He could not translate my apologetic meow’ese. He could see me frantically jump, rollick, and cavort over his bed while I screamed a word or two through my nostrils. Mostly golden brown with some orange and a tiny blotch of red; my moist nose was surrounded by whiskers that wildly shook as my ears stuck out like clumps of cookie dough. He stared at me as if he would clench my golden whiskers, tie them up into a Borromean ring and hang me over a nail like I was objectified to be a living dartboard. It is obvious that the tip of my scrawny nose would be the bullseye. All I inadvertently did was to stroll around his house just like any other innocent pet would; albeit with a sprinkling of some unintended sequence of trigger events that resulted into an unimaginable domino effect of crazy proportions. My tiny dad would have been proud of me had he seen me grow into an adopted pet in such an elegant household. This particularly curious incident is something I would have to share in illuminating detail for the rest of pet owners and pets and living beings of all sorts to draw some deep wisdom out of. What started out to be my innocent yet playful stroll through the living room turned out to be my owner Roberto ‘the bearded’ Machini’s worst nightmare.
Roberto with his mucky beard was taking an unsuspecting shower as my paws landed from one piece of furniture to the other as I circumnavigated the confines of his living room. I heartily leaped from the coffee table in the center of the room to the bar stools near the kitchen and the itsy bitsy corners of our entertainment center just until my God damn paws descended on that God forbidden handset of the landline telephone thereby brushing it aside. The itchy curiosity I usually garner, made me pause and look back at the phone. A key moment, I now totally regret. Out of further curiosity I greedily gyrated back towards the landline and tried to fidget over the dial pad. My fur-body swerved there with dexterity; keenly examining the various designs on the dial pad as my paws dialed the forbidden 3 letter syllable; no not what you would usually think of. I happened to dial a pattern that I later realized humans pronounced as something that sounds like Mnaiye Weahow Weahow.
I then continued onto my leisurely stroll into the balcony and through its grills into the courtyard, as I eagerly screened for worms and creatures to heartily snack on. The 911 emergency dispatchers at the control station on the other side of town stuck to their standard operating procedure as they faced a barrage of silence. The closest blinking police resource on their computer aided dispatch screens that was available to handle the call for service happened to be a K9 (canine) unit. Yes, the God forbidden big dogs that could give me a heart attack in a jiffy with their calmly sniffing snooty heads that never missed a chance to throw out a grouchy roar of a maniacal dog tantrum whenever a really inexorable urge arose at the meager flick of a bloody sniff. K9, seemed to be too suave an acronym for a Goddamn pack of overtly inquisitive bloodhounds. As I was lost in my culinary indulgence of raw worms, it was not too long before the canines started arriving closer to our parking lot. Upon looking at the sight of an unwelcome pack of big dogs disembarking and marching towards our house; I squirted out a bit of pee and gulped a warm load of saliva right down my externally furry tummy. I then momentarily turned around and sprang back into the house for the sake of my kitty life as my heart skipped a quick beat or two.
My athleticism touched a new high as a ‘fight or flight’ mechanism kicked into my bloodstream with the obvious final decision being to flee without an iota of hesitation. I fled like a grasshopper landing all over the place. If my heroics (zero’ics I must say) were to be documented by a slow-motion camera on social media, it would have become a highly upwards trending YouTube video.
My hind feet landed on the top of the couch, then on to the mini fridge and I finally catapulted even higher as I landed onto the top of the Goddamn power button on our blender that lay bright red on the kitchen counter although unfortunately with its lid wide open.
Roberto had put in the raw ingredients for Tiết canh (Vietnamese Blood Soup) that he had sumptuously had in South Korea on his international summer trip at a popular Seonjiguk (Korean Blood Soup) joint in Busan. The only caveat being that the blood belonged to a widely embraced and cared for animal species. It was Dog Blood. Jeez. For yall peeps that are not born and bred in South Korea, I must gleefully share that selling certain dog meats is totally legal in South Korea. So is eating it.
Roberto had fallen in love with that soup, tummy flab over heels that he just could not get over it after his gastronomic trip. Alas, he happened to smuggle some of the raw ingredients (throat clearing: Uhm Dog Blood) back into the United States as he flew back via Honolulu, the port of entry on his return. He had sealed it in packs of beetroot to get it across. I seriously wished it to be okay even if there was dog shit in that blender or for that manner any sort of shit; as the shit hits the ceiling is perfectly okay with me in this situation. But when dog blood splatters all over a room surrounded by highly trained bloodhounds; what follows at the first instance of dog sniff meets dog blood is an unquantifiable ferocity exacerbated by uncontrollably Grrring jaws and shuddering bodies in solemn reverence for the blood of their fallen brothers and sisters from Asia. They indeed barked like crazy, causing the earth to shake beneath my feet. I had goose bumps on my skin that straightened my fur like a cat with its three paws squished into a power outlet and the fourth paw force-fed into its own mouth.
