I sigh.
Glitter Cricket it is today.
Might as well match the cat.
I reach for her. “If you’d just stay still, I can get you out of there.”
Her yowls turn to a hiss, and she swipes at my hand, claws out.
“How did you even get under there? Oh my god.Oh my god. Tell me you weren’t chasing a mouse.”
The cat yells even louder.
Possibly like I’m the stupidest person in the world.
A person who can’t even successfully manage a glittered cat.
“You’re the one who got stuckunder a couch,” I snap back.
She swats at me again.
I grab a throw pillow and bat back at her as gently as I can.
I don’t want to beat the cat—clearly, that’s the last thing I want—but if I can knock some glitter off of her fur—sorry, Heath, this pillow’s toast—maybe she’ll attack it instead of me and then I can pull her out.
And I know better than to try one of the balloon animals that are also littered all over the living room.
She bats at me, I bat back, glitter poofs around us, landing all over my arms, and she gets a claw stuck in the pillow.
Yes.
This is it. This is my chance.
I grab a blanket—sorry about this one too, Heath—and wrap it around her, getting a solid grip on the cat just under her arm and yanking.
She hisses, then yowls an unholy yowl like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my entire life.
It’s like she’s trying to summon the dead.
“You shouldn’t be under the couch, and you shouldn’t be glittering the whole house!” I whisper-shriek at her.
She does the demon yowl again.
My arm hairs rise.
A shiver makes the rest of my skin prickle from my scalp to my tailbone.
I pull the blanket off and check to see if I’ve made any progress.
Nope.
I have, though, made progress at making the glitter demon cat angrier.
She’s baring her teeth at me, and I swear her eyes are glowing.
“Okay, okay,” I say softer. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you did this to yourself by playing with glitter unsupervised.”
Her lip curls, and she growls.
