For The First Time In My Life, It Really Was My Cat
And it’s been an interesting experience
The girl I sat next to in my form group in High School believed I had a white cat named Snowball. I had never had a pet cat at that point, in fact, I’d almost exclusively had pet birds, which wouldn’t have been a good match. So why did she think I had a pet cat? Because she noticed the cuts on my arms when my sleeve caught on something and that was the best explanation that fourteen-year-old-me could come up with.
Over the years that I actively self-harmed, there were very few times that I was caught and had to come up with an explanation. They differed in levels of creativity, usually depending upon how stressful the experience was; for example, my imaginary cat Snowball had a lot to answer for, but the one time when my mum accidentally noticed some similar cuts, I claimed: “I must have done it in my sleep”. She didn’t follow it up at all, even though I’m pretty sure that she knew the truth, so no harm done (ha!).
Actual Cat Scratches Hurt!
It is with a kind of irony that only the universe knows how to employ that one of my cats actually did scratch my arm deeply two weeks ago. While lifting him onto the bathroom window sill, because he’s my little baby and even more clumsy than me, he lost his footing on my…
