Month: October 2024

War on Dog Poop – Part 2

~ msnarky ~ Leave a comment

There is only ONE reason these signs exist!

Story 10 of 52

By M. Snarky

Cop, to Rooney, while filling out an FI (field interrogation) card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Okay now, Mr. Rooney, tell me what happened.”

Rooney, with a hint of arrogance: “That terrible man over there chased me down the sidewalk with that pooper scooper full of dog poop and he threatened to hurt me.”

Cop, incredulously: “He threatened to hurt you?”

Rooney: “Well, he didn’t exactly threaten to hurt me, but I felt threatened by him following me down the sidewalk with that thing,” as he gestured toward the pooper scooper.

Cop: “Why would he do that in the first place?”

Rooney: “I don’t know. Maybe he was going to mug me or steal my precious dog, Fang.”

Cop: “Mug you or steal your dog, Fang…really?” Now the cop was shaking his head, I think, because I really didn’t match the profile of a mugger nor a Pomeranian dognapper.

Cop, to me, while filling out another FI card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Now, Mr. Snarky, tell me what happened.”

Me: “Officer, Mr. Rooney over there had been letting his dog poop on my lawn on a regular basis for months without cleaning it up, and I finally caught him in the act this morning.”

Cop: “You actually witnessed Mr. Rooney with his dog, Fang, while said dog relieved itself on your front lawn?”

Me: “Yessir.”

Cop: “And you’re positive it was Mr. Rooney and this dog?” The cop pointed his pen down toward Fang. Fang barked and then hid behind Rooney.

Me: “Absolutely positive, officer – here’s the evidence.” I thrust the loaded pooper scooper toward him.

Cop: “That’s a lot of poop for such a small dog.”

Me: “Fang’s poop is the fresh one in front that looks like a cat turd.” The cop took a closer look and then turned toward Rooney.

Cop, to Rooney: “Well, Mr. Rooney, Mr. Snarky here says that you let your dog poop on his lawn and didn’t clean it up – is this true?”

Rooney: “No, it is not true – that man is a LIAR!”

Cop: “Mr. Rooney, calling someone a liar is a serious accusation. And what about the fresh evidence in the pooper scooper? Are you telling me that this didn’t come from Fang?”

Rooney, in a blustery, dismissive tone: “I have no idea where that came from!”

Cop, sensing that Rooney was not actually telling the truth: “Well then, Mr. Rooney, I guess I have no choice but to take the poop Mr. Snarky alleges as coming from your dog as evidence and also take your dog, Fang, into custody until he poops again at which time the crime lab will perform a DNA test on both poop samples. If they match, Mr. Snarky may sue you for trespassing, property damage, and defamation of character, and you will also be charged with giving false information to a peace officer which is a misdemeanor and could result in up to six months in county jail and a fine up to $5,000.”

Rooney: “Ha! Officer – you’re joking…right?” The officer looked Rooney straight in the eye and shook his head slowly.

Rooney: “You can’t be serious about taking Fang into custody as if he was some common street criminal! You aren’t going to cuff him, are you?”

Cop: “I never joke about making an arrest and taking people or their dogs into custody, Mr. Rooney. I’ll have to radio in for animal control to come and pick Fang up.”

Rooney: “Animal control? Fang will end up in the city dog pound!”

Cop: “Yes, he certainly will. I hope you’ve kept up on his vaccines – you never know what he might pick up at the pound. Stuff like mange, distemper, kennel-cough, ringworm, heartworm, rabies, fleas…stuff like that.”

Rooney, in an excited, wavering voice: “Whoa-whoa-whoa! I-I-I simply cannot stand the thought of Fang sitting behind bars with a bunch of flea-bitten ill-behaved mutts from who knows where. Um, officer, I, ah, I think things may have gotten blown up way out of proportion here. I-I-I mean that I didn’t really feel threatened by Mr. Snarky. I, ahem, I, ah, I was just totally embarrassed that he caught me and Fang red-handed, and I may have, ah, overreacted just a smidgen under such a stressful situation.”

Cop: “A smidgen?”

Rooney: “Okay-okay, I absolutely overreacted. I-I-I owe Mr. Snarky here an apology.” Rooney gave me a sheepish grin and said, “Please accept my sincere apology for acting so foolishly.”

