Strange Quark's Strange Quirks: Cats are the devil, mama!

Kittens are notorious bullshit artists. When people think of kittens, usually (unless they're serial killers) the first thing that pops into their heads are images of precious little four legged puffs of fur that exist soley to make humans act like idiots over their cuteness and dangle string in front of their faces.

Well, they're WRONG. Kittens use their cuteness as a distraction from their real agenda: to slowly fray the ends of sanity of every cat owner on the planet.

Knocked over grandma's clock? Oh...but how can you stay mad?? She's so cute!!

Hacked up a furball in your slipper? Cute.

Shredded the bottom half of your brand new living room furniture? Dammit, still cute.

They have the ability to make us more pissed off than a badger in a fun house hall of mirrors, yet we are incapable (in most cases) of causing bodily harm to the furry little bastards.

Why, you might ask, do I have this outrageous opinion that kittens are pure evil wrapped in snuggly fur?

Flash back to 1991. My best friend's cat had kittens...cute little calico wads of meowing fuzz. I remember the one she kept was named Mischief. The one I acquired was named Patches. In a few moments you will realize the misnomer.

Patches was Satan in feline form. A day didn't go by where Patches wasn't causing my mom or my step dad to scream and curse the kitten's existence. I, on the other hand, was way too young to have to deal with such nonsense as "pet responsibility," so I was far from realizing the terror this cat truly was - at first.

Here is a *short* list of the horrors we experienced at the hands of Patches, a 6 month old kitten.

-Patches would utilize god-like strength and dexterity to jump to the highest point in a door frame, latch claws, and slowly slide down the wood. One time he was startled in mid maneuver, and actually managed to get stuck *to* the top of the door frame.

-Patches took great joy in making me afraid of the edge of the bed. To this very day, I am uncomfortable with letting limbs dangle over the side of the mattress.

-Patches once fell into a bucket of white paint, and after climbing out, ran all over the fully carpeted two story apartment.

-Patches nearly destroyed a wedding cake worth several hundred dollars. Mom used to make them as part of her job as wedding planner. Well, this cake ended up having an oddly placed plastic cherub to hide the huge bite mark the cat left behind after he literally dove into the cake. Mom swears to this day Patches smiled at her before making his escape.

-Patches smashed my mom's favorite anniversary clock. It was no light thing and it was well towards the inside of the shelf. It was clearly intentional.

-Grandma once spent a few days at our place watching Patches while we were gone on vacation. We came back to find grandma sitting by the door with her coat on and her bags packed. She warned us that she would never babysit "that demon cat" again. We still don't know what Patches did to her.

-This one isn't necessarily evil, but worth mentioning. My step dad was laying down for a nap. Patches sat on his chest. Every time my step dad opened his mouth on the inhale of his log sawing snore, Patches quickly stuffed his paw down the cavernous maw, presumably trying to reach that dangly thing in the back. You'd be surprised how long it took before the step dad woke up.

-This is the smoking gun, irrefutable proof of why Patches was Satan in furry disguise. The evil cat was cooked in the broiler of an oven and SURVIVED.

This deserves telling in more detail. The step dad was making hamburgers in the broiler. He momentarily left the broiler open and turned away.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, Patches crawled into the back of the broiler where he began to nom on raw hamburger meat. Step dad turned back and closed the broiler door.

Moments later, my mom began flipping out because the oven was making strange banging noises. We were all afraid that the oven was going to explode.

Step dad opened the broiler and out flies Patches with smoke and singed fur trailing behind him. The cat was obviously traumatized, but otherwise okay. No cat should survive getting broiled. No MORTAL cat.

Inevitably the day arrived when I came home from school and Patches was nowhere to be found. Mom had given him away to an unsuspecting family. There wasn't much debate or discourse on the topic, but even as a small kid, I wasn't overly sad to see him go. He was the cat from hell, after all. I just felt sorry for the family that got duped into taking Patches home.

You would think that after all of that, I would never subject myself to that type of torture again. I had a few dogs over the years, but my man person does not enjoy dogs. Because we worked different shifts, I was lonely. What do I adopt? A kitten!