Punk Rocket

I'm high from the fumes.

Normally I don't bring up the cat because I'm afraid of being called a Crazy Cat Lady or accused of using the Internets to bombard people with mind-numbing minutia about my cat's daily bowel movements, BUT, I think my recent foray into cat torture warrants at least a short post where I display evidence that, no matter what happens with my career, I can NOT ever be a cat groomer.

See, we have a Maine Coon. Her name is Rocket. She has many interesting characteristics such as bloodthirstiness, a great love for waffles, a fetish for men's hair products and an affinity for being shaved.

For some reason, the cat who will bite and claw and try to rip my face right off 99% of the time will, at the sound of the clipper's buzzing, lie calm and serene and allow me to shave her fur off in whichever way I please.

Perhaps she realizes that I'm cutting her workload in half. Perhaps she knows she'll be cooler when I remove half her fabulous fur coat. Perhaps she has some other bizarre hang-ups about which I do not want details.

Either way - my shaving the cat means that I don't have to do all the things that would require taking her to a groomer which would include, but not be limited to: catching her, stuffing her into a box/crate/reinforced steel cage, drugging her, paying off the groomer so they don't sue me for releasing a wild animal in their shop or having to re-upholster the interior of my car due to severe shredding.

And so, about every six months, I cross the line of normal DIY and I shave The Rocket. And I do an hysterically piss-poor job.

I feel like one million dollars.

Usually I start out thinking that this time will be different and I'll make it all even and smooth like they do at those professional-type places and then I realize that not only do I not have the professional-type clippers that they do, I also am not being paid to do it and therefore, don't have the patience to shave a cat the size of a wildebeest in my house which doesn't have A/C.

I think you'll agree that heat, sweat and flying cat hair are not a pleasant combination.

This is why I always end up putting on my Bare Minimum hat and deciding to limit the requirements of the job to: Just give every surface at least one pass.

That way the clippers (we're on our second pair which are on loan from our nice neighbors who DON'T WORRY know what we're doing with them) don't burst into flames and Rocket doesn't suddenly realize that I'm torturing her and revert to her 99%-of-the-time-Face-Ripping self.

Sure, she ends up looking like she just got spit out of the mower, but she's happy, I still have my face on and the clippers can be oiled and brought back to life for future torturing.

At first it used to bother me when Bubba would laugh and point and make fun of the cat's retarded hair cut.

I would defend her and tell her how cute she looked (because I actually think she's cuter with her funny hairdo) and would tell Bubba to shut up and go look at his own hair or something similarly immature.

But then I stopped taking myself so seriously because who really cares if I don't know how to shave a cat right since that's not really a skill I plan to pride myself on or anything. And also because she does look funny and it's always better to laugh than be serious, so there we are.

And this last time around, I really outdid myself in the piss-poor haircut department, which I'm sure was a direct result of my not even trying to do a passable job. Not that any of her haircuts in the past have been any good, but this time I was actually laughing and making fun of my work as I went.

Does this haircut make my ass look fat?

So, now you know that I'm a closet cat shaver and, while I should be ashamed, I'm really not because look how cute she is. All with her various bald spots and what not.