Me: “Mr. Rooney, I was just trying to make a point; please excuse me for my crude, impolite methodology.” We briefly smiled at each other and shook hands. Rooney’s hand was clammy and wimpy; it felt like I was shaking a cold, dead fish.

Cop: “Okay now, citizens, are we good here?”

Rooney and myself, in unison: “Yessir.”

Cop: “Okay now, both of you go home; I have some real criminals to catch.”

And as the cop was walking away from us heading back to his black-and-white cruiser, he reached down to his tactical belt and pulled out a tiny pair of dog-sized handcuffs and twirled them around on his index finger. He was serious after all.

Musing aside, I followed Rooney to the end of the long block where he turned right and headed west. I let him sweat it out for another minute or so and then turned around and walked back toward home. I was feeling some satisfaction that Mr. Rooney now knows that I know that he and his dog Fang are the poop offenders when suddenly the irony of the situation struck me; once again, I had picked up his beloved Fang’s poop. That man was diabolical! I never saw him again.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if only Mr. Rooney and his ilk would be more responsible about their dog’s poop. This is not hard to do!

The War on Dog Poop needs you to stand up and fight for your right to stroll through your neighborhood without stepping in it and your right not to have to pick up someone else’s dog poop from your front yard.

See something, say something! Call these miscreants out! Take a picture of them and their dog and post them around the neighborhood with some sensationalized tabloid headline, like, “GUILTY OF POOPING IN PUBLIC!” or “IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!” Or something like that.

Or maybe lobby city hall to create a new law for these dog poop ignoramuses that requires them to provide a public service like dog poop clean up, for example. Or perhaps pay a $5,000 fine or spend 6-months in jail. Maybe this will help alleviate the problem. Or not.

Because everyone walking in America deserves public poop-free zones!

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024 All Rights Reserved.

War on Dog Poop – Part 1

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A sign of the times. This should NOT be necessary.

Story 9 of 52

By M. Snarky

Authors note: out of respect for my reader’s time, this and future posts will target 1,500 words, or about a 10-minute read per post. Thank you for following my writing journey.

Aside from an IRS audit, stepping into a pile of dog poop on a public sidewalk is the next most hated thing in America. It stinks. It’s messy. It’s disgusting. It gets into the tread of your shoe and now you find yourself trying to get it out by dragging your shoe back-and-forth across someone’s front lawn, looking like a loon in the process, and often exacerbating the problem by driving the poop deeper into the tread. Sometimes this method works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, you need to find a stick and try to scrape out the poop from the grooves which is really gross. The last resort is getting back home and using a high-pressure hose nozzle to clean it off which is always effective but now your shoe has to dry out for a day or two. I have much better things to do with my limited time on this planet than cleaning up what was obviously someone else’s mess. What kind of dog owner is it that doesn’t pick up after their dog? The completely arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and indifferent dog owner, that’s who. These people must be stopped! I declare a War on Dog Poop!

These are the type of people that the “Please Clean up After Your Dog” yard signs were invented for. Signs like this would not be necessary if all dog owners exercised some common decency, for example, picking up their dogs excrement. I’m also pretty sure this group of dog owners are the reason for the proliferation of the “free” dog poop bag dispensers found in public spaces and generally maintained by some city or county governmental department, like Parks and Recreation. Any government entity that tells you something is free is totally lying to you because any good or service provided by the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay for it, ergo, it is not actually free. This also means two other things: 1) Taxpayers paid 10¢ for a 1¢ plastic baggie, 2) Taxpayers are subsidizing people’s lack of proper dog poop clean-up etiquette. There’s probably a free online course about this too, so there’s absolutely no excuse for people not to clean up after their dog. As far as I’m concerned, ignorance cannot be claimed and the lack of picking up after one’s dog is a blatant act of disrespect for the neighborhood.

The not actually free government provided dog poop baggie issue aside, without much effort or expense, dog poop baggies can be purchased almost anywhere. They are in the pet aisle in the supermarket, often at convenience stores, and all over the Internet. Some of them even come with a handy dispenser that can be clipped onto a leash or a collar. They come in various gender specific colors too if that’s your jam. I think the black ones represent non-binary dogs but since dogs are color blind it doesn’t really matter to them. One can even subscribe to have them delivered on a regular basis which is very convenient for busy urbanites. If bought in bulk, they are less than a penny each. So, I think I can rule out inconvenience or budgetary constraints as reasons for not carrying dog poop baggies and picking up after your dog. It must be something else…

Oh! Look! A little satchel of dogshit!

