Mom, Bring your Mink Gloves! AKA Cat #5

Reason #5 to never get a cat may only have to do with the cat I got stuck with (thanks, Sarah).

NEVER, if you have any shred of decency, and even if you decide you MUST have a cat, EVER EVER get a long-haired cat.

If you do end up with a long haired cat, try to get a lobotomy so that you can just stop caring about things such as “basic maintenance.”

It’s really bad enough that every few years when I decide it’s time to wash the curtains, or I decide it’s time to venture upstairs into the attic, I notice that the trails “just out of view” from my eyes are lined with cat hair.   It’s bad enough that when the heater turns on, large puffs of hair float into the air.  Let me tell you things that really cross the line:

1) Hair Streaks. This has changed slightly due to differing sleeping locations of said cat.  But previously, the cat would sleep right by my face/neck just out of reach of my body every night.  This means that along with two permanent “dents” in a mattress for our two bodies, a nice little fur patch was formed right at the top of our bed.  Cat hair doesn’t come off in the wash, it just tangles.  So you take out the bottom sheet and there still, is the hair, now clumped into a bunch of mini balls, attached into the fibers of the sheet.  THAT is what I want to do with my time, I want to SHAVE MY F*ing sheets.

That hair.  It’s just so dirty.  You can feel the hair lumps on the sheets, and it’s not a nice pleasant feel.  It’s not an angora sweater.  It’s a bit oily, sortof scaly, with that OH SO OBVIOUS cat smell.  That cat smell comes straight out of the litter box, according to my husband.  Mmmmmmmmm..

2) Hair Blobs. The cat can’t keep up on her own maintenance and/or I am an obsessive freak, which leads me to finding mats all over her body. So then, I pick at them.  I occasionally brush her, and the best place to do this is in bed, in her aforementioned place, because it’s where she is comfortable.  I have to brush her on the “downlow” so she doesn’t really know I am doing it.  This usually leads to a nice little handful of cat hair in my hand as I’m falling asleep in bed at night.  Judge me all you want and think that YOU are better than me, but what do I do with it?  Well, I set it on my nightstand to “get in the morning” of course.  (I’m so sure you’d get out of bed!)

I have bought a few tools to try and help me with my hair mat removal problem, and once susy came down with the clippers and the mink gloves.  Neither one of us got anywhere near the cat that day.

My husband threatens to divorce me every single time he finds a blob of cat hair by the bed… or by the computer…..  he doesn’t understand the undercover operation that went into getting it out in the first place.

3) Stuff sticks in there.  Yes, I’m talking about POOP.  The f*ing cat isn’t smart enough to know how to poop without getting her poop on her hair.  There is nothing better than lying in bed, reading, then noticing a particularly foul odor only to realize where it’s coming from.  THEN WHAT?  I have to engage in an undercover operation to remove said poop, which entails me pretending everything is normal while I let my cat crawl onto my lap.  I then have to quickly and quietly reach for the turd and either yank or cut it out before she turns and starts biting me.  This cannot be done with gloves.

Happy living!

Mornings

Here is why your morning will be a horrible experience if you ever decide to get a cat.

We are all sleeping soundly.

A faint change in the air flow; a slight lightening of the insides of the house; somethin.  Something happens, something MUST happen, something that I miss.  But then, my eyes open gently.  Gently, lightly, without moving another muscle in my relaxed body, I slowly become conscious. Not a singly complete moment passes before I hear:

MEOWORRRRROOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!

Every. Single.Morning.  My animals read my mind.  Beulah does it all the time.  I give her credit, she’s a smart dog.  Olive?  She’s possessed, man.

Once the Meow starts, it doesn’t shut off.  MMRROW!  MMOOWW!!! So, the morning can go one of a few different ways from here:

1) If I am getting ready for work, I’m left with two possible MMMRROWWW  sucky options: a) go feed the cat, trying to keep Beulah on the bed or locked in the bedroom.  Trying also to not wake Jonah by opening the back porch door which happens to be about 15 feet from his bed.  b) ignore the cat MRRWWW and lock her in the front side of the house, away from Jonah’s room, and let her MRROOW to her heart’s content.    A and B always end up with Jonah waking up immediately.

