No, this isn’t a rant about PETA, though I would love to set up a grill and barbeque at their next medical facility bombing meeting. Steaks are great. With some A1 sauce, peppers onions and mushrooms… Mmm…

Anyways, this is more of a rant about pets. I don’t like them, and they don’t like me. Flora or fauna, it’s never mattered  - so long as something else that’s alive has existed near me, it’ll make a point of harassing me until it’s dead. There’s large amounts of proof to support this, which I will describe in detail below.

Exhibit A, Your Honor, is my (former) cactus. Ha! Outlived that bastard. When I was 12 or so, my mother let me have a cactus of my own. The first thing I did was grab it, which prompted my descent into disdain for smaller organisms. Somehow, even though I watered it once a month, it died. I blame the cactus’ sense of spite towards the owner as cause of death.

Lesson 14, Your Majesty - Raven, an appropriately named utterly black callous feline. Raven was polydactal (isn’t Wikipedia fun?) which means I could hear that thing scurrying in the middle of the night, its claws scraping across the floor like an extra from Pet Sematary. I also tended to wake up in the middle of the night with it sitting on my chest, and not in that cute, loving cat kind of way. This cat would just sit on me, staring. Contemplating. I can only assume that it was figuring out how it would get food after it killed me. Luckily, a vehicle was the end of Raven, foiling his plot.

5. Mouth - A rabid, raving pile of psycho given fur. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, this cat is undoubtedly one of my ex-girlfriends. It has absolutely no brain, for that space is taken by pure evil. Instead of thought, this 10-pound chemical imbalance incarnate occupies itself with running into objects, spastically clawing people and objects alike, and biting when the first two activities get boring. I’m also pretty sure it can pick locks, since I’ve woken up with random scratches on my body with all the windows and doors locked. Sure, it feigns ignorance, but I know better.

So, there are my examples. There are far more, but these are the only ones you, the jury, needs to be convinced that I shouldn’t have a lesser life form near me. If these pet patterns continue, it’s only a matter of time before you see me in the news, fighting with a cat mid-air after jumping with it off of a bridge, a la Point Break.