We were sitting together on the couch, watching a particularly offensive episode of "Grounded for Life" on ABC Family. The show turned out to be about as family friendly as your average Jenna Jameson film, only a lot more offensive and violent. I was contemplating the oddity of our nation's tolerance of graphic sexual violence, but shock at a bare booby, when suddenly My Wife said, "Good God, something smells like SHIT!"
"What, you mean, literally like shit, or just really bad?" I asked, having virtually no sense of smell myself and thus not being aware of any change in our air quality.
"Literally," she replied. "He must be in the litterbox, but I can't imagine what he's doing in there. It's never smelled this bad before!"
Finally, we both got up and went to check on Spongebob. I walked into the laundry room where the litterbox is kept. Stinky ran past me as I entered. What I saw explained why he was running.
On the edge of the litterbox, perched at the entrance to the box, was a big wad of cat shit, almost as big as the cat himself.
In the floor, on the tiles and in the grout, were long, brown smears where Stinky had dragged his apparently shit-covered ass across the floor, trying to wipe the shit off.
"Get out! GET OUT!" I heard My Wife shouting from the kitchen. I went to investigate.
"He's wiped his ass on the kitchen floor!" she screamed. "Look at this!" and she pointed to the streaks on the floor of our kitchen.
We both went looking for the oh-so-appropriately named Stinky. I found him under the dining room table and we cornered him there. I threw open the door to the backyard and we chased him out.
Somehow, in the short time he had spent in the dining room, he had managed to leave shit on the floor there, too. My Wife was livid.
My Wife, having a good sense of smell, which is lucky in that it compensates for my near total lack, can't stand to deal with shit. She can't handlel the odor at all. And so it falls to me to clean up after Stinky and his litterbox antics.
I spent the next hour mopping and scraping and mopping some more. My Wife took our other mop and dealt with the kitchen floor. After I had finished the laundry room, where the worst of it was, I handled the dining room.
Stinky, meanwhile, was at the back door, looking scared and wanting to come in. It was 22 degrees outside, but that normally doesn't bother him. And I wasn't kean on letting him back in.
"It's too cold outside to leave him out there," My Wife insisted. So, having cleaned the house, I formulated a plan and began to implement it.
I went upstairs and retrieved Stinky's own personal litterbox. I grabbed his food dish while I was there. I carried the whole thing downstairs and put it into the hall bathroom. Remembering how he had opened the drawer of the vanity and locked himself into the bathroom, I took the drawer out altogether. Then I went and got Stinky.
The minute I opened the back door, he shot into the house. "Come here!" I said, as calmly as a man who had just spent an hour cleaning shit can be.
He ignored me and ran around.
"Has he cleaned the shit off his butt?" My Wife asked.
"I don't know. There's plenty of grass outside. I should think he wiped it on that," I said, hopefully.
Finally, I managed to grab Stinky and carry him to the bathroom, where I threw him in and shut the door.
"Are you just going to leave him in there all night?" My Wife asked.
"Yes."
At least, that was the plan.
We were tired and it was late, especially for My Wife, who has to get up extra early for work each morning. So we went and started getting ready for bed. Stinky, meanwhile, was making all kinds of noise in the bathroom, which echoed and amplified everything he did, including his continuous serenade of meowing.
I got My Wife tucked into bed and went to check on Stinky.
Carefully I opened the door, reaching my hand in to shut the cabinet door that he had opened and which was partially blocking the door. Then I stuck my head in and took a look around. There were shit marks all over the floor, just like the ones he had left in the laundry room.
"Oh no you didn't!" I said, sounding nothing like a black girl at all. I felt my blood pressure skyrocketing as I swung the door open the rest of the way and reached in for Stinky. He ran around, thinking we were playing, until I managed to get ahold of the back of his neck and lift him up.
"Meow?"
"OUTSIDE!"
I carried him unceremoniously to the back door, opened it, and set him out in the cold.
"Are you throwing back outside?" My Wife yelled to me from the bedroom.
I shut and locked the door before walking back to the bedroom where she was. "He's staying out. He didn't clean any of it off himself while he was out. He wiped his ass all over the bathroom floor, just like he did all the other rooms."
Then I turned and went back to the laundry room, retrieved the still damp mop and bucket, and headed for the bathroom to begin cleaning all over again. It was now nearly midnight.
By the time I had finished with the bathroom, I was sweating. "Great," I said to myself. "I just love being covered in sweat and shit and cleaners before going to bed."
But as I was cleaning, I had been thinking. I had never seen Stinky afraid of being outside, yet every time I had opened the door for him tonight, unlike his usual response of wanting me to come out instead of himself to come in, he had come running with wide eyes and shot into the house. I had no idea what was bugging him, but I wasn't very happy with the idea of leaving him out there, in sub-freezing temperatures, with something possibly hunting him.
There is a big himalayan tomcat that comes around from time to time, looking for Stinky. He's gigantic, whereas Stinky is not even ful grown yet. Stinky has fought him before. He doesn't show much fear of him anymore. Just last night, in fact, I had seen the cat on our back porch looking up at Stinky, who was perched on top of our grille where he always is. I had swung open the back door and chased the cat across our backyard, nearly pulling a hamstring in the process. When I had returned from the chase, Stinky was still sitting on the grille, showing no interest. He didn't even want to come inside the house.
If that giant tomcat doesn't scare Stinky anymore, I can't imagine what is. Nothing else has ever shown up on our back porch like that. At least, not that I know of.
Finally I decided that I knew what I had to do. So I went to the backdoor and turned on the light. Stinky came running. I opened the door and he streaked into the house without slowing down. I grabbed him up and carried him back to the bathroom, with him complaining all the way. I took him inside and shut the bathroom door behind me. Then I put him down in the shower and turned on the faucet.
Our shower in the hall bathroom has one of those attachments with a long hose and a sprayer on the end. Women seem to like them for reasons that have little to do with showering, but to me they're mostly a pain in the ass. But on this occasion, it was just what I needed. I held Stinky with one hand and the shower sprayer with the other, and began spraying him right up the ass.
Oh, he wasn't happy about that. Oh no. Not at all. But it was the only way. His hair is so long and so thick and was so matted with shit that nothing short of a hose-down was going to clean him up.
I washed and washed and washed until my arms were tired. He was thoroughly unhappy and upset, but exhausted from the battle. By the time I was through, he was barely fighting me. Finally I was satisfied and I stopped spraying him. I let go and he ran behind the toilet. I grabbed a towel and dragged him out from behind the toilet.
I will never understand why, as much as cats hate being wet, they seem to hate being dried off even more. But they do. He fought the towels, he bit the towels, he clawed the towels, and he complained the whole time.
Finally he was dry enough to satisfy me. I set out his litterbox and food dish again, and left him there to spend the night in the bathroom, just in case I had missed anything.
So now I know why our Little Girl cat doesn't want to use the litterbox after Stinky has used it. The idiot stands backwards in the box, with his face pressed against the back and his butt at the entrance, peeing and pooping right where she stands when she uses it. And he smells awful when he goes, too. And now I'm working on a plan to train him to turn his ass around, so we don't ever have to spend another night cleaning up shit off the edge of the litterbox, off his ass, and off the floors of our house.
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