Of Cats and Catapults

 

“Cats are clean animals”.

We’ve all heard that one. And, generally, it’s true. That’s because anything cats don’t want on or in them, they remove and put on YOU or something of yours. Dirt. Fur. Vomit. Drool. Poop smears. Dingleberries. Cat litter that gets stuck between their toes. Eye boogers. Real boogers.

There are two rules of living successfully with cats:

Rule Number One: Never walk barefoot in the house. Ever.

Rule Number Two: Never pick up anything off the floor with your bare hands.

That thing that looks like a leaf or a wood chip? It’s never a leaf or a wood chip. It’s something that’s going to go squish between your fingers and smell hideous. That’s the rule no matter what end of the cat it came out of. Step around the thing and get a tissue to pick it up with. If it does by some miraculous turn end up being a leaf or a wood chip, go buy a lottery ticket, ‘cuz it’s your lucky day.

When a cat pukes, it will never be on a surface that’s easy to clean. It will always be on your favorite chair or place on the sofa. Or your bed. Or that expensive rug you saved up for and splurged on (and, really, WHY did you do that with cats in the house anyway? Serves you right!). If there’s a mile of bare floor between your cat and the one throw rug in the room when the cat decides it’s time to heave, the cat will make it to that rug. Every. Single. Time. Might as well call it the throw-up rug.

Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, the cat will choose to puke on you. Generally that happens in the middle of the night. I’m pretty sure the word “catapult” was invented by someone who woke up to a cat hanging over their face winding up to yak. It’s horrifying and requires that the cat be launched as far away from your face as possible as quickly as possible.

Alarm clocks should sound like that, shouldn’t they? That "eck eck eck" is guaranteed to bring you to full wakefulness with no snooze feature needed. Think of all the times you wouldn’t have been late for work if you had a clock with that feature!

Then there's waking up to the sound of a distant outside-the-bedroom puke during the night and the ensuing calculations as you try to figure out whether or not you can make it to the bathroom without your slippers. Stop that now and refer to Rule Number One.

Yup, that's barf in the window.  We called it the Vomit Snake.
I have no idea how it was produced intact, but at least it missed Matt's shoes.

My personal favorite is when a cat jumps out of the litter box and scoots its ass across the floor to get a good wipe. It’s such an undignified look, using the front legs to propel the back half along. Leaving that lovely contrail of shit on the carpet. When I see that, I always thank God for toilet paper and the opposable thumbs with which to grasp it. Can you imagine if humans had to wipe like that? Not only would we look absolutely absurd, but the most popular carpet color in the world would be Shit-Brindle Brown with a Corn Contrast. It would be on backorder everywhere.

The other fun thing is to watch cats get the shit zoomies after an especially satisfying dump. They burst out of the sandbox like Superman leaving a phone booth and proceed to fly through the house spraying poop dust everywhere as they celebrate the miracle of moving their bowels. Again, can you imagine humans doing that? “Yippee, I feel lighter than aiiiirrrrr….!!! Confetti, I need confetti, where’s the confetti? Oh wait…here’s a dingleberry—that’ll do!”