P'nK Books

by DeLeon DeMicoli

There’s vomit on the carpet.

            I come home from work and find sand castles of mushy indoor Purina cat food scattered on the floor of the living room, office, and bedroom.

            I look down on both of my cats, Boogie Down and Cha Cha. They’re the best. I have the photos to prove it.

“Who puked?” I ask.

            Both cats sit on their hind legs and stare back at me. Cat hair tumbles across the carpet like someone blew on Seed Head Dandelions.

            My wife says, “One of them must be sick.”

            Cha Cha is an extroverted cat. She barks like a dog. She barks at everything: You, me, people, birds, cars. She’s very playful and talkative. She’s skinny and her chin sticks out because she has an overbite. Every time we come home from work she greets us at the front door. My wife says, “Who’s there?” multiple times. Cha Cha gets excited and drops to her side, rolls on her back and barks, happy we’re home. She also enjoys pawing at windows and mirrors, sleeping on my wife’s side of the bed, and drinking bath water from the tub, which has stopped me from peeing in the shower.

            My wife decided to adopt Cha Cha so Boogie wouldn’t be alone. She picked her up at an animal shelter in Chicago. When she brought her home she was small and skinny. Her head looked too big for her body. She had a respiratory infection and stomach problems. We kept her in the bathroom for two days so she could get well. When we let her loose in the apartment we realized Boogie was very content on being an only child.

            Boogie is a fat cat. She weighs over fourteen pounds. My wife calls her Bear Face. Sometimes Boogie will lean up against a wall and sit upright, trying to clean her belly. When she does her Buddha stomach protrudes out, hairy and plump, soft as a bean bag. She can’t even lick her own butt. She always has dingle berries stuck to her butt hole. You walk around the apartment and sometimes you’ll come across poop stains on the kitchen counter, the bathroom counter, or on a book cover left on the bedside table. You find tiny spots on surfaces that look like someone squished a mosquito, but really it’s just where Boogie sat down.

            Boogie was our first pet. We adopted her in Michigan. She purrs when I comb her hair with a brush, then growls when she’s had enough. Her and Cha Cha only get along when Boogie says it’s ok to play. If Cha Cha tries to play when Boogie isn’t in the mood, Boogie swats at her and runs away. The only thing Boogie likes is food and sleeping. She enjoys sitting on my wife’s lap when my wife organizes her cosmetics. She’s not much for toys and rarely runs. It’s as if she knows the whole concept of cat toys are for the enjoyment of her owners to watch her play and take photos. She doesn’t buy into the whole perception of how cats are supposed to act. When you throw a furry ball across the room or a tiny fake mouse up in the air, Boogie will not move. She will stare at you. You look at her long enough and you can read her thoughts as she says, “Fuck you if you think I’m running across the room so you can take another goofy ass picture of me to put on your Facebook page. Give me some food asshole.” Then she returns to her cat condo and sleeps for another ten hours.

Boogie and Cha Cha, they’re the best. But one of them is sick. We come home from work and someone has puked up an ant colony.

            Again my wife asks each of them, “Who isn’t feeling well?”

            The cats stare at her. Heads slightly tilted to the side. Cha Cha licks her own face. Boogie has one side of her lip stuck to her gums, making a face like a wiseguy. She makes this face because she’s missing a fang. We had to get it pulled because the tooth was rotting. The veterinarian said she has bad genes. Maybe she knows that and that’s what makes her hate everything.

            My wife kneels to pet Cha Cha. She goes to pet Boogie, but Boogie walks away to her food dish and eats. She crunches down on the food and swallows. Then she pukes it up.

            My wife takes Boogie to the veterinarian. After receiving an Ultrasound the vet says Boogie has something stuck in her lower intestines. The food isn’t getting to her stomach, that’s why she keeps puking. The doctor advises we give Boogie a half of a Pepcid AC pill once a day. Only serve plain chicken and rice for dinner. She doesn’t want to operate yet. She wants to see if the object will come out on its own. She says to check back in a week. If the object doesn’t come out, then she’ll operate.

Boogie is brought back home. We continue to find small piles of puke on the carpet. I clean the puke up and I am convinced we will not get our security deposit back once our lease expires.

            At night, I break a Pepcid AC pill in half. I get on my knees with Boogie in between my legs. I lift up her head and place the pill on the back of her tongue. She wiggles from side to side. Her tongue shoots in and out of her mouth. I keep her head tilted hoping the pill will go down. She growls and swats at me and says, “Get off me! I’m not eating that shit.” Her head is released from my grip and she spits the pill on the ground. I try again.  Her mouth begins to foam and she looks rabid. She finally swallows the pill. I let her go and she runs off. We do this for two nights. She begins to puke less. We think she’s getting better.

            Each day I return from work I sift through cat poop, hoping to find something, anything that she might’ve swallowed: a button, the ring around the milk jug, a small screw from when we put together our Ikea furniture.

            I find nothing. I get scared. I don’t want to put Boogie under the knife.

            On the third night I give Boogie a Pepcid AC pill. Carrianne cooks rice and chicken. The cats eat. We rest and watch television. Carrianne enjoys our view. This is the reason we chose the apartment. The view is amazing. It looks out onto the Bay. On a clear day you can see as far as Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge. On the Fourth of July I didn’t leave the apartment. I could watch the fireworks from outside my window.

            As we sit and watch television and enjoy our view I sniff something awful. My head rotates from one shoulder to the other. The smell gets stronger, making my head tilt back and my eyes water. I close my eyes and wipe them and shake my head from side to side hoping the quick movement makes it go away. I get up and close the window. It’s still there. I smell my shirt. I smell my armpits. I say, “Where is that coming from?”

