This is a good story.

Last night we were all excited to play old-school Gauntlet over Xbox Live with our friends Stacy and Steve. They had just gotten their 360 up and running and we were ready to go.

So Tammy puts on the Xbox headset and it’s not working. Turns out one of our goddamn cats (the smart money’s on Conan) chewed through the cord. So I did what any responsible pet owner would do. I picked him up and yelled at him in the face, squeezed him until his eyeballs popped out, and threw him across the room.

I was afraid that wouldn’t be enough to teach him a lesson though, so I hatched a little scheme.

Observe the cat trap:

I took what was left of the headset and completely coated the wires with Tabasco sauce and left it on the floor of the kitchen overnight. Wires don’t taste good, and people need to know that. Especially when those people are cats.

So I’m feeling pretty smart and smug and stuff and I’m laying in bed half asleep, laughing to myself, trying to imagine what Conan’s reaction will be when he discovers his new toy in the middle of the night. Ha-ha! “He’s gonna shit himself when he tastes that Tabasco and he’ll never chew through wires again. Brett you’re a friggin genius when it comes to pets.”

I chuckle a little and rub my eyes, roll over in bed and then it hits me – My eyes are on fire. I sit up straight in bed and yell “EYES ON FIRE!”

I run screaming over to the bathroom sink and shove my face under the faucet and start rubbing my eyes, trying to wash them out. This does a great job at getting the remaining Tabasco on my fingertips evenly distributed across my eyeballs. By this point I can barely open my eyes and things are only getting worse! I start to think that hey, even though Tammy’s on the toilet maybe I should break down the door so that she’s the last thing I ever see. In a crisis situation you don’t really have time to stop and think.

But then I remember that I have eye drops, so I open up the cupboard under my sink and start knocking things over until I find the little plastic bottle of soothing, cooling relief. I squirt half the bottle into my eyes and it works, mostly. After about 10 minutes I’m good. And actually my eyes feel really good when all is said and done.

Now I’m not a moron. I washed my hands after I set the trap. With soap. And yet somehow I still managed to pepper-spray myself.

It was an eye-opening experience!

Also, the cat-trap appeared to be untouched this morning.