The Cat and the Multi-legged Disintegrating Bug

My cat, Anubis, spends his days keeping me company while I sit around and write or edit. He will lounge nearby and whenever I get particularly bored I will call out "Cat!" and his head will whip around and he will respond with a "Meow!". I amuse myself by Meowing back a few times and he will continue the conversation until either he or I get bored with the endeavor.

He also does a pretty good job as a bug slayer. Actually, he does a pretty good job as a slayer of mice too, although those come with a price. The price is paid when I step out of my bedroom in the morning groggy and barefoot and my foot lands squarely on a moist crunchy heap, the remains of a gift that he has left for me.

I am a little happier with his bug slaying abilities however, as we have some pretty awe inspiring bugs in this house. There is a creek behind our abode, and apparently that brings some interesting inhabitants. One of those is the Rabid Wolf Spider. I'm not exaggerating there, that is actually the name of the thing. It's a cousin to the tarantula and it looks the part. My husband calls them Gerbils. Anubis will not eat those, but he will kill them and leave the dead curled up husk on the floor, all the easier to pick up with a paper towel.

That is not the subject of this post however, rather I meant to discuss the House Centipede, something which I have long referred to as the Multi-legged Disintegrating Bug, due to the fact that it doesn't take a whole lot of pressure from a shoe or whatever and these things just disintegrate. Their multiple legs all fall off at once. It's really creepy.

So last evening I was sitting here in my office at my desk, an art deco knee hole model, the kind where there is an opening all the way through for your legs, when I noticed that the cat was stalking something that must have gone under the couch that sits across from me. I watched his antics with interest for a moment, wondering what kind of beastie he might be after, when the beastie in question climbed up the wall behind the couch and I saw it was a House Centipede. Anubis saw it and continued his stalking endeavors and I lost interest and went back to what I was editing.

A little while later I suddenly became aware that something was touching my bare foot, and I looked down and saw it was the cat, looking around my feet with interest. It took me a few seconds to process what that meant, before I shot out of my chair like I was being chased by the hounds of hell and jumped around the room frantically brushing at my pants. I didn't see anything, and then a thought struck me with horror. What if the thing had actually crawled up inside the leg of my jeans? That thought inspired a renewed flurry of jumping around and running my hands down over my pant legs. Of course, that led to the realization that if it had done that I'd just covered my bare leg with slimy nasty bug carcass. Eww!

Thankfully, there was still no sign of the bug. So I gingerly rolled my chair away from the desk and searched for the beastie. I found it crouching in the divot left by one of my chair wheels. So then I got the bright idea to perform a particularly pointless move, and I tried to get Anubis to follow my pointing finger and go after it. Mental note to self: Cats do not give a shit what you are pointing at and they generally will not respond to your efforts to get their attention in this manner. Strangely enough though, Anubis did eventually notice the bug and go back after it.

I decided to go let the dogs in and do some other mindless housekeeping tasks for awhile before coming back to my desk and finishing what I was doing. When I finally returned, I noted that the cat was still sniffing around the base of my desk, but no bug was in sight. Great! Now I still don't know where it went and as I sit here typing, my legs are off to the side rather than under my desk, and I am living in fear that the Multi-legged Disintegrating Bug is actually crawling around in the crevices made by the center drawer of my desk. Yuck!