Let me tell you the story about this… CAT. If you follow me on Twitter (@mikachu_nu), you’ve heard me bitch about him on several occasions.

One day, my Junior year of High School, my friend’s boyfriend, Dylan, found a kitten underneath a bunch of junk that was stored outside the auditorium by the theatre teachers. There were no other kittens and no mother, so we all assumed that this cat had been abandoned as the runt. He was so tiny and so cute, with a little pug face. Black & white fur and just adorable. Dylan was a big guy and this kitten fit in the palm of just one of his hands. My friend, Amber, had planned on taking him home with her but I swooped in and took care of it for the last period of the day and ended up taking him home with me. I knew it probably wasn’t the best idea, considering my dad’s allergic to cats and overall, we’ve never really had pets in our home except for the occasional feral cat we fed in the backyard, one such cat that stayed with us a while inside that ran away, and a hamster. I managed to keep it and take care of. I litter trained the kitten, fed him formula and we’ve had him ever since.

My brother was a menace to the poor thing from almost the beginning. Once the cat was big enough, he would taunt and tease him and be an overall nuisance. This, I think, is one of the main reasons this cat is so… evil. My dad didn’t care for him (he’s not a pet person at all) but my mom and myself seemed to be the only nice ones to him. The only odd thing about Da Vinci was he didn’t meow or purr – ever. I figured he didn’t because he never learned how since he didn’t grow up interacting with other cats.

Once I left a year after graduating high school to join the Air Force, I wasn’t around to be his main caretaker. My mom took over the role and who knows how my brother treated him. After all the protecting and love from my mom, she became his human. She still is. Another reason he may be so evil towards me, is once I got to my permanent duty station in South Carolina, Devin and I adopted our own new kitten, Gunny.

Once we moved back home after serving away for 3 years, Gunny came with us. They’re not friendly towards each other at all. They’ll tolerate each others’ presence at best, when laying & napping in the vicinity of one another. They chase each other around the house, torture each other by “fighting” and only a few times have I heard serious growling and hissing late at night (if they’re not both sleeping in the room with me). I figure since they don’t particularly get along and I’m Gunny’s human, this makes Da Vinci not like me more so than my absence alone.

What I can definitely be blamed for is the two times I’ve managed to step on Da Vinci because he LOVES laying in the most inopportune places. Both times he gave me a serious scratching around my feet and ankles, chased me down growling, moaning and hissing. Boy, let me tell you, that cat sure does hold a grudge. Both times it took DAYS for him to stop moaning at me each time he set eyes on me.

However, the most recent attack was completely unprovoked. I was feeding both of the cats in their separate bowls. I was trying to walk by Da Vinci in a narrow hallway/doorway the separated where the food is kept and his bowl and as I held my hand out, with the food, to get to his dish, he moaned, growled, hissed and jumped up, delivering two puncture wounds to my middle finger & knuckle as well as a scratch on my forearm. I have a delicious looking bruise on the lower half of my middle finger, extending over the knuckle since his claws caught on the vein in my finger. It’s comparable to having had a large-gauge hypodermic needle go into the bottom part of my finger.

My friends haven’t had much luck with him, either. They all own their own cats, however – so perhaps he smells the other cats on them. One friend, Chris, has attempted to be nice and pet him, however he’s not only completely rebuffed his advances, but has gone on the defensive, a step away from going on the offensive.

Nessa, my local cat “specialist”, can’t even understand why he acts in such a manner. She’s grown up around cats her whole life and hasn’t ever had the problems we all have with Da Vinci. Perhaps something medically is wrong with him, but if he’s left completely alone, he’s fine. Hell, he’s even cute sometimes. He’d be a great cat to cuddle with if he wasn’t such a dick. He’s pretty, fluffy and big, but his attitude is so poor towards everyone except my mom. She’s had to come between him and I a few times. He doesn’t attack her, ever.

If my parents made me take him as technically since I brought him home, he’s “my” cat, I would definitely have him declawed – and I would never have a cat declawed. Fortunately my mom loves him and he likes her so that won’t be an issue. He’ll live his life out here at the house he grew up in, with my mom who’s been his only constant saving grace and I won’t have to live in fear of him attacking me because I tripped over him yet again or walked by him in a narrow doorway. Only a few more weeks!