Pee, poop and puke. My grand life.
Recently, I was encouraged to rescue Priscilla, an adorably vulnerable shelter dog. My third child was fostering her up in Santa Monica, and, I must admit, the photo of the scruffy little thing with her trusting eyes and croppy, floppy ears tugged at my heartstrings…just not enough.
NOPE, I texted in all caps to Rocío, NO WAY.
For one thing, I was still mourning my last dog, a sweet little tri-colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Coconut. A nearly perfect pet, her only failings were 1) throwing her head back and howling when left alone, even for the time it took me to move the laundry from washer to dryer, and 2) her obsession with protecting us from other dogs, cats, and galloping wildlife on Nat Geo by launching herself furiously at the screen and then running behind the set, looking for stragglers.
She was such a lady. Even her poop was perfect. The other day I was picking up the unique squiggles that my grand-dog, Kingsley, spreads around all over the grass (I swear that pedigreed pooch is incapable of producing a decent dog pile) when a wave of nostalgia hit me. Coconut never failed to deposit her dainty droppings in one discrete corner of the garden. I’m considering erecting a shrine.
By the time her congestive heart failure took her last November, Coco was taking a lot of meds and had a special diet, so each time I was away, I had to leave her pills counted out and her food prepared for serving. Not having that canine responsibility frees me to hang out in San Diego with my newest grandson, two-year-old Lucas.
Except that, even when I am home, I’m not entirely free. I am kept busy by my two grand-pets, Kingsley, also a Cavalier (a Blenheim), and Silver, an ordinary gray cat with white paws, aka The Cat.
Kingsley belongs to my oldest daughter, Rosalena, who works from our home. In the same room where I write. And yet, at exactly 4:30 every afternoon, Kingsley emerges from his den under her desk to sit in front of my chair whuffing at me, knitting his eyebrows together and staring (I swear) at the clock on the wall behind me. He cocks his head. “What’re you waiting for? It’s 4:30.” He swivels his gaze toward the office door and backs up, in full body wag. “Okay? Now? Are we going now?”
It’s nice to be loved.
Silver belongs to my middle grandson Marco. That is to say, Marco adopted her around seven years ago when he was about ten. His deep concern and affection for the tiny kitten lasted nearly a month, and then gradually the litter box became invisible to him and decidedly present for the rest of the family. Arguments and nagging ensued, to little avail. The cleaning of the litter box passed from one family member to another until Marco went off to college, and somehow the cat’s bathroom ended up in my part of the house.
I am scrupulous about scooping the poop every morning before breakfast, but even so, as if obeying some cosmic force, Silver will occasionally drop a dollop of doo-doo on the mat in front of her pristine litter box.
She is essentially an indoor cat, but just before bedtime when Kingsley is let out in the garden for his nightly pee, Silver, unless we are hyper-vigilant, silently transmogrifies out the door into the dark, climbs over the wooden fence, and sets out for nocturnal adventures.
Our family has lost two cats to the coyotes in nearby canyons, but Silver seems to have acquired her predecessors’ unused lives. Around 2:30 am, she returns, starving and anxious to get in. But does she climb back over the garden fence to the patio door? Why would she do that when my bedroom is on the ground floor at the front of the house?
Mid-dream, I awake to the scritch-scratch of her claws climbing up the screen on my window, accompanied by loud meowing and intermittent thumps when she falls off. I am not a foul-mouthed person, but when this happens I often forget my usual constraint. If cats could speak, Silver’s vocabulary would rival a sailor’s. In two languages.
Silver is not a snuggler. She doesn’t love any of us, doesn’t settle on laps or curl up next to anyone in bed. Isn’t that what cats are supposed to do?
She does know where the treats are kept, however, and I trained her to sit with her rear end flat on the floor in front of the open pantry before I will place three or four tiny squares in front of her paws. While she crunches her dainty way through them, Kingsley shows up and performs his three tricks (sit, shake, and down) in order to earn his own rewards.
That’s on the good days. On the obnoxious days, Silver simply plants herself beside the closed pantry door and screetches. Kingsley, not to be outdone, stands in front of her and barks. I’m never sure if he is trying shut her up, or if he just wants a piece of the action, but with the combined meowing and barking, you’d think they were alerting us to the imminent invasion of armed intruders.
Before we invested in a robotic cat food dispenser, Silver demanded breakfast by meowing me awake, sitting on my bedside table or perching on my pillow around 5:30 every morning. So now I sleep with the door closed while the robot feeds her a little bit at 5:30 and another little bit 6:00. Even so, she often wakes me at dawn, on the other side of the door, with a peculiarly hollow yowl.
