Bitten - toshiyuki ihira (top rated books of all time TXT) 📗

The spit soak through the tissue and wet my fingers. I shake it off into the pail. Pull out more tissues and wipe up the spit trail. He comes over to the trash pail and stretch up, putting his front paws on the edge of the trash pail, looking into it. I pull him away from there. I don't want him to look at his fur. It fluff up and look like a lot.
He starts to look at his bare patch again. I rub that bare skin gently, saying “mee, … mee.” When he says “oow” back to me, I pull his other fur that don't come out. He feels a bit of pinch and a pain. I rub his bare patch again gently. I can see he is not feeling a pain there. He is beginning to get it. He looks at me sheepishly. I pull on my hair on my head. (“My hair come out, too.”) I manage a short broken hair. He looks at it and cry a quiet “ooowww.” Bad example. I rub my cheek to him, on his bare patch, on his cheek, head, all over. He takes a deep sigh. His shaking is gone now. I wash up. We are having our breakfast.
Next few weeks he shed his baby fur out completely. He coughs up few more fur balls.
“We don't want that fur ball in our house. Teach your cat to hack it up some place else.” Grandpa tells me.
Grandma isn't saying anything. She is just watching. O.k. I will teach him.
When he starts to hack, he doesn't have a time to go anywhere else. He is busy hacking. I teach him to roll the ball with his front paw. He doesn't like the wetness but he manages to roll one all the way to the walkway and push it over the edge and down on the ground outside. Wet fur ball leaves a spit trail. (“It will dry up soon enough. Little water is not going to hurt anybody.”)
“What the …. What do you teach your cat? This trail is going all over the house.”
“It will dry up.” I say.
“It's a spit. When it dries up, you can't see it but it smells. Clean it up.”
I clean it up with a lot of water. Make it thin enough they can't smell it. It is a lot of work. I need to think of other way.
I cut a square piece of thick paper and teach him to put a fur ball on top of it and pull the paper. Use crumpled newspaper for a fur ball. When he pulls, the ball rolls right off the paper. I cut a larger rectangle, long on one side with a bent notch at its end. He can tell the difference. He knows where to pull. I tell him. Success.
He manages to put one out without leaving a trail. There is still a fur ball right outside the walkway but it's outside, on the stone step on the ground.
Grandpa wants to nitpick but says nothing. He has seen our toil. He let it go at that.
By this time the cat shed all his baby fur. He doesn't need to take any more fur ball out. He finished his molting. He is covered with adult fur now.
As he gets older, he doesn't jump around that much. He wants to sit and rest. He picks my lap for resting. When he does, I can't move. If I do, he complains. That's o.k. He is my friend. He can use my lap if he wants.
He starts to purr when he rests on my lap. It's so different. I don't know where that purr come from. It's not his talk. When I touch his neck softly to see if it's making that purr. He stops. I don't know where it's coming from.
He starts to draw his claws out when he rests on my lap and sink them into my thigh. He purrs at the same time. He does it through my pants so, it isn't that bad. I say “ow” to him when he does this, telling him I don't like it. He says “me” back to me, looking at my face. He stops for awhile but starts up again. Well, it's o.k. He is my friend. It's not that bad.

My uncle moves back into his parents' house that's where I am living. He brings his dog with him. I have to move in with my mother, two houses down.
This house also has a walkway very similar to my grandparents' house. I spend a lot of time sitting on that walkway, dangling my legs out. My cat, my grandparents' cat now, comes over and rest on my lap. It has become his daily routine. When he comes over, he walks up a gentle slope going up to a rectangle front yard. There is a stone wall along that slop with its top flat with the front yard ground and he peaks his head out around the end of stone wall at the top of the slop to look for me. If I am sitting on the walkway, I am looking at the end of the front yard and the slope behind it. I can see the left top part of the slope, going down. I can't see the wall from there. It's supporting the end of the front yard. He is tiny so I can't see him until he sticks his head out, from behind and down the wall. If he sees me, he comes right over and rest on my lap, start purring. And he claws.

