Catwoman Begins

My cat Mamie, perhaps sensing my impending transformation to Fit and Healthy Thirtysomething and fearing that my days of sloth-- and therefore my days of allowing her to lie on my chest for hours on end while I shovel fistfulls of Cheez-Its down my gullet-- are coming to a close, has decided to attempt to sabotage me the only way she knows how-- by peeing on everything.

I take that back-- she has, in the past, broken out what must be considered the Fat Man and Little Boy of the cat arsenal, the Giant Flying Boogery Ear Stink, which afflicted her for about a year in Wilmington. While a successful surgery was performed to eliminate this scourge on my personal life ("Hey, want to come over and sit on my furniture, which is covered with gelatinous wads of goo that smell like a homeless man's belly button?"), I think Mamie sort of realized that with great suffering came great amounts of petting, and filed that away in her brain.

And I have to say, the Random Pee Bomb is nearly as effective as the Boogery Ear Stink-- it certainly smells worse, although this time Mamie has been civil enough to contain the battle to the basement, specifically to a woven rug that Ben put under the laundry table. And since it's so centrally located, it doesn't have the visual wallop of the B.E.S., which could be flung in a six foot arc in any direction (which was really, really hard to explain to my landlord upon relocating). But the R.P.B. is more of a psychological weapon-- every whiff penetrates straight into your brain with the ominous message "Say goodbye to your friends, kemosabe. You're the cat lady now."

Especially horrifying about this is that the woman who lived in our house before us was a cat lady; according to our neighbor Frank, who somehow knows everything about everyone in our neighborhood, there were, at one time, thirteen cats living in our house. Some might say that this could be the cause of Mamie's problems-- that she's simply retaliating against the ghosts of Pee Bombs past.

But I have a more terrifying theory: what if the house makes you a cat lady? What if, when she moved in, the old owner was a young, vibrant, vitamin-taking hipster? And the the house mugged her with its cat ladyness, and all the sudden her clothes all had a vague funk and she wanted to prop cross stitched pillows on every available surface?

If this happens to me, consider this my will. You will know what has become of me. And do not destroy Mamie-- she's but a mindless pawn in the house's deadly game. But I beseech you, please, before anyone comes over to mourn me as I stare at them from behind bifocals and a fur-smeared, teddy-bear appliqued sweatshirt with mock turtleneck underneath, please at least destink my basement. And scan it for signs of Boogery Ear Stink. Just in case.