Great Moments in Animal Husbandry
We have pets. Lots of pets. Two dogs: Billy and Suki. Six cats: Gable, Sparkle, March, Wanda, Cosmo, Nina. Assorted fish. It’s a zoo around here.
Having pets is great, we obviously must think so, but with a zoo like ours also comes … let’s just say moments:
- Finding cat poop in the bathtub daily
- Dogs snacking out of the cats’ litterbox
- Wet toilet seats from dogs drinking out of bowl
- Cats running half a step in front of you all the way across the house, forcing you to stutter-step around them the whole way
- Feeling the wet soak through the paper towel as you clean up fresh dog puke
- Cats peeing on clean, folded laundry
- Dogs puking up half-digested cat poop
- Cats peeing and/or pooping behind couches
- Dogs lying half on top of you while you watch TV — and farting
- Stepping barefoot into cold cat puke in the morning
- Hairballs
- Dogs barking at nothing every single night at 3 a.m.
- Near-daily refilling of the kitchen fishbowl because the cats drink out of it
- The stupid dog peeing on the living room carpet because he’s afraid of the dog door
- Ripped-up carpet in the guest bathroom from one of the dogs obsessively scratching at one corner of the floor
- Cat diarrhea in random corners of the house
- Half-inch deep chew marks on the wall where the carpet scratching dog chewed when she was a puppy
- Cats walking all over you while you watch TV and sticking their butts in your face
- Water all over the laundry room floor from dogs drinking from the water bowl
- Pet hair on everything you own
- Pet bail
I guess I should provide a happy list now, point out all the good things there are about having pets. Yeah, I’ll get right on that, right after I clean up whatever mess is inevitably waiting for me out there somewhere.
Jian had the profound joy of finding two little cat turds in my underwear yesterday while doing my laundry. (Thanks Jian!)
For a moment, she wondered if they were mine …
Your entry reminded me of an incident that happened about 18 years ago. I was a relative newcomer to the New York music scene and I was doing a gig at the Waldorf Astoria with a really excellent band.
When one of the better known trumpet players in the business walked onto the bandstand before the start, a few of the older guys commented on a huge yellow stain on the front of this trumpet player’s tuxedo shirt.
He smiled and said, “Yeah… y’know, I didn’t think it was that noticeable. What happened was, I put my tux and shirt on the bed before taking my shower this afternoon… and when I came out I caught my cat peeing on my tux shirt!”
One of the other musicians said, “Are you shitting me?! You’re actually wearing a shirt soaked with cat piss???”
To which this trumpet player calmly answered, “Well I wasn’t going to waste a clean shirt!”
That, my friend, is an animal person.
[afterthought: I found out later that this trumpet player was known for being, um, frugal. This guy was so cheap that I found out from one of his friends that he used to buy his tuxedos from funeral parlors! Really!!!]
While I don’t have the menagerie that y’all have, I do have four cats. Which makes for some interesting cleaning issues on occasion. Especially when two of the cats have clear ideas about where to do their business that, unfortunately, don’t always coincide with my ideas. *sigh*