WARNING: This post contains scatological references. Read on at your own peril.

I am becoming more and more certain that I am definitely a cat person. Fluffy is in her "terrible twos" stage an is very difficult to live with. Gone are the days of sitting serenely in the morning, coffee in one hand, staring out the window, enjoying the company of a purring and contented cat. The cat is neither purring or content, and there is no such thing a serenity any more. Chaos reigns. Fluffy the dog is just so *in your face* I'm now sure that I'm not ready for children. While Fluffy is gleefully jumping up and down with the strange idea that my ears make the best chew toys, Shmoggleberry and I exchange meaningful glances, much like those knowing looks two tired and frazzled mothers exchange in the supermarket. Words are not necessary to extend sympathy to a fellow sufferer. I can only stand Fluffy's "boing" time (she just sort of bounces here and there with all the energy and enthusiasm she can muster) for an hour or so after work, and then I put her to bed. I understand now why parents enforce the 8:30pm bedtime for kids. Its not so that the children get a good night's sleep - it's so the adults can spend some time doing adult things. If they are lucky like me, they'll get about 10 minutes of relaxation between the end of the chores and the start of the snoring, the latter usually beginning some time before I actually to take myself to bed. The snoring stops abruptly when I step on dog toys, dog debris or dog excretia on the way to bed, which begins another burst of chores.

There is a benefit to a mad puppy who's so vicious she's scared of the fridge door shutting. She has made us vacuum regularly. Very regularly. About every four hours regularly. I guess this is training for baby feeding, after all Fluffy was purchased mainly to deal with my growing maternal urges. Now that I've experienced raising a puppy, instead of just hitting the "snooze" button of the biological clock one more time, I've gone on to switch the alarm off, remove the batteries and smash the clock to smithereens.

Vacuuming up shredded toilet paper is not so unpleasant. Bits of ex- cardboard and half-chewed bits of rawhide are also fairly innocuous. What was my latest knitted project until Fluffy happened to it is more of a challenge, and the rootball from last spring's camellias gets the old Hoover a bit overworked. Its the kitty litter that is the worst though. Its not something that can be ignored as it hurts like hell to step on, and if enough of a pile is deposited anywhere it may confuse Shmoggleberry regarding the correct location of his box. It rattles away in the vacuum and I despair of the machine's insides. However, I'd much, much prefer to vacuum kitty litter than deal with what must be Fluffy's very favourite activity: Litterbox treasure hunting.

When she first started looking for "buried treasure" I naturally enough thought is was Shmoggleberry. Someone scratching through the kitty litter is a normal household sound to my ears, and so I didn't really pay it more than a cursory amount of attention. But it went on and on. I'm not sure how long as I wasn't really didn't notice anything out of the ordinary in the beginning, but as the sound continued, it slowly dawned on me that something was awry. It was not so much the sound itself, but the rhythm that must have caught my attention - it wasn't so much a delicate, neat, precise sort of scratching of a cat, but the sound of someone digging and flinging with gay abandon, the burrowing and dispersing that only a person that was *born* to dig can do.

FLUFFY!!!!!

As a hint to the readers, never call anything you are likely ever to want to get angry with "Fluffy". Its not a word you can say with any harshness in your voice whatsoever. "Fluffy" can not be hissed, vehemently. You can not say "fluffy" with acid dripping off it. "Fluffy" can not be uttered as a harsh reprimand. No sir, you can try to say "Fluffy" with whatever inflections you like, but it will still come out like you were praising and adoring something, well, Fluffy.

Fluffy stopped spraying bits of clay from here to next week, and looked up at me with her puppy-dog eyes. You can get immune to the puppy-eyed look. It takes a lot of practice, but it can be done. I'm getting the hang of it remarkably quickly. Like my namesake, I was not amused. There was cat litter *everywhere*. The trajectories of the stuff would have amazed even NASA scientists. It was all over the laundry, out into the hallway, in the bathroom, and had also managed to do a complete 90 degree turn and go into the toilet. Unfortunately, the stuff that Shmoggleberry deposits into the box had also been randomly relocated around the laundry region. Not that that was the worst part, because at least it was dry and could be picked up. Oh no, there was worse to come.

Fluffy, seeing the look on my face that, funnily enough, resembles the look of Shmoggleberry pre-nose-whop, did a quick and unceremonious exit, spraying up yet more cat litter as she scrabbled to get enough traction to leave the room at light speed. No, it wasn't the content of the litterbox all over the place that bothered me the most, it was the "snack", the prime piece, the freshest item in the litterbox, that she was carrying around in her mouth as she scampered post haste from the laundry.

The problem was, of course, that we had now started to play chase & tug-of-war. I have been trying to teach her how to play fetch. She's now got the hang of chasing the ball, and bringing it back, but doesn't quite understand "drop" yet. She thinks its a great game, me trying to win the tug-of-war by extracting the ball from her mouth. She loves it. So there I was, chasing the dog 'round the lounge room, occasionally lunging at the litter-encrusted cat-crap hanging out her mouth. Shmoggleberry, wisely chose not participate and got to see the whole disgusting epic from the his vantage point on the top of the lounge.

Eventually Fluffy solved the problem for me by gulping down the last part of Shmoggleberry's pre-digested breakfast, and tried to thank me in typical doggy fashion for the excellent game we just played. I swear, if she didn't have those cute floppy ears and those incredible puppy-dog eyes, she'd be back at the pound in no time flat. And people wonder why I'm such a staunch cat person. Among all their other wonderful attributes, cats would never dream of having recycled cat food breath, and none have shown any inclination to lick my face with same!

Copyright © Vicky Chapman
September 27, 1999