How my Cat Broke my Arm

When I turned six I got a cat for my birthday.

Meraai the First.

A few days living with us, my first 6-year old thought was that maybe she liked vomiting blood.
But my mom, having always been brutally honest, told me that she is probably very sick.
She sadly passed away about a week after getting her.
Seems SPCA rescues are subjected to all kinds of weird bugs from other dogs/cats/birds/janitors/other bugs.
And so Meraai the First bit the dust long before her time.

I plagued my mother for a full week before she agreed to get me another one.
Because (duh) the first one had a manufacturing fault and had to be returned. It’s called reimbursement mom! I did not actually say that because of the possibility of backfire...and death.

So off we went to Danville where people don’t sterilize their pets in mortal fear that they might not breed like hopped up bunny rabbits and overtake the planet.
Danvillians really really really want domesticated animals to re-inhabit the earth.
So as luck would have it, an unwashed family’s cat got frisky with a feral and BOOM:
6 adorable little fluffykooshnoos.

My mom let me pick one out after arguing for 20 minutes that we should take this fine strong little one home.
I then picked the one that she said she thought was the least likely to even survive the car ride home.
But the chosen one only died when I was 23. He he he, I love it when my mother is wrong.

I, on the other hand, almost didn’t survive the car ride home. Little kitty was not impressed with being in a cardboard box inside a metal box that vibrated and rumbled like a rabid dog.
She slid all around the box exaggeratingly with her tiny but flaming sharp claws scratching baby trenches along their path.
While she was doing the hissing and the scratching, and that freaking awful sound a cat makes when it’s really pissed, my mom and I were arguing our next topic.
What to name this one.
She adamantly stood by Japsnoet, which I thought was stupid (but I didn’t say it because sometimes I got a little bit nervous when her eyes went slightly crazy and I didn’t know exactly what she might be capable of…love you mom).
I wanted to call her Meraai the Second. Because it was a nice name for a cat and the first Meraai didn’t live long enough to wear it out. I was only going to grade 1 the next year, so my understanding of bad omens was at best sketchy.
Then my mother did the scariest thing known to kids with mothers. She burst into tears.
I said fine we can name the damn cat Japsnoet but I think it’s STUPID.
Turns out my mother either wasn’t in the mood to maim or she actually wasn’t capable of it. I still think it’s the former.

I was, like, 22 or something, still thinking about the day I made my mommy cry, when I realized she wasn’t crying over the cat’s name but about a bunch of other proverbial shits hitting the proverbial fans, of which I was still blissfully unaware of (cannot stress enough the importance of school, for the “harder lessons in life”).

Meraai the Second (who will, from here on forward, be referred to as “Meraai”) was the funniest looking little kitten I had ever seen. Her ears were bigger than her body, which doesn’t say much because her body was minute. She looked adorable in one of my sister’s roller-skates and only mildly terrified when I dragged her around in it by its shoelace and then later a rope (it was longer so I could go faster)
It was not long after that, that I realized she is a little prankster.
Hiding in dark corners, behind curtains, on wardrobes, inside wardrobes, in bushes, under the bed, just above the bed, in trees and behind my drum set (and she only sat there when she knew my sister and I had just finished watching a scary movie and had to walk down the dark hallway, past my drum set, eerily draped with a white sheet).
Then leaping out at the speed of white lighting; yelling MIAOW at me/us/them/it (she did this to the dogs too, poor things). Scaring the scheisser out of us.

This was a fun combination of hide and seek and tag, only when playing with Meraai I was always “it” which I thought was unfair.
Meraai was the product of a semi-feral but stable (if a bit promiscuous) Mommy cat and a crazy, hands off the wheel, feral alley cat Daddy and boy did she get all the right genes.
She was batshit crazy. But the good kind.
She refused to go down to the kitchen for breakfast (at 06:00) without a chaperone (me) even though she always had a full bowl waiting for her.
She had a series of “tricks” she used in the tedious process of waking me up and getting me out of bed so I can escort her to her meal.

1. The Decibel
First she’ll start climbing loudly in and back out of my bedroom window, ensuring her hip bones bump an appropriate amount of times and that her nails scratch frantically at the sill as much as possible.

2. The Tornado
Then she’ll run in a circle on my bed until my duvet resembled the top of a soft serve swirly ice cream cone.

3. The Stare
This is the part where she will come and sit with her little face awfully close to mine. And then comes… The Stare. You might not think that it could be possible for a staring cat to wake up a semi-comatose person but the success rate is scary.

4. The Lickbite
In the event that The Decibel, The Tornado and The Stare all failed, Meraai brought out the big guns. Say hello to her little friends: Scratchy Tongue and Razor Sharp Teeth.
She will move even closer to my face then slowly and lovingly start licking my nose.
AND THEN BITE IT!

This usually did the trick but if I made her go through the whole rigmarole from start to finish before waking up; I would have to prepare myself for a poke in the eye as soon as I opened it.
For real, she poked me in the eye on more than one occasion.
We would then proceed (me in the lead as if I am driving her limo, she trailing behind as if she is a passenger in her limo), to her little bowl of kibbles where she would sit down neatly, look up at me to see if I am watching and then finally start eating. I had to stand there throughout her whole breakfast before casually being dismissed.

So one gorgeous atumn day when I was eight, Meraai and I were charging through the house jumping on things (mostly her), crashing into other things (only me), when she pulled this unbelievable stunt.
I can’t remember it very well because the awe of the moment blinded me a little but I think it went something like this:

How she did it:
Zoom full speed down hallway.
Bound into my room at the end of it.
Immediately bolt for single bed #1.
Do a back flip from single bed #1 to single bed #2.
Jack-in-the-box onto the desk then fling into the air.
Land perfectly in a martial arts crouch position.

How I did it:
Zoomed full speed down the hallway.
Tripped on the threshold of the room and timbered onto the floor, breaking my left arm in two places.

As I lay there groaning in pain, Meraai passed me on her way out.
Amateur, her disappointed glance said as she lifted her tail and strolled off.
What a class act.