Wait A Minute Wait A Minute Wait A Minute- You Took A Dump Where?!

I get pissed about things. Like, really pissed. I scream, I yell, I say absolutely horrible things I later regret (sometimes). I throw stuff, I break stuff, I'm generally terrible. I am by no means proud of this. I realize I have trouble controlling my anger, and I've worked hard to keep it in check. I have raised my voice exactly once to Baby, and that was in the middle of the "Biggest Fight We Have Ever Had" and she was yelling as well. And even though that fight was horrible, I didn't say anything abusive or hurl any insults or accusations I would later have to take back. I was just mad. So a year and a half with no other outbursts is nothing short of miraculous.

With that as the background, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the heavens that Baby was out of town three weeks ago. Because things almost got ugly. And it has taken this long to find the patience to tell the story.

Baby was in Chicago with family and friends at Lollapalooza, and I was stuck at home taking care of the cats. I wasn't stoked. Baby will tell anyone that listens that I hate them and I wish they were dead. That's not technically correct. If they were dead, Baby would be really upset. I wouldn't like that. But hate them? Check. Wish she had never owned them in the first place? Double check, circle, exclamation point, underline.

She adores these cats, treats them as if they were her children. The disgusting things they do and eject don't bother her in the slightest. She loves their neverending supply of cat hair, their incessant vomiting, their utter lack of shame when they lick their genitals. Recently the more tame cat of the pair, Lola, has developed a condition I've taken to calling Zoo Ass. How a cat of that size can produce turds that smell that bad is beyond me. The homeless guys that take dumps in the park don't smell that bad, and I've seen the things they eat. Baby will clean the litterbox, replete with the byproducts of Zoo Ass, and put everything in a plastic bag next to the trash can in the kitchen. The fucking kitchen! They don't make a pair of rubber gloves thick enough for me to take that load of trash out, so it just sits there giving me toxoplasmosis. That's about how far apart Baby and I are on the subject of what she calls "the princesses."

These god-forsaken animals and I have found a way to co-exist, we've come to an understanding. I stay as far the fuck away from them as our apartment will allow, and they make every effort to be as close to me as possible at all times. I don't understand it. If god should someday decide, in his infinite kindness, to give me the ability to lick my own balls, I would probably do it in private. But Lola and Jezebel (the most aptly named cat ever), make a point to puke, shit, shed, and drool on everything I hold dear, right in front of my face. Baby was gone less than an hour before Lola threw up on my Gamecube controller. And that was the best thing she did all weekend.

As Baby has never even introduced the concept of discipline to these animals, they have enjoyed free reign in destroying everything she has owned over the course of their eight malice-filled years on earth. Every piece of furniture is in tatters, every square inch of fabric covered in layers of cat hair and dander. In fact, the imminent destruction of everything I own was the sole reason I was originally hesitant to move in with Baby. But I told myself I was being silly. I decided I could train these horrible bastards. I am a complete fucking idiot. We talked about getting the cats a scratching post for them, but figured it was a waste of money. I told Baby that a surefire way to get them to use it was for me to treat it as if I cared about it, but frankly that's an experiment in spite that's probably not worth the expense.

About six months before we moved in together I treated myself to a brand new bed and boxspring. I've had back problems for a few years now, and my parents offered to give me a few hundred bucks to buy a better bed. I took that money and applied a considerably larger sum of my own to buy what is, in my estimation, the most comfortable bed on earth. Can you tell I'm proud of it? But Baby loves it as well, and I brought it to the relationship like a dowry.

The cats immediately set up shop under the bed, as it's the darkest place in the apartment. I put boxes and things under there to keep them out, because it's a pain in the ass to clean under there after they've been camping out. But they just squeezed their way in between the boxes, or nudged them all out of the way. So I gave up. What else could I do?

