i shit you not
my cat noir, sofi wan kenobi, in her declining years, pisses and shits in weird places. places other than her glitzy shiny new black n white ‘bmw’ litter box. i don’t think she does it on purpose. she’s doing her elderly best. she can’t strap on an old lady’s diaper. she can’t telegraph her defecation location so i can intervene. she’s getting used to her new box, but accidents happen. the other night i smelled cat shit at 4 am. it woke me up. i thought ‘no way. she couldn’t. she wouldn’t. maybe it’s one of her rare cat farts. maybe she shat in the kitchen and it wafted into my bedroom. forget about it, berlin. go back to sleep.’ 5 minutes later it still in the air. i snort and sniff like Devine in Polyester. i yank on the lamp light and there on my floor are three semi-hard tootsie rolls, underbelly wet and curdling the room. sofi is purring. i scrape ’em up into a paper towel, clenched jaw and squirt chemicals at the spot in hopes that her remains won’t invite a recurrence. why is this happening!? in trying to leap through the closet portal into the kitchen to take a proper dump in the proper box, is she thwarted? are the jump-up level boxes i set up to make it easy for her not properly aligned? does she give up, have to go and do her business on my floor because she can’t help herself? is she vindictive? ‘he didn’t get things right so i’m gonna shit on his fucking floor…’ does her aging sphincter fail to hold tight. (and that’s only the shit angle.) the piss part, that foul acidic toxin, permeates the apartment. it hits you in the nose when you unlock the door and though it does have a grapefruit like altered state, it reeks. i’ve read that this is not uncommon among grandma kitties, but it’s nasty. i can’t tell where it’s coming from: the bathroom? the living room? the kitchen in front of the fridge? the back porch? (sniff and search.) case solved one afternoon when i see her crouched on the lower shelf of the plant table, belly to grid, cutting loose onto the tile. splishy splashy with a kitty face warning: ‘don’t watch’. today, armed with the anti-cat piss product, i wipe things down again, fingers crossed that she will stop once and for all. i don’t blame her. she’s old. but there have been times when she came after me on purpose. a visitor was visiting. (sofi is not fond of shared affection.) we were getting it happening when that ungodly turd curtain hit the bedroom air. there she was, on my bed, back arched with black Team America turds curling out of her furry hole. the kid bounced — abrupt end of visitor and visit. ‘sofi!!! for fucks sake!! this is over the line!!!’ she didn’t care. sofi and rick: a dysfunctional love affair.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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