From Out Of Nowhere

Wednesday night we went for a walk, just My Wife and I. My cat, Spongebob Stinkypants, walked a short distance with us. It was pitch black outside. We could only barely see him trotting long the grass somewhat behind us. Eventually he disappeared, in one of the yards close to ours, still very close to home.

We walked for about 2 miles. It wasn't very far. We have both been dealing with a great deal of stress and needed the exercise and chance to get out in the fresh air.

When we came home there was no sign of Stinky. I figured he was off in the trees where he usually is at this time of night. So we thought nothing of it and went inside.

Late that night, when it was time for bed, I turned on the porch light and called him. But he did not come. There was no sign of him. Finally, I gave up and went to bed. I figured he'd be sleeping on the back porch in the morning, like he always does if he doesn't come in.

The next morning I went to let him in. He wasn't there.

That afternoon, when I was sure he'd have come home, he wasn't there. My Wife and I began to worry.

Thursday morning I looked outside, still expecting to see him there, laying on the back porch, perhaps with a mouse. But he wasn't there.

It became a pattern. Each time I walked past the back doors I would look out, expecting to see him there. But he never appeared.

My Wife's levels of stress and worry quickly ramped up. I was surprised at how upset she was. After all, Stinky is mostly my cat and the Little Girl is mostly hers.

But I had noticed that the Little Girl was worrying, too. She had suddenly become afraid to go outside. And she was searching the house over and over again, trying to find Stinky, the cat who pounces her incessantly.

Little Girl began to worry us as much as the missing Stinky did. She wasn't eating. She wasn't using the litterbox. She wouldn't go outside. All she did was sleep. Whenever she got up to get a drink or come sit in a lap, she walked very slowly, as if it pained her to move. And when she lay in a lap, she hugged it tight.

I must confess, I had no idea how much pets can feel until just these past few years, when Booger Bear died and Little Girl was so unhappy. And now, with Stinky missing, and Little Girl again so depressed that she won't eat or drink anything and won't go outside.

On Friday I printed up flyers saying, "Lost Cat - male Maine Coon" and featuring a big photo of Mister Spongebob Stinkypants taken just last week as he walked in the snow. I put them in mailboxes all the way up and down my street.

I went out back, and seeing a neighbor in his yard behind us, I walked across the 2 acres of mushy, muddy, wet land from my back porch to his, so I could speak to him.

"Hi, I'm your neighbor, Steve," I said, introducing myself. He was older and probably retired. He looked at me through his glasses. "I've lost a cat, a gray and white maine coon with a red collar. I was wondering if you might have seen him."

"I see him all the time, him and a black cat," he replied, putting down his garden sprayer and wiping his gloved hands on his pants. "I'd shake your hand, but I've got poison on my gloves here. Anyway, the two of them run along those trees. I wasn't sure if anyone owned them. I see a lot of cats in there all the time."

"The black cat with the red collar is mine, too" I said. "There's another black cat, a tom, I don't know who he belongs to. And an orange Himalayan, a monster of a tom. He's not ours either. But the gray and white, he's mine and he's missing."

"Well, someone may have taken him," he hesitated "but you know, there are a lot of animals around here, owls and coyotes, and they'll kill a cat if they can catch him."

I think my expression gave my thoughts away because he quickly added, "but I haven't seen any owls large enough to take a cat so far this year. They aren't that common, but they do come around. None of these hawks," he said, pointing to the circling flock of enormous birds overhead, "are large enough to take a cat. It's just the owls and the coyotes, mostly.

I thanked him for his time and sloshed home again across the damp yards, not feeling any better at all.

As I walked home again, wondering where Stinky is, I realized that the trees where he and Little Girl like to go run all the way down the length of the street behind us, much further than we can see. And the people living along that street obviously see them running there all the time. I hadn't dropped any flyers in their mailboxes. I only put them in the mailboxes along my own street.

That same night, Friday, I printed up more flyers. Saturday morning I waited for the mailman to come. I wanted to put them in the mailboxes after he had come, but before anyone had a chance to get their mail. It was raining. In fact, it was pouring. The yards and streets were covered in rapid running water like a whitewater river. I didn't care. I want my cat back.

