El Gato Diablo

My friend Maya (who is also an LUC student) lives with Jake the Cat, otherwise known as Grumpy Cat’s twin. When I first met this cat, I thought he was the cutest and most behaved cat I’d ever met. Not only did he just lounge around the pool all day, but he let everyone pet him! When Maya and I told her host mom about the famous Grumpy Cat in the states, she proceeded to explain to us how Jake the Cat is never allowed to leave the house because he’s too expensive to lose. Also, that if Jake the Cat were ever lost they would not buy another cat to replace him because of how expensive he was, so pretty much all I know about this cat is that he’s expensive and his name is Jake. Anyways, last week Maya’s chilean family went to the beach all day, so after class a group of us went to Maya’s house to plan our trip to Argentina and the family told Maya to keep Jake in the mother’s room until everyone left so she did.

As soon as everyone left at around like 6-ish, we let Jake out because we felt bad because he’d been trapped in there all day and then we started working on our presentation that was due the next day.While we were working outside on their patio, which is next to their mini backyard with tiny pool,some tall trees, and a fence separating their yard from their neighbors. 20 minutes into working on our presentation, Jake the Cat sees a bird and begins to scale the tree. Remembering the previous conversation about this expensive cat, Maya and I freak out and coax him to come down from the tree. After a couple failed attempts, Jake the Cat finally climbed down and nonchalantly walked away from us as if nothing had happened. This is where Maya and I should’ve learned our lesson, because 15 minutes later, Jake the Cat sees another bird and scales the other tree and decides to jump over the fence into the neighbor’s backyard. Immediately, we begin to hyperventilate and start screaming ideas out on how to retrieve the cat. The first and foremost one being to go to the neighbor’s house and ask politely if we can retrieve the cat. However, while working on our presentation I plugged in my laptop charger into an outlet on the patio and blew a fuse. (Chilean outlets are different from US ones, and you need a converter in order to use anything electric.) This comes into play because the front gate to Maya’s house is usually buzzed open electrically. We came to figure this out however, when I tried to buzz myself out and the door wouldn’t open, preventing me from reaching the cat. We finally find the keys and i’m trying to explain to Maya’s neighbor that there’s a cat in his backyard and that I need to retrieve him but he’s completely ignoring me and not even listening to me because I obviously am not speaking spanish very well and that is when the cat finally makes its way to the front of the neighbors house. But the story does not end there, nope, Jake the Cat will not let anyone grab him and after 20 minutes of chasing him around the front of the house, I finally grab Jake, put him upstairs and close all the doors to the outside world, so we can finally fix the electricity. Their neighbor came over and fixed the electricity and the world was good again. Until…

5 minutes into working on our presentation, we hear a ton of crap falling like someone had knocked it over huge dominoes. Our immediate first though: WHERE IS JAKE?!

Frantically, I’m looking under the couches and dinner table etc and then I hear Maya screaming, “NOW I KNOW WHY MY HOST MOM CLOSES THE BATHROOM DOOR!?

Chileans don’t believe in screens, like no screen doors, no screen windows.

Everything is just open. all. the.time.

Maya, “OMG CHRISTINE JAKE IS ON THE ROOF WTF DO I DO?!”

I make my way upstairs and there are shampoo bottles and conditioner bottles all over the bathroom floor and I look out the window and Jake is on the roof.

His eyes are glowing red and I wanted to murder him.

I run downstairs, climb up on a chair, and reach out on the roof to retrieve this cat.

I finally coax him with food to come to me and we stick him in the mother’s bedroom.

We did not do s*** that day.

Maya and I got our a**es kicked by a cat.

Like round-house kicked by Jake the Cat.