Nothing Crazy about being a Crazy Cat Lady

It's the same old story. Person only has her family—no friends. Person dies. Family eats person.

While the above statement holds true for large parts of the South, it also happens just about everywhere there's a crazy cat lady. You know the type, she's a lady. She has cats. That's all you need to know about her. She's a crazy cat lady.

The corpse of the crazy cat lady only gets discovered when neighbors notice cats adorably walking around the house wearing their former master's wigs and eating her ribbon candy (of course laced with large parts of intestine). While it might look insanely cute from the outside, it reeks of decomposed old woman on the inside. Or as we call it in the crazy cat lady industry call it, a push.

My big question is why can only ladies be considered crazy cat ones? Is this some form of bizarre reverse sexism? There's no crazy cat men or insane iguana girls. The entire concept relies on a very pointed finger with only a certain type of person and a certain type of animal.

You'd be crazy for these cats too... lady.

I'm sure men out there would love to have a cat nuzzle up against them, tenderize their extremities and regale in their mews. As a guy, I can confirm that. And I'd love it even more if there were 34 of them. Yet society and its nomenclaturing dictates that I cannot do such a thing.

Personally, I own three cats. Which many people would claim puts me on the way to CatLadyDom. I think it's just the exact amount of cats necessary for a household to function properly. My three cats have their own hierarchy worked out where Otis hates and beats up Sprocket, Sprocket doesn't care about Rio, and Rio just exists. Were I to add another, it'd be like adding dynamite to Rock-Paper-Scissors—would just screw everything up and make people angry enough at each other that they start attacking with real rock, paper, scissors or the oh so controversial dynamite.

But with my three kids, there's no sort of dynamite kerfluffle. Everyone gets along in our own community. For a good while, I lived in a house with 500 square feet. This gave us all a good 100 square feet of space that was personally our own. Sure, occasionally those 100 feets overlapped while kitties would battle it out or I'd make them cuddle with me, but brought a welcome change to our loving relationships. And it was adorably cute. But then again, kitties were doing it, and I love my kitties.

Even animated, those cats are still adorable!

Come to think of it, my whole Rock-Paper-Scissors analogy is off. I need more kittens added to my masses. I'm in an apartment nearly twice the size now. Applying some permutations and purposefully incorrect math, I can easily fit at least a 50 cats in here—hell, I could even hop up to a gross of them.

And the names I'd have for my new loves—Launchpad, Roderick, Pizza, Cheyenne, Television, Role Models on BluRay, Wyoming, Item. That just represents a small amount of the names I could go through for my brand new bundles of fur.

All the kitties in the world will love me, much like the Grey Gardens people had adoring fur friends, or just about anyone who has ever appeared on Hoarders knows. There will be oodles of kitty love reciprocation. Who cares if they eat me once I pass, I know my 165 pounds will provide them with sustenance for years to come. They will lead happy, healthy lives because my corpse will always be there for them, much like they were there for me.

Although the sight of our animals devouring my corpse just might confuse and sicken my girlfriend, I'm not going to let her stop it. I wouldn't let my Otis, my Rio or (most of all) my Sprocket suffer. I love them too much, and I will use my crazy cat man powers from beyond the grave to allow them sustenance.

Papa not give kibble. He must have a Sprocket loose!

Your dignified guest blogger.

Papa is busy writing a novel this month, so he just didn't have the time to write. Since he didn't have the time to write, he needed someone to write for him (since he didn't have the time to write). He turned to his offspring and said “Offspring, I don't have the time to write this week. I need one of you to totally Billy from Family Circus this for me.” And since Papa only has cat for offspring, and since Otis is a really stupid cat, that task fell to me, Sprocket, his most smartest cat.

I'm much better choice than other kitties. Way smarter than that stupid stupid Otis. Otis had poop stuck to his tail the other day. He also chased his tail. Unrelated, but still show Otis very stupid. I hate Otis so much.

I use this space to talk about something that's weighing heavily on my mind recently. No, not the fact that on a scale of one to 10, I hate Otis the amount of furs I have (lots). No, it's the fact that it seems kibble time comes later and later every day. You might say “You're a cat, you can't tell time,” and that may be so, but I know when my tummy rumble rumble rumbles, and I make sure to tell everyone, but still kibble time comes so much later. I hate it!

Otis wouldn't figure out how to fit in here. I did.

And then when Papa finally relents to my non-stop whining, Otis tries stealing my food! That's my food! Now, I don't want to draw any sort of racial conclusions here, but did I mention that Otis is Black Cat? Pretty scary huh? He bring people bad luck, probably because I hate him so much. Oh, and he's stupid. Way stupider than me.

I'm not going to stand for this. Until I get kibble 24/7 and Otis goes to the great litter box in the sky (which he don't even know how to use right) I am officially on strike. I want endless supply of kibble given to me 24/7, and you better make it wet kibble. None of that dry stuff. Well, some of that dry stuff, because it kibble, and I like kibble, so I like dry stuff. Wet stuff also good, it taste like kibble.