Finally the mail came. I grabbed my flyers and jumped into my truck. The street may be directly behind our house, but getting there is a bit of a trek. I drove the several blocks to the other street, noticing the rain letting up mercifully. Then I parked my truck and got out to walk the long street, stuffing flyers in every mailbox. I held them under my coat to keep them from getting soaked. It was a long walk, and it was wet. As I walked I looked around at every house, hoping against hope to see Stinky peering out someone's window or running across their yard. But there was no sign of him.

My shoes were filling with water as I stepped through streams that ran across the road in my path. I realized that we all live on a hill and that the houses behind me are higher than my house, even as my house sits at the top of the hill compared to the other houses on my street. I hadn't noticed this before. All the water flows down and down, into some poor soul's yard down there somewhere below me.

In my last home, that poor soul had turned out to be me, thanks to some relandscaping the wealthy neighbors had all done as they had their inground pools installed. I had even gone to the trouble of finding and purchasing flood insurance at that house, after having done all we could to set up huge drain pipes underneath the yard and yet still seeing deep waters rise dangerously close to the house in heavy rains. I felt relieved to know that this time there would be no rising river or lake against my home in rains such as this. This time my yard would send that water flowing right on past, down the road and away from my house, my empty house, where a cat was supposed to be, but wasn't. Where was my cat?

All day Saturday I sat and waited, looking outside frequently in the hopes that someone had gotten their mail, read my flyer, and realized that they had my cat. All they had to do was open the door and let him go. He'd come straight home, probably with a mouse he picked up along the way. But he never came.

Saturday night My Wife and I sat and talked. She told me for the first time how she had noticed that as we walked away from Stinky, he had stopped and hunched his back up, apparently seeing someone or something in the darkness that we had not noticed. She thought nothing of it at the time. It hadn't struck her as anything ominous until I mentioned the coyotes. Since then she had been wondering and worrying, what if we had stopped and gone back to investigate? What if we had simply taken Stinky back inside the house before going on our walk? Oh, if only.

Sunday came and we went to church. We sat in Sunday school when they asked for prayer requests. Should I even bother mentioning that while some here have a child in the hospital or a mother with cancer, that we are worried about our cat? We looked at each other silently. We had both come to believe that Stinky was almost certainly dead. And so we said nothing.

Sunday was a sunny day and we worked out in the yard just a bit. Little Girl came outside and walked around with us. She actually seemed to enjoy herself a bit. She always enjoys when we come outside with her. But she didn't last long. She didn't have much energy. Before long she was back inside the house again, lying in her bed just like before. I couldn't help looking around during the time we were out, always keeping an eye out, wondering if maybe Stinky might come running from the trees, pouncing across the yard as he always used to do, bounding with the energy of a nearly grown kitten. But of course he didn't.

Sunday night we watched a DVD, "The Bee Movie" by Jerry Seinfeld. It was funny and gave us a much needed relief of laughing. Little Girl slept in My Wife's lap while we watched it. Everything felt normal. Except for Stinky not being there with us. But we were putting it out of our minds. There is so much to worry about without having this, too. And anyway, what can we do? We've just about done all we know to do at this point.

I'll admit, I had prayed several times for Stinky to return. But over the years, as I've lived and learned hard lessons here in Memphis, my faith has faded. I don't know how to explain it exactly. It's not that I don't believe God has the ability to do things. It's just that I don't believe he cares quite so much. I don't mean that I don't believe he cares about people in general. Just about me. Even that isn't really an accurate description of what I've come to feel. I don't really know just how to express it. I just don't pray the way I used to. I pray more like someone trying not to annoy someone. I guess I've come to believe that God doesn't like me and I don't know what to do about it.

5 days have passed and we have given up. Stinky is almost certainly dead. Anyone who might have taken him has seen the flyers. He has been running through the neighborhood for months. Why would someone just now conclude that he's abandoned and take him? And he's fixed. Why would he just suddenly take off, not coming home after 2 major storms, and wander? Fixed male cats don't run like that. Only toms do that.

Monday morning came and I sat at the table eating my breakfast. I didn't even bother to look outside. Little Girl was still in her bed, not stirring to eat or ask to go out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving. I turned and looked.

There was Stinky with no collar on, laying on the back porch, flipping a mouse around in his paws, flicking his tail, looking over at me as if nothing had happened. I had to look twice to be sure it was him.

