Monday, January 10, 2005

The Grossest Vomit Ever Puked

I was already late for the bus when the cat threw up. Now, we live in a multi-species, multi-level household. It's sort of like Wild Kingdom in here, where only the strongest survive. However, in this case, the strongest among us is a 2.5 pound bunny wabbit with a nasty temper and an uninhibited sexuality. This struggle to live is not what I'm talking about here, what I'm talking about is who cleans up after the crap/vomit/urine/hair that all of these little cuddlies produce.

Part of the deal we have with the dogs is that they clean up after the rabbit when he gets let out to play. The dogs have a great time, and they get snacks. Lots of snacks. Lots of little, round, dark snacks. The way they go after rabbit poop, it's as if I spread Bac-os liberally around the living room carpet.

My single thought this morning, then, was should I clean up the cat vomit or let the dogs eat it? It wasn't a hairball (which our cats, thankfully, seldom produce), but a patch of barely-chewed premium cat food that Grex placed neatly in a line. It looked, more or less, like canned dog food, which our puppies never get. Seemed like a treat to me. You can guess for yourself what I did.


Which brings me to the story of the day. Yes, this is a story about cat vomit, I call it "The Grossest Vomit My Cat Ever Puked".

I grew up on a farm, so there were always plenty of mice around. Our cats were fair-to-middlin hunters, and caught the wee mousies quite frequently. They liked to eat inside, and since I walked barefoot in the house, often found the remains of the day's meal with the sole of my foot (or between my toes). Imagine, if you will, stepping on a mouse organ, a mouse head, or, one time, only the very end of a mouse nose with the whiskers attached.

Nothing compares, my friends, to the day I found "The Vomit". This particular pile of puke was in the front room of the house, and had already grown cold. It had the requisite mouse parts in it: feet, nose, hair. What made this pile of puke so amazing was that the mouse had been pregnant, and from the look of the fetuses lying in digestive fluid, had been quite far along.

The fetuses had not been chewed.

Rather, they were simply swallowed whole and had been vomited up in a neat little line...looking for all the world like they were headed off to mousie kindergarden. I might have dressed them in little pinafores and played Madeleine. The cat, of course, would have been the nun.