He comes over to me. I put a matt on my lap. The matt is thick. He looks at the matt. I tell him to hop on, patting the matt and saying “me” to him. He hops on and rests. He keeps shifting. He curls one way then changes to other way. Doesn't like lying along my legs, he rests across. He steps off the matt and “ow” at me. He tries to pull the matt off my legs. I pull it back. He arches his back and hisses at me.
“Why don't you like this matt? It's flatter and more even.” I pat the top of the matt and say “me” to him.
He stares at the matt. He hops on. He curls up again, for a while. Then he steps off and try to pull the matt off of me, again.
“No. The matt stays.” I grab and hold on to the matt.
He shouts “MEOW” at me. We stare at each other. He tugs on the matt. I hold on to it. He lowers his head and stare up at me. He turns and step off the walkway and starts running back to his house, down the slope. I lost his sight as soon as he goes around the top of the slope and get behind the wall.
I try few more times to let him get used to the matt but he just doesn't. Well, there are other ways. I can take a clipper.
He hasn't come over for a few days. That's unusual. If he isn't here, I can't try out my plan on him.
He shows up. I see him sticking out his head from behind the wall. I call out to him, “mee.” He takes a time deciding. (What's now?”)
He comes over. He walks slowly. His head is low to the ground. He looks like he is stalking. But, as he comes closer to me, he is his usual self. He hops right on my lap.
I wait until he claws.
He does.
I lift him up and off to the side on the walkway. He tries to climb up on my lap but I hold him back, saying gentle “ow” to him. I take out a clipper I am hiding behind my back. I show it to him. It's not anything dangerous, see. I clip my own nails, letting him watch. I hold out my hand and do a gesture of drawing a claw out of my finger tip.
“Take your claw out.” I tell him.
He understands. We have done this before. He wants to be human and he doesn't like things only he has. Fur, whiskers, moveable ears, claws, padding at the bottom of his paws that he can't grab things, he has to use his mouth, he has to eat off a plate on a floor, not at a table. I tell him they are great. I have them if I could. I can hear better. I don't bump into things even in the dark. A little sliver of his claw shears along its length but it doesn't break off. The sliver keeps hanging, making it irritating for him to move that claw in and out. I trim the sliver and sand the claw to make it smooth. He says “me” and rub his head on me.
He draws out one of his claws. I take the clipper to it. I don't clip yet. Just a gesture of it. I want him to agree to clipping. He pulls back his paw and try to climb up on my lap. I stop him with my hands and “ow.” I show him the clipper and then tap my lap. He tries to climb up. I stop him. I show him the clipper.
After few more of this, he gives in. He lets me clip his claws. Just a little at the point. I clip only the sharpest points on all of his claws and file them smooth and round and let him climb up on my lap, without the matt. He curls up and soon starts purring. And he claws. They don't hurt me. They don't sink into my flesh. He claws harder. They don't break my skin but they hurt. I pull him off and set him down next to me on the walkway. I demand that he let me clip him again. Staring him in his eyes. He gives in. He lets me. (“O.k. I don't think I can keep trying. I have to make it stubby now. If he gets crossed and become angry, it's all over.”)
His claws are long. Very sharp point an the end but closer to the paw it is thicker. I wonder if I can put the clipper around its thicker end.
I get the clipper on his claw and push the clipper as far as it can go toward his paw. Push on the lever of the clipper. I can't cut. It's too thick. I place the lever in my palm instead of holding it with my finger tips. I squeeze as hard as I can. It cuts about a third of the way in. I look at him. His eyes are larger but he hasn't pulled his paw back. Lever is little easier to hold in my hand. I get a good hold of it and squeeze hard. I clip it off.
He shouts “MEOW” and pulls his paw back and try to run but he can't. He can't put his paw down. I see blood spurting out from the tip of his paw. I felt cold sensation go down my cheeks. I dash to a medicine box in other room and grab cotton balls, gauze and iodine bottle and dash back to him. I open the bottle and place the cotton ball on the mouth of the bottle and tip it over to let the cotton ball soak up iodine. Put the bottle down on the walkway, I press the cotton ball on his mutilated claw. I press hard to stop the bleeding. After a few minuets I pull back the cotton ball to see if the bleeding has stopped. The blood guzzle out. Press the cotton ball back. I keep pressing the cotton