Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Stool

A few weeks ago, Mike found poop in the garage.  He told me about it, and then I forgot about it until my foot brushed up against it a few days later.  My unspoken rule about messes of all kinds is: finders cleaners.  If I'm the first person to discover puke in the hall, I'll clean it up before somebody steps on it.  So I didn't take ownership of the pile in the garage.  For several days, I steered around it.  One day, in a moment of divine justice, Mike stepped right in it. The next day I noticed it was gone.

Then poop started appearing in our closet.  I couldn't figure out which cat was doing it.  There was blood in it, so I called the vet and was told to bring in a stool sample, which leads me down a little rabbit trail about euphemisms.  I thought about trying to write a blog post entirely out of euphemisms, but that would probably take up way more time than I want to give.  I'm not a big fan of talking around unpleasant things.  Why can't we just say someone died instead of "passed away"?  Being "vertically challenged" myself, I have to employ stools often. There's one in my pantry, one in my closet, etc., because I can't reach things on high shelves.  So how did my friend the stool become a euphemism for poop?  I fantasized about sawing off a corner of my pantry stool and bagging it up for the vet.

Anyway, I bagged up the fecal matter and delivered it to the vet.  They tested it and didn't find anything unusual, so they wanted me to bring in the offending pet. I didn't want to pay to have both cats examined, so I said I would wait until I could determine which one it was.  They were both highly suspect, but I was leaning heavily towards Snickers.  The next day, I caught Marty in the act of dumping a load in the closet.

So yesterday Marty went to the vet.  After some tests and an exam, the vet determined that he didn't know what the problem was. So I came home with an expensive tube of tuna-flavored laxative and a bill for $72 for the privilege of having the doctor tell me he doesn't have a clue.  This morning, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the unmistakeable smell of cat poop.

4 comments:

Jamie Schroderus said...

Oh no.... you think its because she is so mad? 8-/

Janes Family said...

The vet said it's a possibility. I'm not sure she's crafty enough to play such head games. And I don't know why she's so mad! Snickers is nothing but sweet to her, and we still love Marty just as much as before.

Jamie Schroderus said...

Did the family that lived there before have pets? Sometimes animals can pick up on that and get territorial. Hope she gets over it.

Janes Family said...

The family before us had a dog. It didn't seem to bother Marty for the first year and a half she lived here. I think her big beef is Snickers. Maybe she thinks we took away her buddy Jason and replaced him.