CC Image by red.dalia on Flickr

A friend of mine, who is beautiful and awesome and brilliant and all sorts of good things, is also the proud possessor of a head of very, very curly hair.  It’s the kind of hair that has so much body that you sort of suspect it of also having an independent mind–you know, working in tandem with the brain under her scalp, but occasionally going off and doing its own thing on, for example, rainy days.  Another couple of friends of mine are the proud owners of two cats with very defined personalities and certain ideas about the hierarchy in the household.  Our theory is that they’re only putting up with us until they figure out how to work the can opener.  In the meantime, though, they like to make sure they can jump on everything in the household in some sort of bizarre, repetitive exhibition of feline dominance.  I’ve given you all the pieces; can you figure out where this is going?

My Curly-Haired Friend was at the cat-owned apartment hanging out one night.  We were just kicking back, practicing Latin (no, seriously, that’s what we were doing.  That’s not at all code for something else).  Curly-Haired Friend was sitting on the floor, yelling Latin declensions; cats were prowling the furniture.  I looked away for a second and then I heard this almighty yowling, and then an extremely Anglo-Saxon shriek.  I looked back, and one of the cats had jumped onto my friend’s head and was attacking her hair!  Just jumped from whatever piece of furniture and seemed to be fighting the hair from six different angles at once.  I think he saw it as an enemy and was trying to subdue it.  My friends and I could have told him that was a hopeless battle, having watched our Curly-Haired Friend fight with her hair for years, but the cats never consult us when they make their plans.

Now, this is not just any hair.  This is Hair with experience, possibly with combat training. The Hair started fighting back.  Poor Curly-Haired Friend was letting out ungodly shrieks from underneath while the cat and the Hair battled it out on her head.  Eventually, the Hair forced the cat to jump off onto the floor, partly assisted by the mere mortals who were weakened by uncontrollable laughter, but mostly it was the Hair.  The cat immediately scooted off to some dark recess of the kind where cats go and licked his wounds, and I swear, I swear, the Hair started purring.  Neither of the cats has ever challenged the Hair’s dominance again.  We had to finish the Latin another night, though.  The Hair told us to.  And you do not mess with the Hair.