[Insert curse word] cats!

Speedy Carter yanks on a cat's tail at least five times a day. The cats have tolerated him; they get flustered and scramble away. I've been naive in thinking I have pretty good cats, they
would never intentionally defend themselves. Yesterday Tigger proved me wrong.

I was cooking dinner.
Baby giggles.
A cat snarls.
Hissing.
Hysterical, tear-filled cries.
Blood trickling out of Carter's plump, little, once flawless arm.

I want to drop Tigger off at one of those bookstores who have cat adoption agencies. I'm sorry, our animal adoption program is only here on Saturdays. We leave the cat in the middle of the Self Improvement aisle, make a mad dash for the car and speed off.

You'd think Carter learned his lesson yesterday. Today the first thing he did after he finished his breakfast was make another beeline toward his begrudging cat.

I can't believe this is my second blog post about cats in the past week. Because I think I hate them.

11 comments:

  1. awww poor carter :(

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  2. awww what a cutie pie, I hope he's fine :)

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  3. Aw :( poor Carter. He probably just caught Tigger at a bad moment. Make sure you disinfect the scratch, as cats have bacteria in their claws: https://health.google.com/health/ref/Cat+scratch+disease

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  4. Babies will be babies! :) With all due respect, it's also about teaching Carter not to antagonize pets. We have a 16-month-old and a dog, also very friendly, whom we've had since long before her birth. Up until quite recently the baby would pull on the dog's tail, smack her etc. We were very firm with both the baby and the dog and they now get along without problem. Sometimes she'll 'test' us by petting the dog too hard. We just tell her a firm 'no' and that if she's going to hurt the dog then she can expect to be hurt back. I know it's frustrating when a pet - or anything, for that matter - harms your baby but if you're going to live with pets too then I think it's important that the child is taught not to antagonize the pet. Hope this didn't sound too preachy. I wasn't intending to be mean :)

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  5. It's not the cat's fault, Meghann. Cats don't have reasoning skills and they can't think to themselves, "This is my baby brother. When he pulls on my tail, I should just sit here and take it instead of fighting back. He's a baby. I deserve to be irritated and antagonized." And you really shouldn't get rid of a cat just because he scratched Carter. You need to teach him that it's NOT okay to annoy the cat and that he needs to just let the cat mind his own business. Anytime Carter goes near the cat, tell him, "No, Carter. Tigger just wants to be by himself today." And go distract him with something else. It's Carter's fault afterall.

    -Nicole

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  6. I'm dreading the day that my son catches up to the cat since I'm sure that my cat will not put up with hair pulling and harrassing. They already spend an awful lot of time staring each other down...

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  7. I know it's not the cat's fault. Carter will learn to be nice to the cats. I wrote this blog post and didn't want to sugarcoat what happened or how I was feeling. I was mad at my cat for hurting my baby, it's a natural reaction.
    Thank you guys for the comments! :)

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  8. did you actually give the cat away? :(

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  9. If only we could expect our animals to not intentionally defend themselves. ..Sigh...
    I know it's just an initial reaction to him being hurt though. Hopefully this taught him how to treat the cat a little nicer though. Poor things. :(

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  10. Did you actually leave the cat there!?

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