I had to wash my carpet. Why? I found a multi-thousand dollar stray cat. Seriously. Purebred Siamese. Found him emaciated and lethargic and full of ticks on the side of the road. I got him home and watched him, looked him over and took in the evidence before me. Then I said to myself “This is an expensive cat, and he was dumped because he’s sick.” Vet confirmed. Diabetic. He pisses everywhere because his blood sugar is so high and he is thirty all the time and probably has a uti. So I have a diabetic cat now. The cat that would have sold for multiple thousands of dollars as a kitten will cost me multiple thousands of dollars in Insulin and syringes and special food and vet care. He’s totally worth it though. Absolutely the sweetest boy. So anyway, I had to wash my carpet. Again. Because he isnt quite over the pissing everywhere thing yet. I stepped in a wet spot in my socks so I took them off and finished washing the rug in bare feet. I had to take that vent out of the floor to clean it because the cat likes to piss precariously close to the vent shaft. As far as I can tell he has not gone the further step of just pissing straight into the vent but I know that he is warning me that this option is on the table for him should I continue to treat him so dispicably. (Really? Fancy Feast?) So I finished washing the carpet again and was packing up the carpet cleaner when I stubbed my toe. Now, ordinarily, a stubbed toe probably doesnt warrant photo documentation and a five hundred word write-up, but this is a very special stubbed toe acquired in service of my very special stray cat. See the toes are cold because the a/c is on and the carpet is wet. As you might have guessed, I stubbed my toe on that cold metal vent cover. It’s fairly hefty being the product of 1970s manufacturing. It’s steel, and weighs probably four pounds. A further thing you should know is that it wasn’t just laying as pictured when my foot collided with it. No, it had become jammed under my swivel recliner, which is also why I didn’t see it. So it became an immovable object. As I turned to leave the room, my bare foot contacted this immovable steel object that, for at least the purpose of becoming an indoor landmine, is basically made of a bunch of dull blades. One of these blades took up the call to arms and, after attempting to separate my toenail from the bed, slipped off the nail, scaped its way down the tiny little toe bones and landed in that nice soft web of flesh between the toes. The neighboring toes were merely crumpled against the other blades and I really just forgot that they even existed. Are you feeling it? The expletives I screamed I’m pretty sure were in some kind of forgotten demonic language. I have given birth twice with zero pain medication, but I think, barring the duration of course, for a minute or so, an internal organ trying to turn itself inside out and and an orifice tearing open like raw meat in a hyena’s jaws seemed like a preferable kind of pain. My teenage son actually peeled himself away from youtube to ask if I was ok. I’m the type that the common pains of a common sort of life don’t usually even slow me down, but this one stopped me in my tracks, and had me leaning on the carpet cleaner to remain upright. In the end, there was only a tiny amount of blood and very little real damage. The toenail stayed on. The cat has had at least one successful piss in the litterbox. So I won’t complain, much. That’s how I got the bandaid on my toe. Thanks for reading.