While still in elementary school, my sisters and I decided it was a good idea to procure two baby kittens from a friend at school without first informing our parents (a story for another blog). We ended up only keeping one of the kittens and named him Barney.
When Barney was a young cat, I decided it was a good idea to bring him down to a friend’s house, she lived right down the street and I thought it would be a great opportunity to train Barney to walk on a leash like a dog (this did not work out by the way). My friend’s brothers had two large Rottweilers, but my friend also had cats which got along with the dogs with no problem, so I felt safe bringing Barney by.
As it turns out, it was not safe, it was probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. One of the dogs got wind of the new cat and attacked. The dog managed to get a hold of the cat’s tail while I still had his leash in hand. We both began tugging in opposite directions, me tugging his leash, trying to free Barney from the dog, and the dog tugging his tail trying to eat the cat. To this day I am amazed we managed to get the cat home in one piece.
My friend’s dad came out and began beating the crazed dog with a pole. When the pole broke, he began using his hand, which he also broke.
At some point, my friend’s cat came charging up and leaped on the dogs head, claws out.
This startled the dog enough to open his mouth and free our cat at which point, I grabbed the cat and ran home. My brother and I cleaned the cat up, and were shocked to find he only had a small wound on his tail, but was fine otherwise.
Needless to say, Barney was never quite the same cat. He was antisocial and didn’t enjoy being overly touched, especially around his rear end/tail region. He made a habit of randomly attacking other animals and people. He got in so many fights he looked like a street cat with his ears all cut up. One morning we were all enjoying a bowl of cereal and weekend cartoons when all of a sudden Barney leaped onto my sisters back and sunk his claws in. My sister began frantically thrashing about trying to get the cat off of her.
This was extremely amusing to those of us witnessing the crazed cat attack, but of course, my sister did not find it funny. She eventually recovered, but this is just one example of Barney’s strange behavior.
Barney spent most of his younger days outdoors while we lived on our “mini-farm”. When we were 9 and 11 years old, my family moved to a new house, which was located in more of a typical suburban neighborhood. Surprisingly, this new house had a serious problem with coyotes, so we were more reluctant to let our pets run wild outdoors. We did let them out for brief periods of time, but not enough to suit Barney. He spent most days sitting on a window sill, despondently looking outside. Other cats in the neighborhood would come by the window and sort of taunt Barney, and he’d respond to their taunting by growling and hissing loudly, and Barney had a growl like no other cat you’ve ever met!
One evening my dad, sick of listening to Barney carry on like a cat being tortured, opened the door and let him out. Some time later that night, my dad began hearing cats fighting right out in front of the house. My dad went out front to see what all the commotion was about and realized it was Barney fighting in the street.
My dad became concerned for Barney’s safety and attempted to break up the cat fight by reaching down and grabbing Barney by the scruff of his neck. In a crazy acrobatic move, Barney twisted his body around and latched onto my dad’s arm, claws extended. My dad began swinging his arm about trying to get the cat to let go. When it seemed as if the cat would never let go, my dad bumped his arm against our car, stunning the cat long enough to let go and run off.
My dad was bloody from wrist to elbow and dripped blood all over the front driveway, which we noticed the next morning on our way to school. The next evening, my dad came home and his arm was red, scratched up, and swollen. My mom was concerned by its appearance and drew a line on my dad’s arm where the swelling and redness stopped in order to monitor whether or not it got worse, which it did.
Turns out, my dad’s attempt to rescue Barney resulted in blood poisoning. A few weeks of antibiotics and he was good as new, but my dad never did quite trust that cat ever again.
We have many more animal attack stories as well as a variety of other funny pet stories. We hope to share them with you in future blogs. We hope you’ve enjoyed this illustrated blog and we hope to bring more pictorials to you. Until next time…
