Rocky is a Puker

(If you don't want to read about cat puke, you might want to skip this post.)

My cat Rocky is a cham-peen puker. Always has been. When he was younger, it was mostly hairballs. Which were disgusting, but it was also a little amazing - the size of the hairballs that would come out of that cat! Since I have started combing him (and combing him, and combing him - you don't think about that when you're picking out the little long-haired kitten), the hairball problem has ceased. These days, it's just straight up puke.

I was not in a good mood yesterday afternoon. For one thing, it was garbage day at my apartment building, which meant hauling a crapload of garbage out to the curb in garbage cans which still have wheels but no longer have handles, which makes things interesting. Jabba alone downstairs produces the garbage output of a small village. I'm not kidding, this guy creates more garbage than everybody else in the building combined. Which is kind of mystifying. I mean, yeah, he's grossly obese, but that means that he eats more, not that he throws more away. Right?

Anyhow, I was not in a good mood, and I had to stop at Wal-Mart, which worsened the situation, and I got home and Rocky had puked in the hallway. At least I saw it before stepping in it. Last Monday, I woke up, went into the kitchen, hit the switch for the overhead light, and realized that the bulb was burned out at the same time that my bare foot hit the liquefied cat puke. Good morning!

So I cleaned up Rocky's puke last night, and I mean, I really don't begrudge him for puking or anything, it would just be much easier if he would puke on the linoleum as opposed to the carpet. One can hope, right? And then I had to clean out his litterbox. When he was younger, he never used the litterbox, going outside instead. So his recent uptick in litterbox output had me kind of puzzled, until I realized, hey, this cat's not as young as he used to be. He probably can't hold it all day while I am at work anymore, and at a certain age, going to the bathroom inside has to be more appealing than going downstairs in the bushes. (Well, at any age, actually, but I'm talking about the cat here.)

A few years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to Rocky's pre-puke sounds. If you have a cat, you know what I'm talking about here, and if you don't have a cat, I really can't describe it. Sorry. So I looked around, and to my horror, Rocky was sitting on the nightstand right next to my bed, about six inches away from my head, with puke on the way. And by the time I could even react, he projectile vomited a great big load of puke onto the carpeting. I swear, it was like something out of The Exorcist. This stuff landed about five feet away from where he was. The most amazing puke episode ever. I couldn't help but be amazed.





He looks so innocent, doesn't he? They say it's always the quiet ones.