You Know Your Cat Is Trying to Kill You When

I post this not as a whine - mostly - but as a public service to all you writers working on fight scenes.  You see, my cat tried to kill me this morning. There I was sound asleep. The 13lb girl you see at left here, jumped a very long way, and landed, all four feet in one spot, on my lower belly. I was awake. That everyone else on board wasn't, given my shriek of dismay, surprised me.

Once the initial shock of the punch to my lower gut wore off, I subsided into bed with only a grumble or two. The force vectors behind those paws didn't bear thinking about. It's not too bad, I thought. Doesn't really hurt. Good.

Oh, but then.

Have you ever seen one of those time lapse films of a flower blooming? That's what happened with the discomfort level. Over the next ten minutes, sharp, cutting pain uncurled a tendril here, then unfurled another over there. Nausea rolled through, subsided, then rolled through again. The hurt finally settled into a crampy, dull ache with only the occassional stab to remind me that my cat had tried to disembowel me and had been foiled by the bed clothes. Twelve hours later, I'm still tender and sore, walking slowly, and breathing through the occassional bout of nausea. I leaned up against the counter to wash dishes a few minutes ago - that was a mistake. Ow.

So the point is this: If you're writing a fight seen and one of your characters takes a gut punch, you now have one person's description of what that feels like. I don't recommend any further research.