Cat Therapy

Cat therapy ............ or should I say cat torture? No wait! Before you all rush off to the SPCA, I am not talking about torturing the cat, but the cat torturing me. It always starts as therapy and nearly always ends as torture.

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that Mr DBM and I are trying to sell our house and buy a new one. This is turning out to be rather more stressful than planned. We have had two offers on our townhouse; both of them good offers, but both of them were then withdrawn, due to issues with the buyers selling their houses. As for the buying part, well, this is proving to be even more difficult. Apparently, I only choose houses that are owned by crazy people and it seems that negotiating a fair price on a house with a mad person is very difficult. Notice the word fair. We wouldn’t have a problem buying a house, as long as we either agreed to a ridiculous price or to some hair-brained subject to, whereby the seller can pull out at any point in the next six months if they can’t find a house that they quite fancy. So, English Mum, don’t book your holiday to Canada just yet. In amongst all this, there was a devastating earthquake in Haiti, and nothing seemed very important after that. But that is a very dangerous view to take on life and life does go on. And so the house hunt goes on and so my roller coaster ride of emotions goes on. Looks like I might be in some need of some relaxation therapy. Cue the cats.

Any of you that have been around my blog for a while knows that I have two cats – Willow and Tess. They are gorgeous, obviously, but they are also a source of much irritation. They leave fur everywhere, and what they don’t shed in puffs of fluff that roll endlessly across my dining room floor, they throw up in copious amounts of cat vomit all over my basement carpet, and my bedroom carpet, and my hall carpet, and my stair carpet. I do have a lot of laminate and tile flooring, but they always seem to miss that. Did I mention my nice living room rug or my lovely, expensive duvet cover? Did I mention that they do this very loudly at 2am in the morning, or right before we are due to have the house shown to some prospective buyer? I am guessing that stepping in a large protein spill does not encourage one to buy a house.

They also have other irritating issues. Willow insists on being let out of the backdoor, legging it round to the front door and then staring in at the window until you let her in. She then eats one piece of food and repeats the whole exercise, over and over again. She insists on being the world’s friendliest cat, but only between the hours of 2am and 5am, after which she has no interest in humans what-so-ever, unless they are feeding her tuna or letting her in or out. She also has fur issues. The fur that she does not shed or throw up proceeds to form into large clumps, making her look like a charity case that needs rescuing from the SPCA. I know, as a responsible owner I should be grooming her regularly. But, as an owner who is fond of her facial features and likes to keep her blood inside her body, this has proven to be rather tricky and rather expensive, since even the vet deemed that she needed sedation before she could be groomed.

Tess is less worrying and less expensive on a day-to-day basis, mainly because she doesn’t really do anything. There is no terrorising the local rodent and avian populations and so no mouse livers or bird heads left on the path outside the back door (again, putting off anyone who might be interested in purchasing the house) and no fears of internal parasites that said victims may have been harbouring. She is unlikely to get eaten by roving packs of coyotes, since she never leaves the safety of the house. Her fur is sleek and smooth and she does not try to kill me if she sees me with a brush or comb. She may be a little bit stout, but I just tell everyone that is just because she is fluffy. However, I do have worries in the mental department. You see, I fear little Tess is a little bit crazy. This may be due to the consumption of copious quantities of catnip or it may have something to do with oxygen deprivation in the womb. She was the last to be born and was a little bit slow coming into this world. She has been a little bit slow ever since. She really is a bit of a basket case. Just the other day, she proved this to be literally true when I found her rolling around with her head inside one of our wicker waste paper baskets. She also snores, a lot, and she has found the perfect position on the bed where I can’t quite reach her to kick her.

So, what is the point of having these two fairly useless lumps of feline fluff around the house? Where is my relaxation therapy when I need it?

Imagine going into a quiet, slightly darkened room and lying down on a bed. Now curl up into a foetal position and start to stroke the smoothest, silkiest surface in the entire world. Imagine your fingers flowing over this soft, pliable surface; your tactile sense is stimulated to a new level of bliss. Your cares and worries start to flow out through your fingertips; the warmth emanating from this living, breathing creature starts to lighten your mood. Your breathing slows and your stress starts to drain away. As you start to drift off into a world full of feathers and snowflakes, fluffy bunnies and down duvets, a vibration begins from deep within this miraculous animal. As the purring resonates through your body, pulsing through your skin and your muscles, reaching all the way to your heart, you finally relax. Your breathing slows further, your heart rate drops. You have just discovered nature’s answer to all that is chaotic and stressful in this world full of craziness. Your eyes are now starting to close as the purring intensifies. You can feel soft paws starting to massage your weary neck and head, you have just about reached a blissful state of ultimate relaxation and then...............

OMFG – The PAIN! All of a sudden it feels as though tiny, curved pins have been stapled into your head. You know that they are curved because they don’t pull out again. Instead they embed themselves into your scalp and then pulsate back and forth, ripping holes into your skin. WTF!?! What happened to my massage? What happened to my bliss? I want my peace, my calm, my serene state back. I don’t want this drooling monster sucking on my head, piercing my skull with her needle-sharp claws over and over and over again. Oh yes, she is still purring, but how is that helping me now as drool starts to roll down my neck and soak my pillow and my nerve endings start to scream out for mercy. If I try to pull away, one of her claws invariably gets stuck in my head and I lose another chunk of scalp and let lose another couple of swear words. Why oh why does Tess derive so much pleasure from sucking on my hair, and why does she have to torture me while doing it? The other one is no better – Willow just targets my boobs instead. Seriously, if you need to interrogate anyone in the near future, just let me know. Sod the waterboarding, I can just hire you a couple of cats and you will soon have your victim squealing for mercy, begging for the pain to stop, willing to tell you the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, the combination to the safe or where he has hidden the marshmallows to prevent you from eating them all in one sitting. They are evil, I tell you, evil.

Having said all of that, I do love them dearly. As I type this, Willow has just walked into the room, sat down and is now just looking at me. I don’t know what she wants, or what she is thinking. It is all a mystery to me. I have no idea what is going on in her walnut-sized brain most of the time. But, no matter how much they bug me, I do know one thing. Every time I see them, I smile. It is a smile that reaches my heart and heals my soul.

P.S. The cats are available for hire – for relaxation or torture, depending on your needs.