Thursday, May 03, 2007

My life is never boring . . .

Tuesday I was sitting home cuddling with my tonsil-free girl on the couch. It was about 3:00 and Dustin came down from upstairs. He had a pretty nasty scratch/cut on his cheekbone. I asked him what happened. Earlier we had an "episode" in the backyard when he didn't want to come in for lunch and weilded a rake around to "defend" himself from my insistence that he come inside. I thought maybe he had been scratched then. He said he didn't know what happened which is pretty typical since he has very few pain receptors and doesn't know when he gets hurt unless he sees blood. Then he looked at his hand and saw a tiny spot of blood from another scratch. I inspected his hands while he was freaking about about the smallest spot of blood I had ever seen (which didn't hurt, just freaked him out; you'd think his arm was falling off his body) Upon inspecting them I found many bites and scratches. . .

Backstory: our cat is a gem. We had origianlly got him because we had mice when Harrison was newborn. I didn't want to set traps and I convinced my husband the cat-hater to get a cat. He was insistent that it was not to be a pet, it was a working cat. Ozzy was brought into the house, a tiny ball of white and black fur. At 8 weeks he came into the house and moused the first night he was there. I knew his place in the household was secure. Little did I know that he would become a treasured pet. Ozzy doesn't know he is a cat. Other than the litter box escapades and the mousing, he is purely canine. He wags his tail like a dog, licks you like a dog, and comes when you call him better than any dog I have ever owned. He eats the dog's food (much to my dismay) and will eat scraps off your plate. He is the alpha-male in the home. Ozzy is my husband's BABY. He has turned from cat-hater to Ozzy-lover.

Back to the story at hand . . . Upon seeing Dustin's hand I knew precisely what had happened to his face and hands. Ozzy. Ozzy and Dustin have a love-hate relationship. Dustin LOVES him and he HATES Dustin. I will spare you the details of this, but rest assured it is hate and it is eternal. I sent Dustin to the kitchen to wash his hands and as soon as he walked out of the living room, Ozzy jumped onto the coffee table. He was slick, shiny and hair sticking up in every direction from his front paws to his tail. One ear was stuck back to his head, and his eyes were red and irritated. The following is the conversation I had next :

Me: DUSTIN get your butt in here! (loudly)
D: What? hands up and shoulders shrugged like he had no idea what in the world could be wrong
Me: Would you like to tell me what is all over the cat?
D: nothing
Me: excuse me?
D: I don't know anything
Me: It smells like hairspray, what did you do to Ozzy?
D: How did you know?

Typical Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. If I didn't see it happen, he has no idea how I could figure out that he had poured an entire bottle of harispray on the cat to get him to stay in his room. I told him to go to his room because I couldn't even look at him and proceeded to give the cat a very unwelcome bath . . . Yesterday I bought some aerosol hairspray.

My life with FAS.

1 comment:

Patty said...

Our cat Andy also thinks he is a dog. When we first got him my youngest said, "I am going to teach him tricks so that everyone knows he is as smart as a dog." In my experience cats are w-a-y smarter than dogs, but she felt pretty proud when she "taught" him to sit up for treats and "fetch" his little bell filled balls.