Ethan Marcotte now blogs at Unstoppable Robot Ninja.

Weblog entry:

Kitty hot

Here I sit, in the first autumn month of my twenty-seventh year, watching an excellent samurai flick during a cool Cambridge evening, while a cat licks my head.

Context? Oh, certainly.

I occasionally get rather sharp neck pains, to the point where it’s damn near impossible to turn my head to one side. Not without turning half of my torso to follow, that is — which of course leaves me pulling a rather painful (and crappy) Batman impression for the better part of the day.

So naturally, on the day I’m leading the DEFCON 1 of design presentations at Harvard, I wake up with a neck full of hot lead. Stumbling to the bathroom mirror to assess the damage, it doesn’t look pretty: unless I want a few bolts of white-hot pain to shoot up my spine, I need to keep my head cocked slightly to the right…which will either make me look thoughtful as all hell, or somewhat deformed. Deciding that it’s definitely more the latter, I apply some Icy Hot to the muscles in question.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this fine product, Icy Hot is basically Bengay without the old-person smell, or the name that will make fourth graders giggle. A muscle relaxant that apparently “heals” by “causing a ridiculously intense burning sensation in the applied area,” Icy Hot’s helped me out with some pretty insane neck issues in the past: I swallow my pride (and more Advil than is probably wise), liberally apply the Icy Hot to my neck, and lie face-down on the couch while I wait for it to kick in.

After a minute or two, I feel She’s cat leap up onto on my back; padding along with her thick feet, she stops her kitty shiatsu about three-quarters of the way up my spine, and settles in for a spell. For a few minutes, all’s quiet — the cat, my neck, and I in an empty living room, the coffee maker gurgling in the kitchen. Then, the cat moves ever so slightly toward the top of my back; her weight shifts forward, slightly, and she cranes her neck forward toward the Icy Hot-ified portion of my neck.

Sniff, she offers.

My eyes open, slightly surprised, then they close again.

Sniff sniff sniff sniff.

Still, I keep my eyes closed: I think on my presentation, run through my main points, think about the audie—

Sniff sniff sniff sniff lick.

This officially causes the What The Fuck klaxons to sound.

Sniff sniff lick lick lick lick lick sniff lick lick lick.

Since the cat has started licking Icy Hot from my neck like her tongue’s attached to an outboard motor, I try to reconcile what the hell’s currently happening. Cycling through the following points:

  1. Icy Hot typically makes my skin feel like it’s been marinated in napalm, and smells vaguely like my great grandmother.
  2. This cat won’t eat tuna if it’s placed in front of her, and yet is licking up topical pain reliever like it’s heroin-infused.

…I find that, no, I don’t understand it either.

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