This is because Silver is a gobbler. Gobblers inhale their cat food faster than their digestive system can handle it, and guess what happens then? Puking.
After the hollow yowling, puking happens on the tile floor right outside my bedroom door. Stepping barefoot into a mound of moist and slimy undigested cat food is the worst wake up ever, but slipping on a regurgitated hairball is a close second.
I’ve just learned that cats can live for seventeen years.
So, bringing this all together, I returned home late last night after spending twenty-four hours caring for my aforementioned two-year-old grandson, Lucas, who is working at being potty-trained. His mother Daniela, my youngest daughter, (yes, yes, three daughters) was spending the weekend at Lake Tahoe with girlfriends. Lucas and I were having a lovely morning together when his mother called. She and Lucas spent a few minutes conversing in toddler-speak, and then he turned to his toys, and she and I chatted until her mom-radar kicked in.
“Where’s Lucas now?” she asked. Based on previous experience, I rushed to the bedroom where Lucas, feeling ignored, had crawled into his parents’ bed, pulled the covers up over his head, and peed.
Shutting down the app, I ripped the wet bedding and the mattress protector off the king-sized bed and stuffed it all into the washer. Lucas stared wide-eyed as I ranted. “Nana is MAD AT YOU! Peeing in Mama’s bed is NOT OKAY! Pee goes IN THE POTTY!”
His lower lip began to tremble. Tears welled. And then I flat out lied. “And Scout is MAD AT YOU, too. He’s gone away!” I did not share that I’d flung his favorite electronic toy up to the highest shelf in the closet. My daughter could sort that one out when she returned.
Then we both took a deep breath and went off to spend a delightful day at the Children’s Museum.
Late that night I arrived home ready to crawl into my own comfortable bed. Having spent the previous night on a slowly deflating blow-up bed in my daughter’s living room, I was exhausted and ready to snuggle under my own luxurious down comforter. I flipped on the light in my bedroom.
But what was this? I turned on another light. No way! Not tonight! A large yellow circle stained my side of the bed. I poked it and sniffed. Dog pee.
Whatever message the Universe was sending me would have to wait till morning. I flipped that comforter around so the stain was at the foot of the other side of the bed and crawled in.
Just as I drifted off, I remembered Priscilla, that foster dog up in Santa Monica.
Hell, no.
Nancy Villalobos
NOPE, I texted in all caps to Rocío, NO WAY.
For one thing, I was still mourning my last dog, a sweet little tri-colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Coconut. A nearly perfect pet, her only failings were 1) throwing her head back and howling when left alone, even for the time it took me to move the laundry from washer to dryer, and 2) her obsession with protecting us from other dogs, cats, and galloping wildlife on Nat Geo by launching herself furiously at the screen and then running behind the set, looking for stragglers.
She was such a lady. Even her poop was perfect. The other day I was picking up the unique squiggles that my grand-dog, Kingsley, spreads around all over the grass (I swear that pedigreed pooch is incapable of producing a decent dog pile) when a wave of nostalgia hit me. Coconut never failed to deposit her dainty droppings in one discrete corner of the garden. I’m considering erecting a shrine.
By the time her congestive heart failure took her last November, Coco was taking a lot of meds and had a special diet, so each time I was away, I had to leave her pills counted out and her food prepared for serving. Not having that canine responsibility frees me to hang out in San Diego with my newest grandson, two-year-old Lucas.
Except that, even when I am home, I’m not entirely free. I am kept busy by my two grand-pets, Kingsley, also a Cavalier (a Blenheim), and Silver, an ordinary gray cat with white paws, aka The Cat.
Kingsley belongs to my oldest daughter, Rosalena, who works from our home. In the same room where I write. And yet, at exactly 4:30 every afternoon, Kingsley emerges from his den under her desk to sit in front of my chair whuffing at me, knitting his eyebrows together and staring (I swear) at the clock on the wall behind me. He cocks his head. “What’re you waiting for? It’s 4:30.” He swivels his gaze toward the office door and backs up, in full body wag. “Okay? Now? Are we going now?”
It’s nice to be loved.
Silver belongs to my middle grandson Marco. That is to say, Marco adopted her around seven years ago when he was about ten. His deep concern and affection for the tiny kitten lasted nearly a month, and then gradually the litter box became invisible to him and decidedly present for the rest of the family. Arguments and nagging ensued, to little avail. The cleaning of the litter box passed from one family member to another until Marco went off to college, and somehow the cat’s bathroom ended up in my part of the house.
