The Tale of the Three Rotten Cats and the Very Bad Mask (or How to Scare a Rotten Cat)
This is my long-promised Rotten Cat story.
Before we begin, please be assured that none of us makes a habit of intentionally scaring the Rotten Cats. This incident happened quite by accident. And while it is indeed unfortunate that the poor Rotten Boys were frightened, the result was pretty hysterical.
This is a Rotten Cat. Cat Two, to be specific.
![20140617_113654[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1136541-e1403020627687.jpg)
Isn’t he sweet sitting there looking up at me with his little Rotten Cat eyes?
This is Cat Three. He is also sweet all curled up in my chair ten seconds after I vacated it. He does that. He thinks it’s a fun game.
![20140617_105433[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1054331-e1403017619304.jpg)
Sometimes the Rotten Cats curl up other places, too, like under the bed where Cat One is right now. They also enjoy curling up on a living room chair or the corner of my desk, or in front of the open window in our bedroom so they can watch what’s going on outside. That is exactly what the three Rotten Cats were doing one evening a few weeks ago when Kidzilla was getting ready to take her bath. That scene usually looks something like this:
![20140617_115555[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1155551.jpg)
As is standard procedure, Zilla headed upstairs to brush her teeth and get undressed for her bath. I follow after about five to ten minutes to supervise. As is also standard procedure, Zilla got distracted from said tooth brushing and clothing removal at least six or seven times. At one point, we began to hear strange sounds coming from somewhere upstairs. This is not unusual when Zilla is up there, but this sound was…different.
It soon became clear that the sound we heard was that of a Rotten Cat. A very upset Rotten Cat. The Hub and I sprang to action and dashed upstairs to see what was going on. We found the Three in our room, looking more like this:
![20140617_115008[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1150081.jpg)
And the sounds that came from each of the Rotten Cats were…well, they were disturbing. Put them all together? A cacophony of Rotten Cat sadness. If you’ve ever heard a terrified and unhappy cat growling and mewling, you know precisely the sound I mean. Now multiply that by three.
After everyone settled down, Zilla finally got her bath. As she was washing, she looked over at me and whispered, “Mom, I have to tell you what happened to the cats.”
Me: Oh…?
Z: Yes. I know how they got scared.
Me: OK…how?
Z: Well. You see. I was naked and already brushed my teeth and went potty and decided to put my zebra mask on and show it to the cats because I had nothing to do while I was waiting for you and that’s what I decided to do and the cats were looking out the window and heard me kicking my feet on the side of your bed and they just turned around and saw me in the mask and and went “MAOW…MAOW…MAOW” and got all puffy-tailed.
![20140617_124054[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1240541.jpg)
And that’s what happened.
Sigh…
This would be the mask in question:
![20140617_105915[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1059151.jpg)
I’m pretty sure if I were a Rotten Cat and one of my people skulked up behind me in a semi-dark room wearing this and nothing else, I would go MAOW MAOW MAOW and get all puffy-tailed, too.
Zilla got the lecture of her life about not doing things that may or may not scare the Rotten Cats out of their minds. By bedtime, the Rotten Cats had returned to their usual activities of brotherly snuggling and impolite licking.
And the terrible, evil zebra mask was banished to a drawer.
Forever.
And that, friends, is The Tale of the Three Rotten Cats and the Very Bad Mask.
![20140617_124111[1]](http://www.themeaningofme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140617_1241111.jpg)
Artwork courtesy of Me and Zilla.
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Hilarious! I thought that cats were too cool to be scared of petty things like masks. Guess they fooled me. 🙂
Yes, fooled us, too! They were not happy cats.
Oh, my goodness, Lisa, it was totally worth the wait!
Your illustrations are spot on, as are Zilla’s.
When you said “zebra mask,” I was picturing something like those horse head masks. Your boys really are scaredy cats! How funny that that’s what sent them over the edge!
I will admit that we like to scare Pete, because he’s ridiculously easy to scare. I’m the best at it, and I do it when he’s sniffing around at something near my feet, then I move my foot, quickly, but only about and inch or two, and he jumps straight up like an armadillo.
Ruby still scares herself and poofs up. She does the kitten thing where she arches her back, poofs her tail and crooks it to the side, and does that funny sideways bounce in an attempt to look tough.
And Fletcher ALWAYS jumps in our dining room chair when any of us get up to get something from the kitchen. And peers over the edge of the table to see if there’s anything he’d like to eat.
Thanks for letting me know you posted this!
Haha – so glad you enjoyed it! It was pretty funny…but not…but really funny. They are pretty big babies when it comes to getting scared. Very frequently, at least one of them will get startled by something and shoot straight up in the air – just like you described. It’s too funny.
Trying to picture sweet little Ruby trying to look tough…
Again, I’m laughing at the similarities here. All three of the boys will get up on the chair and check out the food to see if there is anything interesting. And yet, not one of them will eat even a morsel of it. Well, except Cat Three – he does like a bite of chicken every now and then!
Thanks for reading! 🙂
I am thinking the lighting had to be just right for Zilla in her paper mask to be terrifying! I hope you two had as much fun making this post together as I had reading it!
I suspect you are right, May – and the fact that Zilla has super-stealth abilities probably helped. Those poor cats didn’t know she was there until she was RIGHT there.
We had a great time doing this post together – I may have to get Zilla in here as a guest poster more often! The re-telling of the story is pretty much all her (at least the parts where she’s in the story) and the dialogue is exactly hers – run-on sentence in one breath and all!
Oh, those cats. You know I am not a cat fan, but (or so?) that story was hilarious! That image! I am actually jealous that Zilla is as independent in that evening routine as she is. Maybe I should start letting go a bit more.
So glad this story is such a hit!
The independent streak in Zilla is tremendous…the ability to allow her to be so in the Mom is less tremendous. She definitely neds supervision, but mostly because of the distraction, not because she can’t do these things herself. Can’t tell you how we got to that point – just one day we said “OK, go brush your teeth” and she did! You’ll get there – all things in due time!
That is awesome!! Zilla has some powerful cat-scaring skills! The visual aids made this post.
Ha – they really did. I think I may hire Zilla to be my regular illustrator.
Oh, to have a video of that. Snort. I’m sure the poor Rotten Cats were scared out of their minds, but that is too funny!
Oh, but I do have video – well, of the aftermath at least. We don’t have video of the actual scaring, but I did grab a few minutes of them making those horrific noises all puffed out. The best part is two of them, completely puffed out and mewling, slinking down the stairs in tandem, eyeballing each other and moving ever so slowly all the way down…
The whole thing was unfortunate, yes, but hysterical.
I was laughing at this one! Those poor cats but still so funny. I’m still trying to figure out how that mask scared your cats…is it bad if I want to test a mask on my silly cats to see if it would scare them (I don’t own a mask like that and I wouldn’t actually do it but still…it IS tempting…). I also loved the artwork on this post. Your daughter is very talented!
Jean, I have no idea how the mask scared them – maybe just the right lighting. Who knows? Our Boys really are (forgive the bad pun) scaredy cats. It doesn’t take much to get them jumping!
[…] any cool new photos to share, so let’s go with another look at Zilla’s artwork from this week’s Rotten Cats story because how happy is this […]
That is so funny! My wonderpoodle is afraid of stuffed animals that talk. the kids take great joy in this.
It really was pretty funny. Zilla, though, felt so bad that the Rotten Cats were upset. I think she imagined that they would be more entertained by the mask than they were. They got over it, though, and they love her just the same – thank goodness!