No More Claude Balls: Thinking about it again, the Warfarin blood test last week was quite eventful. Called into the cubicle for the deed to be done, the nurse, (they tend to be nicknamed Dracula's in most hospitals), noticed a quite fresh wound on my left forearm.
'Cat's claw?' she asked.
'Yes,' I nodded, 'she's just over a year old and still quite feisty.'
'Did you know they're breeding them without claws in America?'
'You are joking!'
She went on to say, as she extracted the usual tiny tube full of blood, that this highly unnatural variation from the norm was being carried out to specifically produce a breed of cats who would spend their lives in high-rise appartments.
'It's so that they don't scratch the furniture, carpets or curtains,' she added. 'But of course, such cats would be no good in a normal home; just imagine if it tried climbing a tree, or went after a bird!'
And indeed, that final scenario is just what Tom & Jerry cartoons were made of; the natural instinct of tree climbing and getting nowhere, and the cat looking at its paws and thinking: What's happening? Or even better, trying to run in a polished wood floor!
Our new cat, Lucy, visited us for Xmas last year. She was 3 months old and, much like our unfortunate clawless cat described above, likes climbing trees. The problem was, Lucy kept climbing our daughter-in-law's indoor Xmas tree and wrecking it several times a day; and with 2 young kids looking forward to the festive season, it wasn't very funny. And bah-humbugs as we are with no space for a tree anyway, she arrived on our doorstep with a small suitcase for 3 weeks holiday; and ended up a permanent resident. Yet despite the wounds to the forearms, I would rather she kept her claws than not.