I Have a Lot to Answer for On Judgment Day.

I used to kill animals for a living.

Got your attention, right? There’s probably some journalistic name for that. Tag line, or something? What the hell do I know. I’m not a journalist. Although that would kind of be an awesome job. But only if I could say “I’m with the press” a lot, and if I got to wear a fedora.

I worked at a humane society for two years in my twenties, and, among other things, one of my duties was putting animals to sleep. I think this may have led to my jaded worldview. It’s hard to be all unicorns and rainbows when you have to give ten perfectly good dogs a shot that puts them permanently to sleep and they die in your arms, and then you have to move on to culling out the cats.

If you say this to someone, they look at you like you're a Nazi. They get big, scared eyes, like you might be concealing a death syringe in your blouse. They say, "how could you KILL the BABY ANIMALS?" I didn't slaughter them with a chainsaw or a club. I put them to sleep, quickly and humanely, so there was room for other animals in the cages. It was not something I enjoyed. I can honestly say there wasn't an employee there who was twisted enough to enjoy that part of the job. The main reason I had to do this? Because dumbasses kept either abandoning or not spaying their pets, and because people would rather adopt an inbred puppy-mill mall pet than an awesome shelter rescue.

Surprisingly enough, I loved working there. I got to work with animals, was the main reason. Yes, I had to put them down – sometimes daily, sometimes weekly – but I also got to play with them every day, and adopt them out to good homes, and reunite lost pets with their owners, so that was enjoyable.

I started out as a kennel employee and worked my way up – well, that’s really not the case, it wasn’t my can-do attitude that did it, it was the fact that people with more seniority quit – to front desk over the course of my employment. Each position had its pros and cons.

Kennel employee. Pros: more contact with the animals. More time to loaf around and chat with fellow employees. Cons: more “blue room” duty (that was the name of the room where we put the animals down – the whole room was, for some reason I never was able to ascertain, painted blue. Hence the name.) More cleaning of poo.

Sidebar. Poo. Oh, the poo. SO MUCH POO. The animals weren’t often in the best shape when they came to us. We were the only shelter in the county, so we got all of the animals – sick, healthy, stray, what-have-you – and often, the animals weren’t well. And this led to messes. Which we had to clean up constantly with hoses. And I was often covered with poo, so I’d have to hose myself off. Yes, I know. Glamorous! You didn’t really bother so much with “looking nice” when you went to work there because what was the point? There would just be poo, later. Poo everywhere.

Front desk employee. Pros: less poo. More time to sit and relax and read. More errand-running. More time to chat with the payroll clerk, who I really enjoyed talking to but who only worked in the front desk area. Cons: more chances to get bitten by animals who were freaked out by getting checked in by their owners (you’d think it would be the other way around, but I actually got bitten more as a front-desk employee than as a kennel worker.) More interaction with the public, who were 60% assholes and 40% nice.

I also got to have a gigantic bunch of keys, like a prison warden, so that was kind of impressive. I'm pretty sure this cements my total badassery for all time.

The people who came into the shelter could be broken into the following:

People who wanted to adopt, and were lovely, and left happy.

People who lost their pet and were despondent and nice and I felt bad we didn’t have it.

People who lost their pet and were angry, as if it was our fault we didn’t have it.

People who lost their pet and were there to pick it up and were happy we’d found it.

People who lost their pet and were there to pick it up and were furious they had to pay to get it back.

People who wanted to volunteer and were nice about it.

People who wanted to volunteer but had a hidden agenda, like condemning us for being a “kill” shelter.

People who were crazy. (Cat lady on The Simpsons? Pretty sure modeled after a shelter customer we had.)

Very stupid people who asked for things like "baby kittens - like, one week old? These are TOO OLD."

Thieves. 

The nice people were outnumbered by the jerky ones, who were always there. They wanted to yell at us for killing animals (but they didn’t want to take any off our hands to alleviate the overcrowding that caused us to have to put animals down in the first place.) They wanted to harass us for charging them money for things like licenses and shots and adoption fees. They wanted to adopt pit bulls to fight them and they didn’t want to get them fixed, which was mandatory at our shelter, and when we refused on both grounds, they wanted to fight us about it. (Seriously. One guy asked me if I wanted to “take this outside.” Um, not really? What are you going to do, sic one of your other dogs on me?) 

