02/23/04’s illustrious band:

Kibbletoss

Brought to you by Warren Peace, Feline Despot of Sensational Acres.

When I got home from my classes on Saturday, I found that Warren Peace had left a calling card in the middle of my bed: amid the yellow sheets lay a large ABC leaf that showed he’d been grazing on my peace lily. Sigh. Laundry time. Again.

I am amazed at the frequency and abandon with which cats throw up. When I’m sick enough to toss my cookies, it’s an event; to them, it’s nothing more than a super-sized belch. They can do this a few times a week without seeming any the worse for wear. Are dogs this prolific, too?

And the places! I’ve found lost lunches in the bed, in my shoes, on the pages of an open magazine (not a treasured book, fortunately), on bathmats and doormats, on couches and chairs, on the (formerly) oatmeal-hued carpet -- where I see ample evidence that their expensive “all-natural” cat food still contains plenty of chemical dyes -- and even once, horribly, on the grate over a heating duct.

But I never find the remains of a meal on the easy-to-clean linoleum or in the bathtub or outdoors. Never. Cats are such fastidious creatures, you’d think they would take as much care to sequester this mess as they do their others, to carefully cover it up and pretend it never happened. But no, they seem to prefer public, upholstered areas. And if I don’t notice what’s happened quickly enough to suit them, they make a point of drawing my attention to it.

And the timing! There’s never a great time for this sort of thing, really, but cats seem to have a special gift for choosing the least convenient moments to hurl. Mine usually manage to do it when I’m in a hurry to leave the house, or when I’m on the phone with someone who does not wish to hear me bellow, “What did you just do?” Or right outside the bathroom door when I can’t jump up to scoot them onto the tile, or when I’m trying to share a special moment with a special someone.

And yet I keep these cats around. Why? Because I’m a sucker for soft coats and delighted purrs and sneak attacks on dastardly shoelaces.

Today around the world: February 23 is Green Monday on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

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