Yes, I do like to vomit upon the carpet under the piano. Of course it is much harder to clean there than it is to clean vomit off the linoleum in the kitchen. Why else would I do there – if not to make them get on their hands and knees? It is obvious that the mother needs exercise, as she is gaining a bit every year. Anyway, I don’t like the lingering smell of Mr. Clean they use on the Persian wool. Pine Sol’s “tropical flowers” does not have quite so bad a smell. But both of their smells need to be lessened with fresh sick – tuna does that. Tinned tuna is nice and odoriferous, and does a good job, especially when they don’t find it for a day or so. I am not sick on the Andean silk throw rug, oh no! – that is my favourite spot to sleep; it is so soft. I could be friends with a baby Alpaca. I’d snuggle up to him.
Zadok the Beast after confessing to his crimes
Zadok the Beast after confessing to his crimes
Furballs are a little different. If I had fresh catnip and grass to nibble it might be better. If they brushed me every day, as they know they should, they would have fewer furballs. Humans’ laziness and their inattentiveness to detail is amazing. How they can walk past my brush every day without picking it up to brush me is a microcosm of their indifference to my wellbeing in itself. They need to be shaken from their alternating torpor, stupor, and overreacting hysterics. Sometimes they shout at each other. Why? They are not thoughtful of my sensitive ears. They sleep in a half-death state for a third of the lives. They do not even keep half an eye open. I can walk on their heads in the morning, and they still don’t get up to feed me when I need to be fed. They sleep in the same spot every night and I think they must be the most insentient of all beings. They do not even lick each other.
What do they do all day? They get in boxes and leave. They come back. They are not affectionate. They do not even smell each other, but they enjoy smelly food – and spending hours making it. They spend longer making it – and delaying my supper – than they do eating it. Then they sit on a sofa, and watch a blinking box, staring stupefied at it, for hours, night after night! Sometimes they are gone for fractions of a moon, occasionally for nearly a moon. When they are gone, they send in someone new who does not even appreciate my needs. It is not good. I tend to think they have incipient dementia and forget where they are. Someone finds them and sends them back.
Or it could be that they are actually stupid. Maybe they just forget to feed me and empty my litter box on time? What is so hard about that? Of course I will go on the floor beside the box if I smell anything in the box. I should have clean litter every other day, at least. It is outrageous I have to go all the way downstairs to the basement (where it is cold!) to use it, too. They have a special room upstairs beside the bedroom for their litter bowl. It is warm up there. That is where my litter box should be, or in their warm bedroom. And, yes, I will pee at the back door if they let raccoons into my back garden. The sheer audacity of the racoons – the biggest one I call Napoleon – to come and sniff at my backdoor cannot be tolerated. The humans make no attempt to keep them away from the windfalls from the apple tree. The apples ferment, and the raccoons get drunk eating them. I cannot stand an animal that cannot holds its liquor.
Perhaps the most insulting aspect of these humans is that when I need treats, I will actually come and rub against them, being inordinately affectionate, and sit down on their computers, newspapers and books for the necessary strokes and tickles, and then they will physically push me away! Not only are they rude, sometimes I don’t even get treats as a result! Yet these selfish humans get whatever they want, when they want it. You really do wonder whose house it is.
