Tuesday, July 28, 2009

To take care of a cat...

I woke up this morning to find a flea bite on my eyelid. Some of you might not know how to identify a flea bite, but for me, I see them daily. We have one cat hanging onto life with quite a spring in her step despite her age. The only sign of her aging is that she seems to have gone completely senile. She meows all night long for no purpose and sits in our driveway refusing to move even if you pull the car right up to her. I actually have to get out of the car, move her, and then continue up the driveway. I must, however, claim some fault with the flea epidemic we currently endure. I skipped a few months of her flea meds, maybe like 24 months, or something. If you stand on my carpet for just one minute you are almost gauranteed to find a couple fleas attaching themselves to your ankles. Sick, right? This is my life.

I also never had a litter box for my cat until this year. She was trained to go outside and we never had an issue with it, quite proud of that actually, until about a year and a half ago. My mom and I noticed what looked like a little tootsie roll graveyard in the back corner of our fireplace. Believe it or not, we didn't deal with the issue for sometime. On occaission my boyfriend and I would be watching a movie on the couch and a breeze would blow outside and the living room would be filled with the smell of old, musty poo. Still, months continued to go by in this fashion. It wasn't until a particular evening when we realized change needed to be initiated. My mom's friend came by one night to pick her up for dinner, I had been told this woman is meticulously tidy. I had completely forgotten about our poo ridden fireplace until the woman sat in a chair beside the fireplace while waiting for my mom to finish getting ready (lateness can be expected in our household.) I was praying she wouldn't notice while we kindly made small talk. But eventually, she started looking around the room from her seat until her eyes stopped on the fireplace. She peered for a moment or two, trying to decipher if it was, in fact, what she suspected. Probably then determining by the looks of it that it must have been there for a while. "It looks like there's a little turd back there," she said, as though she was notifying us of news. I should have corrected her, "Turds, actually." It was then up to me to defend our reputation. I made up an explanation of how our cat is losing her mind and just "recently" started doing this. I hurriedly cleaned it up pretending to be so appalled. I should be.
If you saw my mom or I, or came over for dinner, most likely you would never believe we have these sorts of ill things going on. Our home appears tidy, my room is decorated particularly cute, and my personal hygiene is exquitsite. But before we knew it, we were that house Ben Stiller walks into in "There's Something About Mary" where there's a pile of poop in the corner, just sittin' there.

The Culprit