CAT-ASTROPHE!

              I made the grave error last night of running out of my cat’s (a/k/a “Her Imperial Majesty’s”) favorite flavor of tinned cat food.

 For those of you who aren’t owned by a cat, this doesn’t sound like a big deal.  You think (erroneously) that, like a dog, if a cat is hungry, it will eat whatever you give it.

 To quote my cat (if I’m interpreting her dirty looks correctly), “I don’t THINK so, Bitch!”

Tango has this thing for Fancy Feast Salmon.  It’s all she eats.  After three days in a row of the stuff, I’d be gnawing the bark off trees instead, but she’s perfectly happy with it, day after day.

 Stopping at the grocery store on the way home, I remembered that she needed more Fancy Feast Salmon, so I went to the appropriate aisle and (fade in ominous chord) THEY WERE OUT OF IT!  Tiny beads of perspiration formed on my brow, and I began to hyperventilate.  Desperately, I searched through the tins at the back, hoping against hope that there would be just one dusty little tin that someone had overlooked.

 Nada.

 So, I tried to think like a cat, and picked out a couple of tins of the most disgusting-sounding and stinkiest types of food I could locate.  I finally settled on a tin of mouse knuckles, goat lips, and fish heads, all chopped up in a gay combination; and a tin of pureed filter organs from, I think, six different varieties of wildebeest.

Though cats can’t read, they have unequalled comparison skills, and she was immediately onto my game.  Deciding to ignore the fact that, where Tango spits, grass never grows, I dished up the mouse knuckles.

I’m here to tell you that I have never smelled anything remotely like that cat food this side of Elizabeth, New Jersey.  My eyes watered.  I broke out in a strange rash.  All my hair fell out at once.

 I scraped the ghastly stuff into her dish, and threw away the melted spoon.  She glared at the disgraceful mess, then at me, then at her dish again.  The last time I looked, she had dragged it to her litter box and was in the process of burying it.

After that, she went to the phone and speed-dialed her lawyer.

I think she’s going to sue me. 

 Any defense lawyers out there willing to take on a cat in court?