2) If my mom is at my house, the as Olive wanders around the house MROWing, Max (the second most annoying animal that I know) chases Olive through the kitchen, Beulah starts barking and growling and chasing Max, and the entire house is woken up by sheer terror and violence.  We all come rushing out of our rooms; gnarling and gnashing our own teeth because jesus christ, that is no way to wake up.

3) If everyone MOOOOW happens to be in their own beds, we have no house visitors, and it’s early enough, then when Olive jumps up onto the bed and starts scratching at the blankets, I bury my head beneath them.  Sometimes if I hold still enough, I convince her that I have fallen asleep.  I haven’t.  Damn cat woke me up with MROROROOOW and it’s 30 minutes before I have to get up anyway.  You THINK I went back to sleep?  MEEEEEEEWWRRRW No, I’m plotting someone’s death.

As you can see, the meows continue.  You can try to ignore them, and you can think I am being dramatic.  IT MRRROOW SUCKS!

I have tried kicking her – it doesn’t work.

I can’t put her food anywhere other than where it is, and I can’t feed her anywhere other than the back porch, so there is no real way for me to adjust that.

SHE JUST SUCKS.

After we are all moping our ways to the bathroom after being woken up and feeding her, we usually step in a puddle of puke / mucus that she left for us on the floor.

That’s her specialty.  This is not something she does occasionally.  I would bet she does it at least twice a week.

Every week of my life.

Cat #4 – Nights

Here is what it is like getting ready for bed now….

I get Jonah convinced it’s time for bed.  He walks calmly into bed, an action that makes every cell in my body rejoice.  We get settled in, laying on the floor where he sleeps now.  He says “love” and hugs me.  He stares blankly at the ceiling, which means he is relaxing.

Clomp. Clomp. Crash.

“Cat” he says.  “Get cat!”

You see, the routine is either a) get cat and lock it in mom’s room before bed, or b) when he is on the verge of sleep, the cat does one of the following: a) starts playing with toys in his room, batting around bouncy balls b) starts climbing on us and purring like a damn motorboat, or c) chewing on me (as mentioned earlier).

So, I go to get the cat.  She runs.  I’ll be damned if I’m going to chase a f*ing cat around the house now.  I sit down and pretend I want to pet her. “There cat!” yells Jonah as she comes in from the backporch cat door.  I grab her and throw her in my room.

Let’s talk about the “back porch cat door” for a second.

She has a cat door that goes from the kitchen to the back porch.  It came with the house, but is actually quite a genius idea, because a) I can keep the dog out of the cat food b) I can keep the litter box away from any habitable space, c) when my mom stays at my house with her wonderfully annoying little dog, Olive has somewhere to run to, and d) the cat is kept safely in the house (a poor decision on my part, but largely based on my belief that it isn’t my neighbor’s responsibility to scoop my cat’s poop out of their parking strip).

The cat door lets in a lot of cold air, especially for a child who may or may not be sleeping on the floor in the back bedroom, about 10′ away from said cat door.  The double whammy comes in when you see the OTHER cat door.  This one leading from Jonah’s bedroom to the “attic.”  This one WAS our doing, and is also pretty genius.

The entrance to the “attic” (a finished, yet highly unaccessible space) is also in Jonah’s room.  The attic is the place the cat goes since she is afraid of everything.  If she didn’t have the attic to go into , she’d be hanging out with us, and no one wants that.  It’s a dangerous ladder, the entrance to the attic, so I had to put up a kiddie gate so Jonah can’t get up there.  In fact, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know it really exists.  The space the cat can get through is perfectly large enough to allow any warm air that may have been in his room to be pushed right up into the attic.

