The Cat, The Tub, My Butt

A couple of years ago, I had a new kitty.  Her name was Bob.  I thought she was a he, but she wasn’t.  Bob had a bobbed tail. She wandered up to my place and hung around my front door for a week. I began to feed ‘him’ and named ‘him’ Bob, after the tail, and soon he was an inside cat and a female.

Have you ever had a small kitty?  My legs looked like I had wrestled with a barbed wire fence and lost the battle. The same applied to my butt cheeks. I don’t know what it was about my rear that made this cat want to sink its claws into it, but it was a daily occurrence.  On most evenings, I could be found sitting at my kitchen table, reading or watching a small TV. My kitchen chairs had slats in the back and Bob just loved to sneak up behind me and attack through those slats. She learned, on how loudly I yelled, how fast she should run.    

I have lived in the same place for almost thirty years.  The garden tub, in the master bath, was a favorite of my children when they were young; they thought of it as an indoor pool. It is a fiberglass tub, which, are not known to last forever. On the top edge of the tub is a rather large crack. If you sit on the side of the tub it pinches the skin. To place the plug, or to turn on the faucets, you have to sit on the side of the tub and reach across it. I place a towel over the crack for protection.

One night, I stripped down to all of my glory, placed a towel on the tub crack, and stretched way across the tub, to put the plug in place. About the time I was totally stretched out, Bob pounced. I yelped, turned and jumped, the towel shifted, and I then plopped down, heavily, on the side of the tub. The tub crack and mine did not exactly line up and the tub crack caught the inside of my right butt cheek. There is no way to explain, without tears, hysterics, and the use of four letter words, how tender the inside of a right butt cheek is when tightly pinched. When I regained consciousness, Bob was nowhere in sight, and I was still attached to the tub. It was a very slow, and painful, removal process.  I am sure there was a nasty mark, but quite frankly, I wasn’t about to bend over to look.  I didn’t know where Bob was lurking and showing my ass was getting dangerous.

I came down with a bad case of cat scratch fever. I can no longer use the doctor I had to see; I don’t think they are supposed to laugh at their patients like that.

Bob escaped. I do not miss her, but do think of her every time I take a bath.

I placed duct tape on the crack; of the tub, not mine.