As you know, Bob, I have five cats collectively known as the J Crew. Since I like to write in the living room, they have what I can only describe as a rota system where they take turns sitting on me while I’m in here. I have accepted this as my lot in life and use it as a break to comb them (best way of getting rid of excess undercoat, I’ve found).

Two of my little darlings, however, have lost lap privileges for awhile. Last night, Jessie (the dilute grey tabby at right) climbed up for a cuddle. Not a problem, I was just doomscrolling through Twitter, so I had an arm free. And then Jasmine, the striped tabby below, climbed up because by GOD, if Jessie was sitting on Mom she was going to get in on that action, too.

Now, Ramón refers to Jessie and Jaz as the Tabby Twins of Terror because 1) they’re both grey tabbies and 2) they did not like each other for a long time. Jessie is very much the alpha of the J Crew, and I think Jaz is a wannabe alpha. When Jaz and her sister Jemma arrived back in 2013, we spent a year with plastic picnic tablecloths covering all our furniture because Jessie used to pee on it as a way of marking her territory and warning off the interloper. So much fun.

Things have gotten better over the years, and the girls are now at the point where they’ll sit a foot apart on the bed or lick each other’s heads. Sometimes they’ll even climb up and sit with me at the same time. I have always been aware, however, that Jessie still gets annoyed with Jaz at times and will take a swipe at her, so I’ve always been cautious when they’ve decided to camp out on me.

Well, my luck ran out yesterday. Jaz jumped up and immediately tried to worm into her favorite position, which is sprawled across my boobs. Since that would have put her far too close to Jessie (and I also wanted to be able to scroll), I gently pushed her onto the other side of the lap desk. She did her grumbling growl and tried again, at which point Jessie lost patience with her and took a swipe.

Bless her heart, Jessie is neither the most graceful nor the most precise of cats, and her swipe promptly landed on my chin and lip, laying open the lip and creating two divots in the skin directly under my mouth. I started yelling, unsurprisingly, and both cats promptly scrambled off the lap desk, which promptly sent laptop, lap desk, and cooling deck sliding to the carpet. Because getting clawed in the mouth wasn’t bad enough.

Luckily the hardware is all right — if it hadn’t been, trust me, you would have heard the cursing from wherever you are. We always keep triple antibiotic ointment in the house as both Ramón and I are klutzes, so I cleaned up the wounds and liberally coated them with the stuff. Everything seems to be healing well today (although I can’t eat anything salty, as I learned to my dismay at lunch). As for the cats, Jessie has been slinking around apologetically, while Jaz clearly doesn’t remember anything and is her usual ditzy self.

So while I love them both very much, they’re not coming up on the Chesterfield for awhile because ow.