This story begins a couple of weeks ago when I began to fall behind on my goals/objectives for my duties for my website & YouTube page as a video, Zero vs Hero Running Back Strategy, took longer than anticipated to finish. Fast forward and as of a couple of days ago (Friday) I’m actually starting to feel fairly caught up.

          Friday night, I’m sitting there, at the tail end of a 3-4 hour recording session for my Mock Draft Monday video series, when I notice my cat come trotting out and heading towards where she gets fed her wet food every evening. First, let’s rewind a few days… Monday or Tuesday? Earlier in the week I noticed that my cat began to “act up”; by Wednesday she was clearly not feeling well. Back to Friday, Snickers (my cat) hadn’t been eating her dry food for 24-48 hours at this point. Earlier, on Friday, I had fed her a larger than normal portion of her favorite flavor of wet food, “Salmon”. Which is a very saturated, probably dyed, nearly bright pink color. I explain this because it may help to paint your imagination better shortly. So, I’m getting close to being finished with my second (of two) Underdog Fantasy Draft while recording. There’s a long period of time between picks and, if you see the video, I wasn’t explaining each pick. So, cat goes trotting past me and the first moment I get, I get up and walk down a darkened hallway… grab her food (still in a dark space) and place it in her bowl (same, dark, space) and run back into frame to finish recording.

          It’s during that time period, after feeding my cat her dinner and while recording the video below, when I notice a smell. A smell that I know I didn’t cause. Aside from whenever this specific smell is supposed to be… smelt, I had smelt it once before; semi-recently. That time was just some freak accident that I found on the floor, not in the litter box. I finish recording and go hunting for a tootsie roll somewhere on the floor. I check where she had been laying all day, not there. I check around my camera and desk, not there. I turn the lights on down the hallway where my cat gets fed and I see what looks, mostly, like her breakfast. A semi-bright pink mess, I check around the corner into the bathroom and see my cat cleaning herself with a similar looking mess on her buttocks.

          Let’s rewind, once again, to about 5-years ago. One morning, I wake up only to soon notice a non-negligible amount of blood (on carpeting!) right next to my bed. Cat’s location, unknown. It’s easy to imagine that I freaked out as I looked all over for her, eventually locating her and it doesn’t take very long to notice where the blood had come from. She didn’t happen to fall on a knife, or cut herself, it was a biological thing that sometimes happens to cats. I felt helpless, lost, and unsure of exactly what to do. Her bleeding had stopped by that point so, at least, I knew she was “okay”. Still, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have experience with this and my level of concern was extremely high; I was panicked. At the end of the day, she had surgery where the vet removed some glands… this issue should never occur again; or so I thought.

          Back to Friday night. As a reminder, I knew Snickers had not been feeling well and she’s an older cat. The mess on the floor looked a lot like her Salmon wet food, which was all she had to eat all day and I had given her a large helping of it. Also, she’s beginning to get old. I thought, based on the smell, she had her first old lady accident. I go and grab a large bucket, fill it up with warm water, find a large soft sponge and head back to clean her up and then the mess. This entire time I’m not 100% sure about the accident theory, but it seems probable; after all, she had those glands removed. Regardless, the scenario is feeling all too familiar. I have a nice stand up shower w/ glass doors, perfect to trap a cat in so she cannot spread a mess, nor can she get away from myself and a sponge.

          I approach her and my stomach sinks a little… what’s on her buttocks appears to be less pink and more red. I pick her up, intending to clean her either way while I get a closer look. As I set her in the shower it’s clearly, 100%, blood dripping onto the shower floor. No panic this time around, I’m 90% sure I know exactly what occurred. I look at the clock and get a wonderful reminder of the impeccable timing of my dearest Snickers (cat), it’s five minutes before all veterinary services are closed until Monday. Spoiler time, as of the very moment I’m typing this up, Snickers head (more-so her e-cone) is very heavily laying atop my left hand, hindering my ability to type on that half of the keyboard.

          Experience, practice, a plan. That’s the difference in my reaction from a similar event occurring five years ago and two days ago. Five years ago, I called my mother… I needed support in my moment of panic. Two days ago, I calmly assessed the situation and took the proper steps to get her back to feeling better in an efficient manner. My level of concern/panic was 20% of that from five years ago.

          When it comes to Fantasy Football the more prepared you are coming into the draft, the better you can assess (instead of panic) during your draft. Curve-balls will be thrown at you, plans will fall apart.