            My wife and I look around the apartment. The smell gets worse. I think I see squiggly lines in the air. We hear paws shoveling cat litter. We think Boogie must’ve pooped out whatever was trapped in her intestines.

            I place the collar of my shirt over my nose. It smells as if the insulation in the dry wall was filled with a hundred dirty diapers and dead skunks.

            I walk into the office where the kitty litter is kept. I wait for Boogie to finish. The kitty litter boxes have a plastic dome over them. There’s a flap to keep the stench locked in the litter box. The plastic force field we had hoped would secure the smell into a confined location has failed us.

            Boogie walks out of the kitty litter box. She shakes the kitty litter trapped in her paws onto the carpet.

            I keep my collar over my nose and grab the small blue shovel I scoop kitty litter with. I push the flap back and scoop up big sandy rocks of dried up urine and stick it into the Litter Locker, which is a Diaper Genie for cats. I scoop up hardened Tootsie rolls of poop. I dig in both litter boxes, breaking apart the poop with my shovel, hoping to find the object. I sift through the massive remains Boogie just left behind that are soft as cookies, easy to break open and dissect.

            I find nothing.

            The kitty litter boxes are clean. I return to the living room. I shrug when my wife asks if I found anything in Boogie’s poop. I can’t explain it.

            Cha Cha is pawing at the window. She barks at birds.

            Boogie jumps onto the dining room table. She eats chicken and rice. She seems fine, back to normal. Thank goodness, no surgery.

            I get a glass of water. I pet Boogie on the head. She gets mad and steps back and continues eating. Behind her is a trail of poop, muddy and wet on the black dining room table. She stands up and walks around the table and eats at a different angle.

            I see a long piece of poop hanging from her butt. It dangles from her butthole and extends all the way down passed her feet.

            “Check this out,” I say.

I go to the bathroom and spin a Cotton Candy roll of toilet paper around my hand. I return to the dining room table and lift up Boogie’s tail. She instantly gets mad and screams, “Don’t touch me, asshole.”

            She walks in circles. A trail of poop follows and makes spirals on the table. She tries to jump down, but I stop her. Carrianne comes and holds her in place. I grab Boogie’s tail and lift it up. Boogie growls.

Cha Cha paces from side to side, watching us and saying, “What’s going on? What’s wrong with Boogie?”

            Boogie says, “Fuck off! Don’t touch me! I’m sick of rice and chicken! I hate you all!”

            I gently place my waded two ply hand in between Boogie’s butt and the poop, laying the poop on the toilet paper. Boogie continues screaming, yelling how she didn’t sign up for this, that this wasn’t part of the deal when we moved to California. We promised to leave her alone. We are not living up to our end of the bargain. “And when are you gonna get rid of Cha Cha. She’s the devil.”

            Cha Cha laughs, meows, barks.

I gently wipe Boogie’s butt. I remove the poop, but it grows in length. I find myself slowly walking backwards as the strand of poop goes from one inch to five inches, from five inches to a foot long.

            The smell only gets worse, burning tires and asparagus in the urine.

            The poop grows from a foot long to a foot and a half.

            My wife tells me to be careful.

            I take my time, but the poop comes out easier than a butt plug, lubricated and warm, sliding out like a dollar bill in a vending machine.

            Boogie is going ape shit. Cha Cha can’t believe what she’s seeing. I can’t believe I’m pulling two feet of ribbon out of my cat’s butt.

            When the end of the ribbon dangles off my hand, I throw it in the trash. The ribbon has a pink hue, wet and warm. The ribbon was wrapped around a Christmas present. I remember the ribbon because it was Cha Cha’s first Christmas with us in Chicago. When we un-wrapped the gift she went crazy for the ribbon. We took pictures. Now that same ribbon was just yanked out of Boogie’s butt. I knew Boogie didn’t like Cha Cha, but not to the extent that she would devour a toy just to show how much she disliked Cha Cha.

            I get more toilet paper and wet it with warm water. I gently pat Boogie’s hind legs and butt to clean up the mess. When Boogie is clean she jumps off the table and runs into the bedroom. I grab disinfectant wipes and clean off the dining room table. The smell still lingers and I throw out the trash.

            My wife and I finally rest on the couch. We laugh and come to the conclusion that Boogie, while chewing on the ribbon accidentally swallowed the end. She couldn’t yank it out so she swallowed more and more. Think of a snake swallowing an animal whole. It must’ve taken her hours, gagging, tongue perched out and breathing in only to devour more pink ribbon.

            This has never happened before. In Chicago we left all types of ribbon on the floor. Every time we received a present the ribbon would automatically be dropped on the ground. Cha Cha would bite on the ribbon and run around with it in her mouth. We had nice satin ribbons from Williams – Sonoma, Nordstrom’s, and Victoria’s Secret. We had crinkly ribbon from the dollar store that would spiral together when you rubbed scissor blades across it. Ribbon would be dangling off of furniture, stuffed in the couch cushions, and scattered all over our Chicago apartment covered in cat hair.

            As I child I was the same way. I swallowed quarters, pennies, and whole Lifesavers. I would choke and my mother would give me CPR.

            Our cats are like our children, we can’t remain upset with them for too long. The difference is they remain cute forever. They’ll yawn and my heart will crumble. They’ll curl up into my chest and I’ll instantly fall asleep. They’ll never outgrow their clothes or demand a handbag that everyone has at school. I’ll never have to worry about them coming home passed their curfew or sitting me down because they got knocked up by the douche bag who calls after ten pm. They’ll never wake me up at three in the morning because they wrecked their car or ask for five hundred dollars to pay back child support.

            They come to me potty trained. I will never have to teach them how to change a flat tire or balance a check book. I can walk around naked in front of them and they could give a damn.

            Boogie and Cha Cha are the best.

            And if you don’t believe me, I have the photos to prove it.