Cat Wars

When the two cats that inhabit my house finally die I'll probably wonder how I ever managed to put up with the torment.

My apartment is small—barely 700 square feet. Crammed inside that confined space are four living, breathing, farting, shitting lifeforms: The Great Organizer, myself and two cats. With all that close contact and exchange of matter between us—dander, skin flakes, bodily gases—you'd better hope we get along. Guess what? We don't. Well, two of us generally do—The Great Organiser and I are known to create some noise on occasion but we're still officially "lovers"—but the other two are a different story right now.

Those two are the cats, and for now we'll label them Fucko the Clown, the graceless larger of the two and sometimes the surliest, and Chumbles, the runt of the litter with an attitude completely out of whack with her compact size.

On Sunday afternoon I returned from a round of clothes shopping, bag in hand. The Great Organiser was sitting on the couch while I displayed my recent purchases for her. Nothing I bought managed to illicit too much of a response from her either in the negative or the positive. What did get a response out of her was the way in which the cats reacted to the bag. Made of brown paper, the bag was a little larger than the kind of bag you'd find at a grocery store. The handles were made of loops of twisted brown paper, lending them sufficient strength to support the spoils of a significant outlay of cash at the store.

"Check this out," called The Great Organiser while I was down the hallway putting the clothes in the closet. I shuffled my way back towards the entrance to our small dwelling.

Anyone with a cat can tell you that while it's possible to throw down no small chunk of change for cat toys, by far the cheapest and most enjoyable playthings for felines are boxes and bags. When anything arrives at the doorstep from Amazon, pluck the product free of its shipping container and leave the box open for the cats. It's as if the next four generations of video game consoles had been released at once and delivered directly to the pets. The amusement is seemingly endless.

The Great Organiser was motioning towards the formerly empty bag, situated close to the front door and lying on its side. The contents were no longer new clothes; it now contained Chumbles having the time of her life. Fucko the Clown hates to be left out of any fun that's being had by any other living being in the apartment, so he crept up on the bag, invisible to Chumbles, who had by now buried herself deep inside.

"That's pretty funny," remarked The Great Organiser and I had to agree. For whatever reason it always amuses me to see the cats get a kick out of something as mundane and ordinary as a box or a brown paper bag. Fucko the Clown was by now upon the bag, Chumbles inside.

With Fucko the Clown perched on top of the bag, pressing down on the trapped cat inside, Chumbles contorted herself in an effort to escape. She didn't get far. In her efforts to extricate herself from the enclosure she managed to ensnare herself in one of the bag's loops, effectively hooking the bag around her torso.

That's when the panic struck.

What had moments ago been a playful cat on mission of exploration into a brown paper cave turned into a writhing, screaming tempest of fur, claws and paper. I was dumbstruck.

"Get over here and help!"

The Great Organizer reacts much better to stressful situations than I do. She'd already leaped into action, lunging towards the blur of fur and paper that was spinning in front of her like the Tasmanian Devil from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I couldn't do much but stand there and watch.

Before The Great Organiser could get a firm grip on her, Chumbles' violent thrashings had ripped the handle free of its attachment to the bag. The stress of her entrapment had caused her to lose control of her bladder, and with a spray of cat urine Chumbles darted off towards the opposite end of the apartment, paper bag loop still encircling her midriff.

At the time it all seemed hilarious, and even now it cracks me up to recall the image of Chumbles, completely engulfed in panic while she attempts to free herself of the bag. But it doesn't end there. After Chumbles had recovered and emerged from her hiding place, the loop now gone, it became apparent that Fucko the Clown had completely changed his disposition towards her. Whereas minutes earlier they'd been able to get along just fine, now he was growling at her and stalking her, treating her like an interloper in her own home.

That was on Sunday. It's now Wednesday and the animosity between the two felines has barely subsided. Suspecting the liberal showering of panicked cat urine around the living area as the culprit, The Great Organiser and I have removed the couch seats and bought an enzyme cleaner to rid the scent. Pheromones designed to assuage the anxieties of stressed cats have been sprinkled around to minimum effect and the two have also been separated. It's like reintroducing them to each other for a second time. Moreover they won't stop howling at one another, regardless of the hour. We're now three days into this routine, all because of a brown paper bag. They're at each other all the time. Sleep has become a relative concept and rude awakenings at three, four or five AM on account of hissing and growling are now par for the course. I'd do strange, strange things to remove the cats from my life and get a full eight hours of uninterrupted rest. Strange things. This morning, at around 4:35, I pondered a future in which both cats died a horrible and vicious death, and no pets were around to bug me for food or stomp on my head while I slept or howl at full volume at that other cat on the the other side of the door. It's a distant future, I know, but right now, with my eyes drooping from lack of rest, I'm clinging to that vision dearly.