Fear

Lately I have been left home alone with all of the pets and, being unemployed and lonely with no family members to entertain me, I’ve started to reach out to the animals.

We currently have four cats, one dog, two birds, seven turtles and a couple fish tanks of fish.

One out of the four cats just happens to have an intense fear of anything near or related to me. He spends most of his days hiding from me and any time he enters the room with me in it he creeps as low to the ground as possible as if hoping to achieve invisibility, all the while looking at me with wide fearful eyes.   

The quiet loneliness of the house must have lured him into a false sense of confidence and despite his fear one night he came to sit in my lap. 

My parents being gone has made this cat behave oddly and has even brought me to, what must be, the brink of madness. Despite my immense fear of the evil aforementioned Quincy I have begun to befriend him.

I started with wrapping a towel around my arm and forcing him to climb aboard.

And then, with confidence, I proclaimed that I would not hurt him and that nothing would hurt him whilst with me. 

He then tried to climb off the towel and onto my naked arm.  This, being too much for our first encounter, I quickly put him back in his cage and talked to him very nicely.

The next contact I made I got braver. I opened his cage, placed my exposed, unclad finger in front of him. My bare appendage stuck out to the mercy of the jaws of Quincy The Killer. He accepted my challenge by digging his sharp beak into the tender flesh of my finger and, sensing this being a test, I did not flinch. He, approving of my strength, climbed onto my finger and began to scream, with what I assume to be a happy bird scream.

At this point I am still afraid but I have all ten fingers so I allow him onto my shoulder.

He’s kind of cute, I think to myself, what a cute freaking reptile you are.

This goes on for the next two days where we are friends, he watches me put my make-up on and looks curiously at all the things I do to get ready in the morning. Birds are definitely not that bad, in fact I suspect they are smarter than most cats I know. They really listen to you, they peer up into your eyes and tilt their head, listening to the things you say, solving problems and testing human weakness. Reminiscent of the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park…. I remain weary.

Despite my fear, however, I am starting to get cocky.

‘Let’s take him into my room and I’ll put him somewhere up high and he can watch me hang out there. What could possibly go wrong?’

I set him down and walk away only to have the sounds of flight come from somewhere behind me.

Everything in my world seems to slow down as if my Spidey Senses have kicked in, unlike Spidey I do not contain my fear, I do not harness it. Instead I did what any respectable person would when a small feathery reptile is flying unseen somewhere behind them.

I hit the deck. 

And in hearing flight still taking place above me, I began to scuttle as quickly as I could on all fours in order to avoid having  this nasty reptile with wings landing on my head.

There is no way, no freaking way, that I am going to let this creature on my head. 

Flight ceases and I feel safer and began to peer around looking for where he landed.

I hear shuffles from somewhere in my room and the faint mumblings that can only be described as an angry bird who missed his mark. My head is safe but now I have to find him.  I search around, afraid that I’ll start to hear the tapping of it’s sickle claw on the floor. Do I hide in a massive stainless steel industrial kitchen cabinet? Do I dare peek around the corner only to be faced with creepy clicking and horrible deep throated growling noises?

Yes. I do.

And there he emerges, from in between my wall and my bed, mumbling and grumbling he appears clawing his way back from the space he inhabited. As if a long lost soldier returning from months held captive by his enemies.

We have saved Private Ryan.

And Quincy will never forgive me. He is back to hating me and I am positive he will never trust me again.

Meh… don’t care. This is not the face of a pet, but just the face of a foe I once tricked into liking me for several hours at a time. He remains evil, lying in wait for his moment to, perhaps, gouge my eyes out. 

Never again.......