Oddly, some of you DO go to the trouble of picking up your doggos doodoo…and then for whatever idiotic reason you drop the poop baggie to the side and keep moving. You see these everywhere; the little green, blue, pink, or black plastic baggies of dog poop sitting on the sidewalk, or in a driveway, or tossed onto someone else’s front lawn. I just don’t get this half-assed attempt to clean up after your dog. Why can’t you just take the poop bag with you and toss it into the trash when you get home? Oh, maybe it’s the smell that bothers you? Let me tell you something; nobody actually likes the smell of dog poop either except for other dogs and perhaps some super-freaky people, but it comes with owning a dog. You want a dog? Get used to bad breath, smelly poop. and stinky dog farts. If you can’t handle any of that then get a goldfish.

Thinking about this further, I can only imagine the dog poop getting onto the sidewalk or on your front lawn in one of the following ways:

  1. Someone’s dog got loose and relieved itself when the moment came as it was running through the neighborhood. This is free-range poop and there’s not much to be done about it.
  1. Somebody simply left their doggie poop bags at home and didn’t bother to come back to pick up after their dog. These are generally well meaning, but obviously lazy, inconsiderate dog owners.
  1. Someone was physically unable to bend down to clean up after their dog. I’ll give disabled persons and the old folks a pass on this, but maybe they should try curbing their dog.
  1. Somebody just doesn’t care where their dog poops and cares even less about cleaning it up. These dog owners are Public Enemy #1.

There was a #4 in my old neighborhood in Granada Hills who let his dog poop on my front lawn on a regular basis and left me to clean up the mess. He reminded me of an older, graying version of Mr. Rooney from Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, mustache and all. It took me a while to figure out it was him and his ankle biter Pomeranian as he was very sneaky about it. Was it a sign that he didn’t like me? I don’t think so because we never met each other. Or, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor and fertilizing my lawn? Well, I don’t know what he was actually thinking, but one morning I was looking out of my front window sipping my coffee and I caught him and his dog in the act. He was nervously looking around as his dog was dropping a deuce on my lawn. I stormed out of the front door and confronted him about it. There was no use denying it. I said, “I really don’t like cleaning up your dog’s poop; why don’t you pick up after your dog?” He sarcastically quipped, “Or what; are you going to hurt me?” like some schoolyard taunt from a ten-year-old masochist. And then he just casually walked away, leaving the fresh, steaming pile of dog poop on my front lawn. This blatant act of defiance enraged me.

I ran to the backyard through the side gate, grabbed the pooper scooper I used for my dog, quickly scooped up some Labrador poop from the backyard, ran back to the front yard, scooped up the fresh pom poop (indeed, I was going to pay Rooney back in spades) then ran to the corner in the direction that I last saw him walking and looked up and down the street, and there he was, strolling south down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. He was maybe two houses ahead of me. I briskly but quietly walked up behind him, and when I got about ten feet away from him, I said (sarcastically, of course), “Excuse me sir, I think you forgot something!” He stopped dead in his tracks and spun around on his heels to see me standing there with the loaded pooper scooper. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. Without saying a word, he spun back around on his heels and began walking away from me at a fairly brisk pace, looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if I was still following him. Then I said to him, “I’ll just follow you home and leave this on your lawn!” He picked up the pace a little bit more and yelled over his shoulder, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!” which made me chuckle a little bit thinking about how that interaction with the cops might transpire…

…to be continued next week.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024 All Rights Reserved.

Boy vs. Bees

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Story 8 of 52

By M. Snarky

The hubris of my youth combined with its commensurate ignorance conspired against me for a belief of invincibility. Or so I thought…

Around 1970 when I was 9 years old, my dad rented a single-story 4-bedroom farmhouse on 40-acres of pasture in rural Capay Valley which is about 30-miles northwest of Sacramento, CA, and moved the entire family of six into it. This was boondock living before it was cool. Nothing but silos, cows, and alfalfa fields as far as the eye could see.

I was the 3rd of four children. My half-brother Marc was the eldest by several years, followed by my sister Lisa, followed by me, and our little brother Scott was the caboose of the baby train.

