It's Raining Dogs and Feckin Cats

I've always had an issue with cats. As in, they scare the crap out of me. I find them to be fairly unpredictable, and that makes me uneasy. They are cute and all, and I think kittens are hilarious, and I love watching them play at the shelter, but I am not a cat person.

I think this all stemmed from the days at my grandmas cottage. Her neighbour had 18000 cats and they were always underfoot. I was little and moved around a lot. This equated to me stepping on lots of cat tails, and subsequently getting the crap scratched out of my leg. I understand...getting your tail steps on hurt, and the clawing is just a natural reaction, but holy crap, I was small, and those cats scared me.

Every cat since then I've been leery of. I don't stare at them too long, for fear they will pounce on me, and I don't pet them too long for fear they will all of a sudden turn on me and claw my face to death.

The only cats I've really found that I can be around without fearing disfigurement, are my friend's cats Marley and Patches. I won't go as far to say I like them, but they don't scare me the way most cats too. Perhaps it is because they are my godkittens, and I MUST love them. Either way, they are relatively docile, and don't do that creepy "I"m randomly gonna jump behind your head now" thing that most cats are prone to doing.

Anyway, my other friend was away this week, so I agreed to go and feed her mother's cat. This is a cute cat people, with big green eyes. I went on Monday with no issue, and on Wednesday with no issue. On those days, the cat could really care less that I was there, she was just happy for me to fill her food dish and get the hell out.

So yesterday, I go to feed the cat for the last time. I don't know what happened between Wednesday and Friday, but cat darn gone crazy. She would not get out from around my feet. So much so that I could barely walk anywhere. Nonetheless, I feed her, I flush the toilet so she has fresh water. Then I am standing in the living room, doing various tasks, all the while talking to the cat so she hears some human voice, when all of a sudden, the cat rushes over, bites my leg, and starts hissing up a storm. ?? I have no idea what provoked this sudden attack, so I start thinking to myself, "has she gone crazy? Is she just warming up? Is my face next?". I know nothing about cat behaviour. I can read dog behaviour fairly well, but cat's...I got nothing. Because that biting and hissing fit came outta nowhere! So anyway, after this happens, I was pondering my options. "Maybe I can go out the back door, sneak in the front door, grab my purse and get out...but no, because then the back door will be unlocked". What resulted was me going out the back door, running to the front door, peeking in the window, only to see this demon cat staring me down. To the back door I go! But once I get there, there is the cat, staring at me..again. I repeat this pattern several times, with the cat stalking me all the while. After about 5ish minutes, I realize how RIDICULOUS this is, and decide to just go IN the back door. This is just a cat after all. A fairly tiny one at that. It's not a mountain lion, or a puma, or anything that could kill me.

So I open the back door, and there is this cat, hissing and staring away. "I must remain calm", I think. "Be rational. Animals sense fear". So I grabbed the bag of cat treats, and proceed to pour wayyyy too many on the ground. "This will stall her" I think, and I make my way for the front door. I grabbed my purse, the key to the house, my sunglasses, throw on my shoes and got the hell outta there.

I think my car made screechy noises as I peeled out of the driveway.

Over-reaction: most definitely.
Puffy bite marks on my legs: two.
Number of people I've ever cat watch for again: 0.

I'm sticking with the dogs.