Taming the White Tiger

A few years back, I was living in a small apartment in Provo Utah with my husband, Brandon, and my white cat named Hector Ayala.  Brandon was napping in the bedroom and I had just gotten home from PetSmart with some kitty treats and other essentials.  While I was there I saw a nice blue collar.  It had a cute little bell on it and the color looked like the ocean on a tropical beach somewhere.  Hector had never worn a collar.  He never needed to since he was an indoor cat but I decided that it was time for him to wear one.  I pulled the tags off the collar and undid the buckle on it. I laid it out on my coffee table so I could be ready for him.

I called Hector over with the promise of treats and he came willingly.  He must have been thinking the red beast is sharing her bounteous hoardings.  I pulled him up onto my lap and gave him some scratches then I grabbed the collar.  It was like he could sense danger. He began to tense up and squirm.  I held him a bit tighter and said soothingly, “Awe, it’s okay Hector Spector,” which is one of his nicknames.  He looked up at me with his wide knowing eyes and I could tell they were filled with fear.  While he was looking at me, I put the collar around his neck.  He immediately began biting my hand.  I tried to continue to put it on him while he was gnawing at my flesh but it became too painful.  I said, “HECTOR! STOP!” and he did. 

I began to thread the collar through the buckle when he began to squirm more.  The thing you have to remember about Hector Ayala is that he may be white and fuzzy but he is strong and cunning as well.  He began kicking his back legs against my forearm like a bunny would to hop around.  My grip tightened.  I finished latching the collar onto her his neck.  I decided not to give it a whole lot of wiggle room so he wouldn’t be able to just slip out of it and I sent him on his way.

He jumped off my lap and gave me a dirty look.  He scuttled off and hid somewhere.

A few minutes later I head grunting and heavy breathing.  I looked underneath the side table in our living room and sure enough there he was.  There were clumps of hair everywhere and Hector was a heaving mound of white anger.  I went to put my hand on his back to comfort him when his body levitated off the ground, flipped around, landed facing me, and then he squealed at me.  I drew my hand back and shrieked.  He was in no mood to be comforted.  As I drew closer to see what the problem was I realized that he had somehow slipped his back paw into the collar and was stuck that way.  He was breathing heavily and grunting from the struggle to get loose.  I panicked.

I went to grab him and he became nothing more than a flailing blur of claws and flying white fur.  I grabbed the closest blanket I could find to wrap around him to keep him from shredding my delicate pale skin.  I threw it over him but it was like the blanket was a fluffy white cloud and it dissipated as soon as it touched him. 

I called for my husband who was sound asleep in the bedroom and could not hear my panicked pleas.  I decided I was on my own to save my cat from suffocating to death by his own stupid foot.  I picked up his writhing body and pushed through the pain of claws on flesh.  He used his one free back paw to slice open my forearm.  I screamed out in pain and then held him closer. 

I knew from that point it was eat or be eaten so I grabbed a toss pillow with one hand while holding the trembling hissing animal with the other.  I pushed the pillow onto his claws and held him down tight with one hand while I pulled his back paw free.  Now that all four paws were free, he was a lot stronger and extremely angry.  He began kicking as hard as he could with his powerful back legs and tearing open the soft pale Irish skin on me legs.  I pushed pillow into him harder with my elbows and forearms.  Luckily, due to my shoddy housekeeping skills there were multiple things on my coffee table including scissors.  I somehow managed to grab the scissors and cut the cursed collar off my cat.

Once the collar was off, I lifted the pillow and there was nothing but a white blur running off to hide somewhere.  I cried out a pitiful sound that I am not entirely sure was English.  I looked at the remains of what used to be my arms and my legs and thought I would never, ever put a collar on the great white tiger known as Hector Ayala again.