A Tale of a Kilkenny Cat

There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many;
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats there weren’t any.
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Here’s a tale of one cat from Kilkenny
Who thought Equuschick had ten fingers too many
So she threw a great fit
And she scratched and she bit
But since Equuschick is tough
The cat soon had enough
And the Equuschick grabbed her in both fists, using the teeth plunged deep into her own fingers as leverage and grabbed that cat and plunged her back in her cage and locked the doors tight and that cat is one sadder and wiser mammal now, or would be if, regarding sense, she had any.
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Blogging has been somewhat lighter than we had hoped because of a recent minor (we hope) family crisis. A few days ago we received a telephone call informing us that we needed to meet Equuschick at the hospital, as she had gotten in a fist-fight with a cat and would be unable to drive herself home.

The cat (henceforth known as Edwina Scissors-paws) escaped from its cage while being fed, and Equuschick fought Edwina Scissors-paws and succeeded in keeping the beast from her face and putting it in its cage and then went in the office, shut the door and put her head down and bled messily, and somebody fetched her off to E.R.

There are several scratches and at least one bite (which means a deep puncture wound), and her hands are swollen, and cat bites and scratches are nasty, nasty, nasty. Edwina Scissors-paws is a feral cat, which makes her bites even nastier.

When we arrived home from E.R., the Deputy Headmistress spent some time on the internet googling ‘feral cat bites’ and sharing helpful factoids with Equuschick. Did you know that 80 percent of all cat bites result in infection? Or that bites over the knuckles can actually damage ligaments? Or that sepsis can result from cat bites? Equuschick said that the Headmistress should come away from the computer and quit frightening herself with horrors. The Equuschick is still at that age of invincibility and immunity from long term negative consequences, so she was not herself personally horrified.

Nonetheless, Equuschick’s hands, unaware of their invincibility, did get infected, and she had a return visit to our family doctor. She was put on a stronger antibiotic, spent four hours in the office having her hands repeatedly soaked, scrubbed (with a wire brush), and soaked in disinfectant again, and then the
doctor spent some time tweezering out bits of fuzz probably from the towel used to staunch the bleeding at the time of the Kilkenny Cat encounter. The Doctor also gave her a time consuming home regimen involving soaking in various brews, pouring other brews over the wounds several times daily, and plucking catnip by the light of the full moon and burning it in the stump of a newly cut osage orange while reciting the above nursery rhyme- backward. Or so it seems.

The Equuschick’s attitude remains one most accurately described as resentment. She resents the inconvenience, and tells us “It’s just a finger- why are we all making such a big fuss about just a finger? Why is a single finger interfering with my life so much? How can such a small thing cause so much trouble?” And we merely look at the Equuschick, who is 5 feet tall only if she is wearing thick hunting socks, and do not say a word.

The Deputy Headmistress cringes at the thought of what the tiny but mighty Equuschick will say when she sees this blog entry. The Deputy Headmistress knows she only avoids immediate computer retaliation because the Equuschick is unable to type at her usual speed.