Crazy Cooter: My personal memoirsChapter four: My Training Begins

I wasn't always a champion fighter. I know that sounds difficult to believe, but biting and clawing my way to the top didn't come naturally to me. Since I started so young, it did appear to be second nature, and I never bothered to correct the people who called me "Evil Kitty" or "Troublemaker", so the reputation stuck and helped instill fear into the hearts of my enemies and eventually the giants.

I started off small, the way many champion fighters did. When the male giant reached to pick me up, I would bare my teeth and whip my head forward so my little jaw landed on his finger or wrist. It took several weeks of practice before I could get him to recoil in surprise at the sudden pain. He called it, "Jeez!" and I felt that was an appropriate term. Once I was more mobile, I could hide in the folds of covers and Jeez! their noses in their sleep, or under the bedskirt and Jeez! their ankles. I was an attack cat learning the trade and Jeez! was my specialty.

After mastering Jeez!, I moved on to hand-to-hand combat skills. My paws weren't even as big as a piece of the Roscoe's food when I began learning how to do the "Ow! Dammit!" The essence of this move is to impale your victim with your claws as many times as possible before they say, "Ow! Dammit!" But the particulars of how to accomplish this are far more complicated than can be described in writing. It involved everything from becoming one with your environment to the art of deception. In fact, deception was one of my strong points. Especially as a kitten, I was able to transform my appearance so as to seem, as the female giant called me, "a cutie-patootie". This would inevitably put me in close proximity to a vulnerable place - shoulder, face, hand, it didn't matter. The longer I held up the charade, the more vulnerable they became, until, at a planned, precise moment, my razor talons (sharpened on my climbing tree, a matter for a different story) would instantly torpedo into their skin. Palms were more difficult, but wrists and chests were like pulling a hot knife through butter.

At a certain point, the giants came up with what they probably thought was a deterrent to the Jeez! Ow! Dammit! combination - they would toss me into a pile of clothes, blankets or pillows to get me away from them as quickly as possible. Well, if I could have shouted "Whee!" I would have. Those trips soaring through the air were some of the most fun a kitten could have! It only enticed me to practice my tactics on them further.

However, the older I got, the more the giants began to learn my giveaways - the butt wiggle, the ears back, the huge eyes - and prepare themselves for attack. It got so that I could only get in brief moments of combat before the day was through. Luckily, the Roscoe rarely defended himself past walking away… which helped with my target training.