You Have No Idea

Seriously. No idea what we just went through.

So I am sure I have mentioned approximately 60 times that my cat Jolee is a polydactyl. Which means he has 7-8 toes on his front feet. (I say 7-8 because, well, they're sort of hidden in long straggly fur and I'm not sure I've even seen this alleged eighth toe my vet says he found.) I was told the last time I went that I need to clip his toenails so they don't get ingrown. I said, "OK, sure, OK." I am all about my cat's health, because he is my Floofer and I love him very much.

But yeah right. He doesn't sit on laps, he barely tolerates being picked up, and there is no WAY he would ever let me near him with nail clippers. We are talking about a cat who freaks out when a letter falls through the mail slot. But I figured, hey, he has a scratching post, and I manage to grab his paws every once in awhile while he's sleepy to make sure everything's OK in there... until the other night, when I realized he has a nail possibly embedded in his paw that is roughly the length of my big toenail. Seriously, this thing is an inch long. It's on one of his "fake" toes that hangs out between his regular cat toes and his "thumb" toes. It is huge and curved and it might or might not have grown into the pad of his foot. He's not limping, and he doesn't seem to be in pain. I thought I could feel the edge of it, and I wanted to get a better look and maybe have a go at it with the nail clippers.

So we hatched a plan. Jolee has this thing where he has to come running whenever I am on the toilet. Don't ask me how he knows I'm on the toilet. He just does. So during halftime of the Saints game, I went in the bathroom. What was supposed to happen was that Mike was going to sneak up nonchalantly and come join me in the bathroom, at which point he would shut the door, trapping the cat. Then we were going to get him with a towel and I would try to clip the giant toenail.

Well. Jolee was traipsing across the threshold, when he somehow sensed Mike getting off the couch all the way out in the living room. I swear, he must be smarter than I give him credit for, but he bolted. Mike shut all the doors so he had nowhere to go but the kitchen. Then the howl of death started. (If you have a Siamese-ish cat or a generally loud cat, you know this howl.) At this point it is important to note that no one had even approached him, so I don't know how he came to the conclusion that we had murder in our hearts. He charged at the LATCHED BEDROOM DOOR with his head, and headbutted it open. Then we tried to chase him out from under the bed. This lasted about 20 minutes. There was much sweat, and white fur clumps were flying. He was hissing and yowling and doing his open-mouthed hyperventilating thing.

When we finally managed to squish him in the bathroom and restrain him with a towel, he peed on the floor in panic. I checked out the paw, only to conclude that, if the nail wasn't already growing into the pad, there was no space to get the clippers in between and cut the nail anyway. I'm going to have to take him to the vet to have this thing expensively removed. On the good side, it's not hurting him, so I'm just going to lull him into a sense of false safety by waiting till Saturday morning. I feel awful that I never saw or felt this huge nail, and I feel like a huge wimp that I can't cut my cat's toenails myself, but at this point I'm afraid if I tried, it would bleed all over the place.

Why do I have to have the world's most high-maintenance cat???

He has rejoined us in the living room, but is currently sulking under the futon, resenting me because I "made" him pee on his own tail. He is very vain about his tail.