The other day I woke up and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and discovered that one of the cats had gone into the shower at some point and taken a huge grumpy crap on the floor. Now, if you live with animals you no doubt have had this exact experience—let’s face it, no matter what kind of animal you choose to invite into your home, chances are very, very high that they will take a dump inside the house at some point. And heck, with cats you more or less expect them to shit in the house! It’s kind of the whole point. So it’s hard to get too upset when they occasionally send a message via their bowel movements.
Of course, this prompted an immediate DefCon 5 cleanup of the shower, but I didn’t get too upset. My wife, The Duchess, and I lived through the Mad Pooper, after all.
The Mad Pooper What Poops at Midnight and At All Other Times
The Mad Pooper episode was a couple of years ago, now, and it is exactly what you think: One of our cute little cats began crapping all over the house. Again, if you have cats, this is going to happen from time to time, so we didn’t panic at first. A poop once in a blue moon is nothing to get excited about.
But it happened again, and again. When we found a dookie in our bed one morning, we knew something had to be done. The Mad Pooper had to be unmasked and taken into the Vet for a checkup, and possibly sold to cat traffickers. I’m just kidding about that, but the Mad Pooper was definitely getting under our skin. We were even starting to look at each other with some side-eye, trying to decide if it was at all possible that one of us was the culprit in the strangest case of marital passive aggressiveness ever.
In the end, the Mad Pooper chose to reveal herself: Our cat Coco, who is about eight pounds and moves with the sort of deliberate slowness indicative of either great wisdom or great stupidity, walked into the bathroom one day, looked at us, and proceeded to crap right on the rug while maintaining eye contact. It was terrifying. We got her checked out, bought another litter box, and the Mad Pooper was no more.
The Hygiene of Homer
Since then, we acquired a new tenant in the form of Homer, who started off life as an adorable little nubbin and then swole into a being we refer to in hushed tones as The Junkyard Cat. Homer is just a regular cat in many ways, but not all ways. For one thing, he reacts to any kind of unexpected situation with hissing and scratching, and then returns five seconds later with a hangdog expression that definitely implies you should never ever startle poor Homer again.
For another, he is the dirtiest cat imaginable.
Inasmuch as I contemplate the act of going to the bathroom beyond my own necessities, I assume it to be one of those simple natural functions that nature has more or less perfected. And yet Homer emerges from the little box looking like someone tried to mug him. He is always covered in litter and his own excretions, and I am not making this up.
And yes, this means that if you have ever shaken my hand, you have basically touched Homer’s butt.
Homer does make sad, futile attempts to groom himself, but there’s something missing, and so he spends much of his time moping about with a general expression of Eyeore on his face while his hindquarters resemble an industrial accident. There’s nothing physically wrong with Homer; one assumes it is the lack of a parental influence when he was a kitten. Or possibly a simmering hatred of us all that he expresses in an unusual and disgusting manner.
All this to say that a mere pile of poop in my shower does not phase me. At least it doesn’t as long as I can remember where I was and how much I drank the night before.