So What Did You Do With Your Sunday Morning Part III

There wasn't much I could do to help Max. I just kept calling him and patting the floor.

I was getting frustrated. I didn't know what to do to help him. I walked away and tried calling him. I put wet cat food down. I even considered calling the dog over, pinning him to the floor so he would be free to attack him if he felt so inclined...but decided against it...Max is bigger than my dog.

I watched Max twist and turn and scoot around and we were both getting terribly frustrated. I decided it was time for a cig.

I inhaled the highly addictive nicotine with pleasure, closing my eyes to savoir the feeling of it entering my blood stream. Feeling it causing cancer in the interesting and medically inaccessable areas, then I went back to Max.

He was resting, curled up in the duct and I tried to look him over again. I didn't see anything wrong. No scratchs or cuts or gouges. I reached my hand down and lightly petted his back...he didn't move.

"Max. Kitty kitty" no response. He wasn't moving and like a thunder clap - it struck me that Max was dead. I had failed to get him out and he was dead. He was dead in my duct with my children just a few yards away...baby needing a diaper change and everyone needing breakfast....oh shit.

I felt like hell. I couldn't believe it. I was in total shock. I stoked his back and tried to figure out what in the hell to do. No way I could let the kids see this. It would be one of those horrible childhood memories that would be relived at the shrinks office when Lauren grows up and blames me for everything that is wrong with the world.

I called to Charles and told him the cat had died. He sat down at the dining room table (just a few feet away) and took off his supper heavey steel toed boots and dropped them on the floor.

I don't know what in the hell happened or what was going on, but Max came up out of the vent like a shot, climbed up my legs and fused with my shoulder. I almost shit myself. I was screaming like a mad woman - screaming for all I was worth - screaming and dancing and swatting at the dead cat and tried to run - but ran into the wall - and I kept hitting and hitting and hitting him and screaming and screaming. There was a dead cat climbing up my body with claws that were REALLY REALLY SHARP and suddenly visions of PET CEMITARY were flashing thru my mind..

...but he was fine. We had him checked out and he got a clean bill of health. There just wasn't enough room for him to move his hind legs like he wanted to.

We fixed the duct that he had torn apart to get in and made sure that no more kitties could get in under the house.

I'm scarred from the whole experience....his claws were REALLY sharp and he didn't like it when I kept swatting at him for some reason. ouch.