It started as all great plans do with one rule. Avoid my family. Which is really something incredibly challenging especially over the holidays. This year however it all seemed to plop into place so perfectly that I really should have been suspicious.
My parents moved to Wyoming right after Thanksgiving, so their plan was to celebrate alone in the vast expanse of the middle of nowhere known as the ranch, while my grandma was going back to Kansas with my aunt to celebrate there which diverted all the crazies there and left the Florissant house vacant for me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend to take over in a glorious display of our adulthood. That of course meant a raging party with soda, candy, boardgames, and cleaning everything up afterwards (oh, yeah we're badasses). As well as a lot of time spent playing Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64 and Pokemon on our Gameboy Advances.
My younger sister and her boyfriend arrived at Florissant house first because they agreed to take a cat from our older sister's friend who had to move and couldn't take the cat with her. The cat was dubbed Milo and was very much an adorable kitty. He however didn't seem to like my sister's boyfriend and attacked his leg twice, but since he wasn't fixed we just assumed that it was a territorial thing and he would mellow out upon being fixed.
A couple days later I was collected from Denver with my cat and mass amounts of dirty laundry. (Don't judge I at least wash the laundry myself.) That is when things got interesting. Upon arriving back at the house there was a lot of "The hell were people doing before they left?" My grandma and aunt left the house while less than an average Robinson disaster zone very much in a general state of random weirdness that you just have to not ask and walk away.
For starters, we had to hunt about the house for the mouse traps that had been set. There were supposed to be six in total and it was like some version of a scavenger hunt where if you won pain was a viable prize. No mice have been seen since we arrived and no one was snapped by a mouse trap. Mostly because I just didn't participate in this scavenger hunt.
As well as our mouse trap scavenger hunt, the microwave was pulled out from the wall and stuff was just placed randomly. To anyone that didn't grow up as a Robinson it would look like someone did a half assed job of looting the place then got bored and left. To someone who grew up as a Robinson, it would be recognized as what likes to be called cleaning.
Once the kitchen was returned to a livable state and the mouse traps found we settled into a pretty nice groove. That of course, by rules of both television and my life meant chaos was finishing up that last cocktail before stopping by for a visit.
It started with fish tacos. We all worked together and made a pretty exciting dinner and it was almost finished when I sent my sister's boyfriend downstairs to take the trash down to the garage. Angel seized this opportunity to book it into the basement to escape Milo who seized that as an invitation to chase after her into the one place in the house he is terrified of. I called downstairs after my sister's boyfriend to ask if he could bring up the box of taco shells. I was answered with a cat yowling and for a moment I almost thought that that was my sister's boyfriend reply. While this may seem odd to the people reading about it, it really wouldn't be out of character or all that surprising if it was.
But no it was the cat. That noise was probably the most terrifying animal noise I have ever heard in my life. Comparable only to that of the fox (no seriously an actual fox. I'm not a reference to the music video). It was just this terrified cat screeching yowling noise and while I could probably simulate it with my voice the closest thing you get in type it this: "YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA!" Now just screech that at the top of your lungs in the highest pitch possible and combine it with that of a screaming child and your close. Milo had cornered my sister's boyfriend and Angel in the basement and was just standing there with wide-eyed terror making that noise. So my sister did the logical thing and shooed me out of the basement, then picked up the cat to carry it upstairs. Milo waited until he had been carried about halfway up the basement steps before digging his teeth and claws violently into my sisters face, hand, and boob leaving her boyfriend to pry him off.
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| YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA! |
After doctoring my sister's head, hand, and boob, the goal was to get Milo out of the terror death trap of the basement. Me being the only one having yet to experience an attack volunteered (I generally don't think these things through until after the fact). I got down to the bottom of the stairs and remembered that the light was burnt out, so I called upstairs for a flashlight in a classic moment of frobelinkensteinerbean. (frobelinkensteinerbean (noun): the moment when you realize you either just did or are in the middle of doing something you yell at people in movies for) My sister's boyfriend kindly obliged and I entered the dark basement with a pocket flashlight and a dear skin coat as armor looking for a vicious black cat. (Horror movies really do write themselves.)
As I enter the basement I saw no cat and a flat box that had toppled over. I picked up the box leaning it against the piano and sure enough the cat just casually strolled out from behind that piano like he was the happiest most adorable thing in the world. (You were expecting him to leap out of the box weren't you? So was I.) I came up to him nicely and he remained cute and nice until I scooped him up. Then he proceeded to go completely berserk. He spent the next few moments, as I held him tightly, attacking the hell out of what he wanted to be my arm. Doing something between a march and the awkward jog you do when a car stops for you to cross the road, I got the cat upstairs and shut into the guess room with only two tiny little nicks upon my wrist that didn't even bleed. Finally we ate dinner.
