the battle of pelusium reenactment society
Madam, the mother of our litter of kittens, has been super aggressive to me lately since I started trying to move her brood out of the store room. This escalation of affairs led to a standoff which ultimately concluded in me being chased by a cat down the corridor into my office. I didn't dare leave for another hour. Madam is seriously fierce! Temporary amnesty on 'pussy' jokes starts here.
I developed a technique of throwing cups of water on her just to get her to move away and not charge me, just so Pandora and I could leave (Pandora comes in with me when I work weekends). If you thought that was a low point, think of what I did next. As I was trying to sidle out of the office and past Madam into the stairwell - where she was still fixed and hissing - I used Pandora's carrier as a barricade between me and her, shoving the case on the floor and edging it out of the door with my foot. I've sunk even lower than the use of human shields - I use small, terrified cats as shields.
By coincidence this is the very tactic of war that secured the Persian annexation of Egypt. History replays itself in surprisingly banal fashion.