I'm trying to run a respectable patio here...

In which your humble narrator cleans up the garbage heap of vice, fornication and sin that sits outside his side door.

At 4:40 this morning I woke up to a persistent yowling. As I emerged from sleep I was fairly sure it was feline in nature and my thoughts turned immediately to our emergency back-up cat, Akbar. He only has two brain cells and if one of them goes on the fritz he frequently gets "stuck" in whatever activity he was pursuing when half his cognitive function blinkered out. I figured, eyes still heavy, that he was downstairs yowling at phantoms. But it kept up.

I rolled over to make Wife-a-roo go deal with her retarded cat (Akbar is why Wife-a-roo is no longer allowed to pick pets independently) when I noticed that Akbar was sitting by the bed, not making any noise at all. Our main cat, Harold was asleep at the foot of the bed as usual.

So I stumbled out of bed to investigate the yowling. It was loud. It was punctuated by wild shrieks. I went downstairs to the kitchen. The window was slightly open and the noise was louder. I opened the side door to see a guilty looking tom cat shuffle off into the front yard. An irritated pair of yellow eyes peered back from under the raspberry canes. A saucy looking little lady cat had apparently decided to turn our patio into an early morning niche d'amour. She had tags on but was clearly on the prowl for some lovin', making me wonder about whatever neighborhood yahoos hadn't spayed their little darling. She was also clearly peeved about my arrival on the scene.

It took much more effort to dislodge her from her little hissy-hussy den than I anticipated. Which is how I ended up in a bathrobe chasing a spitting mad, hot 'n' bothered lady cat out of my yard with a broom at 4:45 in the morning. As I trudged back into the house, Venus was particularly bright in a cloudless sky.

Five Things I Hate Today - Cat Barf Edition

In which your humble narrator expounds upon five hated things.

1. Waking up at 5:00 because a cat is projectile vomiting on your bed. And it wasn't even my cat, it was my wife's mentally challenged, Siamese jerk-cat. Then he ran away while barfing, leaving a vomitous trail across the bedroom (the only carpeted room in the house) and down the wall along the stair case. Just try going back to sleep when your bedroom smells like mostly digested pet-grade tuna.
2. Cleaning the coffee-maker
3. The fact that it's not socially acceptable to laugh at middle aged, spandex clad people on those damn roller-skis
4. People that refuse to use capital letters in emails
5. Ear wax
   

Sofa Bites Man

In which your humble narrator gets a cold, fords a river of snot and is victimized by an overstuffed sofa.

Everyone has a cold. Wife brought home some hideous virus from her workplace where (she says) many people do not wash their hands after using the restroom. And this is a department in the medical school at a giant mid-western university. (I'll give you a hint: Its first initial is "U" and its last name is "of Minnesota.") Anyway, the department where Wife works is also a clinic so there are all sorts of members of "the public" who probably sneak down to Wife's office and lick her doorknob on their way to the bathroom.

Both children briefly turned their attentions from poop-making to snot making. We're talking rivers here. In case you do not have experience with small children, I will tell you something else. Small children hate having their noses wiped. Child #1 has become so good at avoiding the Kleenex that I have resorted to lying in wait behind pieces of furniture until he walks by at which point I leap out, tackle him and then wipe his nose. This is mostly so I don't have to watch him lick the snot from his upper lip, a charming little habit that makes me want to throw up. Children are revolting.

To add insult to an already crappy weekend I cut my finger on our living room sofa. What the hell? I was doing a real vacuuming job in the living room, moving furniture and the whole shebang when I noticed that the back of the leather sofa by the window was pretty filthy since our main cat and our emergency back-up cat (also known as Retardo Montalban) sleep up there and drool and shed. So I got a dust rag to wipe off the cat detritus and managed to catch the very edge of a strip of velcro that holds the cushion to the back of the sofa in between my fingertip and the nail of my right middle finger, slicing deeply under the nail. It hurts out of all proportion to the severity of the injury. Plus there's not a big scabby wound or anything to elicit the sympathy that I so richly deserve.

Bastard sofa. From now on only our least-liked, most-flatulent guests will be sitting on you, friend.