untanglingknots.com: Should have bought a Chia Pet

by Karla ° Friday, May 16, 2008

Last Sunday began in a typical weekend morning fashion with Mark and I sipping fresh brewed coffee to enliven our heavy and bleary eyes while Nate, wide awake and raring to go, guzzled his morning sippy of thirst-quenching milk. Samson, not much of a morning dog, was curled up by my feet still trying to catch up on his beauty rest. Simon, sickly and cadaverous from his failing kidneys, was perched in his usual resting spot near my head along the back of the couch, and Sebastian, gluttonous and fat, sat distanced from the family on a dining room chair, strategically positioned to swat the dog should he walk past his majesty’s obese resting zone.

Samson and the cats have never exactly learned to be friends. When Samson entered our family, the cats were approaching their senior years and his riotous puppy antics did nothing but annoy them. The scars on Samson’s nose are a forever reminder of their enemy status.

Sometimes, life with a kid, two cats and a lunging lunatic of a dog can be a bit zoo-ish because Samson has this very annoying penchant for chasing our aging cats and this often results in him knocking things over, like say, Nate. But shoviness aside, he is generally very well behaved, especially considering all of the ear pulling, tail tugging and countless bonks on the head he’s received from a boundary-testing toddler.

That being said, I still don’t trust him. I’ve heard far too many stories of even the most perfectly behaved dogs suddenly turning into vicious skin-shredding monsters, and for that reason, Samson and Nate are never left together unsupervised. The cats however, are so nonchalant and disinterested in having anything to do with the human or canine population that I’ve never really worried about Nate being around them. Never in a million years would I have thought that Sebastian would be the animal to cause Nate harm, especially with me right there.

While encouraging my body to perk up under the influence of caffeine, Nate, slightly unsteady in his gait, Frankenstein lurched his away over to see Sebastian on the dining chair. Although we’re working on the whole being ‘nice nice’ thing, authority tends to cause a colossal meltdown of a tantrum these days, and by meltdown, I mean total annihilation of any new behavioural instructions that were written to his brain. And because all the work we’d done on not hitting had been lost in a previous meltdown from, oh, 10 minutes prior, he went ahead and hit the cat with a giant yellow lego, and Sebastian retaliated by shredding the skin on Nate’s face dangerously close to his eye and all down his left cheek.

Before getting scratched by the cat, I have never really had to deal with anything alarming happening to Nate. All things considered, my role as a Mother has been rather uneventful in terms of accidents or illness so far, thank god/knock on wood. I mean, sure, Nate’s had a few colds, and one pneumonia scare when he was two months old that warranted exposing him to x-rays for the second time in his life (the first time was shortly after being born), but as he approaches 18 months, the kid has never really been ill yet, including no fevers, ear infections, and (unless you count occasional spit up as a tiny baby), he’s never even vomited.

Something terrible was bound to happen at some point, and hearing his screams and seeing the blood dripping down his cheeks made my heart palpitate. We called the free medical advice hotline here in Ontario to find out if there was anything specific we needed to do to prevent infection and treat his wounds, and they advised us to have Nate seen by a doctor within a couple of hours.

It turns out that the scratches weren’t overly deep, and the angry red welts were actually just superficial wounds that only required a topical antibiotic, but I’m still upset about this because how do you correct unwanted behaviour in a cat? Because seriously, the only thing in the whole wide world that fatty cares about is when the human with the opposable thumbs will dispense more kibble in his dish.

At this point, I’m seriously contemplating cutting his hazardous feline claws and legs off, and locking him and his stumps in the basement to eat and grow like a fat demented Chia Pet.

Labels: All in the Family, Motherhood, Nate

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Comments:

Poor guy. Hope it heals quick and w/o scars.

My boy is 3 1/2 and my girl almost 8, and 3 weeks ago was out first accident moment, little boy had to get 3 stitched under his chin, so SCARY!!

Posted by Donna : May 16, 2008

Karla, that's so strange, because our cat, Purdie, scratched Callum on the nose this morning, also drawing blood. I was so annoyed with the cat that i put her out of the house.
But she is back in the house now and Callum is still chasing her about. It must not of hurt that much!

Posted by Amanda : May 16, 2008

Hope Nate's face is ok.

Love Amanda x

Posted by Amanda : May 16, 2008

Poor Nate!

Stupid cat. We have one, but she sleeps 23 hours a day. In the basement :)