Christmas Come Early

My cat turned four years old last month. I'm not sure what this means in people years, but you'd think that in cat years, one would know how to use a litter box by then. You'd think.

Coco is, to say the least, difficult. We got her when she was only a few weeks old and apparently raised her, in absolute terms, wrong. She doesn't sit in our laps, doesn't like to be pet for more than a minute, and insists that we stand next to her when she's eating. The first two characteristics are mildly acceptable. As a family, we've come to terms with the fact that we got a defective feline, and now cherish every morsel of what limited affection Coco chooses to show us. The last characteristic, however, is WICKED annoying. She will meow at us until someone gets up and accompanies her to the kitchen. If we walk out in the middle of her meal, she'll follow us and meow incessantly until we walk back with her. This is more annoying than you could ever imagine, but with wireless internet and a chair in the kitchen, it has become remotely acceptable.

Yesterday, after much nagging, I walked to the kitchen with Coco and waited patiently for her to finish her meal. She popped into her litter box after she was done, but HIGH TAILED (pun intended) out of it after Little One dropped something outside and made a huge ruckus. As I left the kitchen to see why the little bugger was whining, I stepped in a little surprise that was probably intended for the litter box. There, in the middle of the hall, was a fresh piece of you know what, and half of it was on the bottom of my you know what.

Now, some of you may not know this (because you've been living under a rock), but I am the biggest podophobe known to man. Any activity involving those things attached to one's ankles sends me into a panic attack complete with heart palpitations and high pitched shrieks. So, having to wash CRAP off my singular footses was excruciatingly disturbing. My family, and cat, will never recover from the "EW! EW! EW!"s that lasted for about seventeen and a half minutes following the initial contact.

And to think I wanted to stay home instead of going to a Halloween party last night. My hatred for costumes is pretty high on my list of neuroses, but I'm thinking suffering through some ludicrous get ups would have been better than spending my evening disinfecting my ankle accessories.