won't be worried long

One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the limb off quickly and cleanly. So they did.

I can't help but think that lingering effects of my mother's story somehow figure into the following random, but characteristically "Andrew," autobiographical antidote.

I adopted Mia not too long after Zoe Blackfeet, my previous feline companion, wandered off and never returned. Mia had belonged to some neurotic yuppies from Winchester who had soured on the idea of pet ownership and dumped her off at the vet's office.

Unlike Zoe (or Budwina before her), Mia was not a personable cat. I don't know if it was from poor socialization or abuse experienced at the hands of her previous owners, or a simple matter of temperament. I've lived around cats my entire life; they're capricious creatures. Mia, though, wasn't so much aloof as sociopathic, and able to switch from snugglebunny to psycho-slasher with no warning whatsoever. (She also possessed the ability to shed her weight in long white fur on a daily basis.)

Even if she wasn't the nicest cat, I was still happy to have her around and living in a decent home.

On a lovely spring afternoon in 2002, I was in my bedroom reading a book when Mia hopped on the bed and stretched out beside me. I patted her. She purred. I scratched behind her ears. She viciously bit and scratched my left forearm, and refused to let go until my limb had been thoroughly flensed.

It hurt like hell, but cat scratches usually do, and this didn't appear that much worse than some of the previous feline-related injuries I had dealt with. I washed the arm with some soap and water and let nature do the rest. That the cuts seemed to be a long time in healing or there was a growing burning sensation in the arm didn't worry me a whole lot. Nor did the fact that over the course of the following week or so my forearm swelled up to near-Popeye proportions.

Maura, of course, was concerned, but it's her job to be. Besides, who is more familiar with my internal workings than I am? It wasn't until I had entered the second week following the incident that I was forced to acknowledge that something wasn't right. (Maura's mom was particularly persuasive with her worried stare and repeated use of "Jaysis.") While my co-workers and family (not Maura, because she understands me) chimed in with a loud chorus of "EMERGENCY ROOM," I decided to take matters into my own (swollen and healthy) hands.

Using a sterilized needle, I opened up the bite wounds that were the source of the infection and let the stream of pus drain out. Afterwards I soaked the arm in warm water and Epsom salt for an hour before slathering the area with anti-bacterial ointment and bandaging it up. It took about a week of such therapy before my arm started to resemble its old self (though I still have a few scars), thus proving that not only that am I too laid back for my own good, but that I can occasionally remedy the problems which arise from my complacency (in an extremely painful and disgusting way that could have been avoided with a glimmer of foresight).

Prince Buster - Pussy Cat Bite Me (from Wreck A Pum Pum, 1976) - Felis dentata ska.

Tom Jones - It Takes a Worried Man (from Along Came Jones, 1965; collected on Millennium Edition, 2000) - Devo's cover of this folk standard will always be the definitive version as far as I'm concerned, but Sir Tom's powerhouse vocals and that magnificent horn section are almost enough to make me reconsider my position.

Love and Rockets - No Big Deal (from Love and Rockets, 1989) - True, but a perfectly fine song, nonetheless.