Saturday, September 27, 2014

Pink plastic couches



     If I could teach my cat any trick in the entire world, it would not be to fetch my slippers, or bring me the evening paper, or even to wear boots and fight evil...It would be to run to the bathroom and lean over the toilet bowl before the throw up. Cats vomit profusely. They happen to be rather dramatic vomiters as well, and, do not discriminate where they vomit. Any surface that may be difficult to clean is fair game to them, and they seem to discriminate against easily cleaned surfaces such as tile. Our cats seem to have a particular fondness for vomiting on the carpet RIGHT NEXT TO the easy to clean linoleum. I can stand the public bathing , I could tolerate their nocturnal schedules. Heck, I could even deal with the cat litter that they kick out as they exit the cat box, but puke on my carpet or even worse, my COUCH? I just can't do it Jack. I recently had a very un-cat-loving-friend bring me dinner. This friend happens to be from a culture that does not allow animals in their house because they are considered dirty. (Gee, I wonder why...) I had just had major surgery and out of the kindness of her heart, she brought over a delicious pot of soup for our dinner. I invited her to sit and visit with us for a while, and no sooner did she sit down on the couch than the bleeping cat decides to start his retching. A retching cat is not a quiet thing. I am convinced that it can be heard from within a 15 mile radius...I was horrified. My family was horrified. What should I do? My mind was racing...should we grab kitty and throw it in the bathroom? Should we pretend we don't hear it? Ignore it? I settled on distracting my guests...I spoke loudly over the retching, almost yelling, in hopes of them not hearing the horrifying sounds. Either they didn't hear it or my yelling covered it because my guests didn't even raise an eyebrow, they just kept on talking as if nothing was amiss. I couldn't believe my good fortune! One of my daughters casually went over and cleaned it up without being seen and my friend left without the knowledge of my bulimic feline. It took all that was in me not to feed that cat to the coyotes... but I didn't. And I won't. Although, I'm sure that thought will revisit me the next time I find a gift on my carpet...Say, do you happen to know where I can order some of those plastic couch covers from the 70's? On second thought, I never understood why all of Barbi's furniture was hot pink and plastic. NOW I understand, she must have had a cat.