It's a hunch...but as a creative type I would hate for something I worked on/established in the past get poorly handled by another creative team in a way that undermines the previous work and makes it out to be a freakin' lame joke!
At first I thought the joke was he got a minor scratch and it was merely another reference to him eventually losing his eye. However I was like wait...WTF??? this is the actual reason they're going with for how badass Nick Fury loses his freakin' eye??? It 100% undercuts his delivery to Pierce (Redford) about how the last time he trusted someone, he lost an eye!
Cause now it just makes Fury look like he's embellishing a dumb story...ohhh yeah, I trusted this cute kitty cat alien and I lost my eye...poor me! Oh, no...I didn't lose it to a fellow agent/spy that I entrusted my life with who turned out to be a traitor/double-crossing agent who tried to kill me, but didn't, but was very close...except I was able to escape...just barely! But I lost my eye in a dangerous shootout in the process. NOPE! Instead it was an alien cat! And because of THAT, now I trust no one!!!....I'm sorry, but that's DUMBBBBB and poor writing.
There were so many cool and interesting ways to make his eye loss an epic backstory, but instead...CAT...yup...it's canon and it's official now.
And since the Russo's were in charge of, arguably MCU's best movie TWS, I'm sure for them to see that this mysterious, intriguing setup turned into a letdown joke would rub them the wrong way. Cause it certainly rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't even work on the film!
Well see, I don't think it undermines anything at all.
Think about it - The only ones around when he was injured were Danvers, Rambeau and the Skrulls. As far as anyone else at SHIELD was concerned, whatever he put in his report was the cause of his injury. Do you really think NIck Fury wrote that he was "scratched by a kitty"? 
As Tony put it, "He's THE spy. His secrets have secrets". He's going to simply report that it happened fighting the Kree and use it to help get his Avengers Initiative off the ground. And BTW, didn't he say that line about trusting someone (& losing an eye) to Cap, not Pierce?
As Tony put it, "He's THE spy. His secrets have secrets". He's going to simply report that it happened fighting the Kree and use it to help get his Avengers Initiative off the ground. And BTW, didn't he say that line about trusting someone (& losing an eye) to Cap, not Pierce?
It had it's moments, but the story was a bit dull and generic, and they never told us enough about Carol for me to really get invested in her (other than the fact she was a fighter pilot and used to be a tomboy as a kid... which isn't much). I do see a lot of potential with Larson in the role, but she wasn't given much to work with here, and hardly any clever dialogue like I would have expected. So I'm really hoping Endgame will do a much better job with her.