The property also had a scary old, dilapidated 2-story 19th century Victorian farmhouse about 50-yards from the main house. We convinced ourselves that it was haunted, so we mostly avoided it.

Living in the boondocks like we did, Lisa, Scott, and I found unique ways to entertain ourselves often in the form of dares. A dare from an older sibling was a way for us youngsters to prove our worth and stay in their good graces by demonstrating our mettle. Or so we believed.

The first standout dare in Capay Valley was that Lisa challenged Scott and I to climb over the fence of the cow pasture and touch a cow, which we boldly accepted. The problem was that it had recently rained, and the cow pasture was a massive muddy quagmire. This, however, did not stop us boys from proceeding. Scott and I slowly slogged out to about 50-feet from the fence when a bull far off in the distance spotted us and began trotting toward us. The bull had to be at least 200-yards away, but it was making good speed in the mud. Scott and I quickly turned around and began running for our lives back toward the fence. Scott stopped in mid-stride and yelled out, “My shoe got sucked off of my foot; I have to try and find it!” This was a bad idea. I kept heading toward the fence while Scott was hopelessly groping around in the mud with his hands as the bull, now picking up speed, was quickly closing in on us.

I got to the fence and climbed over it and turned around to see Scott on all fours, now covered completely in mud, and still frantically feeling around for his shoe. Lisa and I yelled out to him, “RUN SCOTT, RUN – THE BULL! THE BULL!” as we pointed behind him. He looked back at the bull and realized that we were not kidding. He jumped up and began to run as fast as he could toward us and the perimeter fence of protection. As he continued to run for his life, his sock got sucked off his foot, then the other shoe, then the other sock. By the time he got back to the fence, he was barefoot. Lisa and I helped him get over the fence and by this time the bull was only about 50-feet behind him, which, in my opinion, is as close to a bull as you want to get unless you are a matador.

When we got back to the house, I was half covered in mud and Scott was fully covered in mud. The look on my mom’s face when we got to the mudroom at the back door was priceless. Then the inquiry began. “What were you boys getting into this time? How did the two of you get so muddy? Scott, where are your shoes and socks? Lisa, what do you know about this?” As my mom was stripping us boys out of our extremely wet, muddy clothes, the truth spilled out. A dare. A couple of willing little brothers. A muddy pasture. An angry bull. A near death run for our lives. A lost pair of shoes and socks.

As was typical of my mom, she spoke in matter-of-fact tone. “What were you two thinking would happen? You boys are lucky that you didn’t get gored by that mean old bull. Lisa, stop daring your brothers to do such dangerous things.”

One day not too long after the bull incident, I noticed a swarm of bees under one of the lower eaves of the presumably but probably haunted old farmhouse. It was maybe about 8-feet above the ground. I watched it for a while and was mesmerized by it. I showed it to Scott and Lisa. They too, were mesmerized by it.

Then my sister said something familiar to me that I could not resist; “I dare you to knock the beehive down!” Well, a dare is a dare (it is a personal level challenge, really) so I took it upon myself not to wimp out. I knew where my dad kept some lumber and walked over to the carport and grabbed a 2-by-4 stud and walked back with it. “I’ll use this!” I said triumphantly as I thrust the slightly warped wood stud forward.

I lifted the 2-by-4 up by one end and put the other end along one side of the beehive and gave it a shove. It didn’t come down, but it got the bees riled up and they started buzzing around me as honey started to drip out of the hive. Scott and Lisa took a few steps back. I shoved the beehive again, this time with a little bit more force, and most of the beehive came down with a plop about 3-feet in front of me as I jumped back. Now the bees were very angry and swarming around the beehive pile and darting toward us.

Then my sister dared me to run through it. I knew this was a bad idea, but I accepted challenge #2 anyway and I ran through the swarm of bees not once…but twice.

The first pass was a full-speed run through the cloud of swirling bees and although a few bounced off of me and a few landed on me that I quickly brushed off with my bare hands, I did not get stung. Now, I was feeling invincible, so the next pass was a slow walk through the tornado of angry bees. This was another bad idea. The bees were now landing on me en-masse, and I was brushing them off as fast as I could as my pace quickened because I was sensing that maybe I overestimated my invincibility. Then a bee landed on my lower lip and immediately stung me as my siblings stood there in the distance, gawking. This stinging of the lip was certainly not the fault of the bee that sacrificed its own life for the sake of the colony; I was, in fact, an existential threat.

