#023 In which our hero chases a cat, fruitlessly.

My wife owns a cat. I also own a cat, but my cat is a great cat; a loving purring machine that I can only fault by his insistence of sleeping on my head at night. We've come to terms with this; and those terms are "you can only kneed at my skull with your dagger-like claws for so long before you get tossed across the room."

But that's not the cat we're talking about. We're talking about my wife's cat. The bane of my existence.

Like me, I'm sure you have a morning routine; shower, shave, dress, eat breakfast, etc. But, unlike me, you don't have the evil yellow cat from hell living with you. What I spend my mornings on generally breaks down like so:

• 5% Showering
• 2% Brushing teeth
• 2% Feeding the dog
• 1% Packing a lunch
• 90% cleaning up cat puke

Even though my wife insists otherwise, I'm pretty sure her cat got dropped on his head at some point. He is clearly retarded. I mean, if you sat down a human at a table and put in front of him a plate of lima beans and a plate of dried leaves - which would you expect him to eat? Yes, of course, the lima beans. But, if he ate the dried leaves instead, what would you think? That's right - retarded. But what if he ate both? Knowing that lima beans didn't agree with him? That, in a nutshell, is my wife's cat.

He'll eat anything you drop on the floor. And his stomach can't really handle anything expect the special dry cat food he gets (and I should point out, gets in ample quantities - it's not like he's starving or anything, the little shit) so it all comes back up in great heaving spurts, which I have to clean up - usually when I'm already late for work.

Now, here's the problem: this activity pisses me off mightily. I try to grab the cat and hold him over a newspaper or something until he's done yakking. And to be fair, I'm none too gentle when I do this. And there is some yelling. The bottom line is this, when the cat starts puking, he runs from me.

And if you think I'm pissed about a pile of cat puke, you can imagine what it's like when I'm cleaning up a trail that goes from under the kitchen table to the basement. But today... today that little shitter outdid himself.

First I hear him puking in the kitchen. I ran downstairs to see that he ate what appeared to be a 12lb. standing rib roast, which is now a partially digested mass half on the rug, half on the hardwood. He high-tails it to the basement, and I'm in hot pursuit.

I can't find him until I hear more heaving from under the futon, which I tear away from the wall to find another puddle of puke. I clean this up and follow him back upstairs.

At this point, fool that I am, I think he's done. I go to get dressed (oh yeah, I'm running around in nothing but my boxers) and I hear the sound that really sends me over the edge. He's puking AGAIN, and this time he's under the bed! I pound on the bed yelling "get out from there you little fucker!" - to no avail. I finally pull the bed out from the wall and he bolts downstairs again. There is another pile of puke, right on top of a sample catalogue I had written and hadn't yet stuck in my portfolio. Thank god for glossy stock.

He vomits two more times, and I clean it up and go to work. No doubt there will be more when I get home.

And the bane of my existence laughs, and laughs, and laughs.