Roberto just came out of his shower in great suspicion upon hearing the blender as its blades continued to rotate unabated and was shocked to see the repugnant bloody art splattered all over the place. That was not the only shock he received as it continued to be a roller coaster of a seismic hotchpotch that followed into his private space as he hurriedly ran towards the blender to turn it off. All through these moments, I got back into my privately guarded space through a crouched squeeze right under the couch and more towards its hind leg so that I could steal a clandestine view of the developing situation. That spot never disappointed me in situations where my guard-level gets raised to red. It made me feel like a cowardly ninja cat whenever my guard rose to red, an ironic collusion of principles in antithesis. That was the moment the follow up aftershocks began to unfurl as the police began to smack the main doors with a sonic boom that began to raise our tensions as another officer partially sneaked in with his gun pointed towards Roberto from the other side of the glass of the balcony (rear door). He briskly pulled aside the glass doors a bit and pointed his gun towards Roberto via the grills that obstructed his entrance into the living room. Roberto turned into a fearfully shocked bear of a creature and raised his hands wide up his medium rare mid-sized beer belly while shouting ‘I did not do anything. Am absolutely harmless!’ in a voice that seemed like a possum coming out from a body that seemed like a bear. The gun mongering officer positioned in the balcony shouted in a crisp and loud, instructive voice, “Keep your hands together and high up”. Roberto attentively took that quite literally into his hoppy head and started to stretch up his torso like a Yoga posturing bear as his belly began to pop out and inadvertently hung all over. At that exceptional moment, his towel could not take any more of his stretching and it snapped and fell right off on the floor. Not a pretty sight at all; I can vouch for how unaesthetically animated and disturbing that sight looked like. “Just walk towards the main door and quickly open it, while facing towards me all the while”, the officer verbally continued to mandate. “OK sir, I will. I will”, verbally assented our earnest possum like speaking, yogi’ly posturing, belly flashing, bear sized Roberto. He literally walked sideways with his arms going for the stars as his terrorized eyes stared at the officer so strongly as if he were attempting to release laser beams through his beady eyes. As he continued to tacitly assent to the officer’s rules in this grim situation as he walked sideways, he just reached for the doorknob and turned it open. The officers with all those bloodhounds on the other side of the main door, quickly stuck to their books, gauged that moment, and smashed the door open as Roberto got squished by the door right towards the wall. He was stuck like a fat mouse in a mousetrap between the open door and the adjacent wall. The officers continued to push the door, further containing Roberto in that creak of a space as he continued to be squeezed like the batter of a puff pastry. That was the moment when another officer from that door squishing group parted apart and pointed his gun towards Roberto through the opening that remained. Roberto was literally triangulated. On one side he had a corner, on the other side the door was squishing him to the wall and on the third side a gun was pointing right into him. With the thought of impending death penetrating his head, he squealed ‘Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me’. This was accompanied by the dogs that roared like crazy upon the smell and sight of blood belonging to their dear canine homies from South Korea as it lay splattered all over the place. Their throats went nuts and the sound wrenched my guts. One officer quickly restrained Roberto to the wall as the door was left aside at that point and another created a chokehold around Roberto’s neck with his bulging shoulder. The officer that restrained him took his handcuffs out of his bodily arsenal and arrested Roberto. I no more felt like a cowardly ninja cat. The ninja’ness had vaporized into the celestial as I turned into a cowardly cat stuck under the couch. Had the officers left their hold on the dog leashes, they would have torn me to pieces and possibly devoured me alive, that is if I did not die of fear at that point. One particular officer communicated through their handsets with the dispatchers, “Situation contained. One arrest was made” as he again pushed his finger on the APX 8000 series All-Band P25 Portable Radio and relayed “Blood covered site, upon entry. Site sealed. Forensic backup required. Over”. The officers barricaded the site with a crime-scene fluorescent tape. In what followed, the forensics joined the site and collected various samples of blood and a lot more to be tested for in their labs. They didn’t take long to guess that it was not human blood, but it definitely perplexed them on what it could belong to. Roberto was taken for questioning. I was taken into custody by a forensic team for further examination, as I remained there for the rest of the day. As the dusk arrived, I was taken to a veterinary provider where I remained for a few hours yet again. I did not know where I was headed for next or what was to set on me. The forensics were initially perplexed as usual as they are with many cases but soon concluded that the blood belonged to many dogs. One of the officers blurted out at Roberto, “We are arresting you on charges of animal brutality and further charges might follow”. I was eventually taken from the veterinary care and was headed for an animal shelter in a van with tiny meshes and grills along with a whole bunch of other cats. What a day. Unbelievable. Meow.