We had a handful of people who stole animals right out of their cages and ran out the back door with them – their own pets, because they couldn’t afford to get them back, or animals they wanted to adopt. We ended up having to lock the animals in their cages, it got so prevalent. We had a woman who did a super-secret “expose” about the shelter and our practices and put it in the paper and THAT brought the kumbaya people out of the woodwork for almost a month. (There was nothing wrong with the shelter or our practices. We had to accept every animal that came in the door. Because of that, we had to put animals down. We had a finite number of cages. There is nothing confusing about this. We treated the animals well, we were kind to them, and ask anyone who works at a shelter where there is overcrowding, euthanization is a sad, but necessary, fact.) 

There were exciting moments. One year, there was a rabid skunk outbreak in the county, so the animal control officers had to set up skunk traps all over the county and bring us skunks, which we then had to put down with a syringe attached to a long pole and send off to be tested. At least once a day, one of my coworkers would come in, all, “Have to go home, got sprayed” and we’d be a man down as they tomato-bathed the smell away (it never completely went away.) Once someone brought us a buzzard they found by the side of the road and I got to feed it hamburger meat. Once we got to take care of a horse. Once we got to pull porcupine quills out of a doped-up dog who kept trying to bite us but was so drugged he was moving as slow as a sloth so we could avoid his slow, slow jaws. We also had, over the course of my employment, chickens, rabbits, ferrets, snakes, birds, fish, and raccoons. 

We had court-case dogs on lockdown in a back room – dogs that were being held while their fate was decided by a judge. We’d have them for anywhere from ten days to almost a year. We all fell in love with a German shepherd who’d killed a goat and were all rooting for him, until the court ruled in favor of his destruction. All of the shelter employees, who’d been taking care of him for the better part of eight months, crowded around him as we gave him his shot, and all five of us, who, just to look at us, were kind of badasses, bawled our eyes out. 

Another dog being held was a lab-pit mix with amber eyes. He was the most beautiful dog. And protective, and sweet, and very intelligent. Unfortunately, his protective side had led him to bite someone, who was suing to get him destroyed. One of my coworkers – a quiet, tough guy with tattoos and a shaved head – loved that dog. When the order came to destroy him, he said he’d do it himself, and brought him into the room. My heart hurt. When, a couple weeks later, that same coworker showed up at work with his new dog – a lab-pit mix with amber eyes, but now, a different name - our eyes met. We never discussed it again. As far as I was concerned, it was a different dog. A different, loving, protective, sweet, intelligent dog, who acted like he’d known me for the better part of a year. 

I was bitten a number of times, but never badly. Only on the hand, and only by cats. Cats are mean! Dogs telegraph when they’re going to bite, usually. Cats are snake-quick and have sharp little teeth. When we got bitten, we had to go to the free clinic for antibiotics. It got to the point where they knew all of the shelter employees by name over there. I was on antibiotics more than I wasn’t. One of the hazards of the job, I guess. 

People were also a joy in that they’d do things like leave boxes of tiny kittens outside our door in the middle of a winter night so that when we came in in the morning, we’d have a box of dead kittens to deal with. Thanks! Apparently the “Humane” part of the name escaped you when you decided this was a good idea. We also got a dog someone had shot in the head and left for dead – somehow he’d survived, and a very nice family adopted him – a dog someone had set on fire who needed skin grafts, and a number of cats people threw out of the window of their car at the shelter building and just peeled out of the lot. Just in case you think the human race is on an upswing, go work at an animal shelter for a few days. 

Also, in case you think this was a totally glamorous and high-paying gig? Minimum wage, 10 hour days, no two days off in a row until you had seniority (it took me almost two years to get the seniority to get the two consecutive days off, and then I moved to another state, which meant giving up my plum time-off position, dammit), no sick time, and vacation time only after you'd worked there a year (and it was up to the discretion of the director if you could take it or not, or when you could take it, after that.) None of us were there for the glamour, I can assure you. 

So yes, I’m an advocate for adopting your pets, not buying them from a puppy mill. I’m an advocate for spaying and neutering. I donate to animal-related charities. I still go all smooshy when I see a big, tough pit bull being walked down the street (contrary to popular belief? They are honestly very, very sweet. We had more chow and small yappy-dog bite cases over the years than pits.) I am fantastic with animals, but I also know the dark side of it all. I’m very practical about it. Chalk it up to skills I have, but hope to never have to use again: I can tell how old a cat is by looking at its teeth; I'm not easily grossed-out by some of the nastier messes an animal can produce; I can tell you what sex your kitten is with a quick peek; and I used to kill animals for a living.

My cats would like you to know they might MAKE you LOL but they are NOT LOL cats. They are TOO DIGNIFIED for that.

