Fleapocalypse 2012

A month or so ago, I noticed something that made me feel like disgusting 13 year old pimply piece of gross.

Then, a week or so later, Diamond Racecar noticed that she had a couple bunches of bug bites. Freaking mosquitoes, we thought. That sucks, but whatever. They'll go away soon.

Every day she found more and more bug bites. We thought maybe bugs just really like to eat her. We pretended like her bundles of bites and my weird thigh pimples were totally unrelated. We pretended like the cat was constantly itching and licking herself because she just liked the way she tastes.

But then, yesterday morning, I realized what it really was.

We had fleas. Not thigh pimples, not dancing mosquitoes. Fleas. Brought into our now-frustratingly giant house on the back of our, now that you mention it, very itchy cat. A billion little tiny icky jumpy hoppy bitey flea bugs. 

This is what our house really looks like:

But even though I hadn’t seen them, this is what I imagine our house looked like.

This is what the cat probably actually looked like.

But this is what I'm sure she looked like.

WE SPRUNG INTO ACTION. I spent a billion dollars on anti-flea supplies. We vacuumed, we sprayed, we did 12 loads of laundry. It was a flurry of disgusting and skin crawling activity. The worst thing we had to do was wash the cat. I bought a spray to use on her. The one thing I didn’t think of was how much the cat was not going to like being sprayed. Cats don’t like water. They don’t like spray bottles. And the really don’t like being sprayed with liquid from a spray-bottle while being forcibly held down on the front porch.

Once we finished, she ran away, looking more like a porcupine than she ever had before. She hated us. She would never trust us again. She skulked. She looked at us like we had murdered her babies. She climbed trees and hid under cars, just out of reach.
It took hours before she would even come back in the house. And when she did, she had her revenge on us.

Whatever. At least I didn’t actually have thigh pimples.

*if this post reminds you of Hyperbole and a Half, that means you're a smart person who reads Hyperbole and Half. If it doesn't remind you of Hyperbole and a Half, you should probably go check it out. Cause it's awesome*