Maybe I engage in risky behaviors when my husband is away playing a gig hoping something bad will happen to me and he'll feel bad that he wasn't there to save me and never leave me again. I swim alone in the dark. I let the cats out. And I am determined to bring them all back in before he comes home, even though it would be easier to leave the problem cases out until he came home and let him deal with it. They come right to him when he calls anyway. And by 3 in the morning, they're more than ready to come in. At midnight, the party is just getting started.
Saturday night I swam in the dark alone. Only Arbee was out, and I held the downstairs door open for her to come in. Unless she's spooked by something, she takes a very long time to decide whether or not to come in. Outside she has the whole backyard and no one to bother her. Inside, she usually has to spend her time under the bed or crouched behind the litter boxes to keep from getting into unprovoked spats with other cats. She doesn't care for cats or people.
I thought I was safe because the whole time I was floating in the pool, I could see all the other cats in upstairs windows staring at me, wondering why I was out with the crickets in the dark and they weren't. Arbee was still contemplating whether or not to come in when out of nowhere Seven and Chatter made the trip downstairs and shot out the door. I chased after Seven because once out, he's gone or at least I can't catch him. He won't come to me. Chatter answers to his name and docilely lets you pick him up.
As Seven shot by, I reached down and grabbed his tail. He didn't like that and let me know it, but I didn't want to let him go into the night. I held on. Big mistake. He flipped around and sunk his teeth into my lower leg and grabbed the rest of my leg with all his claws and gave me a good rake. Then, for good measure, he nipped my wrist and slapped Chatter in the face a few times just for standing too close.
I let go of his tail. He took off over the fence. Damn. That hurt. And now I'm gushing blood. I bleed all over the bathroom floor. In the bathtub, it looks like "Psycho" going down the drain. It won't stop bleeding. Now I'm sitting on the floor with the bandages box, slapping them on. One, two, gauze pad, tape, more gauze, more tape. It takes a wad to finally contain the blood. My flip flops are soaked through.
Now I have an inner debate for the next 30 minutes to an hour. Should I go to the emergency room? Do I need stitches? Will I get infected and have to have my leg amputated? That decides it. I balance spending $100 on the co-payment or losing a leg and the $100 wins. But first I still have to get the cats in. Chatter and Arbee now come in easily. I guess the commotion convinced Arbee. Seven is nowhere to be found, even though I hobble up and down the street a couple of times with a flashlight.
I take a book and go to St. Mary's, enjoying the idea that I'll be sitting in an emergency room all night and meanwhile Bobby will come home and find the bathroom and hallway covered in blood, me gone, and he'll decide to give up music and never leave me again. Only St. Mary's busy night is Monday, not Saturday. This hospital doesn't get the gunshots or car accidents. I'm in and out in an hour with new bandages and a tetanus shot. I didn't even need stitches. It isn't even bleeding anymore.
By the time Bobby comes home, I'm in bed asleep. Because I left the backyard lights on, he knows someone is still out. He wakes me up. "Who's out?"
"Seven." I am too tired to tell my story, and I figure he'll see all the blood and wake me up anyway, vowing never to leave me alone again.
He doesn't wake me up again. In the morning, I find myself alone in the bed. He never came to bed, never even saw the upstairs bathroom. I find him asleep on the sofa downstairs. I wake him up. "Seven didn't come back until 5:30," he complains.
"Look what he did to my leg!" Somehow, my story isn't as powerful now, balanced against the fact he sat up all night waiting for Seven to come back. He'll probably keep leaving me alone.
While I type this, Seven, as huge as a dog, sits on my lap as if he never tried to kill me. I guess he doesn't know it was me who grabbed him by the tail when he was escaping into the night.
