I\u2019m the baby of the family and pretty much acted like one for a long time. (Still do, kinda?, maybe?) But when I was 22, my older sister asked if I would babysit her cat while she went on a trip. She didn\u2019t have any kids—Willie was her baby—and I wanted to prove that I was growing up, that I was responsible, so I agreed.<\/p>\n
Wa lived in Boston, I in New York. She brought the cat down to me, told me how to feed him and clean the litter box, and left on her trip.<\/p>\n
I tried to snuggle him posthaste—that’s something you’re supposed to do when you’re taking care of a thing, right?—but Willie was a real scaredy-cat. He wouldn\u2019t let me get close to him at all. So that first day, I did what I could: carefully measured his food, put out fresh water, like, five times, scooped every turd practically as soon as it hit the litter. After I while, I gave up on trying to lurve on him. I showered, waxed my legs, and got my fancy black pants on, and I went out with my friends for the night, leaving him in the apartment by himself.<\/p>\n
I ended up staying out all night, because that\u2019s something I did when I was 22, and when I stumbled back into the apartment the next morning, I couldn\u2019t find Willie anywhere. He wasn\u2019t in my room, he wasn\u2019t in the living room, he was nowhere, and I was like, OHHHH EFFFFFFFFF.<\/p>\n
I LOST MY SISTER’S CAT.<\/p>\n
THE FIRST DAY.<\/p>\n
I was panicked. I checked every closet, everywhere, and I was about to call my sister and tell her I was the worst, most irresponsible person ever, but something made me get down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. Back in the very corner, I saw two gleaming eyes, and I was awash with relief.<\/p>\n
I hadn’t killed or lost the cat, and—the best part—no one was the wiser. No one had to know I was the most irresponsible person ever.<\/p>\n
Problem is, he wouldn\u2019t come out. I tried everything. I called him. I made a trail of treats. I ignored<\/em> him. He would not come out. So finally I got the broom, and I was like, this little bastard’s gonna come out<\/em> and I’ma\u00a0snuggle him<\/em>.<\/p>\n I swept back with the broom, and sure enough—he shot out from under the bed. Immediately I saw that something was wrong, that he was walking funny. Like, step-step-step-shake, step-step-step-shake.<\/p>\n Every time I got close to him, though, he ran away so I couldn\u2019t figure out why he jitterbugging. Eventually I trapped him in my tiny bathroom, and when I did, I saw that he must\u2019ve jumped up onto my dresser, where in my preparations for going out, I had left one of the wax strips I was using for my legs. And now, one of those was strips was stuck to his back leg. His whole back leg.<\/p>\n Now, how do you get a wax strip off a cat\u2019s leg? It occurred to me to pull it off like I pulled them off my own legs, until I realized that I would probably pull his leg at least out of the socket, if not completely off his body. That would be hard to explain to Wa.<\/p>\n Next, I thought about some sort of solvent but figured anything strong enough to get the wax off would probably dissolve his hair. And maybe his skin?<\/p>\n So I ran to the kitchen and got a pair of scissors, then sprinted back into the bathroom. Willie was trying to be everywhere but near me, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room to roam, so I managed to catch him and pin him down, squirming and caterwauling. I picked up a corner of the wax strip very gently and snipped the hair underneath, then I pulled back a tiny bit more and snipped again. And working this way for\u00a0six years, <\/em>or maybe it was eight minutes, whatever—Willie\u2019s catatonic at this point—I managed to get the wax strip all the way off. I opened the bathroom door, and he bolted out.<\/p>\n WHEW, no harm, no foul—maybe<\/em> I still<\/em> didn’t even have to tell my sister what happened.<\/p>\n Then I looked down at my pants, which were no longer black.<\/p>\n They were orange. I was wearing orange cat fur pants. Willie had completely molted, except of course for the leg that I had trimmed the wax strip off, which looked like it had been groomed with an old lawn mower.<\/p>\n There was no way I could get around telling my sister what happened.<\/p>\n BUT! I must\u2019ve done something right between then and now because I\u2019m in my sister\u2019s will as the guardian of her three kids, should something happen to her and her husband.<\/p>\n And god forbid it did, but now at least I know to keep the wax strips away from the children.<\/p>\n See? I’m responsible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m the baby of the family and pretty much acted like one for a long time. (Still do, kinda?, maybe?) But when I was 22, my older sister asked if I would babysit her cat while she went on a trip. She didn\u2019t have any kids—Willie was her baby—and I wanted to prove that I … Continue reading On the Depilation of Felines<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animules","category-fambly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7378"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7396,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7378\/revisions\/7396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}