Freak Magnet Dave

Have you ever had one of those days?

Monday was mine.

Got up, puttered around the house a bit in the morning (it was my day off), went to my chiropractor appointment, went to the bank, did a couple of other errands and headed back home. My plan for the day was to clean my aquariums, do a water change, clean the bathroom within an inch of its life, tidy up the house and get dinner ready. Since The Squeeze was having people over that night for a meeting, I figured I really needed to do the cleaning...the bathroom sink was getting a nice coat of shaving cream and soap skiz.

I walked into the guest room / computer room and I took the lids off of the aquariums, turned off the heaters and filters and began cleaning the algae off the sides of the tanks. I brought out the siphon and was about to hook it up to the sink to drain the tanks when I heard my cat making the frightening sound she does when she is about to vomit all over the house. It is the freakiest thing to hear. It's sort of like a disembodied child's voice mixed with a bit of Linda Blair in The Exorcist with a bit of harmonica thrown in for good measure. The first night I heard her do it I nearly ran screaming from the house. I kid you not, it is right up there with that scary sound from The Grudge.

Now, when this cat vomits, it isn't done in one spot. As she is preparing to puke her tubes, she runs around the house leaving little drops of saliva, then when she's ready for the main event, she hunkers down, her body starts convulsing, and you hear this sound like when you hold a big bottle of Coke upside-down and let it glug out. Ya, that's it. A glug. While she's glugging and puking, she keeps backing up, leaving a trail of vomit that spans anywhere from six to twenty feet. That's what normally happens.

In a few instances, for the sake of easy cleanup, I go behind her and hold her body in one place while she pukes. Sort of like holding the long hair of a high-school friend while she's puking in the toilet. That's friendship! Normally when the cat is done, she runs away, stepping through the vomit and tracking it around anyway, but it's the thought that counts. It's still a lot easier to clean! Again, that's what normally happens.

This particular time, I heard the scary sound and thought "Oh shit! Not now!"
I went running from the bedroom to the living room, dodging a couple of saliva drops on the hardwood, and try to grab her so she can puke in one spot. She was having none of it. She started running away from me, down the hallway, and I was hoping she was going to head down to the basement to do her thing. No such luck. Instead, she ran straight for the spare room where I was working on the tanks. She hopped up on the bed where she often sleeps, and continues her possessed child sounds. "Oh no you don't!" I thought....or shouted. I grabbed her in an effort to prevent her from making a mess on the bed, and she decides that while she's being held in mid-air, it was the perfect time to empty her bladder. That's right, this damned cat pissed all over the bed, the books, papers and recipes I had sitting on the bed, the scale on the floor, the brown wicker waste paper basket and a good portion of the floor. I managed to get her held in the hallway where she finally threw up. Of course, the hallway, being porcelain tile, has grout lines, and the gastric juices naturally flow into the porous spaces. Fuck!

So she prances off to relax in the living room, feeling much better, I'm sure, and leaves me to clean up the aftermath. The first step was to wipe off the books, actually, they were binders, so I was able to clean them off and get rid of the smell with the help of bleach. I figured I would have to type up some recipes again and toss the ones she hit. I cleaned up the pile in the hallway and scrubbed the grout. Washed and bleached the scale, the floor, and cleaned the brown wicker basket in the bathtub and left it there to drain. I stripped the bed and washed the duvet cover in the first load, and while I was drying it, I put the duvet in the wash.

While I was doing this, The Squeeze arrived at home because we had an appointment at the bank to review our mortgage at 4:00. It was about 3:30 and I clearly was in no mood to go, besides, I still had my aquariums to finish with and then I still wanted to clean the bathroom. It was at that time that the brother-in-law came up from his basement lair to inform us that the washing machine was leaking all over the floor. The Squeeze went down to pull the duvet out and put it in the laundry tub and empty the washer. For some reason, the washer was unable to handle the duvet (even though I've washed it several times before). It was making a terrible noise apparently, but I didn't hear it over the rage in my own head.

So The Squeeze went to our appointment alone, I finished the tanks, and started to tackle the bathroom. When I looked into the bathtub where I had rinsed the brown wicker waste paper basket, I realized that an awful lot of the brown dye from the basket was puddled in the tub. That's right, brown dye, bone coloured acrylic tub. I'm sure I screamed "NO!" again when I saw this, thinking for sure that I now have permanently stained our tub. Thank God it washed away, but baby, I was stressed! I managed to clean the bathroom without further incident and was able to get dinner ready and the kitchen cleaned up before The Squeeze's guests arrived. I almost had one person willing to take the cat off our hands, but I had to cancel the negotiation process. As much of a pain in my ass as this cat is, I can't part with her.

This whole incident reminded me of one Christmas day when The Squeeze's family was over and I had the place all done up, and our other cat who has left us now, decided to wander around the room while we were eating dinner and threw up on the area rug under the table. The whole place is hardwood and tile, and he had to find the 20 square feet or so of carpet to puke on. Cats. Can't live with them, can probably easily live without them!

Now I just need to wait for my next day off so I can put that wet duvet into a garbage bag and lug it off to a laundry mat with a big-ass washer. To be safe, I think I'll double...better yet, triple bag it. I don't need diluted cat urine leaking out and messing up my car.

I'm sure one day I'll laugh about all of this. Today isn't the day though.


UPDATE....

The Squeeze took the duvet to a laundry mat (or laundromat) on Saturday to wash the duvet we left to drain in the laundry tub. He put it in a nice roomy front-loader and added the soap and let 'er rip. A couple of minutes later he looked up from his book to see mounds of foam pouring from the soap compartment on the top of the machine. The little Vietnamese woman who was working there started screaming at him "TOO MUCH SOAP!!! TOO MUCH SOAP!!!" The Squeeze told her he only added one of the little single load boxes of soap that they sell in their machines, so that shut her up while she mopped up the mess. A couple of minutes after that The Squeeze had a lightbulb moment. We never did rinse the soap out of that duvet at home. So it appears that, in fact, there was TOO MUCH SOAP used. It just so happens that half of it was already in the duvet. The Squeeze thought it better to keep that information to himself. Better to think to yourself that you screwed up than admitting to the one accusing you of screwing up that you actually did!