World’s Meanest Feline Bodyguard

Have I mentioned that Spike is a bit aggressive?

Well, if I haven’t, he is. As I type this, my right hand looks like I stuck it down a garbage disposal without turning off the blades first. This is courtesy of Spike after I committed some real or imagined slight last night — possibly coming home from work at 5:30 instead of being home at 4 to feed him at the usual time. It hardly matters. I’ll be right in the middle of petting the little hellion when he’ll attack me with teeth and all three sets of claws, which, I should remind myself, need clipping.

Every now and then I’m the recipient of a Spike kindness, though.

Like every time I get in the shower.

Spike is a rare cat: he likes water. He used to hop into the shower with me at my old apartment, at least once every couple of months, and he’d stand there preening while the drain became white with shed fur. But at my house, the water pressure (along with everything else) is a vast improvement over the apartment, and the drumming/raining noise of the shower makes him too nervous to get in. Which is just as well. You try shaving your legs when a cat keeps butting them with his head. I should have scars on my calves that pass, in some countries, for tribal tattoos.

So here, Spike will often stand guard in the bathroom while I’m in the shower, and when I yank back the curtain, he’ll come up to the edge of the tub and lean on it. The first time he did this, I said, “Well, that’s sweet of you,” and leaned down to him, and he gave me a nose-to-nose kiss.

Yes, really.

He does it all the time now — not every day, because he’s often got more important things to do than make sure the shower doesn’t kill me, but at least once or twice a week I get a little dose of a mean, mean cat’s affection.

Sometimes it’s very hard to stay mad at him, even when the back of your hand is plastered with band-aids.