By now, those of you who count yourselves as loyal readers are probably familiar with our two fur trials: Buster the fratboy and Nemesis the she-devil. You might be thinking, “Oh, he meant fur babies, of course.”

No, I meant fur trials, because they are quite obviously a trial from day to day. We love them, but they are a trial.

We just completed a nifty 10 days of torturing Buster with eyedrops, the second time we’ve had to put something somewhere inside of him. Luckily it’s just been ears and an eye so far.

This all came about because finally, Buster got his comeuppance from his relentless picking on Nemi. He’s always picked on her, ever since we brought her skinny little butt in from behind Walmart almost a year ago. Buster had a solid two and a half years with the house to himself and now suddenly here was this she-devil vying for everything. Either that, or she was a four-legged play toy/scratching post. Take your pick.

Through their shared time in the house, Buster has begun to develop tell-tale signs that he’s been picking on Nemi, namely the scabs that keep turning up on his head. We’ve also seen the boxing matches between the two, the chases through the house and irate howls from Nemi.

But mostly it’s been the smaller scabs you find scratching his head in those rare times he’s not Bustering, i.e. the act of being Buster.

Well, one day we came back from brunch with my parents, who were in town for Thanksgiving and noticed Buster’s eye was watering. We didn’t think much of it until later in the day when we noticed it was still watering and he was squinting in that eye.

We kept an eye on it (no pun intended) and the next day discovered it was still watering and that he looked tired so clearly he was being bothered by it and wasn’t sleeping. The day after that, after seeing it hadn’t gotten any better, we followed through on our threat to take him to the vet, where it was confirmed that he had a scratch on his eye, courtesy of Nemi most likely.

We feel comfortable in saying it was her because on the other side of his face was a bit of Nemi claw in his fur, so based on the evidence it’s easy to connect the dots. Stupid cat.

So the verdict was eyedrops for 10 days, which based on our time putting drops in his ear was never going to be fun. When we did his ear, no matter how we approached it, he was all claws and teeth that normally left me with scratches everywhere. We tried ideas people suggested: scruffing him being the most common, but in the end, Buster has to Buster.

So, with the ear struggle fresh on our minds and facing the fact of bodily harm, we went to work. We tried a different way this time, the familiar purrito. The purrito is the act of swaddling said kitty in a towel so he gives the appearance of a burrito, only instead of meat, fresh vegetables and cheese wrapped in a tortilla, it’s a homicidal cat wrapped in a blanket.

One thing we noticed right off was Buster, like many cats, somehow became exponentially stronger during times like this. A fellow cat owner and top-five column reader Susan Anderson Smith related and verified this with her cats.

Where before, Buster can get assertive when held, he came the In-cat-able Hulk when we started this. He would brace and fight each of the two times daily we had to put in the drops. His favorite method was bracing his front legs on my chest and then pushing, adding the extra joy of flexing his claws. Not so much scratches but holes were left in me.

We altered the way we held the purrito, finally coming to the conclusion of holding him with his back to my chest. It wasn’t great, but it was better. None of this was helped be the fact that it wasn’t so much drops we were putting in his eye, but goo, which made everything a whole lot more “interesting.”

At the end of this, we hoped that Buster had learned his lesson. Maybe don’t tease the she-devil. Maybe let her do her thing.

We hoped.

As I am writing this I’ve had to quickly put my laptop down, fumble with my coffee like a Minnesota Vikings quarterback fumbles the ball and give chase to the thundering herd of two cats racing through the house, one chased by the other.

Guess which one was doing the chasing.

In other news

Last week I had two separate people come up and tell me they were reader No. 20.

I’m all for padding the numbers, so let’s round up to 21.