Cats, suitcases, and leather gloves

I found out today just how angry a cat can become.

My wife and I are currently visiting our daughter, who has just delivered her second child, our fourth grandchild. I am staying at a hotel. Tonight my wife washed our clothes at our daughter and son-in-law’s house. After they were done, they were ironed and carefully folded into the suitcase. Eventually, the suitcase was zipped shut. It was the eventually that got us in trouble! We did not check the suitcase before we zipped it shut.

So, we zipped it shut, put it sideways in the car, and I drove to the hotel. I slung the suitcase out and carried it up the elevator to my room. Then I opened the suitcase. AND A CAT JUMPED OUT AND STARTED YOWLING. Yes, one of our daughter’s cats had snuck into the suitcase and, surprisingly, stayed quiet during the whole process of zipping the suitcase, carrying it to the car, slinging it into the back seat, driving to the hotel, etc.

Unfortunately, the cat was fully freaked out. I had to put on my winter coat and my winter lined leather gloves in order to chase the cat. And, it is a good thing I did! The cat tried to scratch me, bite me, and otherwise cause severe damage to me. Fortunately, nothing quite made it through, though I had a throbbing thumb for a while. The throbbing thumb would have required medical attention if it had not been covered with a lined leather glove. The cat bit down on it with a significant amount of power.

The cat was behaving so badly that I had no choice but to lock it in the trunk during my drive back to our daughter and son-in-law’s house. By now it was after 10:30 pm. Of course, this was not calculated to settle the cat down! When I arrived, my son-in-law was waiting. To my surprise, when I opened the trunk, the cat was crouched in the back. Because the cat knows our son-in-law, he was able to coax it out and into his arms. I swear that I heard a sigh of relief as the cat allowed our son-in-law to take him into his arms.

This whole episode certainly made for an interesting night! The moral of the story: in a cat owner’s house make sure to check your bags before you leave the house.