The Cat Theory

The Battle

It was winter. I hadn't seen the cat in a while, so I had kind of assumed it died or that it had given up trying to kill me because I had kept on my guard so well. At this point, the cat and I have a rivalry dating back almost a year. I am in year two of high school, so usually there's a lot of homework and all that, so I don't have a lot of time to actively pursue the cat. This, however was during the winter break. This meant that I had a cat and lot of time to kill.

There was also some family up. I had my three younger cousins at my house: Arthur, Chase, and Eva, as well as my younger brother Finn. The ages ranged from 13 to 5, which might have been a problem if our relationship was built on actual communication and shared interests. But, for the most part we got along well because our relationship was mostly eating things, playing video games, senselessly running around, and beating on each other.

Anyways, the parents were out. They were all going to dinner at a fancy restaurant in town, and I was in charge of making dinner. I decided to fry some fish on the grill. Now, we live in New England and as I mentioned it was winter break, so it was about 9 degrees out. This meant that in order to fry the fish, I had to run out flip it, and run back in. One of those times, when I was running out to flip the fish, I saw what the orange devil was doing, and I was instantly upset.

Earlier that year, the cat had chased 4 squirrels into the shingles under my house. The noise and the beacon had kept me up all night, and I knew that the cat was either trying to kill me from sleep deprivation or get me drowsy and dull my senses so it could finish the job later on.

So, early in the morning, when the squirrels were sleeping on the heating vent, I turned up the heat to 95 degrees and fried them. Unfortunately, they started to smell and my father had to rip out the living room ceiling to get rid of their corpses. My room smelled terrible for 3 months, and we still didn't have a roof over that room, so I was under strict instructions not to kill any more squirrels- which for me meant not to let any more squirrels into the house. My father had bought a blow dart gun full of tranquilizers that he had tried to use to get the squirrels into a have a heart trap. But the more he stunned, put in that trap and carried away, the more seemed to appear. So, he eventually had to get rid of his bird feeder, which what he believed was drawing the squirrels to the yard in the first place.

Anyways, the cat was sitting under the lilac bush where the bird feeder used to be, trying to chase squirrels into the shutters under my room. Immediately, I decided that this would be the end. The showdown of all showdowns between me and the cat. I had to assert my dominance. So, I rounded up my allies, and I told them the plan. We were going to have to go outside, and slowly surround the cat, before catching it in my dad's have a heart trap and using it as a ransoming chip to get the cult to uninstall the beacon and stop loudly chanting at 2:00 in the morning.

Because we were alone in the house, all the doors were locked. I had to make sure that we were able to get back in the house and so I gave the spare key to Eva, who was only 5 at the time. I wanted to make her feel as though she was contributing, without actually involving her in a high speed life or death chase with a cat.

So we slowly crept up at the cat from all directions, blocking it's escape. I was holding the have a heart trap, ready to finally end the rivalry once and for all. It started to get skittish, and I knew we needed something to distract it before it ran away, ruining our chances.

"Distract the cat." I was mouthing, trying not to make enough noise to startle it. The cat was getting increasingly more suspicious, and the boys weren't listening to me at all, instead creeping up on it slower and slower. I turned to Eva, knowing she was our last hope. "Eva." I whispered forcefully. She looked at up at me. "Eva, distract the cat."