WARM AND FLUFFY!

***

I honestly did not know the cat was in the dryer when I turned it on. That simple mistake could have cost the feline its life. It almost cost me mine.

Our daughter is married with a family of her own, so it is just my wife and me now. We share our home with an unbelievably cute little terrier – and the cat. Three of us are very happy with this arrangement; however, the kitty is the exception. She really has no use for the rest of us. We are simply there to do her bidding – no matter what time of day or night that might be.

It seems that our entire lives are built around the completely selfish demands of the cat. Even our yard has been compromised so that she has an area where she can go outside and terrorize small birds, mice, and an occasional baby snake. She loves being outside, and she will cry for hours to be let out so that she can kill and maim as much of the animal kingdom as she can reach.

Because of her insatiable lust for animal flesh, the cat is overweight. I mean overweight in the sense that her belly is so big it sways back and forth when she tries to run. Of course, my bride leaves food down for her 24/7. I should be so lucky.

In fact, everything about the kitty’s life is better than mine. The cat is asleep when we get up in the morning and asleep in the same spot when we go to bed. She never has a stressful day. The cat does absolutely nothing to earn her keep. The food just miraculously appears to fill her ever-growing stomach.

Every day, my wife brushes the finicky feline while telling her how much she loves her and what a good kitty she is. The cat is given annoying toys to amuse herself with, and she is allowed to sleep in places I would be killed for going near. “Stay away from Grandma’s curio cabinet. You’ll scratch it!”

I don’t even know what a curio cabinet is (I think it’s the hideous thing over in the corner), and I certainly have no interest in going near one, but being regaled with such helpful reminders is all part of married life.

It is difficult to convey how deeply my bride loves the kitty. Let me just say that if the cat and I were both in the street and the love of my life was heading our direction in a car – and she had to swerve to miss one of us – I would be eating a bumper. But, thankfully, I’d be able to rest easy knowing that the critter was safe.

At all times, the kitty is the prime consideration of our lives. Our schedule is set so that the obese terror of the backyard is always happy. We can only take short overnight trips so that we can rush home and take care of the cat. (Personally, I don’t think she cares whether we are there or not. As long as there is food, water, and a curio cabinet to sleep on for 23 hours a day, she’s content.) But my spouse is convinced that every aspect of our lives should be considered within the context of how it affects the beast’s desperate need for maximum comfort at all times.

And speaking of comfort, my wife is a quilter. It is her passion, and she has an amazing ability to create beautiful quilts that are so intricate and complicated that I can’t even begin to understand how she does it. That being said, I learned many years ago not to drop down next to her on the couch when she is quilting because, invariable, I would sit down on something warm and squishy that would screech loud enough to stop your heart and then shoot across the room in a blur. The cat loves to sleep under the quilts as my bride is working on them.

After several episodes of near cardiac arrest and being told, “Not to hurt the kitty!” I learned to sit safely in a torturous pain-inducing chair across the room so that the cat would be safe, warm, and comfortable at all times.

Which brings me to the dryer.

One day, I was helping out with the laundry. It is something I do to ease the workload for my spouse and to keep from hearing the ever-growing list of my failures as a husband. She had washed one of the quilts she had finished. I took it out of the washer and put it into the dryer. However, I wasn’t sure what setting to use. She had spent days on this quilt, and I didn’t want to be the one to shrink down to the size of a handkerchief.

I left the dryer door open for about 10 seconds while I stuck my head around the corner and asked my wife about the appropriate setting. In that brief interval of time, the cat jumped into the dryer. I received the necessary instructions regarding the settings, along with a useful reminder to be careful because “You know how you are,” and of course, I know. After decades of marriage, it is well-documented how I am. Anyway, I turned around, closed the door, hit the start button, and stepped over to the washer to do another load.

After a couple of seconds, I began to hear an odd thumping noise coming from inside the dryer. I started to check to see what it was, but then I realized it was probably a pair of my bride’s sneakers she had thrown in earlier. I turned back to the washer.

After a few more seconds of solid thumping, I suddenly heard a faint sound that made my blood run cold. I froze in panic as I distinctly heard a tiny “meow”. I didn’t want to believe it. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe because I realized my life was about to come to an unfortunate conclusion.

As I spun around and opened the dryer door, I heard my wife sprinting down the hallway toward the laundry room. How could she have possibly heard such a faint, muffled sound? It didn’t matter. She burst in just as I reached for the cat.

At this point, it is impossible to relate exactly what happened during the unpleasant minutes that followed. I remember that the charge was firmly made that I had purposely tried to “eliminate” the kitty. (Not true. Although that was a fantasy I frequently entertained, using the dryer would not have been my method of choice.)

It was also pointed out that the creature was irreparably harmed and would never be the same. (Not true. The brief ride in the dryer did not have any discernible effect on her appetite or on her ability to sleep anywhere at any time. Those are important facts because they are her two chief activities.)

And, finally, it was pointed out to me, in no uncertain terms, that I was a careless, thoughtless monster. (Perhaps that is true, but since I’d heard that colorful phrase many times before, it was beginning to lose a lot of its sting.)

The critical thing to understand is that the cat was fine. My life had been in far more danger than hers. While it is true that, when placed on the floor, she staggered around for a brief time with her eyeballs ricocheting in their sockets, the kitty soon recovered her equilibrium and headed straight for the curio cabinet. On the plus side, she did come out of the dryer warm and fluffy.

So in my house, we have reached a truce. I’m not going anywhere, and unfortunately, neither is the cat. With that in mind, she and I have agreed to cohabitate while we conveniently ignore the existence of the other. This is an arrangement that, of course, favors the feline.

While she lives a blissful life of peace and tranquility, I am required to provide a nonstop supply of disgusting-smelling cat food that she can stuff into her swelling belly during those brief moments when she awakens from her lifelong slumber-induced coma. I must sit in painfully uncomfortable chairs while she snuggles up on the couch under a warm quilt. And I am to remain a prisoner that can never leave home for more than 36 hours for fear that the cat will become lonely and desire human companionship.

To say that I can barely tolerate sharing the same roof with this animal is quite an understatement – and I didn’t even mention the horror of the litter box!