My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses etc. Whatever you say, Julie Andrews.
I will admit, however, that like regular mortals, I occasionally experience moments of weakness and allow myself to succumbing to (shudder) FEELINGS. As a higher-evolved being, though, I have come up with ways of coping with this feelings and effectively ridding my mind of the nuisance. My personal favorite method is distraction. Thinking of something hilarious when I'm feeling bad usually fixes it toot-sweet, problem solved. There is one very particular hilarious thought that I like to reflect on in just such instances. It is a memory from long ago, when I was quite a bit younger...
I am not certain how old I was or where it happened, but this story started with a road trip. I was travelling with my family and we were going around sight-seeing. One stop on our trip was an apparently very famous animal shelter or something. This place was huge. They had separate buildings for dogs, cats, birds, livestock, etc. Being a cat person myself, I was most excited about visiting the kitty house. A worker took us on a tour of all the buildings, explaining to us along the way about the programs they had in place and all the generous donations they had received. All my little ears picked up was "blah blah blah get to the kitties already..."
Finally we arrived at the long-anticipated cat house, and the lady showed us their expensive facilities, complete with rooms filled entirely with enormous cat-scratch jungle gyms. Every room was filled with cats of all ages roaming freely on their feline paradise. Our guide explained how there were separate rooms for the newborn kittens and elderly cats, and began talking about their charity work for "special needs" kitties.
As she spoke, I was fortunate enough to turn around and witness the most wonderful scene that has stayed forever in my memory and cheered me on many a rough day.
My younger sister stood listening to our guide and cooing about the unfortunate plight of the special cat, with her back to a file cabinet. On top of the file cabinet sat the most special cat I have ever seen.
Imagine the very cutest most adorable little kitten you could ever possibly conceive. That's what this kitty looked like, with a few key differences.

For one, the little critter suffered from hydrocephalus, a condition which is cause by having an excess of liquid in the cranium at birth, causing all sorts of defects. Humans have been known to have hydrocephalus, but it occurs quite commonly in house pets such as cats and small dogs. One of the more characteristic signs of this condition is an unusually large head.

This particular kitten suffered many other... issues... one of which was that one of his eyes was all squinty. I'm pretty sure that had something to do with his little brain, but it made him pretty lopsided. 

To add to that, he was all scrawny...

Plus he was all bow-legged and sat kind of crooked. 

Even his little tail was crooked. 

And then to top it all off, because this little kitty was kind of special, he wasn't really all that great at grooming himself, so his little fur was all sticky-uppy and mangy looking. Also, as the lady informed us, his condition made it so he didn't really have control of his facilities, so he had a habit of randomly widdling all over. Even his little teeth were all skeewompus and his tongue was hanging out one side of his mouth. 

Now, you may all be weeping silently to yourselves at the plight of this unfortunate creature, but hold your tears. You don't want to short out your keyboard. The funniest part is yet to come. Although as an awful person, just seeing this retarded kitten was enough to make me start giggling. What happened next is what burned this scene into my mind forever. 

You will recall that earlier I mentioned that the kitten was sitting on top of a filing cabinet behind my sister. 

For some reason this little kitty got it into his mind that he really, really, REALLY wanted to touch my sister's hair. So he reached out with his twitchy little paw...

And thus was born the single most hilarious memory of my life. I don't know why the image of this retarded cat reaching for my sister's hair struck me as so painfully hilarious, but every time I think about it I laugh for hours. Of course, my sister always yells at me for being awful, because it broke her heart to think of that poor kitten and its retardedness, but I just like to think that handicapped kittens were put on this earth for the entertainment of us horrible people.