After much discussion amongst ourselves and with the previous owner, we decided that the best thing to do would actually be to take it to the Humane Society. That cat was terrified of the house we were in, my cat was terrified of him, and he had attacked both the people that were his owners quite viciously. It was actually discovered while patching up my sister that part of his claw had actually been broken off in one of my sister's boobs. It was incredibly brutal and my sister's face was swollen for a few days afterwards as a result.
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| Sorry, couldn't resist. |
While she obviously didn't believe a single word we had said and thought we were dumb as a blond teenager in a horror movie, she suggested a couple other cat specific shelters we should try first. Which we agreed to since we still felt bad for the little cat and wanted him to find a good home. One shelter was closed and the other was in Denver so we decided screw it and were going to just take him to the animal shelter in Divide. That of course was also closed as well. So, we just gave up, brought the little bugger home, and placed him back in the guest room thinking it was a sign to give him another chance.
That night all our friends came over for our exciting party where we drank Mountain Dew, ate candy, played a home-made version of Twister, and everyone decided that going into the room with the cat we specifically told them to leave alone was a good idea. That of course meant that Milo was the most innocent cute looking kitty that could possibly be found, so everyone was quite certain we were crazy. By the next day we had become quite convinced we were giving up too easily as well and let Milo run about the house again. It actually didn't seem like a bad idea for most of the day. While he did a good job of bothering Angel, there were no major issues with the cat until the house started to flood.
While we were watching a movie, I got up to pee and upon entering the bathroom I plunged my foot into a copious amount of ice water. (This is starting to become a recurring theme I'm afraid. See Dry Feet, Water, Again?, and Pfft) There was water gushing out of the toilet. I tried to unclog it with no success before I dove for the water valve and just shut it off. After that there was a lot of towels used to clean up the mess and we thought that we were okay. Then my younger sister opened the door to the basement to toss the watery towels down the stairs to the laundry room when Angel used it as an escape from Milo and Milo followed.
My sister ran down after the cat to try and grab him before he started panicking, but got a bit distracted by the absurd amount of flooding in the basement. It was dripping from the pipes and heating vents just pouring from the ceiling. After several phone calls between us and our older sister and several messages left to both my mother and aunt, we got the water shut of and were quite certain that a pipe had frozen and burst since there were ice chunks everywhere.
My sister and her boyfriend were put in charge of getting the water stopped, while I worked on my cat herding skills. Since Milo and his death yowl decided that crammed under the doll house table was the best possible place to panic I couldn't actually get ahold of him even with my armor. After a few minutes of trying, I decided I'd use a squeegee, that for some reason was sitting on the floor in the basement, and use it to pull the cat out of his crevice. This yielded some interesting results when I discovered he was terrified of it. It was like that squeegee was the spawn of satan. The yowling increased and he straight up went berserk and booked it past me towards the stairs. At that point, Milo was twice is terrified as before, so I had my sister's boyfriend bring me oven mitts for extra armor after Milo ripped the flesh off my hand. This time with extra armor when I grabbed for him he ripped the mitt off my hand with one paw and ripped more skin off my hand with the other. At that point I just chased him upstairs where we shut him while we cleaned up the water.
The next day after parental lectures, some phone tag, and finally a resolution, we got the plumber called and as it turns out the pipe didn't freeze and burst. Instead, the ancient toilet, that hasn't been replaced within my lifetime at least, was full of sand from the well. Since the toilet was filling with water so quickly it was both able to drudge up enough to flood through the vents into the basement and was flowing so rapidly the water wasn't defrosting giving us the ice chunks. The toilet just needs to be replaced and it was nothing that we did that caused it to flood. That is hilarious to me. Mostly because for the rest of my life I will be hearing about the time we flooded grandma's house.
On Christmas Eve we finally took Milo down to the Humane society. This of course involved getting him into the carrying case and he was quite certain that wasn't going to happen. It started with using the Swiffer sweeper to get him towards the carrying case in hopes he'd go in. This didn't work because he ran around the swifter and under the bed. After getting him out from under the bed we switched to the foam dog bed as our herding device. This worked really well since he couldn't get around it, but he leapt over the carrying case and brutally attacked the carrying case. After much ado, using a foam dog bed, two chair cushions, and a door as a barricade, we got him into the carrying case with five minutes to spare before we had to leave. In total it took us twenty-five minutes to heard him where we wanted him, but I do believe we have received our cat herding licenses at this point.
At the Humane Society, the lady we talked to actually talked to us like the adults we were and we omitted all the attacking parts from the report and it went smoothly without any of the condescension. Whoever said honesty is the best policy, has never actually had to deal with other people. We were in and out cat free within ten minutes where as previously it took us half an hour and we still left with the cat.
On Christmas we had a fun feast with my older sister, her boyfriend, his daughter, and couple family friends that went a billion and five times more smoothly in both preparation and the actually eating of it than any Christmas meal has ever gone with my family and the break has continued to run smoothly ever since.
"Twas the week after Christmas and all through the house stuffs not exploding and the cat ate a mouse."
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