My Cat Phobia

In my senior year of high school my dad was killed in an auto accident. That was in October. In January, I was a passenger in a car driven by my boyfriends mother that broadsided a car that turned in front of us. No fatalities occurred with this accident but we were all in pretty rough shape for a while. I required surgery on my knee to repair the damage.

After having recovered from the surgery and with fading scars, our cat attacked the same leg!
She was part Siamese and all black. And she could hiss like no cat I ever heard.....hateful, scary hiss! She had babies, 2 adorable kittens. We also had a dog. Medium size...a Springer Spaniel/collie mix. I loved him a great deal. Actually, he was my Dad's dog so after my Dad's death, he sort of became mine.

Anyway, one day the kittens ran across the dog's food dish while he was eating. Now, the dog did love the kittens and had always allowed them to climb all over him and lick him and play with his tail. I don't know if it was instinct or just a little warning, but when the kittens ran across his food, he gave a gentle growl. He didn't make a move for them or anything.....just a gentle growl the same as when he played with them. This brought the mother cat to the kitchen immediately to check on her babies, who by this time had run into the living room to play with something else. The mother seem highly agitated and I thought that if I put the dog outside on his cable run the mother would have a chance to check out her babies and calm down some.

The house we lived in was set up so that you could come in the back door into the kitchen and pass through the kitchen to a vestibule with a large arch into the living room and upon turning right another large archway into the dining room with a swinging door back into the kitchen. After putting the dog outside and returning from the door back into the kitchen, I heard this terrible hissing noise behind me. The next thing I feel is this terrible pain in the back of my right leg. I glance down and discover the mother cat has latched onto my leg wrapping her paws around the front and sinking her teeth into my calf and twisting her head back and forth! Needless to say, I am feeling a lot of pain and was no where near as calm as I appear to be in the telling of this tale. In the meantime, I am running around the above mentioned description of archways and doors in our home and screaming.

Eventually the cat decided to let go; perhaps she came to her senses or decided she didn't like the way I tasted. It didn't matter to me why she let go......as long as she let go.

I immediately ran to the upstairs bathroom and locked myself in. My mother was at work at the time but both my sisters were home (1 younger and 1 older) and the older sister's boyfriend was also there. He finally persuaded me to come out of the bathroom and looked at my leg. Being older, my sister and her boyfriend thought it best to contact our mother at work who instructed them to take me to the ER. So, off we went against my wishes.

After arriving at the ER and being seen initially by the nurse, we were given a small examining room to wait for the Dr. After a short wait, the Dr. came in and looked at my leg. He was fairly young and quite good looking to my 17 year old eyes! He smiled up at me at said "What happened here, honey, did your razor get away from you?" I was so embarrassed and I'm sure I was blushing. Not to bore you with anymore details about the hospital visit, I shall just go on to let you know that all ended well and I was released to go home with antibiotics and instructions of what to watch for.

And that folks, is why I am afraid of cats to this day!