In Which I Unwittingly Try to Mutilate the Cat

So…the other day, and not for the first time, I was rubbing the cat and discovered a mysterious “bump” hidden in the fur.  This time it was on his belly.  the last couple of times I found suspicious lumps in his fur, they ended up being nothing more than a lose piece of skin and fur, or maybe a small scab from a healed abrasion.

To his credit, Methos lay calmly and let me dig through the fur on his belly to isolate what I now thought of as “the weird growth.”  I think he just assumed he was enjoying a very localized belly rub.  I isolated the growth, this dark little brown lump that looked not unlike a mole.  I considered and then briefly dismissed the possibility that it was a nipple, as when I felt around I could not locate the other nipples.

So I did the only rational thing I could think of; I poked and squeezed at it to see what I it would do.  It was kind of odd.  At times it seemed to stick half in and half out of the skin, almost like a small tick (I frickin’ hate ticks, by the way.)  Then I got the tweezers, determined to detach it from the cat.  I tugged and tugged, but it was a slippery little sucker.  I’d think I had a hold of it only to have it slip through my grasp.  Whatever it was, Methos didn’t seem to be having any discomfort from my “ministrations,” and I eventually came up with a little scale of what looked the skin or scab from the top of the “lump.”  But still the brown lump remained.  So I called hubby over to look.  I squeezed the skin around it again, and it sort of protruded out from the surrounding skin.  The following is the general conversation that following, albeit, probably not verbatim:

HUBBY:  I think that’s a nipple, hon.

ME: But I looked for his other nipples and couldn’t find them.

HUBBY:  I think that’s a nipple.

ME: {pause}  I think you’re right.  {second pause}  Ohmygod! I tried to mutilate the cat!  {to cat} I’m so sorry, buddy!   

{Then follows five minutes of shame and horror, probably for me and the cat.}

Lesson learned?  Don’t try to detach things that are attached, unless you are positive of what they are, or at least what they are not.

Methos, in one of his “comfortable” positions on hubby’s lap

A cat’s nursery rhyme:
1,2..1,2,3…
how many nipples do you see?

 

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