by Kevin Steele
I don't really like cats. So, they get to make my TMI Thursday.
It's not that I hate cats. I mean I do. But only in the way we 20-somethings abuse hyperbole. I don't punt them, or bark at them. And I still pet touch pet them.* I actually touched a cat the other day and it wasn't horrible at all.
But I do hold grudges. And I used to be deathly allergic to our domesticated felinious ones.
I also don't like competing for affection. Certainly not with animals. And certainly not with an animal's fragile sense of self.
So it came as a surprise when I moved into my house last summer knowing the roommate had two cats. Should I have known better? Obviously. But do I ever actually admit that with enough time to avert disaster? Meh.
Normally I have a penchant for embellishment. But today, and for today only, I will simply list as pure fact the 25 horrible things these cats did to me by way of their owner. No pretty adjectives, no sexy adverbs. Fair and balanced.
- They existed.
- They had three litter boxes.
- That equals 1.5 box per cat.
- One box was next to the refrigerator in the kitchen.
- All three of the boxes were uncovered.
- The box under the sink in the main bathroom was on a mat. This mat was so the cats could scrape their feet. This mat was larger than the space it was in. So, to brush your teeth or wash your hands at the sink, you had to stand on the litter mat.
- My roommate and her boyfriend did this barefoot and smiling.
- One morning, not yet awake, I did too, but with a different look on my face.
- One morning, not yet awake, I stepped out of the shower and onto a fresh turd.
- I cried on the inside.
- Many days, cat #1 would vomit on the floor and then poop on the pile of vomit.
- Some days, #1 would then start eating the pile as I watched.**
- The cat poop was left in a plastic grocery bag on the front step to our house, several times a week.
- In the summer.
- In DC.
- These bags would be covered with flies and would emit a smell that you could taste.
- Those flies and that smell would follow you inside when you opened the front door.
- They would, though, then give way to the ammonia smell from three uncovered litter boxes packed into a small 2 bedroom rowhouse.
- Cat #2 peed on the kitchen counter.
- I didn't grow up with cats so I thought it was apple juice and decided to wipe it up with a sponge.
- That sponge was for hand-washing dishes.
- One or both of the cats peed on the stove. There was a lot of pee. It happened on the weekend the roommate moved out. I had left town to avoid the awkwardness. Came back to clean up and show the house. Found an inch deep, thickened to the point where it didn't resemble liquid, yellow substance on the stove. I started scrubbing.
- I almost fainted from the smell.
- Months after the roommate left, I still found litter in new places.
- Like the refrigerator.
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*Hilarious how changing one word in that sentence makes me sound like someone you don't want to meet.
**HORRIFIED.
