Kicking cats

I speak Spanish pretty well, so I don't have as many stories of amusingly awkward language mishaps as most volunteers. However, even 13+ years of studying doesn't make me immune to the occasional misunderstanding, as evidenced by a recent incident with the verb pegar.

Pegar most commonly means "to hit," or various actions along that same line: strike, kick, beat, etc. So when my host dad came down to dinner the other night talking about how he'd just pegar-ed our cat, I was a little surprised - why would Javi hit the cat? Granted, the cat is no favorite of mine, but it did hunt down a previously live rat that was running around our house last week, and I couldn't think of any serious breach of decorum that would warrant a kick from my host dad. Brow furrowed in confusion, I tuned in and out of the conversation for a minute, but continued to hear Javi mentioning pegar-ing the cat. Puzzled, I shrugged and chalked it up to something I missed - I didn't want ask questions and run the risk of opening what might've been an uncomfortable family discussion about the ethics of hitting one's pets.

After dinner, we were walking back upstairs when Javi asked me if I wanted to see the cat. I balked for a second - does it have a visible bruise from where he kicked it?? - but realized I had to say yes and see for myself what sort of state the family feline was in. So I followed him across the patio, where he proudly presented me the cat:

"Ohhhhhh, this cat!" Looking at this life-size ceramic replica, my mental dictionary all-of-a-sudden decided to kick in and remind me that pegar can also mean "to glue." Turns out one of the live cats was climbing around the living room and shattered her statuary counterpart, so Javi helpfully pegar-ed it back together. Whoops! :)