Pets with Benefits

I woke up this morning with cat fur crazy glued to my hands. I really shouldn’t have been shocked. I went to bed that way. And I think that this will sadly be a trend that continues.

W. and I, as many readers know, have moved into a new house. With said new house, we have bought new furniture. Now, we had furniture in NYC, but it was my furniture. And, I will admit it – the cats had done a bit of damage to it. Ok, that’s a lie. One of our two cats, the nice one named Paterson, has a penchant for clawing everything and anything she can sink her talons into.

Well, this has created a great deal of strife at home. When the new furniture arrived, I spied her eying it surreptitiously. I did my best to ignore this fact. But an hour later, W. summoned me to the living room. “Look at that,” he demanded, pointing to an almost imperceptible snag in the new couch. I tried to pretend like I could hardly see what he was pointing at, putting my face really close to the fabric, holding the cushion up to the light, squinting. But he was having none of my theatrics. He was convinced the cat had left her mark. “Why don’t we just cancel all the new furniture and live on the old junk we had if this is how its’ going to be treated.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” I implored. “I know what to do.”

Of course I didn’t. I knew didn’t want to get the cat declawed, because that would mean that BOTH cats would have to be declawed, and even though Max, the other cat, is mean as a snake, I really felt it was unfair to punish him for something he didn’t do. So I trotted off to the local pet store and came home with a solution that promised to remove all of my snag-related nightmares and restore domestic bliss.

Softclaws.

They look so easy and cute. Just put some glue on them and slip them over your cats’ claws and voila! No ability to snag anything.

Of course, the instructions didn’t really mention that this is absolutely a two-person job. Even if one of the people is a) already really pissed at the cat for snagging furniture b) allergic to the cat and c) frightened when she starts to yowl and squirm, even if he won’t admit it.

It took a lot of cajoling, but eventually W. helped me affix the Softclaws on both of the cats. This involved a large bath towel, oven mitts, a blanket, and several laps around the dining room to catch each of them. But together the mission was accomplished. Max is now sporting pink nails, and Paterson is wearing blue. Of course, Max is a male and Paterson is a female, so if any future gender confusion arises and they need to see an animal therapist, I will know I am to blame.

But the whole Softclaws problem took an unexpectedly bad turn last night. In addition to the earlier mentioned couch (which, by the way, has no more snags), W. and I got two chairs. Fabric chairs. Chairs just begging to be clawed. No worries, right? The Softclaws will save the day! Wrong. I came home last night to see that Paterson had somehow managed to remove three of her fake nails. And W. is out of town.

“This is manageable,” I thought. So I got out the glue, the blue nails, and grabbed the cat. The first thing I did was glue a blue nail to my index finger. Dislodging it effectively removed at least 2 layers of skin. Then the cat started to howl and squirm, so I crushed her between my legs. As long as I stayed away from her left paw, I was safe, as the nails on the right were all still covered. But Paterson was determined to demonstrate just how agile a really angry cat can be. She caught me in the ankle with her hind foot, took a swipe at me with her left paw, and then calmed down, relaxed, looked up at me, and promptly sank her teeth into my left forearm. I grabbed her by the scruff, resolute in my mission. That’s when I saw the blood on her neck. “Crap,” I thought, “How did I do that to her?” Of course I didn’t do ANYTHING to her. It was my blood.

I called W later on and told him of my cat trauma. “Remind me again, what is the benefit?” he asked. “To prevent them from having to be declawed,” I immediately responded. Silence. “I meant, what is the benefit of having the cats,” he quietly asked. I declined to reply, walked into the dining room, got out the furniture marker, and colored in a new scratch I had just spied on our coffee table.