Me, the Super Soaker, and the Cat

I recently saw an online post from a firearms accessories dealer about the Super Soaker water toy. The post got me thinking about my own limited experience with the toy.

One of most hysterical things that I have ever seen involved a Super Soaker. It was hysterical in a “Tom Sawyer gives Peter the medicine” sort of way. Fun at some poor creature’s expense.

There is a humorous story within The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where Tom gives a dose of medicine, that he had been in the process of pouring into a crack in the floor, to his aunt’s cat, Peter. Predictably, Peter goes absolutely wild and reduces Tom to a state of equally wild laughter. His Aunt Polly was far less amused, although she was relieved that Tom appeared to be returning to his old mischievous self after a prolonged bout of melancholy.

Now don’t get it twisted. I didn’t squirt our cat (or anyone else’s cat) with a Super Soaker. I got my hands on a Super Soaker as an adult (at least according to the information on my birth certificate). Having never had a Super Soaker or even played with one, I took the one that I found belonging to one of my brothers or one of their friends outside for some “plinking.” Compared to the squirt guns that I had grown up with as a child, the performance was impressive.

After engaging a number of inanimate objects in the backyard, I noticed our cat lying in the living room window between the blinds and the glass, clearly enjoying the sunshine streaming through the glass. Taking deliberate aim, I sent a powerful stream of water against the glass where it impacted with a resounding thump.

The reaction was immediate. The drowsy cat instantly sprang into a fleury of desperate action, all traces of drowsiness gone. It was a ball of Tasmanian Devil-like motion trying to escape the confines of the window and the blinds.

It was frankly amazing that the blinds didn’t come down in the cat’s desperate bid to escape. I had not been motivated by any cruelty or animosity for the cat. I hadn’t really given much thought to what would happen. I certainly wouldn’t have dreamed of drenching the cat.

With that being said, the explosion of wild motion impeded briefly by the blinds was one of the funniest things that I had ever seen. Funnier still was seeing my mom peering out the window in an effort to determine what had happened and what had initiated the pandemonium. My mom’s outrage at what precipitated that pandemonium was tempered by the fact that I was totally incapacitated with laughter. 🤣

Me and the cat later made nice after it had calmed down and recovered from the shock. Honest. 😉