The Cat

For those of you who thought I was joking about having a cat, I wasn't. Why would I take such a fantastic picture of a cat if the animal wasn't mine?

The cat went missing somewhere between Friday late evening and Saturday morning: I went to the Sigur Rós concert Friday and stayed at a friend's in Riga. When I got home Saturday the cat was nowhere to be seen and there was no conclusive evidence to explain what had happened to him.

Today, on the way home, I found my cat in the carpark across the street from the train station, but on the same side of the street as our apartment. The cat recognized me and seemed thoroughly freaked out, but I was able to get him to follow me to almost our apartment entryway, where he promptly freaked out again when I picked him up and tried to get him in the door one-handed.

To cut to the end of the story, I got my cat back into the apartment, but not without a heaping helping of this. Though I had a decent amount of cat spit and hair on my clothes and in my hand wounds (not shown), I can safely say that the cat has a good amount of my blood on its fur. I now also have more scars to worry about and will have to wear long sleeves for the next month. At least it's almost fall.

And, of course, as barbaric as the cat acted on the street, as soon as he was back in the apartment he was rubbing against my and my flatmate's boyfriend's legs (he helped keep the stray cats at bay while i coaxed my monster out from under a car. Apparently I looked a lot like an auto mechanic with my body half under a Mercedes) in an attitude that said "Gosh, was that ever intense! What's for dinner?"

Dinner was wet Kit-e-cat food from a pouch.

Now he's sprawled out on the couch next to me purring away like nothing has ever changed.
Hurrah hurrah, I didn't have to go wild-goose-chasing. Flatmate's boyfriend asked, "Don't you want to give him a bath? You can bathe cats, right? I sure wouldn't let him sleep next to me like that..." I pointed to the blood seeping from the scratches and said "You think he's dirty? You wash him." The cat isn't that dirty, anyway. I sprayed him with the water bottle for a good 5 minutes which will have him licking his fur dry all night. Problem solved.