feline grace

My cat fell down the stairs last night. She leapt onto the bannister from the upstairs landing, in an attempt to be catlike and graceful. She really had no business being up on that bannister except to pretend like she wasn't trying hard at all and yet look, there she is, on a high narrow thing being graceful.

Sadly, though, she totally overshot. She made it up to the bannister all right, but then the whole act went south as she slid across the (very narrow) surface and tumbled over it, twisting and clawing and frantically trying to look cool as she went. During the fall I had a lot of nightmare visions about cats lying broken-backed on the stairs while I tried to call the emergency vet via relay on a hand-held wireless device.

But in fact what happened, at least from my perspective up on the landing looking down, was that the cat more or less bounced. Fell two flights straight south, hit the uncarpeted stairs, bounced, and ran off into the kitchen to recover her dignity.

She was kind of twitchy for the rest of the evening (every so often she'd suddenly bound across the room, fur standing straight on its ends, and glare at everyone wildly as though we had been making inappropriate racial slurs) but other than that, fine.

What the fuck? I can't even walk into a room without bruising myself in some ridiculous fashion. Accidentally kicking a table, running headfirst into the doorframe, etc. I am constantly covered with inexplicable wounds. Yesterday I cut myself on a plastic chair. Yes, that's right, I CUT MYSELF ON A PLASTIC CHAIR. Don't feel too bad, it's more like a paper cut than anything else. I'll live.

Maybe if I run into the kitchen real quick-like I'll find my dignity