Be careful with Tabasco sauce

My kittens are teething. You can actually see the new canines growing in alongside the old ones - it's pretty cool. But as part of the process Shadow has developed a taste for chewing at paper and cardboard. You may imagine how I'm not a fan of this, bibliophile that I am, not to mention the papers I need to grade and those I need to hand in to be graded. So I turned to the Tabasco sauce.

I'm not sure where I read this, but apparently cats don't care for the taste of Tabasco, and won't chew on anything that it's smeared on. I spent the first part of this evening smearing Tabasco on the edges of several cardboard boxes, and on several power cords (another favorite chew-toy). Then, for reasons I now forget, I rubbed at my eye.

Never do this. Tabasco sauce burns. Badly. In growing agony, I stumble toward the bathroom, flip on the light and pull off my glasses (no contacts since the cats moved in) and start splashing cold water into my eye. This does several things
- it slowly washes some of the Tabasco sauce out of my eye
- it slowly liberates some of the T. sauce still on my fingers, allowing it to wash into my eye
- it triggers my asthma, and I get short of breath
- it attracts Shadow, who is fascinated by anything that I do in the bathroom. If I'm stumbling into the bathroom, this is going to be a good show.

So it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to wash my hands. I fumble for the soap, peering through a burning eye that I'm starting to wonder if I'll need professional treatment for (viz, an ambulance and the ER, since there's no way I can drive in this state). And in my fumbling I drop the soap into a puddle of kicked-up kitty litter.

By now all of my splashing of cold water has frightened Shadow into retreating into the corner between the bathroom door and the shower stall, but the dropped soap piques her interest. I fumble around my cat and pick up the kitty litter-encrusted bar of soap. Now I have to wash the soap in order to wash my hands in order to wash my eye, which feels like its melting, along with all of the skin around it. I'm having sympathy for the Nazi officers near the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm also having sympathy for my friend Mike, who was sprayed in the face with pepper spray as part of his training in the police academy.

Eventually, the pain subsides enough for me to turn off the water, sit down, and spend several minutes coughing. For the first time in months, I use my inhaler, but as is often the case, I can't breathe the albuterol in nearly as deep as I'd like to. Nevertheless, my attack subsides at a reasonable rate, probably in part due to my air filter.

I love my pets; really, I do.

I've also decided that I love my air filter.