I just got clawed in the face

Long story short, I was holding him and walking past my mom and the dog. The cat has a growl like thing he does when he's pissed at the dog, the dog saw this and went to the other side of the room and sat, but the cat was still a little pissed off. My mom was talking about them and gestured towards the cat and being a bit touchy still attacked her. I was upset that she would gesture like that to him when he was upset and still holding him and telling my mom she shouldn't done that began to walk away. He seemed calm and "secure" so to speak when I turned around. A few steps later when I was still upset and talking to my mom walking away with him he hissed and gave me a claw to the face. I've got a couple of nice scratches now.

I don't know what to do. A few minutes later I picked him up and he saw the blood all over me and it looked like he realized what he had done. I told him to never do it again in a firm voice and put him in the basement (his "Safe" zone). I read that punishing cats is bad because they don't respond well to it, but I don't know what else to do. I sure as hell am not going to put up with him attacking ME of all people. I adopted him about 2 weeks ago and he's been awesome up untill this. He's always seemed to know that he belonged to me despite all of the people in the family, and he stays with me in my room most of the time. I just can not believe that when I stopped everything that was upsetting him and was removing him from all of it that he attacked ME, of all people. Is what I did ok? Is there something else I should've done?

It sounds to me as if he were upset and a bit afraid. He used the defence he would turn to if 'cornered' - his claws. I always think the best solution is not to put him in the position of being upset like that and able to claw you - if you're removing him from a situation like that then don't hold him near your face, and I tend to wear long sleeves a lot of the time because I handle cats and parrots frequently, both of which can draw blood in various ways if they feel threatened.

Animals rarely react like that just because they are being mean, there's usually a trigger to their reaction - try to avoid him being in that situation again, and if he is nervous don't hold him near your face while you remove him from whatever is making him nervous.

He was probably not attacking 'you' but trying to get out of a bad situation he felt he was in. Try to avoid carrying him like that around the dog until he is much more sure of his surroundings - two weeks is a very short time to give him total security.