NOTE: I realize (especially after writing this out) that this was a nightmarish situation for the cat, and I was young and stupid and should never have put the poor cat through this ordeal. I learned from it, and would never stress out a poor animal by being so ill prepared to care for it now. Please be nice to me.
This FU happened about 17 years ago. I was newly married, and my wife and I had gotten our first dog, a chihuahua. We both worked full time, so we thought it would be smart to get our dog a pet to keep it occupied during the day.
A lady at my work was looking for a new home for her sweet kitty. I thought this was a perfect (free) way to diversify our pet portfolio, so we drove over after work to get the little shnookums.
At the lady's house, the cat was the picture of sweetness and friendliness. She came right up to us, let us pet her, then happily climbed into the carrier for the trip to her new home. And everything worked out!
Oh wait no it didn't, this is TIFU. We got home, and little kitty didn't want to come out of the carrier. We thought, "That makes sense, it's a new environment, we'll just keep the dog in the bedroom and leave the carrier open so she can come out when she's ready." It was starting to get late and kitty still wouldn't come out, so we left the carrier in the kitchen with a gate in the doorway, hoping she'd make herself at home overnight.
The next morning, I awoke to see that kitty had come out of the carrier. But we couldn't find her. Anywhere. It was a small 2 bedroom apartment, so there shouldn't have been too many hiding places, but in the 30 minutes or so we had to locate her before we had to leave for work, we came up empty. So we put the dog in a crate, locked the doors, and went off to work.
We continued the search when we got home from work that night, and finally found her backed into the corner behind the stove. I carefully moved the refrigerator so I could squeeze back there, then shimmied back until I could barely reach her. But it was clear that attempting removal would be ill advised, so I started hand feeding her turkey cold cuts. She slowly started accepting my humble offering, and even started to relax a little, purring and moving around a bit. Thirty minutes of hand feeding, crammed in between the wall and the stove, starting to cramp up, and I felt like I had earned some rapport with this cat. So I attempted to pet her.
Kitty did not reciprocate my feelings of trust, and lashed out with a flurry of claws and teeth. This surprised me, naturally, and I jerked back, hitting my head on a protruding corner of the stove. Rage welled up inside me, partly at the ungrateful cat, but mostly at myself for generally being an idiot and getting myself into this situation. I vented my frustration by slamming my fist against the back of the stove, unleashing a thunderous boom and further scaring the kitty back into the corner.
I got up and walked outside, realizing that I was neither prepared nor particularly well equipped to handle a feline pet. As I calmed down, my wife suggested we call the lady and let her know it wasn't going to work out. We couldn't get ahold of her, but decided to get the cat packed back up in the carrier for transport back to her apartment.
Except the cat wasn't behind the stove anymore. And the search resumed in full force. Finally after an hour or so of searching, I spotted two glowing eyes peering out from underneath our bed. I had learned from my earlier interaction that just reaching in there to retrieve kitty was a bad idea. So I suited up for the extraction by putting on a long sleeved flannel shirt and yellow rubber gloves. I peeled back the mattress and box springs, exposing a small maze of boxes perfect for hiding a cat. My wife held the carrier, opening facing up, and I moved in.
At this point, kitty was in full freak out mode, seeing two bright yellow hands descending on her. She fought hard, but I was able to secure her. Then as I moved her toward the carrier, she unleashed the contents of her bladder in a surprisingly powerful spray that shot across the room, streaking the walls, dousing my wife and me, and covering the carrier as I essentially stuffed her in.
The smell. It was very, very bad. We cleaned as much as we could, until we finally got ahold of the lady and arranged to return the cat.
When we got to her apartment and regaled her with the story, she couldn't believe her sweet kitty would be so scared. We opened the carrier, expecting a she-devil to pop out with murder in it's eyes, but instead the sweetest cat you've ever seen slinked out, purring and rubbing up against us like nothing had happened. We haven't owned a cat since then.
TL;DR I tried to get a cat, but knowing nothing about how cats act, scared the bejeezus out of it and eventually covered the walls of our bedroom with cat piss.
Submitted June 06, 2017 at 11:15PM by MrTroy32 http://ift.tt/2sAGnC8 tifu
No comments:
Post a Comment