoon with my brothers and sisters. although the neighbors have reinforced their dog cage, I still kept one eye on it whenever I was outdoors. on this particular day I had the eye of a needle as I saw very clearly one of the Rottweilers not dig under. the fence, but from the top of the dog house, he jumped over the fence, and again charged straight towards our yard where Kitty One Eye was playing with Zeus, one of the kittens from her first litter.
I immediately went into defensive mode and ran for the bat, but by the time I got back all hell had broken out. But, this time it was a fair fight – Kitty One Eye one-on-one with one of the Rottweilers. Maybe it was just a gut-feeling or intuition, but whatever it was, I was completely convinced that Kitty One Eye knew exactly which Rottweiler she was attacking as she had pounced upon the dog’s back just below the scruff of his neck.
With both her back paws claws dug deeply into his skin, she was switching retracted razor sharp claw southpaw blows with retracted razor sharp northpaw blows, each aimed directly at the face eyes nose and neck, and try as he did, the Rottweiler was unable shake her off his back, as she had dug her claws in so deeply it was if a surgeon had surgically sutured her extended claws into the flesh on the dog’s back.
Her front claws pounded up a fury. flailing. and striking their target with the accuracy and precision of Sugar Ray Leonard.
To me, the sight of it was both amazing and hilarious, as I laughed my ass-off at the sight, chanting: “Go Kitty One Eye, Go!”
Kitty One Eye’s unstoppable turbo lightning blows stirred up a whirlwind of dog fur and blood spinning in a vortex and with the force of an F-5 hurricane, destroying everything in it’s path, it was almost cartoon-like, as if the Feline equivalent of anger of the Looney Tunes cartoon character, “The Tasmanian Devil” had been unleashed upon the dogs face and neck.
After what seemed like an eternity the dog finally could not shake it or break, so suddenly fell to the ground whimpering. I thought the fight was over, but not for Kitty One Eye, as she continued relentlessly clawing at the dogs face, until finally he stopped making a sound and stopped moving. He was dead.
To be certain, Kitty One Eye kept one paw dripping in blood and dog flesh remnants raised above his head, until she knew she had reached ultimate revenge.
Then she walked away slowly, coolly, and collectively as if nothing happened at all, as a cat does.
What of the two other Rottweiler’s? Well, from our yard to their dog pen, they had a clear view of the whole incident. I looked up the hill at them and watched as they both went down into the submissive position.
From that day forward, the remaining Rotweilers never dared set a paw in the yard of Kitty One Eye – The Apple of My Eye.
A Final Word of Caution
If a black cat crosses your path, you may be in for some bad luck, But, if a one-eyed half-tailed cat crosses your path, that day just may be your last!
Honorable Mention
This story and its subtitle were inspired by Top Medium Writer – The One-and-Only Unf**kwithable James Knight, and his story Cats Are Superior To Dogs
Citations
¹ Wikipedia contributors. (2020, June 10). Gerbil. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:08, June 26, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gerbil&oldid=961801391
Originally published at https://www.artfullyautistic.com/blog/index.php/2020/06/24/the-wrath-of-kitty-one-eye/on June 24, 2020.