As a striking worker, papa and mama will get no chance to pet all of my furs (which I have many of) and I won't do cute things for them like get stuck inside of three separate TVs on three separate occasions during a three year span. They'll be sorry they didn't give into my demands earlier. My cuteness will be for me and me alone.

The face of thy enemy (yet to die at my paw).

Oh, oh, oh, and Otis won't be allowed to have any kibble. Sure, one of my demands is he has to die, but he also not allowed any kibble. If I find out they placed kibble on his tombstone, boom, back on strike I go!

But if Otis not die, I want to have him still not eat kibble, so I can eat my kibble and then go breath on him. I say “Hey Otis, meow” and then whoooooosh, my breath smelling of Dick Van Patten's Natural Balance Pet Foods Duck and Green Pea wafts all over Otis. Undead Otis would be like “Oh, I wish I weren't dead, so I could have the kibble Sprocket is having. Why didn't I think of going on strike?'

I think it's obvious undead-dead-undead Otis, you didn't think of it, because you're stupid. Way stupider and less cute than I am. To show how stupid he is, I'd also have parents fashion a stupid hat that he'd have to wear, because he's stupid.

Oh, papa calling me, and, and, and it's kibble time!!!!! I must go!

Falling off the Cats Kills Mountains--how my feline "friends" will murder me

As I slid down the stairs, plowing into every step with the small of my back, only one thought flowed through my head. My cats had finally found a way to kill me.

A little background, I own three cats. For anyone who has never seen a cat before, they constantly endanger owners' lives. I know my cats will one day kill me, but I always assumed they'd lacerate my duodenum or perform some sort of bazooka-related fatality (Otis wins), I definitely didn't foresee it happening like this.

Only recently did Otis decide to take out a contract on my life. One of his toys is a Beanie Baby frog that we call Froggy. He loves carrying that thing around the apartment and moaning with it. He also, apparently, likes to use it as an untimely instrument of death. He strategically placed it on the stairs—the very stairs I constantly walk down in order to move from floor to floor.

This is the tramp stamp Otis left on me.
I believe it's Japanese Kanji for "My Bitch."

When I walked downstairs in the pitch dark, I didn't expect Froggy to be underfoot. Froggy was underfoot. I stepped on him and balance immediately left. First my back smashed into a rogue stair, and I then slid down several steps. When I came to a rest, my back was scratched and throbbing, but luckily I did not bash my head open and suffer some life-threatening hemorrhage. You hear that, Otis, I did not bash my head open nor suffer some life-threatening hemorrhage!

I know he's one Froggy-slip away from taking me out for good. I've known this for a long time. Even long before meeting Otis, I knew cats had the potential for evil.

Growing up, I always feared cats, because they always seemed so smart. It's only in hindsight that I realize they were just smart in comparison to my dog who couldn't do any tricks. However, with my little man, Sprocket, I realized that conclusion might not hold true. This cat who has somehow gotten stuck in the vents of my TV not once, not twice, but thrice.

While Otis failed this time, I know he'll try again, and he'll probably succeed. The really scary thing is, Otis is our cat of medium intelligence. He's no Sprocket, but he's also no Rio. She better knows how to play with toys and commit wanton acts of violence. You should see her with pipe cleaners. If they were my jugular, I'd be dead several times over.

Ironically, Rio is the only one who hasn't directly tried ending me. However, she takes great pleasure in pooping on all sorts of things. So she might take me out by Toxoplasmosiodizing up the place, but as of yet nothing has occurred.

Little does Sprocket realize,
I don't keep vital organs in
my nose.

I could solve this cat/murder problem by realizing that a cat is a cat, and I'm a human capable of rational thought. I could also realize that I control their access to kibble, and kibble is the ultimate trump card when it comes to cats. However, they also realize that I'm a huge hunk of meat, and were they to kill me, they'd have 165 pounds of finely toned flesh to feast upon for the next year. Sure, they don't realize that my meat will spoil, or my girlfriend will chide them for their pseudo-cannibalism, but that won't deter them—they'll just focus on the pure volume of me.

With Otis making his first attack, I know my life is on the line. I should be vigilant. I should be protective. I should never be alone in the same room as my four-legged bearers of pain and agony. But I just can't do it. They're far too cute and annoying to be ignored. So I'll continue to love and play with them.

When they knead the blanket covering me, they're not finding internal organs, they're loving. When they mash their face into mine, it's kitty kisses. When they reach into my chest cavity, pull out my still-beating heart, and stare at it before eviscerating it into itty bitty kitty pieces with no semblance of being a vital internal organ, I know they're just saying hearts mean love, and they love me. Or they're referencing “Temple of Doom.” Either way, adorable!

Super adorable!