I should probably write about the hurricane today, right? Because that's the topic of the day, or if you're fancy and French, the topic du jour, or whatever. But the hurricane, which here in my area has been downgraded to a tropical storm, really isn't doing much at the moment. I mean, yes, it's raining, and the parking lot is kind of wet, and it's a little windy, but mostly it's just a regular storm. And I'm not really complaining about that, since people are dying in places where the hurricane is worse, and also, because other parts of town got hit harder than I did, tech day at my theater was cancelled, giving me an unexpected day off so I get to blog today after all and possibly watch television or something. But I was kind of looking forward to a scary storm. I mean, a little bit of one. I didn't want to have to lose power, or anything. But I was prepared! I had candles! I had storm food! And I love windy stormy days. They are most exciting.

No, instead of up-to-date Irene coverage, which I suppose you can get from Twitter or Facebook or your local news station or whatever, let's talk about something that the Internet is fascinated with: cats. Even more specifically: MY cats.

These are my cats. On your left, you have Dumbcat. He actually has a real name which isn't Dumbcat, but he doesn't like the Internet to know his business and I have to respect his privacy. He's very kidnappable and if you knew his real name you might be able to lure him into your child molester van. Also he's in witness relocation and so it's a safety issue. Dumbcat, as his name implies, rides the short bus to school every single day.

On your right you have Bittercat. Bittercat also has a name but she hates you too much to tell it to you. She is very snooty and pretentious, and will correct your pronunciation of certain words and also pee on your floor if you've displeased her. And listen, you've always displeased her.

Dumbcat and Bittercat are from Arizona and are adopted shelter cats. Quick PSA, because sometimes I can be serious, too (SHUT UP I TOTALLY CAN) - get your pets from shelters whenever possible. Because I worked at a shelter for almost two years, and we had to put a lot of animals to sleep. This is upsetting and unneccessary and also means I'm probably definitely going to hell someday. Get your pets spayed or neutered and when you're ready for a pet, go to the shelter and get one. Because it's trite and a cliche, sure, but you really are saving your pet's life.

Bittercat was my first grown-up person pet. I decided I wanted a cat so I went to the shelter with a list. I wanted a male cat, black and white, with a bad-ass attitude. I apparently was under the impression that the shelter was like the grocery store with well-stocked shelves. I surprisingly actually found the cat I was looking for, took him out of the cage, and cuddled him. When he started growling in my ear and tensing himself to eat my face I decided that maybe he wasn't a good fit and possibly a zombie cat and put him back.

Bittercat was in the back of her cage, curled up in her litter pan. She didn't have a card on her cage telling information about her, so I took her out and she attached herself to me like velcro. I had claw marks in my shoulder for a week after I adopted her, she held on so hard. She was not very big and she was kind of wheezy and she had pretty brown and black colors and I really, really wanted to bring a cat home, so I brought her up to the front desk. They asked me where her information card was so they could process the paperwork. I said she didn't have one. There was a fury of whispered discussion and a quiet phone call to the back and a shelter employee came up, gave me and Bittercat a weird look, and handed over the card.

The reason Bittercat's card wasn't on her cage was because, minutes before I had entered the room, the shelter employee had pulled it from the cage and brought it into the room where animals were put to sleep. Seconds after I left the room with Bittercat (which I found out you actually weren't supposed to do, but she was all velcro-ey and I didn't know the rules) the worker had gone into the room to get her to put her down and found her missing. While I was up front talking to the receptionist, they were looking for Bittercat, who they thought might have escaped from her cage. I found this out a couple of years later when I started working at the same shelter and they remembered me and Bittercat.

Bittercat had a serious cold, and wasn't spayed, and had been a stray for a while so took a while to get used to me, and I've had her for 11 years now. She's an old lady, my Bittercat. She's earned her bitterness. She just wants to be left alone. And she wants you to wake up at 5am to feed her wet food, and also she wants more wet food the minute you walk in the door at night, and she's VERY VOCAL about it. She's also uncomfortably old-lady bony and sleeps a lot, and gives everything around her constant bitchface. It has been noted a number of times that since animals and their owners start to act like one another after a long time spent together, Bittercat and I are the SAME. I take offense to that. I'm not skinny.

