When I was about 14 my family adopted a little black and white kitty from the animal shelter. He was chubby and ornery and we named him Doodle.

Some might say I was overly attached to Doodle, or Doods, but how could they blame me? Doods liked to have his fat belly rubbed like a puppy. He foamed at the mouth and lost all self-control at the sight of catnip. Unbeknownst to my mom and dad, he peed along every carpeted edge of our basement. But together, we watched hours of CSI and he even let me dress him up in my old American Girl Dolls’ outfits.

I had gone prematurely cat lady but I didn't care.

Life was good for Doods until one night during my freshman year of high school. My mom and I were watching some reality TV show together, engrossed in staged drama from our maroon, leather, l-shaped couch. Doods was doing his thing, chasing gnats or ants or whatever kitties do. At one point my mom reclined her seat, but it was sticking, and she had to slam her body back really hard a few times to get the footrest to come up all the way.

And she said something like, “What the fuck is wrong with this thing?”

A couple minutes went by and then we both heard this little knocking noise. From where I was on the couch I couldn't see where the noise was coming from and neither could my mom, so we assumed it was Doods pouncing on said gnats or ants.

And we were like, “Shut up Doods, we can’t hear the TV!”

But he kept playing around all loud and stuff until my mom made me go see what he was doing. So I got up from the couch and started the high-pitched pet talk, “Ohhh DooOOoooOOds, what’re you doing?”

But as I rounded the corner past where my mom was sitting I saw the source: Doodle’s head was stuck under my mom’s seat and his body was slamming loudly upwards against the back of the couch. It was immediately apparent that Doods had stuck his head under my mom’s seat right before she reclined, and when she put the footrest up, the space his little head had squeezed into was reduced to nothing. It’s like when you open a door and the crack between the door and the wall gets really tiny. Maybe you've had a similar experience with your finger.

So Doods was trapped in our couch guillotine and his body was compulsively flipping and slamming around like a fish out of water. This is when my fight or flight instincts kicked in.

I screamed bloody fucking murder. Lots of teenage girl horror movie shrieking. I also screamed, “DOODS IS DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” And then I ran upstairs SO fast and locked myself in my room and began the mourning process.

Meanwhile, my brother heard all my screaming, and ran upstairs from the basement to see what was going on. At this point my mom had gotten up from the couch and although she wasn’t hopelessly shrieking, she was just standing there, staring in horror. When my brother got upstairs, he flipped the couch over and revealed Doodle’s head.

Amazingly, somehow, Doodle’s head was not chopped off. It was still very much attached to his body and not even a speck of blood had been shed. I’m told my brother picked Doods up from his little fat belly and the other two halves of him just sagged over like some stuffed animal that was missing most of its fluff. My brother says this is because Doodle was undoubtedly dead. He says Doods’s eyes were stuck half open and his tongue was just dangling out of his mouth.

While arguing over who would give Doods mouth to mouth, my brother and mom were just rubbing his lifeless fat belly until, they say, he suddenly came back to life. Doods just woke up like he’d been in some drunken stupor, stumbled over to his water bowl, took a drink, and fell back down. But he was alive.

After some time, when I got over my hysterics, I crept back downstairs, fully expecting to see a headless kitten and a bloodstain where he’d been murdered. You can imagine how shocked I was to find Doods, chillin, head still intact and attached to his body.

Doodle seemed to go back to normal after that. He lived out his life doing kitty stuff and peeing all over the basement until my mom discovered the pee and took him back to the animal shelter.

From this experience I can say a couple things with complete certainty:

1. Cats must have more than one life.
2. In the event of a crisis situation, I should NEVER be in charge.