I hate cats.

This picture fills me with a hatred stronger than the white hot heat of a thousand suns.

Okay, first things first; let's get the obvious out of the way. In the immortal and hilarious words of my good friend the Right Wing Bastard, "bitching about cats is like bitching about the cactus you keep in your pants." You can probably get the gist of his meaning pretty easily, and it's a question I get asked OFTEN when I'm bitching about how much I fucking hate cats: Why not just get rid of them, then? Yeah, I'll get to that later.

I keep this in my pants and OH MY GOD IT'S SO PAINFUL. WHY? WHY??????

So, here's how the story goes. First, we had one cat. His name is Mr. Charlie (because he told me so). He is enormous and orange and loud and obnoxious and we've had him ever since he was a baby and standing in his food bowl at the pound in Santa Barbara trying to get our attention so we would get him the hell out of there. He's 14 now? I think? Hubs? 14?

He's a surly old man now. Sometimes we say "Oh my god, look how surly that cat is!"

And then, a friend stayed with us for a while, and she brought her own cat, who happened to be unspayed, and then we had 2 cats. Shortly afterward, however, we had 6.

6 cats. Yeah. Good times.

And THEN, through a horrible series of mishaps, fantastic escape scenes, missed doctors appointments and feline incest.... we had 12. I'm not kidding. 12.

This is not as cute as you think it is. In fact, it's not even cute at ALL.

It became comical. Or, it would have been comical if we weren't actually living with 12 cats. My friend, who brought the unspayed cat in the first place, had moved back to LA, leaving behind this enormous breed of fuzzy, squeeky, NOT cute little creatures who became more and more annoying by the day. But we had to hold onto them for when my friend came back to pick them up. In the meantime, though, 2 of the little babies died, and then we gave away 2 (actually we gave away three but one of them was returned to us. I won't say by whom.... I don't want to embarrass anybody.....) and so we ended up with 8. And we waited for my friend to return. And we waited. And waited some more. Finally I just couldn't take it anymore and I put 4 of them in a box and brought them to the pound. The City pound, where they don't ask any questions. It's not a no-kill place, though, and I have no idea what happened to them. 2 of them were still tiny babies, though, so I'm sure they found homes for them. Right? RIGHT??

And then there were 4. That's not a whole huge amount, I mean, at least compared to 12. We still have Charlie, and one of the other ones is pretty much feral and never even comes in the house, so he doesn't really count. And then we have the original, now spayed once unspayed female who caused all of these problems in the first place, but we can't get rid of her because she's still my friend's cat, even though my friend has apparently disappeared into the ether never to be seen or heard from again. And the other one has adopted hubs, and he has adopted her, and they are wonderful friends who love each other. And THEN there's the whole "kid loves cats" factor; Child 2 doesn't call them by their names, he calls them "My friend cat Spike," or "My friend cat Charlie" and he pets them and says "ooooooooooh, you're so cute! I love you!" So how would I explain that one to him? "Sorry, honey, Mommy killed your friend cat because she was annoying me. And let that be a lesson to you and your brother never to annoy Mommy." So now do you see why I'm stuck with all four of them? I can't get rid of any of them, I'm just sitting here waiting for them all to die and thus relieve me of my burden of having to feed them and keep them alive on top of everything else I have to do. And OH MY GOD I HATE THEM ALL.

It's so weird, because I used to LOVE cats. We've had a bunch over the years and I loved petting them and taking care of them and snuggling with them, but there was something about 12 cat overload that took away all of my love of cats and replaced it with nothing but annoyance and derision. And now that they're all grown up they're enormous and they're EVERYWHERE. I swear, there is no surface in my house that doesn't have a cat on it. No sweater that isn't furry, no drawer or chair that isn't being slept in or on, we wake up in the middle of the night EVERY NIGHT to find our legs pinned under the weight of one or another of them. I can't stand it!

And so, my friend the bastard, I will complain about my cats until the day either they die or they kill me and eat my carcass, and you will listen and make fun of me, and that's okay.

This just in:

I would say that I look just like this except this woman only has 2 cats while I have 4.

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