I was tortured by someone using a video game. So, when I was a child, we lived in the country and it was very common that people would drop cats at our house or our neighbor’s house. And if it wasn’t people dropping cats, then our neighbors had unneutered cats that were often having kittens. If they did eventually make their way to our house, we would neuter them, but you know — all that to say there were always cats and there were always kittens, some of which were feral, semi-feral.
And we had one such kitten one year, and I had formally adopted it, which we didn’t always do, ‘cause we couldn’t obviously own 25 cats. But this was one that it was very sweet, and I had adopted it, and we were in the process of sort of house breaking it. But it still had accidents. And one of the places that it had accidents was under the shelf in our den, and that also happened to be where my brothers stored their video games. This was their N64, so it’s like a cartridge and it was very possible to ruin the cartridge and then you were just out of the game. So I didn’t know the cat was having accidents until they discovered that one of their games wasn’t working. They were rightfully really upset, but maybe less rightfully blaming me for it, and I was probably eight at the time. Seven or eight. And one of the video games that still worked was Super Mario. And there is a portion of the game where Baby Yoshi hatches, and I always loved — so, you know, I often would watch my brothers playing and I loved when Baby Yoshi hatched. And in that game — I think it was Super Mario — you could ride on baby Yoshi or Yoshi. And that was how you kinda got around faster.
And after my cat ruined a different game, they were really, really mad at me and so they sat me in a chair. One sat me down and held me, and then the other one kept like, saving right before that part of the game where Baby Yoshi hatched, and then Baby Yoshi would hatch and they would immediately run Baby Yoshi off a cliff and kill Baby Yoshi.
And it was really sad and traumatic and it made me cry, and I was just crying. And I was so upset, and it was not my fault that the cat peed on their games, but they were ruthless. So, I didn’t — I didn’t get mad at someone, but I was ruthlessly tormented for something I could not control.