My Feral Arch-Nemesis

On the way into work this morning, I rode the elevator with an older lady who was wearing one of the most hideous ensembles I have ever seen in person. There was a lime green shawl, a pleated purple skirt, and something off-white and full of ruffles everywhere else. She also was carrying what I swear was a Hello Kitty purse. It hurt just to look in her general direction.

But, oh, she got back at me for my silent condemnation of her outfit, believe you me. Because she owns a cat. I know this due to the delightful fact that through the course of two elevator rides and two trips down the hallway that combine to form my walk into the office, she never once stopped talking to me about it. (Newsflash: cat does not like tuna! Film at 11:00!) I also know this because just being in the general proximity of her was enough to set off an allergic reaction, the likes of which I haven't seen in years.

See, I am allergic to cats. But with each cat, it has a variable degree of allergicity. My sister's cat ranks somewhere around a 2 on a scale from 1 to 10, in that I can play with it all day and it can attack me by pouncing on my head in the middle of the night and all I have to show for it, besides a general feeling of dislike for tiny mammals that interrupt my precious sleep, is a mild headache the next day (Level 2: Cat of Annoyance). In opposition, one of my friends owns a cat that will make me violently ill just by being in the same room with it for more than 5 minutes at a time (Level 10: Armageddon Cat). I'm talking serious issues of pain and destruction for everyone in the general vicinity if the cat and I cross paths.

(I had a DEFCON 5/ DEFCAT 5 joke in mind here but it's really stretching things and I'm not really in a good headspace for such things, but I wanted you to know about it anyways, because I feel that it could have been funny, if properly handled. And I just saw that Wargames movie on TV last weekend and it's still bouncing around in my head. How about a nice game of chess, Matthew Broderick, indeed.)

The cat this woman owned had to have ranked somewhere around level 40,000 (Level 40,000: Anathema Cat), because just being in the presence of its owner was sending me into fits of sneezing, nausea, and dizziness. And now, the day has passed and I'm still feeling it, the headache all tightly coiled around my brain like an evil snake, the watery/swelled eye look, the tendency for excessive sneezes. I would give my right index finger for a syringe of high powered Benadryl right about now. I look a mess, to put it bluntly.

In any case, my war with the feline continues unabated. Damn all the cats, unless they are very cute and/or playful. Then, awwwwww.