Up and at 'Em

I woke up this morning to one of worst sounds that can disturb slumber: retching. It was about four in the morning, which tends to be when I sleep the lightest, and even in my sleep-hazy mind, I knew the sound of puking. It was a cat, not a child, which was better than it could have been, I suppose. On the other hand, my children are old enough to know to run to the bathroom or a trashcan if the urge to vomit seizes them. The cats do not know where to aim, and so, no matter where they heave, it’s as bad a spot as any.

So I was awakened at four in the morning. I recognized the sound, and I knew it was coming from somewhere in my bedroom. I had a couple of options. I could jump out of the bed, grab the heaving animal, and throw it in the tub or the hardwoods in the hallway, or I could turn on the lights and scare it enough to spew. I knew my husband would be even less pleased than I to wake up to the combination of cat puke and sudden overhead lighting. Plus, he is still upset the cats aren’t dogs.

I also knew that the longer I waited to make a decision, the less likely I would need to.  Also, the longer the heaving continued, the less familiar it sounded. I sat up and looked around the floor, but couldn’t see a dark figure hunched over on the floor in my line of vision. The damn cat was hiding under something.

I knew it wasn’t the usual puker. Every family has one member who is the puker, and in my house, it’s my cat, Yoko. She is almost all black and has long hair, not Persian long, but long enough to clog the drain that is her cat throat about once a month. I buy this disgusting smelling paste from the vet called Laxatone which is supposed to help her pass her hair balls, but she hates it even more than I do. There is blood loss every time I attempt to use it, and so I tend to conveniently forget until, say, she hacks up a hairball. She’s nine, so that makes roughly 108 hairball vomit episodes I’ve had to clean up over the course of her lifetime. It seems a small price to pay for the pleasure of her company.

The other cat, Moshe, is a short haired tuxedo with a vacant stare and a surprisingly docile personality. He also has the ability to eat like a billy goat and not throw up often, which adds to his overall charm. I don’t mean the eating part, because that’s annoying as shit, but generally speaking, he keeps down whatever he ingests. I was surprised to wake up to the sound of him heaving since, really, it is never him. Even when he gags he manages to keep it down. He would make a terrible bulimic.

What really sucks is that I totally understood why he was puking. Moshe has a serious problem with Christmas. While Yoko is content to sleep on the tree skirt in a modern Normal Rockwell kind of way, Moshe prefers to eat Christmas. He chews on the light cords. He eats ribbons off of presents. He snacks on fragrant potpourri. And he feasts on his favorite, ornaments.

Moshe has developed a rather strong fondness for ornaments. He likes the glittery thread from which they dangle. He is a fan of the soft batting filled Santas and snowmen. He especially likes sequins and beads, and he will even chew a bit on the wire hooks we use to hang the decorations. He has also discovered that the stronger branches on the lower part of the tree work well as a ladder to work his way higher up to the more delicate and special ornaments that we have learned to hang out of his reach. I kid you not; he has actually made a series of steps out of the branches, kind of like a spiral staircase. And at fifteen pounds, he is not able to nimbly float up the tree; I am fully expecting to find the whole thing on its side one morning because of him.

This year, he also discovered the hand crocheted garland that my older daughter made a few years ago. He has already chewed it into several pieces, which look lovely hanging around the tree, like clumps of intestine. He had to work hard at it, so there are many cat saliva thickened spots which add a special touch that says homemade. I doubt my daughter even remembers how to crochet anymore, so it’s not like she is going to make another one any time soon.

After some midnight snacking on the holiday décor, Moshe clearly needed some Pepto. And so instead of drinking a bunch of water and sitting up for a few hours, he heaved and hunched and puked on my bedroom floor, before I could find him. While everyone else was waking up to the sound of their alarms or the smell of breakfast cooking, I was on my knees in the dark with the Woolite pet stain remover and a wad of paper towels, crawling under the bed and looking under the chaise lounges until I found the three, yes, three places where he succeeded in clearing his digestive system.

Here’s my question: what do dogs do for Christmas? Do they eat ornaments off the tree? Do they try to climb it and knock it over? Do they find the cranberry cheesecake cooling on the counter and take delicate nibbles off the top? The truth is, I am a little scared there is going to be a puppy on Christmas morning, and I just need to know what I am in for. At least the presence of a puppy would scare the cats away from the tree and all its many delicacies.

I am going to add carpet cleaning to my Christmas list.