Dumbcat came along a couple of years later. I was working at the shelter at that point and a bunch of super-smart-awesome-fantastic people had started driving up to the shelter after-hours and pitching cats they didn't want out of their windows and driving away, because signing cats over to us during our very long, very gracious business hours was apparently MUCH TOO HARD. We were getting overrun with stray cats outside of the shelter, so we got a bunch of Hav-a-hart humane traps and set them up outside of the shelter. Most of the cats we caught were very feral, and not adoptable, but one day my co-worker said, "Check this one out, Amy!" and brought in a big, fat lynx point Siamese. I was sure he'd be feral - all the other cats had been, up until this point, and the ones that weren't were avoiding the trap like it had the plague - so I did the pen test. The pen test is when you gently tap a cat through the bars of a trap with a pen. If the cat FREAKS OUT OMG and tries to eat the pen? Feral. What did the Siamese do? Head-butted the pen and started purring so loud the trap vibrated against the tiled floor. I petted him through the trap. He tried frantically to head-butt my fingers. I opened the trap and he cuddled up into my arms and purred happily there because he might be dumb, but he's no fool, and he knew he'd won me over.

Dumbcat had been living outside for a while and had some cuts and scratches, but was otherwise ok. He also had a stub of a tail - the vet said it was a genetic thing, not a cruelty thing- and was a polydactyl, with mitten paws on the front and extra toes on the back. He also had one snaggle tooth and one broken tooth. So, in other words, he was just one big ball of genetic snafus. In better news, he was soft as a chinchilla and purred like a muscle car warming up. We held him for ten days - we had to, in case someone had lost him, although we were all pretty sure he was one of the cats someone had dumped on us - and in those ten days, we had a list of over twenty people wanting to adopt him. I wrote all of their names down with a smile and told them I'd call if the first person on the list fell through.

The first person on the list was the person writing down their names, of course.

The day I was able to take Dumbcat home, I opened up his cage and he took one look at me and bolted. Jumped right out of the cage, ran out of the cat room, and out the back door I'd propped open so I could get his carrier in the car easier. I stood there wondering how an animal that husky could move that fast. It seemed impossible, like how bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly.

The next two weeks were spent seeing glimpses of Dumbcat around the shelter. My co-workers kept a running tally for me. "Saw him over by the dog run! Left him a can of food!" "Saw him behind the night watchman's trailer - he ran under it when I walked over!" I was heartbroken. I was a bad potential kitty mommy. Finally we decided to stop leaving food out for him in the hope he'd get hungry enough to come into the shelter looking for some. It worked. One night, I was in the back shed putting a canned food donation away, and heard his meow - which, for a big old barrel-chested cat, sounds like a delicate opera singer. I very non-threateningly put out a can of food, which he attacked as if he hadn't eaten in years. I snuck behind him and shut the door of the shed, so his escape route was blocked. He realized the door was shut, ran to it in a panic, then looked at me with big, scared eyes - then gave up, rolled on his back, and peeked out at me from crossed paws in an "I give, you win" gesture. I brought him home that night.

Dumbcat is - well, listen, he's dumb. Dumbcat doesn't like to be touched and will run away if you attempt to touch him without him initiating it, sometimes violently, after making noises like a strangled baby chimpanzee. It's a serious problem because he is SO DAMN SQUISHABLE. You cannot see this cat and not want to just hug him until his eyes pop out. He looks like a stuffed animal. He also runs into things with his head. Like bookshelves. Once he ran twice into the same bookshelf with his head within a fifteen-minute span, and after the second time, HISSED at the bookshelf, like, "How DARE you, BOOKSHELF?" He is scared of visitors, even if he knows them, and will hide - sometimes under the couch (with his butt sticking out, because if HE can't see YOU, YOU can't see HIM - and when you pick him up from this type of hiding place, he regards you like unto a GOD, HOWEVER did you FIND ME?) and sometimes in cabinets. His favorite is the pots and pans cabinet because he likes to overturn the biggest pot and curl up under it with just his tail sticking out because IT IS SAFE IN THE DARK. He also hates closed cabinet doors and will go around opening the ones he can and meowing at the ones he can't until you open them for him, because he thinks Narnia is in there? I don't know.

Dumbcat also makes me laugh until I almost pee my pants. It's like living with a little furry comedian whose schtick is physical comedy, done well.

So now I've bored you to death. Sorry. Obligatory cat post. EVERY CAT MOMMY GETS A CAT POST.

To end this blog post, Dumbcat and Bittercat want to say something. Then they have to go back to sleep. 18+ hours of sleep a day doesn't just happen on its own, you know.

