Have you ever had a run of piss-related incidents that made you feel like a deranged installation artist has taken your entire house and dunked it in a giant glass of piss, like the infamous "Piss Christ" ? No? Just me?
On the up side, I can report that everyone's renal health is just terrific!
In a 24-hour period:
1) two stray cats, one who closely resembles Zane Grey to such a degree that we've been calling it "Zane Black" (although Zane Black has a tail), who have the ENTIRE WORLD as their latrine, for some reason decided to make a habit of stepping into our garage, pissing, and then heading on their merry way
2) The original Zane Grey was suddenly shown to have returned to her old tricks! I was searching high and low for a certain set of flannel sheets, and happened to look in the way back of my upstairs closet, and found a different dreaded piss soaked sheet as irrefutable evidence that her experience of having her tail crushed and almost starving to death did little to reform her. In her defense I should add that she's effectively trapped between Ben and Lena… Ben won't let us have a cat box on the second floor, and Lena won't let her move freely between the second floor (where she loves to sleep with her humans) and the basement (where her littler box is housed). But the upshot is that unless something else radically changes she is now a basement/outdoor cat for the rest of her life.
3) Trusty Lena dog lost her mind. It was a flashback to her youth when she ran under the sobriquet, "The Futon Pissing Bandit." After I found different sheets and made a nice bed for my guests… with a woolly mattress pad, and a big down duvet… on a very absorbent futon… Lena leaped into it when no one was looking and drenched the entire thing in three quarts of piss! Ironically I had just yesterday laboriously washed the duvet because not too long ago ISAAC had himself… you guessed it… PISSED on it while sleeping in his "nest" on the floor! So I had spent half the day drying the fricking thing, and then, back to square one! The unpleasant surprise right at bedtime. The guests had to sleep in Isaac's bed!
(I should add that there was a similar incident after Christmas when we brought Lena home from the vet's, where she had had minor surgery and boarded while we were out of town. In fact, I spoke to the vet about it and we decided to check whether she had a bladder infection. You know how they get a urine sample from a dog? Turns out they have a special device. It's a long wand with a forked prong thing at the end. Into the fork they put a little plastic urine sample cup. Then they take th dog out on a leash. If she squats to pee, quick as a wink they tuck the little cup thing under there. In Lena's case they took her out and came back with a sample in 30 seconds flat. It was really quite remarkable! But no, she did not have an infection. Only mental illness!!)
So who's left to join the fun? I guess Elias is the likeliest candidate. He could easily try one of those diaper-change little boy surprises…
…But I'm in the clear now because bad things come in threes, right?
On a related note, there's a very nice yellow climbing rose that I keep coming across in my rose research. Really I like the rose, and would even consider it for our pergola around the front porch, but I can't get past the name: Golden Showers.
On the other hand perhaps there would be no more fitting a welcome to this lucky home!