I had a long phone conversation with my father this morning because the cats and I can’t seem to snuggle without someone electrocuting someone else. I’m not sure what the specific issue is – the contenders are Their Blanket, The Basement, The Carpet and Being Pet In General.

The issue is that, for the past couple weeks, every time I’d touch the cats, I’d get shocked, or they’d get shocked, or we’d both get shocked, and it left everyone feeling a little unsettled. Both our cats are still snuggly little furballs, and that’s something we try to encourage as much as possible. Even when Elephant doesn’t particularly want to be held, she’ll tolerate a good long snuggle because she’s a sweet little cat.

But the other day, things got ugly. Ellie was sitting on my stomach, and her little paw touched my little belly and we both felt the electricity flow from her to me. Neither of us were too pleased {it actually really hurts}.Then I was petting Moose, who was less averse to the light crackles of static than Elephant had been, and I reached in to pet his belly and it was like someone had dropped a live wire between the two of us. There was a loud POP! and he yowled and I yelled and he flipped over and sat bolt upright and looked right at me, as if to say, “You foul woman! I know you don’t really like me but that was just mean!”

I tried to reach out to make amends and give his little nose a little scratch and I must have still been carrying a charge on me, because there was a small line of electricity that arced from my finger tip into his little pink nose with a nastly little crrrcccchhh! noise.

He wouldn’t speak to me for hours.

I shot my father an e-mail this morning, because he works for National Grid and knows things about electricity and how not to electrocute yourself or your cats. He is an incredibly useful guy to know in situations like this. He and I trouble-shot the whole situation, and he sympathetically agreed that, short of wrapping the cats in rubber for the rest of the winter, the best thing anyone can do before petting The Monsters is touch something metal so the excess static that we carry around does not flow directly into or out of the cats.

He also reminded me that static is a product of friction, so the rough rubs that Moose loves so much are bound to be the source of all his electrical woes from here until we figure out where this sudden surge of static is coming from, and how to thwart it in its endeavors. Dad’s biggest concern was, if the charges had something to do with a new magnetic field, that the cats’ microchips would end up being erased. {I was convinced that the chips were probably the reason that they were getting shocked in the first place, because chips are metal and Jasper, the upstairs cat, is completely unaffected by static.}

Never a dull moment in this household, I can tell you that.

At any rate– from everyone here in my family to everyone out there in yours, we want to wish you a happy and peaceful holiday season, full of love, and laughter, and the occasional light shock. Just to keep things interesting.

-MM.