Hello. This is Bittercat. I take offense to anything written herein about me, as I have a reputation to uphold. I am a citizen with high moral standing in the cat community at large and I can't have my name just smeared about by hack bloggers and the like. I won't hesitate to sue. I have a lawyer on retainer, and am not in the least bit unwilling to call him if I'm not reflected in the best light in this post.

Also, it's been five hours since anyone fed me any wet food, and the dish isn't going to fill itself. Get to it, non-furred lackey.

Most very sincerely yours,

Bittercat.


Hello this is dumbkat i have fur. Oen time i aet a bug and it taseted liek a bug. i liek you no touchingg me thogh. bekause it maeks my fur needs likcing for lng times.

loev dumbkat i have xtra toes

Aw. LOVE.

All of This Greatness, and It Being Constantly Thrust Upon Me, is Exhausting

Here are two important things about me: I love animals more than a normal person (three places I’ve worked in my life: pet store, vet clinic, humane society) and fire scares me more than anything. Well, except clowns. Clowns with razor-sharp teeth.

When you were a kid, did they ever make you watch that “be careful because you are about to lose everything and everyone you love in a fire” video (well, filmstrip, I’m old) at school? It scared the SHIT out of me. I BEGGED my parents for one of those ladders that folded up under your window. I slept with all of my favorite toys within grabbing distance in case we had to evacuate. It taught you that fire was insidious. In the filmstrip, a smoker put out his cigarette on the arm of a chair (why did he do this? Fire probably told him to. Evil, evil fire!), and three days LATER that chair burst into flame. No one in my house smoked, but what if someone who visited us had an ash in their pantleg they were unaware of? Stowaway fire! This was a very major concern of my childhood. Fire would kill and eat everyone you loved, leaving you a sad, dirty-faced orphan who smelled like woodstoves, like the poor kid that sat next to me once and then he disappeared and they said he moved, but I was never quite sure about that. That’s what I took away from that filmstrip.

A few years ago, we had a severe thunderstorm on my way home from work. I got home and settled in with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and some HBO. You know, as you do. It was summer. The smell of barbecue grills was wafting gently through my open windows. (“It’s curtains for you, Dr. Horrible. Lacy, gently wafting curtains.” No? Fine. Go watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, you heathens.) It was a lovely post-storm afternoon. Then someone started banging on my door. I went downstairs to the door, grumbling about my ice cream melting and wondering exactly how many people were barbecuing, because the smell of smoke was really getting strong.

My neighbor, who never knocked on my door. Odd. He said “Fire,” and pointed at my bedroom window. He had a very thick accent, and I wasn’t sure what he was saying. He repeated himself. “Fire!” and pointed again. I looked – and smoke was pouring out of the roof right over my apartment window. The neighbors were all leaving the building. My building was on fire. (I found out later that it had been hit by lightning right before I got home.)

And here’s the best thing. My neighbors? Were setting up lawn chairs to have a front-row seat to the fire. One of them brought out a cooler and started passing around popsicles. Apparently, this was their fourth of July; my apartment was the fireworks. Lawn chairs. Freaking LAWN CHAIRS. And they were jostling for the best sightlines like it was the Kentucky goddamn Derby.

He gestured for me to leave, and I almost did, but then – well, not that I wish intense situations on any of you, but have you ever been in a situation where your brain just kind of takes over and breaks down a task and you’re in the zone? Oh, what’s that you say? Sports? I know nothing of this “sports” of which you speak. I’m talking about disaster, people. I was about to leave and I realized two things, one of which had three parts: a. my purse, with my apartment keys, was upstairs, and the door would lock automatically behind me if I closed it and walked away right now; and b. my two cats and my roommate’s one cat were upstairs. And the smoke was really starting to billow. Oh, and there were no barbecues. In case you didn’t figure that out yet. (I was foreshadowing. Fancy, right? I know! I went to college for that!)

The cats were upstairs and there was a good chance the apartment was going to go up in a cinder and our three cats were upstairs. And my roommate didn’t get home from work for another half an hour. And fire was insidious. I had seen the filmstrip!

I ran back upstairs, pulling the door shut after me. The neighbor was yelling something after me. In the zone. I was in the ZONE. I saw the cats, two napping peacefully on the couch, one on my roommate’s bed. I grabbed the cat carriers from the closet. I whirled around.

No cats. Not one. Cat desert. Tumbleweeds blowing by. (Also, smoke. All the smoke. Coming in the open window.) See, the cats even see a carrier, and their cat brains light up with “Carrier. Vet. Shots. SHOTS! OWIES! RECTAL EXAM AND OWIES!” And they are in the wind. We used to put the carriers out a week before the vet visits so they’d think they were new kicky decorating choices and forget about their impending doom, just so we could get near them on vet day.

