This morning Rob was clearing his breakfast dishes when he stopped short and said, almost gagging, “What’s all that red in the hallway?” Rob and William are both extra-sensitive about blood, so I’m accustomed to talking them down from, say, a red crayon drawing or a smudge of cinnamon toothpaste on the sink, and I was assuming it was something like that again–except, what would be red and in the hallway? So I went to investigate, and it was blood. Blood spread out in droplets across maybe six feet of hall, plus spattered on the walls.

I didn’t freak out, because all four children were in my sight and because there was a cat collar and a tuft of cat fur right in the middle of the mess, but I did wonder if we were going to have to deal with a very difficult cat-related situation, and here it was 5 minutes before we needed to be at the bus stop. The way the blood was so….sprayed looking, and the way the cat collar was snapped, made me wonder if we had a neck injury of some sort–but there wasn’t really enough blood for that. I mean, it was dramatic the way it was spread out, but when I cleaned it up later I only used four or five paper towels, so we’re not talking puddles here.

I found our cat Oliver almost right away (it was his collar and his fur, so I knew who I was looking for). I could see blood on his fur, around his mouth, on all his paws–but he looked basically okay. I’d been worried that a cat…well, I don’t know. Had been hit by a car and then had teleported to the hallway? I guess I wasn’t really thinking things through, but I was picturing finding a cat collapsed and breathing fast, not standing in front of the heating vent and looking at me with a “Yesss??” expression.

I couldn’t wait another minute to bring Rob to the bus stop, but I hurried back so I could take a longer look at Oliver. I still couldn’t find the exact problem, but it appeared to me that the blood on his paws was from walking in the blood on the floor, and the blood on his fur looked like it was a smear of it, not like it was coming out from under the fur. The bleeding seemed to be coming from his mouth, but if you have cats you know that most of them are not interested in opening up and saying “Ah” just because you ask them to. I did pry his mouth open and I got a brief look, and the blood seemed to be coming from his gums (that is, not from inside, which is the way you always know a movie character is dying).

My conclusion was that either (1) he lost a tooth, which has happened once before but wouldn’t explain the broken collar, or (2) another of the cats scratched him and happened to get a good swipe on his gums. Still, there was a lot of blood for that. Well, a Red Cross worker once pointed out to me (while I was donating blood and feeling a little woozy–nice timing) that blood always looks like a lot more than it is. “I mean, if this bag were to pop, you could cover the whole room,” he added helpfully, indicating the bag I’d been trying not to look at.

Oliver doesn’t like to be messed with, so I’ve been trying to leave him alone. He’s in his favorite spot (on top of the towels in the linen closet, which I keep covered with a spare towel for this very reason) and I keep peeking in on him nonchalantly–“Oh, I’m just getting a washcloth, don’t mind me.” He seems fine, crabby and normal. I wonder what happened.