Friends, a Couple Named Tim

¶ … friends, a couple named Tim and Tina decided to move to the West Coast. They had been sharing a house with David, a long-time friend of mine. Tim and Tina had two adorable dogs and a very friendly cat who acts just like a dog by greeting strangers at the door and approaching even strangers to be petted. David lives upstairs and rarely comes downstairs because he is very allergic to cats.

Unfortunately, Tim and Tina could not take their cat, "Scoshie" with them because they were driving and the two dogs were enough trouble on such a long car ride.

They planned to come back for Scoshie the next time they were in town, but we knew that might not be for as much as full year. David told them, "Scoshie can live

downstairs where he's comfortable, but someone else has to take care of him because I

can't breath down there." I volunteered because I already spent a lot of time with Scoshie and he is an adorable cat. If it weren't for the fact that I already have another male cat ("Zippy"), I would have taken him home with me. Scoshie always sits with me and he even lets me clip his nails, which is very unusual and the two times that I slept over in the empty bedroom, Scoshie spent the whole night sleeping with me.

My veterinarian suggested that I do an experiment to see whether the two cats could possibly get along, since both of them have been neutered and should not be as aggressive toward each other as they might be otherwise. She said, "Just take Zippy over to the house in his cat carrier and don't open it. Let them sniff each other through the bars and if they hiss at each other, then you know not to let them interact. If they seem OK

with one another, you could try letting them out under supervision." I followed her advice and took Zippy over to the house in his carrier. The moment I put him down,

Scoshie started making very strange sounds like he was whining and I wasn't sure whether he was angry or actually wanted to meet Zippy. Then they stared hissing at each other, so I realized it wasn't safe to let Zippy out.

I took Zippy back out to my car and settled the cat carrier inside where it was warm and I went back into the house to feed Scoshie and clean his litter box the way I

have been ever since Tim and Tina left. As soon as I came back into the house and closed the door behind me, Scoshie attacked me viciously: he grabbed around my leg with both paws, sunk his nails deep into my leg and bit me as hard as he could. I was completely shocked and very scared and his teeth really hurt because they went all the way into my leg as deeply as they could. I was screaming, No! Scoshie, No! And I pulled him off of my leg with my hands. Then he attacked my hands and bit the back of my left hand just as hard and deeply as my leg and after I got him off, he attacked me a third time biting my leg again.

I was in shock and in a lot of pain and I was bleeding all over the place; I couldn't believe such a nice cat had attacked me like that. I was bleeding from my leg and my hand was dripping blood all over the brand new down jacket that I had just received for the holidays. I called my boyfriend but he was fifty miles away at work. He tried to get me to calm down and told me to try to take a deep breath, get out of my panicked mode and go into emergency mode and calmly assess my injuries to determine if I needed to go to the hospital. My hand seemed to be the worst injury because there was a pretty big blue bump on the back of my hand where Scoshie bit me right over a vein.

My boyfriend told me that I had to get to the hospital because was possible that

Scoshie's tooth had actually punctured a vein and that the swelling was a temporary emergency reaction to prevent serious bleeding. I hate hospitals and I knew I'd be in the emergency forever, but Charles convinced me that it was much safer to err on the side of caution in case I had a serious injury. He said, "Look, either way, you will need a tetanus shot and you have to be examined to make sure you have no nerve damage. For all you know, there could even be a piece of his tooth stuck in there and that has to come out right away too. Even if there's nothing in there but some fibers from your clothes, that's enough for a really bad infection. Make sure they check inside each one of those punctures if they don't do it on their own"

He asked me whether I could make it back to my house, which, luckily, is only a few blocks away, but he said, "If you're too shaken up to drive, just call 911 from your cell phone, stay warm inside your car, and keep your hand elevated. Call your brother and ask him to come stay with you and if he can take you to the emergency room, do that instead of the ambulance, but either way, you need to be seen immediately because if he damaged a vein in your hand, that's not something you want to fool around about. Call John and just figure out HOW, not if you're going to the hospital."

My brother showed up a few minutes later and drove me to the hospital after dropping Zippy off at home. He was driving a little crazy and I told him to take it easy because it would be a lot worse for us to get into a car wreck which is a major emergency on the way to take care of a minor emergency. I could tell he was worried about my hand too. He was extremely impatient at every red light we stopped at, and I have to admit that they did seem to take much longer than usual to turn green. When we got to the emergency room entrance, they took me inside to see a doctor right away because I had so much blood on my clothes that it probably looked like I was a stabbing victim or something.

The doctors took my history and examined me and assigned a nurse to clean me up and give me a tetanus shot. The doctor also told her to check inside the wounds too, but she apparently forgot to do that because she was already starting to put bandages on me. I remembered what Charles had said and that the doctor had also told her to check inside the holes so I asked her about that and she apologized for forgetting and she took care of it before bandaging me all up.