Someone was banging on my door. Firetrucks, alarms clanging, were pulling up outside. And where were the ever-loving cats?

I found one under the bed. With the strength of a mother whose child was trapped under an Explorer, I grabbed her and threw her in a carrier. (The claw marks I had in me, later, were kind of epic. Didn’t feel them at the time.)

The second cat – well, he’s dumb. There’s no other way to explain him. He’s mentally challenged. He’s a polydactyl with more toes than brains; he’s got a stub tail that the vet thinks is a congenital deformity (and when he gets excited, it splits at the tip like little devil horns), and he’s slightly walleyed. When he hides, he does the ostrich thing. He only hides his head. “I cannot see her,” he “reasons” (he cannot reason, he is dumb, hence the sarcastic quotes), “so therefore, she cannot see me!” And then when I grab him, he always looks at me like I am a goddess and a finder of lost things. I “found” him with his head half under the couch. Bam. Carrier.

“Ma’am? This is the fire department? And you’re going to need to come out, as your apartment is on fire?” Bang, bang, bang. One more cat! One more cat! Where is the last cat? The apartment! It is on fire! I DO NOT HAVE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE HANDY UNDER-WINDOW LADDERS!

(Have you forgotten about my ice cream? It melted. I had to throw it away. I know. Ben & Jerry’s isn’t cheap. And “act of God” doesn’t cover ice cream in your renter’s policy. Keep that in mind when purchasing insurance. It’s apparently “not an item of value.” Tell that to my TASTE BUDS, insurance adjustor.)

The last cat was under the loveseat. Whenever I tried to reach her, she scooted away. She was not having this. There was a carrier. There was probably a vet visit coming up. And I was acting weird.

I threw the loveseat (no, seriously, that bad boy went over like the Titanic, we found it in the middle of the living room when we were allowed back in and my roommate was all, “Whaaa?” and I was like, “Those firemen! Man! Take care of personal heirlooms, guys, am I right? RUDE” but it was me and my super-adrenalized and possibly ice-cream fueled strength) and grabbed her, more scratches, and ran downstairs, throwing my purse over one shoulder, cat carriers in each hand, two in one carrier, one in the other. Flung open the door. Fireman standing there, his hand up ready to bang again.

“Had to get the cats,” I said. He was not amused by me. At all.

“Ma’am, you never, never run back into a burning building, didn’t anyone ever teach you that?” he said (YES I WATCHED THE FILMSTRIP DAMN), and then, “Last apartment’s clear,” and I walked the cats to my car, crashing, exhausted, my neighbors watching me with their little avid eyes from their lawnchairs (LAWNCHAIRS! at a FIRE!) and put the cats in the car and waited for my roommate to come home. When she did – running across the lawn, petrified because the fire department had put someone at the end of our street telling everyone that if they lived in building 11, they couldn’t go home, it was on fire – we met like lovers at the airport.

“Did you –the..” she said, tears in her eyes.

“They’re fine. They’re in my car,” I said, and we hugged, because I was a huge hero. A parade? Yes. It wasn’t too much to expect. Maybe a small, tasteful piece in the paper. A monument in our local park. I had braved the flames, people, and I had won. Without a little ladder. The insidious flames, they had not gotten me OR my furry kiddos.

Hubbub! Hubbub! What was going on?

The lawnchairs started getting up and going in. The excitement was past. What? Why, you ask? Because – get this, are you ready? – the apartment wasn’t really on fire. No. Seriously. Well, there was a fire. A tiny one. More smoke than anything. It would probably have gone out on its own. We were allowed back in. The fireman had gone through our apartment to put out the gigantic conflagration (tiny smoldering baby fireling) and left it a mess. (And of course there was the mess I’d left, “rescuing” the cats from a danger they weren’t even in.)

Please, let me reiterate.

I saved the cats from a NONEXISTANT FIRE.

Whatever, shut up, I’m still super-brave. I’m sure the firemen weren’t laughing at me when they drove off; they saw something humorous in my general direction.

Well-played, fire. I was not prepared for just how insidious you are. I’ll be ready next time, though. I’m getting TWO of those little ladders. One for me, one for the cats. BAM.

(Note - in looking for a title for this post I found that there is an album by Cat Stevens entitled "Teaser and the Firecat". That - well, that is kind of the most awesome and terrible and also awesome.)