Premature Evacuation

My cat Moshe and I have gotten into an unpleasant little routine. We are not on the same sleep cycle, and we both like to wake the other one up. I don’t feel particularly bad about it when I do it to him. Moshe has no trouble falling back to sleep. No cat naps for him; he sleeps heavier than any cat I have ever had, like the dead, both eyes closed, body totally limp. It’s no big loss for him if he misses out on an hour or two of deep sleep, because chances are good he will still get a solid fourteen to sixteen hours of quality snooze time.

I, on the other hand, am lucky to get six to seven hours of interrupted sleep a night, an unfortunate pattern I developed over eleven years ago during my first pregnancy. At first it was because of the pregnancy itself, with its lovely heartburn and ligament pain and difficulty flipping over in bed. Waking up for feedings replaced that joy, which was then replaced by a few years of night terrors (my daughter’s, not mine), which was then replaced by my own weak bladder and racing thoughts. If I’m lucky, I can get up, pee, go back to bed, and fall asleep within fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, I am not a very lucky person.

My cat is well aware of this model, the waking up nightly between 3:00 and 5:00 am. Moshe has adjusted to my nightly routine, and he prepares himself for my early morning trip to the bathroom. He will awaken from his usual spot under my bed and join me in the bathroom, where he likes to rub his whiskers all over the corner of the wall, followed by trying to knock the toilet paper roll off the holder with his face. Then he trips me in his rush to get to the garden bathtub, where I usually turn on the faucet and give him a little fresh running water to drink. I’ll grab a sip of water, from my glass, not the tub, before heading back to bed, leaving him to slurp up the droplets of water and shed black fur all over the tub.

I then settle myself flat on my back, press my head firmly on the pillow, and wait for Moshe to join me. He jumps up on the bed, purring loudly, his pupils fully dilated, and commences making biscuits on some part of my person. Usually, he will knead his little declawed paws on my right shoulder and armpit, which I rather enjoy, especially if I lifted weights the day before. Nothing beats a cat massage to relieve those sore muscles. Occasionally, he will opt for my belly, in the large intestinal region. Fourteen pounds of cat pressing on your upper abdomen is cheaper and faster than a high colonic, but just as effective, let me tell you. This kneading and purring will continue until he either wears himself out or he wakes up my husband, who is not such a fan of feline lovin’ in the morning.

I allow this behavior for a number of reasons. First of all, he is so gosh darn cute and sweet, how can you say no to that face? Secondly, he is persistent as hell. His biscuit making and walking around the bed is the cat equivalent of trying to get into my pants, and he won‘t take no for an answer. It’s easier just to let him have his way with me, and then he will roll over and go to sleep. He also is pretty good at opening closed doors, and if he can’t get it open, he will stick his paw under it, smacking it a bunch while yowling loudly. It is impossible to sleep through any of that ruckus.

That is pretty much the routine year round. In warmer months, he sleeps under the bed. In colder months, he sleeps on the foot of the bed. But the love fest, well, that’s in season every season.

The other morning, I got up for my three o’clock pee, and Moshe had just settled into his biscuit making in my armpit when something went horribly wrong. He suddenly stopped his kneading and began looking around behind him. I sat up and noticed what looked like a bug on my arm, right around the same time that Moshe furtively licked the comforter. I scooted him out of the way and saw that a trail of whatever was on my arm was also on my sheets and duvet, and Moshe wanted to clean it up before I noticed. He went back to licking the spots vigorously while I sat there dumbfounded. In my sleepy disgusted haze, I figured it out; his anal glands spontaneously excreted themselves all over my side of the bed. And my arm. At three in the morning.

Yes, that’s right. I was covered in my cat’s ass juice, juice which he clearly did not want me to know about. Moshe seemed downright embarrassed that such an appalling thing had occurred and was doing his best, without thumbs, to clean it up. As disgusted as I was, I couldn’t throw on the light and toss the cat out of the room and change the sheets, because on the other, cleaner side of the bed, my husband slept the blissful sleep of the unaware. If he had awoken to what was taking place on my side of the mattress, well, let’s just say our household would be down one cat.

I was not an expert on cat anal glands at the time, but I am now. Just read this part, so you won’t have to Google it yourself later. Yes, it turns out that dogs are not the only ones with this dirty little secret. Cats too have hidden ass glands. But unlike dogs, who like to scoot across your carpet, dragging their filthy asses all over the place, cats just excrete a little at a time when they do their business. Unless they are frightened or very excited, in which case those little buggers just go off without much warning, sometimes even all over your arm before the asscrack of dawn. It’s kind of like a skunk, I suppose, except you don’t have a skunk next to you in your bed, making sweet love to your armpit.

A little ass juice can be fixed with some spot cleaner and a thorough run through the washing machine. My cat’s pride, well, that will take a bit more to fix. At least he has laid off the mornication for the past few days. But he still can’t look me in the eye. No judgment, I told him. Sometimes love can be a little messy.