The first night Baby was at Lollapalooza I fell asleep with the TV on. I woke up around 8am, hungover, to a strange sort of scratching sound. The TV was on but I could tell it wasn't coming from there. I sat up and Jezebel hauled ass out from under the bed and into the living room. I went back to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to feed them, and Jezebel didn't come out to eat. I went looking for her, and I found what she'd been doing. She'd clawed a hole out of the boxspring from underneath, maybe the size of a baseball. As she's a gigantic fatty (I bet you could have guessed that Baby doesn't exactly feed them a healthy diet- Jezebel's favorite is McDonald's french fries), I didn't even consider the possibility that she had climbed through the hole. I went around to the other side of the bed to check over there and I heard her hissing at me.

Now let me explain about the hissing. Jezebel hisses at everyone and everything. I'm sure that, in her kitty eyes, she's the baddest motherfucker that ever lived. But in reality, she is an incredibly overweight sissy of a housecat that has never, in her entire life, put a foot outside her apartment. The hissing just pisses me off. You're the fattest cat anyone has ever seen and I'm still ten times heavier than you, you piece of shit. I can kill you with my bare hands and make mittens to use to strangle your sister.

So anyway, hissing. But I couldn't figure out where she was. She does both scratch and bite, so I wasn't stoked about sticking my face under the bed to take a look. Still, the hissing was making me mad and I was sure she was up to no good. I got down on my hands and knees and realized that not only had she climbed into the hole in the boxspring, but she had worked her way all the way across to the other side of the bed and had apparently gotten stuck. Usually she runs when she's been caught doing something bad, but I could see her in there, her big fat ass causing the fabric to sag. I got worried, fearing she was stuck and had somehow hurt herself. I considered calling Baby, but figured it was best to try to get her out on my own. I poked her, I yelled at her, and I finally crawled under the bed and actually lifted her, inch by inch, until she got back to the hole and made a run for it. I chased her around the apartment and cornered her, and I just unloaded on her. Literally.

We keep a squirtgun full of water for situations like this. Jezebel hates the squirtgun. When she gets squirted she knows she has done something wrong. So she got more than a mouthful of water, and a serious lecture. I would never actually physically harm these cats, as they're only animals. But I gotta tell you that shooting Jezebel in the face with a squirtgun brings a level of satisfaction that honestly scares me. When I'm done punishing her I put the gun down and go to find Lola. I want her to know that all the yelling is not about her, and try to make her feel better. She's incredibly timid when she's scared, and I didn't want her freaking out on me. But I looked and looked and I couldn't find her anywhere. Exasperated from my fight with Jezebel, I just gave up. I went back into the bedroom to lie down.

I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke to the terrifying and unmistakable smell of Zoo Ass. The cats, to their credit, are generally good about using the litter box, so this was unusual. I searched the bedroom and couldn't find Lola anywhere. To be certain that Zoo Ass wasn't contagious, I went to find Jezebel. I found her alright, crouching under the kitchen table. She obviously hadn't forgotten about the squirtgun incident, because she literally spit at me, like a fucking camel, when I got close to her. I didn't even know cats could do that. Having learned something new, I made an informed decision to immediately stop fucking with Jezebel.

Back in the bedroom the smell had gotten worse. With an overwhelming sense of dread I checked under the bed and discovered that a) Lola was now stuck, and b) Lola had taken a dump inside the motherfucking boxspring.

I lost it.

I shouted. I threw whatever I happened to be holding (I don't remember). I tore the covers off the bed. I lifted the mattress off the frame. I lifted the boxspring, with Lola still in it, and turned it on it's side. I heard her dig her claws in and climb, upside down, to the part of it that was resting on the ground. I heard the turds rattle around. I swear to god I heard the blood boil in my ears. I went to get a knife.

I learned that I am a man of tremendous restraint. I opened my preposterously sharp knife and cut the fabric from the bottom of the boxspring. Inexplicably, I took care not to fucking murderize Lola. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I considered all of them. But in the end I cut every inch of fabric from underneath, giving them nowhere to hide and no place to take their secret dumps. Lola, obviously terrified, didn't move the entire time. She cowered in the bottom of the boxspring, her turds of hell in piles around her. I finally had to flip the boxspring yet again and force her to drop out. Of course, I also dumped the turds onto my carpet.

You've had bad days in your life, days where everything seemed to go wrong. But honestly, has it ever been so bad that the best thing to happen to you all day was to have the good fortune of accidentally discovering an easier way to clean up catshit?