The Adventures of Spongebob Stinkypants - Litterbox Troubles

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.

The Bathroom Adventures of Spongebob Stinkypants

"Why do you keep peeing on my beanbag chair?" I asked my cat, Spongebob Stinkypants, as I held up my beanbag chair and shook it at him. He sat looking up at me, flicking his tail on the hardwood floor excitedly, as he tried to figure out if we were were playing or if he was in trouble. I stuck the section of the chair with evaporated cat pee in his face and made sure his nose was right up in it.

"Here, right here, smell familiar?" I asked him. He backed up a few steps. "Yeah, I thought you might recognize this." And then I carried the chair past him to the hall bathroom, throwing open the door and tossing it into the shower, where I began washing it off for the second time in as many weeks. Spongebob pranced into the bathroom behind me. He plopped down into the cool tile floor behind the now half-open door and spread out.

He loves to follow people into the bathroom. It's his favorite room. If you flush the toilet, he'll jump up onto the rim of the bowl and stick his head in, watching the water go down like it's some great event. More than once I've been standing up peeing, only to see a fuzzy head and paws appear between my legs and lean way out into the toilet, watching the yellow stream spash down into the clear water.

I rinsed the dried cat pee off the vinyl beanbag chair and threw it down into the shower to drip dry. Then I walked out, closing the bathroom door behind me and forgetting about Spongebob.

I plopped down on the couch in the living room and resumed watching "Mission Impossible" with My Wife.

After a long time had passed, I began to hear noises coming from the hall bathroom.

"Did you lock Stinky in the bathroom?" My Wife asked me.

"Yeah, apparently I did," I responded. Neither of us offered to get up and go let him out.

Before long, I heard the sound of cabinet doors being opened and then springing shut again. "Ah, he's learning the fine art of opening cabinets. Great," I commented.

And then we heard another noise, a different noise, the sound of something sort of rumbling. "What the hell was that?" I asked My Wife.

"I don't know. Go check," she replied, still not making any attempt to get up off the couch.

Curious, but dreading the answer, I got up and walked over to the hall bathroom. I turned the doorknob and pushed on the door.

BUMP!

"What the hell?!"

"What?" My Wife yelled to me from the living room. "What'd he do?"

"The door won't open," I yelled back. And then I pressed on it hard enough to bend it just a little so I could peek inside the bathroom. I could just barely see a long strip of wood directly behind the door.

"Oh hell!" I cursed. "He's pulled open the vanity drawer and now the door won't open. Stinky, you dumbass, now you're stuck in there!"

He had pulled the drawer all the way open, so that it was fully extended and completely barricading the door.

Stinky was meowing pitifully now, tired of being in the bathroom and beginning to realize from the tone of my voice that bad things were happening, or about to.

"You opened it," I said uselessly to the cat, "now close it back."

He meowed in response, but didn't touch the drawer again.

I could only just open the door a tiny crack, just enough to see in, but not enough to get anything substantial through, like my hand or even a thick screwdriver. The more I looked at the situation, the more I began to think I was going to have to break the drawer just to get inside.

"Where is the long, thin screwdriver?" I asked My Wife, the woman who constantly steals my tools and then scatters them all about the house rather than putting them back in my toolbox.

"I don't know!" she yelled, apparently insulted that I had asked her. Then she began yelling questions to me about the situation, why I couldn't open the door, and couldn't I just poke my hand in and close the drawer and other thoughts a person might have from a comfortable seat on the couch.

"No, there's no room. There's barely any room to even see in, let alone poke a screwdriver or something in there." I reponded. "I think I may have to trying using a knife blade. It's about the only thing thin enough to fit that would allow me to push on the drawer."

I left to get my longest knife.

When I arrived back, My Wife was just opening the door.

"What did you do?" I asked her.

She held up a long, perfectly flat kitchen utensil. "Spaghetti fork!" she announced proudly. "Good thing I'm Italian!"

Spongebob came running out of the bathroom and went straight up to me. I took his furry face in my hands and said in a playful voice masking my irritation, "So, if you could open the damn thing, why couldn't you close it?"

He meowed happily and then wrapped his paws around my wrists and bit the shit out of my hand. Life in the Memphis Household was back to normal again.