By popular demand (and one wheezing geek goddess, which I think means it’s amusing), here is the story of how and why I punched a cat.

Picture if you will: a mild-mannered geek on the path to that restful sleep of the righteous, letting go all the stresses of the day.  He’s earned this sleep, his day having been filled by the demands of the users.  In his mind he hears the insistent tone of a digital telephone, signaling yet another person who ‘broke the internet’ and is being unjustly deprived of their time-sensitive work correspondence (a.k.a. pornography).  Long story short, he’s tired and cranky.

So here I am, in my bed, which is right under a window on the second floor of my crappy condo.  It’s 1:30AM.  I’m trying to doze off and acquire my much-needed rest for the next day.  Suddenly, I hear a sound.  It’s a sound that cannot be described as anything but a cat fighting.  If you’ve heard this sound, you know what I mean.  If you haven’t, take a squeal and mix it with a roar.  If you haven’t heard either a squeal or a roar, then watch more animal planet.  So I hear this sound.  The only problem with this sound is that it’s in two frequencies at once.  To the trained ear, this is an indication that this is no ordinary cat vs. raccoon/squirrel/badger/whatever, this is two cats.  Despite the fact that I was raised in a family of dog people, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for cats.  It may be due to their aloof, arrogant attitude, or it may be that they’re damned cute.  Either way, I want to know that they’re going to be okay.  So I sit up and scoot over to the window.  This window looks down on the 15-by-15 privacy fenced patio below.  When I pull apart two of the curved bits of metal in the blinds and look, I see that this particular cat fight is actually happening on my property.  They’ve chosen my patio as the location for their battle royale.  This simply won’t do.  Firstly because I don’t like to see cats get hurt, and secondly because if I have to see the blood on my patio I’ll feel really guilty about the first part.  So I go downstairs (note: this is commonly known by my friends as mistake #1).

I’m in my pajamas, barefoot, and it’s about fifty-five degrees outside.  I somehow decide that I am more than capable of breaking up a fight between two animals with sharp claws and bad tempers, so I open the patio door and calmly walk out (note: mistake #2).  As I walk out, I start yelling at the cats.  Anyone in the audience who has seen an angry cat knows exactly how well this worked.  For all I know, these were two deaf cats.

As I walk towards them, I decide that I need something besides my bare hands to deal with this problem.  I hope this means I’m not completely retarded, but since I know how this ends, I can’t believe that.  I know from my one childhood trip to the circus that lion tamers use a chair and a whip.  From this, I take that an aluminum folding lawn chair and a small rake should be more than enough (note: mistake #3).  So here I am, walking towards two angry cats who don’t care that I exist, armed with an aluminum folding lawn chair and a small rake.  I decide (correctly) that unless I can break the line-of-sight between the cats, they’ll never pay attention to me.  So I do the obvious thing and put the lawn chair between them and bang it with the rake (note: I don’t consider this one a mistake, because I’m an idiot).

At this point, the cats recognize a large object between them, so they move to go around it.  Once they can see each other again, they screech and jump.  This lands them both on the back portion of the privacy fence which surrounds my patio.  I have included a handy diagram below to explain the scene.

Please note a few things about his picture: 1. I am not a graphical designer. 2. I do not use a Mac 3. The cat on the left was lighter in color and approximately 25% bigger than the cat on the right.

At this point, I decide to put the lawn chair on the fence.  Separating them had worked previously, and it sounded like a good idea to do it again (note: I also don’t consider this a mistake).  When I did that, the bigger cat (we’ll call him bigcat) jumped off of the fence to the outside (that’s up in the overhead view).  The smaller cat (we’ll call him littlecat) jumped down on my side of the fence, ran behind me, and sat down.  Great.  Now I’m a teacher on the playground.  The little bastard thinks I’m protecting him.  I’m feeling confident, nay, cocky at this point, so I go to look over the fence and make sure bigcat has recognized my superiority in both intellect and girth, and decided to leave (NOTE: This is the part where I am an utter idiot, and may soon be renamed mistakes #4-7).

Bigcat, however, did not recognize my superiority.  Bigcat is crouched, waiting for his chance to attack.  Apparently that chance is signaled by me looking over the fence.  Once my beautiful face is in sight, bigcat leaps directly at it.  The next action on my part will define my manhood for the rest of my life.  I shrieked like an 8-year-old and threw both the lawnchair and the rake straight upwards.  This brilliant tactical move on my part succeeded insomuch as bigcat became entangled in the lawnchair’s overwhelming complexity, and took it with him right past me and onto the ground.  I have diagramed the ensuing positioning below:

In this scene, bigcat has just landed on the ground while wrapped around the legs of the lawnchair.  Being the superior intellect in this particular situation, it doesn’t take bigcat long to realize that he’s not chewing on the face of an idiotic human, but rather on the leg of an aluminum chair.  Once he realizes this, he quickly decides that there is only one acceptable course of action.  With almost catlike speed, he jumps at my face again.

Now, in this situation, what would you do? I would have happily shrieked and thrown things in the air like the previous time (my default behavior) except that I had nothing to throw.  Given the dire circumstances that I faced, I did what any completely rational person would do.  I punched a cat.  In the face.  With a left hook.

Not having calculated the applied force or the expected trajectory, I was somewhat surprised to see bigcat fly end-over-end over the fence, screeching the whole way.  After watching this whole ordeal, littlecat finally makes his decision.  He looks at me with an expression that can only mean, “Dude, you’re freaking crazy.  You just punched a cat! That’s just too much for me to handle right now.” He then jumps over the fence in the same direction bigcat flew, and runs away.

I never went back and looked over the fence again.  Not out of fear that bigcat would be there and pounce again, but more out of fear that the two cats are friends, and had been messing around, and I just punched one of them.  I don’t need that guilt on my conscience.  I left the lawnchair and the rake, and went back inside and up to bed.  My two dogs, ever vigilant, had slept through the whole gorram thing.