Cat fight

I know I've said before that everything kind of falls apart when Bob is gone, and this week was no exception.

I really tried to do better; I actually went to the grocery store and bought actual food. And I actually cooked, i.e., there weren't any nights this week when I just ate ice cream for dinner, and I only went out once (Chipotlé Monday night). It was really kind of hard to come home and cook last night (Thursday) and Tuesday after the gym, since it makes it so late, but I did.

So I did pretty well on the cooking front -- I'll go get Chinese at the grocery store tonight, as is our habit. And he'll be home late tomorrow night.

As for other things, well, I didn't do as well as I might have hoped. I'll need to clean the house tomorrow since I kind of let things go, and I'll have to be careful to go around and clean up all the cat fur tufts in the living room.

We had a cat fight Tuesday night. There's a cat in the neighborhood that our cats just despise. They don't go outside, of course, but when they see him in the yard they just go ballistic, and whichever of them sees him will turn around and take out their aggression on the other cat in the house.

I was up in the front of the house on the computer, and I suddenly heard a cat start screaming and jumping up and slamming herself against the sliding glass door in the living room. I jumped up and ran in there, and Dinah came running down the stairs to see what was going on, so it was obviously Pyewacket freaking out. I tried to grab Dinah, but I wasn't quick enough, and she ran over toward the window just as Pyewacket shot out from behind the drapes.

Pyewacket immediately jumped on Dinah in a rage, and they were immediately rolling around on the floor, screaming and hissing and acting as if they intended to kill each other, as I'm sure they did. This wasn't the play fighting they occasionally do, this was for real.

I know you're supposed to throw water on them, but that would have entailed taking my eyes off them, going into the kitchen, filling something up with water, etc. I hoped that I could get them separated quicker than that. I was screaming at them, and clapping my hands together, trying to make noise and scare them apart, and looking around frantically for something I could pick up and swat them with.

Fortunately, though, Dinah shot out of the scrum and ran upstairs to get away from Pye, and I scooped up Pye and threw her in the downstairs bathroom in case Dinah came back down. Which she did a few minutes later--I saw her look out through the stair railings upstairs, trying to gauge if it was safe to come out. I left Pye in the bathroom for a little while; usually they'll calm down if they're alone for awhile.

I went to look out the back door to see if the no good, horrible, very bad cat was gone, and he seemed to be. I'm not sure what it could be about this cat that sets them off so, but they can see any number of other cats walk across the yard and while they're interested, it's just sort of a mild interest, not the blood lust that this particular cat seems to invoke.

I had a sore throat that evening from screaming, and the next morning I noticed that the palms of my hands and the ends of my fingers were bruised from clapping them together so hard.

Stupid cats.

And then, of course, someone's been throwing up all week. The throw rug in front of the back door was folded up when I got home last night, and I knew what I would find inside. Kind of nice of them to cover it up, I guess, and also kind of nice when they actually do it on a rug that I can pick up and wash, rather than having to clean the carpet.

Stupid cats.