Secret Santa

My cat, Moshe, is really getting in the holiday spirit. Today he left me a present on the floor of my laundry room.

He apparently had a little trouble with constipation or a clinger-on, if you will, so he decided to drag his asshole all over the floor until the turd was finally dislodged. Nothing makes you happier to have a pet than finding a shit smear across the floor, ending in a piece of crap, like a period on the most disgusting sentence ever written.

In his defense, he can’t really wipe. No thumbs. The struggle is real. He did the only thing he knew to do, the poop scoot, and the worst part is, I knew something was up when I heard him getting out of the litter box. I was downstairs, sitting on the couch for ten minutes of alleged “me” time, while upstairs there was a great ruckus going on, with the sound of the kitty litter door flap opening and closing and then some crazed running around the house, cat claw toenails scrambling against the hardwoods.

I didn’t discover the scene of the crime until a few hours later when I went up to the laundry room to transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer. I cleaned up the mess and then disinfected the floor and the bamboo slat rug which he defiled, wondering where else he may have rested his cat ass after his largely unsuccessful bowel movement. So far it seems an isolated incident.

I am not surprised if he is feeling a bit sluggish and irregular this holiday season. He has been feasting regularly on Christmas ornaments from the day we put up the tree.

We have one of those fake that we decided looks real trees, pre-strung with white lights.  My husband adds a modern version of old-fashioned bubble lights, and then we all decorate with our eclectic assortment of ornaments while trying not to kill each other. We get new ornaments in our stockings every year, snails for me, robots and dentists for my husband, ballet related ornaments for the younger dancy teen, and owls and sharks for the older and more difficult teen. A large number of our ornaments are glass, and we make a point of hanging them up higher on the tree, ensuring each one is secure on its artificial branch. Towards the bottom of the tree are the unbreakable and handmade ornaments, since they are not as delicate. I am sentimental to a point, but some of those handmade ornaments weren’t all that swell when they first came home some ten years ago. If the cat wants to eat those, have at it.

Every year, Moshe dines on whatever he can reach. When he was a kitten, he would climb in the tree, which was really cute until it fell over. Now, at a robust 15 pounds, he realizes that flimsy tree can’t support his excess weight. He still tries, which I know because of the odd way the lower branches are mashed down, kind of like a fat cat tried to sit on them. We will lose an occasional glass ornament to those climb attempts, but only the ones we really love. After he gives up on reaching the higher branches, he concentrates his effort into snacking on whatever is close at paw.

Mostly, he likes to eat the metallic loops used to hang the ornaments on the branches. Pompoms and ribbons also make a delightful midnight treat. He enjoys chewing through cords and felt. Every morning before breakfast I do a quick check of the tree skirt for his nighttime victims. If you look at our tree, it looks like we have a toddler. All the ornaments are a good two feet from the bottom.

Two days ago, he tried to eat one of my husband’s metal robot ornaments. It was a cute ornament too, with arms and legs attached with curly springs like those inside a clickable ballpoint pen. Moshe removed the robot from the tree and chewed the spring off the top and also one of the arms. I couldn’t find the arm anywhere and immediately had a panic attack that he had actually swallowed it. I had this unshakable mental image of me taking him to the vet, where they would find the arm on X-ray, and then he would get really sick because he couldn’t shit a robot arm.

I found the arm a day before I found his feces debacle, so at least I know things are moving and he isn’t obstructed, which is a Christmas present in itself.

Not to be outdone, as I write this, Yoko decided to throw up a hair ball in one of the empty shirt boxes I have out for gift wrapping. A Merry Christmas indeed.