Close these off, you say?  Then where would I put the cat toilet?  Where would the cat spend her time?  And most importantly, who would administer Xanax to the rest of the family as the cat tried desperately to claw her way through those two doors every time she saw a spider?  I’ve done it, I know what happens.  Same thing that happens if I lock her in the bathroom.  She SCREAMS, CLAWS, and freaks the F out. Doors in this house cannot be closed.

And so…. to make the story more complex, this night, after I locked the cat up, Jonah didn’t actually go to bed.  The cat got accidentally let out of the bedroom, we attempted night time #2 with Jonah, the cat hadn’t been put away, and luckily he didn’t notice.  But my stomach was in my throat the whole time he fell asleep, because the cat chose motorboat mode, and was sitting right by us purring, slobbering, and trying to rub up against him. I had to have one arm under a sleepy Jonah, and the other wrapped around my own back, petting the cat to keep her in place so she wouldn’t climb on him.

Trust me, mornings are even better!

Cat Reason #2

Jonah has decided he won’t sleep in his crib anymore.  Where will he sleep?  Well, that’s a good question.

We are struggling with getting him sleep on his mattress outside of the crib, and while he has done pretty good at night, he now does not nap.

I lay with him on the floor for a few minutes and that usually works.

So, today, trying desperately to get him to go to sleep the same way for a nap, I lay on the floor with him.

Me wrapped in blankets, him lying on his mattress next to me.

Cat, wrapped around my feet, gnawing on it, and kicking it with her back legs like it’s a f*ing rat.

I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, occasionally kicking at her, so that Jonah wouldn’t really notice.

He kept running around the room, so I was fighting with him, telling him to lay down, meanwhile Olive is attacking his toy food and he’s laughing at her saying “what cat do?”

I finally grabbed her and threw her out of the room.

Jonah has yet to fall asleep.  I locked him in his bedroom instead.  Ugh.. this really really sucks.  I sit down to write this here little post.  I reach for the mouse.  Olive sits on the mouse cord, on purpose, and when I grab for the mouse, she attacks the sh*t out of my hand and arm.

“Mommy Mommy Mommy” screams Jonah.

And since I’m not using the mouse while I type, Olive situated herself right back on it.

gee, wonder what’s gonna happen next.

 

And the New CATegory is….

That’s right, folks.  There is a new category on Mac N Dos.  I urge you all to follow with intense anticipation the chronicles that you will find within category “cat.”

Why?

Because the universe needs to hear what we are dealing with here.  Because one day I might have to justify something.  And in case any of you ever get the urge to bring home a nice fluffy little kitty, maybe some of my images will reverberate in your brain long enough to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life.

I will show you, as often as I can conjure up the spirit, just why life with a cat is NOT WORTH IT.

To start us off………

Two days ago, Dust and I switched sides of the bed. We’re risk takers, what can I say. I slept by the window, and always complained about the cold, so we thought maybe Dust should sleep over there since he’s a human heating pad.

Now… not only does Dust not like my cat, he cannot touch her.  Not out of hatred, but pretty much out of pure fear.  He will blow air in her face to get her to move because he is afraid if he touches her, she’ll rip his arms off.  And, she might.  Olive sleeps for part of the night on the wall side of the bed, right by my (now his)  head/neck.  She’s not snuggler, which is good because, OMG, yuck.  But she likes to lay there.

Fast forward to the middle of the night.  We hear that noise.  THAT NOISE!

It sounds like this:   Hggggct…   hhhhgggcccst…..  hgggct.. yuchhhhhh.

As soon as I heard it, I yelled “push her off.”  It was dark, and since pushing her off was not an option to my dear husband who likely froze in fright, and since he couldn’t see which way to direct his blow… the cat puked  on the bed.

Right by my (now his) head/neck.

All while my pain-in-the-butt two year old slept soundly though the night, like any normal creature should.

This is only the first reason, folks.  I intent to share each pleasant moment with you until you will be lined up at my doorstep with little syringes filled with questionable toxins.