The time I broke my cat

When I was about 10 years old I had a bitchy cat named Heidi. She only loved me and that was a stretch. She was twitchy. She'd come up and rub against your leg and when you bent down to pet her she'd bite your hand.

The story starts on Saturday morning. This is back in the day of the GOOD old school Sat AM cartoons. I was headed downstairs hugging blanket and pillow out in front of me. I bent over and picked up the cat and stuffed her in the top of the wad. I continued down the steps. Near the bottom I tripped, tumbled and fell flat on my cat and blanket pile. On impact the cat screeched. She jumped up and ran into the other room to hide. I felt terrible since I thought I really might have hurt her, but she was too far under the couch for me to reach so I left her alone.

Later during the middle of Smurfs she slunk out from behind the couch and started to walk over to me. All of the sudden she hunched down, stuck her ass up in the air and started to yowl. I was terrified. I honestly thought that I had done internal damage to my cat and her organs. "She's going to die!" I thought to myself. "And it's all my fault". So, I run upstairs to tell my mother about the cats strange behavior hoping that she can diagnose her injury and possibly give some hope that she may recover.

I burst into the kitchen and scream, "I dropped Heidi while I was running down the stairs and I think I did something to her". I explained to my mom how the cat was acting. She listened intently (she's raised many a farm cat and has seen just about everything). As I finished I stared intently in her eyes. She held in a giggle and then let it go into a full on, almost snorting laugh, "I don't think that YOU made Heidi go into heat when you dropped her down the stairs!"

So, then we had to have the talk about cats in heat and you kind of see where this is going. I was just thrilled that I hadn't somehow broken her and she was going to live to be an old, decrepit, bitchy cat.