I am scrupulous about scooping the poop every morning before breakfast, but even so, as if obeying some cosmic force, Silver will occasionally drop a dollop of doo-doo on the mat in front of her pristine litter box.
She is essentially an indoor cat, but just before bedtime when Kingsley is let out in the garden for his nightly pee, Silver, unless we are hyper-vigilant, silently transmogrifies out the door into the dark, climbs over the wooden fence, and sets out for nocturnal adventures.
Our family has lost two cats to the coyotes in nearby canyons, but Silver seems to have acquired her predecessors’ unused lives. Around 2:30 am, she returns, starving and anxious to get in. But does she climb back over the garden fence to the patio door? Why would she do that when my bedroom is on the ground floor at the front of the house?
Mid-dream, I awake to the scritch-scratch of her claws climbing up the screen on my window, accompanied by loud meowing and intermittent thumps when she falls off. I am not a foul-mouthed person, but when this happens I often forget my usual constraint. If cats could speak, Silver’s vocabulary would rival a sailor’s. In two languages.
Silver is not a snuggler. She doesn’t love any of us, doesn’t settle on laps or curl up next to anyone in bed. Isn’t that what cats are supposed to do?
She does know where the treats are kept, however, and I trained her to sit with her rear end flat on the floor in front of the open pantry before I will place three or four tiny squares in front of her paws. While she crunches her dainty way through them, Kingsley shows up and performs his three tricks (sit, shake, and down) in order to earn his own rewards.
That’s on the good days. On the obnoxious days, Silver simply plants herself beside the closed pantry door and screetches. Kingsley, not to be outdone, stands in front of her and barks. I’m never sure if he is trying shut her up, or if he just wants a piece of the action, but with the combined meowing and barking, you’d think they were alerting us to the imminent invasion of armed intruders.
Before we invested in a robotic cat food dispenser, Silver demanded breakfast by meowing me awake, sitting on my bedside table or perching on my pillow around 5:30 every morning. So now I sleep with the door closed while the robot feeds her a little bit at 5:30 and another little bit 6:00. Even so, she often wakes me at dawn, on the other side of the door, with a peculiarly hollow yowl.
This is because Silver is a gobbler. Gobblers inhale their cat food faster than their digestive system can handle it, and guess what happens then? Puking.
After the hollow yowling, puking happens on the tile floor right outside my bedroom door. Stepping barefoot into a mound of moist and slimy undigested cat food is the worst wake up ever, but slipping on a regurgitated hairball is a close second.
I’ve just learned that cats can live for seventeen years.
So, bringing this all together, I returned home late last night after spending twenty-four hours caring for my aforementioned two-year-old grandson, Lucas, who is working at being potty-trained. His mother Daniela, my youngest daughter, (yes, yes, three daughters) was spending the weekend at Lake Tahoe with girlfriends. Lucas and I were having a lovely morning together when his mother called. She and Lucas spent a few minutes conversing in toddler-speak, and then he turned to his toys, and she and I chatted until her mom-radar kicked in.
“Where’s Lucas now?” she asked. Based on previous experience, I rushed to the bedroom where Lucas, feeling ignored, had crawled into his parents’ bed, pulled the covers up over his head, and peed.
Shutting down the app, I ripped the wet bedding and the mattress protector off the king-sized bed and stuffed it all into the washer. Lucas stared wide-eyed as I ranted. “Nana is MAD AT YOU! Peeing in Mama’s bed is NOT OKAY! Pee goes IN THE POTTY!”
His lower lip began to tremble. Tears welled. And then I flat out lied. “And Scout is MAD AT YOU, too. He’s gone away!” I did not share that I’d flung his favorite electronic toy up to the highest shelf in the closet. My daughter could sort that one out when she returned.
Then we both took a deep breath and went off to spend a delightful day at the Children’s Museum.
Late that night I arrived home ready to crawl into my own comfortable bed. Having spent the previous night on a slowly deflating blow-up bed in my daughter’s living room, I was exhausted and ready to snuggle under my own luxurious down comforter. I flipped on the light in my bedroom.
But what was this? I turned on another light. No way! Not tonight! A large yellow circle stained my side of the bed. I poked it and sniffed. Dog pee.
Whatever message the Universe was sending me would have to wait till morning. I flipped that comforter around so the stain was at the foot of the other side of the bed and crawled in.
Just as I drifted off, I remembered Priscilla, that foster dog up in Santa Monica.
Hell, no.
Nancy Villalobos
