Aversion to Animals

For anyone who has spent significant time with me, it will come as no surprise that I have an aversion to animals.  I never had a pet growing up, and hardly anyone in my extended family did, so I just did not spend a lot of time around animals.  Many of my friends have/had dogs and those I more or less got used to over the years.  However, some animals I just cannot understand.

For example, let's start with cats.  They're creepy. Stealth.  Sneaky.  They pounce.  Appear out of nowhere.  They slink. It's way too much to handle.  To summarize: Cats are the worst.

Friday night Maggie and I took a stroll to our local movie store to buy a few new movies for the upcoming days/weeks.  We have been to the video store a few times before and everytime we have a little trouble finding it, but I always know we have arrived when we see the cats.  Yes, cats, and that's plural.  The guy who owns it has AT LEAST 4 cats, all of which stroll throughout the store (cause it's located in the basement part of his house/kind of garage)...sketchy I know.  Anyway so we are perusing the videos and the whole time his cats are roaming around.  At one point Maggie had to make one go away and the guy had to physically move one away from me because I was so visibly flustered.  The whole time they were just bouncing up on chairs OUT OF NOWHERE and then slinking around...clearly up to no good.  I was terrified for the duration of the trip.  Please view pictures as evidence of these nightmare animals.  As we paid for the movies, the owner made some remark to me in Spanish that I shouldn't look so nervous with my money.  I was too flustered to be able to explain to him that I wasn't creeped out about having to take out my wallet, rather I thought one of his cats was going to pounce and kill me!

Example number two: bugs.  Gross, but unavoidable in a country where asking for screens on your windows is basically a foreign language.  I just went out to the kitchen to get some water before bed and there it is.  This disgustingly large bug thing.  We proceeded to have about a ten minute confrontation, which I clearly won because my brain is about 6,000 times the size of this foolish thing's.  However, once captured I didn't really know what to do with it or how to transport outside...and Maggie is already asleep :/  So it's sitting in our kitchen under a Juan Valdez cup with Clorox on top to ensure no escape.  Hopefully I wake up before her in the morning...or perhaps she will deal with it by the time I wake up.  Follow up story tomorrow?  I think so.