I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, have never been stung on your lower lip by an angry bee so I’ll explain to you what it was like in an attempt to dissuade you from doing anything foolish with a beehive. You can thank me later.

The initial sting on such a tender part of my face was extremely painful and the rush of the adrenaline induced fight-or-flight reflex shot through my body like I got struck by a bolt of lightning. I panicked and tried to brush the bee off of my lip while also spitting and running away from the swarm as fast as I could. This is when I noticed that my lower lip was already starting to swell up. I started to panic and ran to the house without breaking pace.

By the time I got inside the house calling for my mom with tears in my eyes and a panicked, trembling voice hoping that she could somehow triage my lower lip with some old timey remedy, my lip had swollen considerably to the point that when my mom finally got a look at me, she started laughing. My siblings, who were hot on my heels, also got a fresh look at me and started laughing. They couldn’t contain themselves. Let me tell you, trying to talk when your lip is so swollen that it’s hanging down preventing you from closing your lips to pronounce letters like B, F, M, P, U, V, and W, makes for a very cartoonish Elmer Fudd like voice.

Then my mom started with another inquiry. “What happened?” I was trying to explain but it was hard to talk with my inner tube sized lip. It also didn’t help that everyone was still laughing at me. My siblings gave an abbreviated version of the incident skipping over the part about the dare, but I didn’t care. My mom put together a baggie of ice and told me to hold it on my lip. This is when I rushed to the bathroom mirror to assess the damage. My god! How can my lip balloon up like that? Will it ever go back to normal? Am I permanently disfigured? What will the kids at school say? Will my family ever stop laughing at me? Questions like these raced through my mind. Also, now I understood why my family was laughing at me – I had a freakish appearance with my big, puffy lip hanging down revealing my bottom teeth, looking a little bit like a Shih Tzu with a bad underbite. I could have been hired as a circus sideshow attraction.

For the next several hours, I held an ice pack to my lip while struggling to talk or eat. My mom eventually administered an antihistamine, and I don’t remember the rest of the night. I woke up the following morning and my lower lip was almost back to normal size and by the late afternoon you it was as if nothing had happened.

The only consolation that I had was that I technically “won” the dare, but I definitely lost the battle with the bees.

Boy 0, Bees 1.

IM: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

A Rescue Cat Named Cheeto: Domestic Terrorist

~ msnarky ~ 2 Comments

Story 7 of 52

By M. Snarky

“Oh, honey; look how cute he is!” said my wife, Kim, while pushing her phone into my face with a picture of a small, softball sized fluffy orange hairball. “He’s a rescue cat from Palm Springs named Cheeto that was found in a hole in the desert. He’s already been neutered, and he needs a home; can we adopt him?” A rescue cat with a backstory posted on the Internet looking for a nice suburban home to move into already sounded dubious to me. Also, she asked as if she needed my permission for anything – Kim is going to do what Kim wants to do anyway, especially when it comes to cats. She grew up with cats and so I knew that it really was only a matter of time before she got what she wanted. My cat-free days were numbered.

Kim started scrolling through the plethora of pictures of Cheeto-the-homeless-feral-long-haired-orange-tabby-kitten-found-in-a-hole-in-the-Palm-Springs-desert like he was some A-List celebrity. “Awe, look at him sleeping!” She turned her phone toward me again. I really couldn’t make out his head from his tail and it reminded me of a furry creature from a Star Trek episode titled, The Trouble with Tribbles. Yes, he was undeniably cute. No, I didn’t want to adopt him or any other cat for that matter because it would interfere with my scheme to eventually be a pet-free household so we could travel the world extensively without worrying about any animals back at home.

“I miss not having a cat and Bagheera has been gone for 4-years now.” Bagheera was a fluffy black cat that had lived an indoor life of ultimate leisure with us for 17-years and was from a litter of kittens from another rescue cat named Avalon that Kim “found” wandering around the neighborhood. I sensed a pattern here. “Besides, Sydney needs a playmate.” Sydney is an Aussie-Doodle dog that Kim also “found” on the Internet.

Kim met up with an anonymous woman – who I was sure was a typical low-level Internet con artist – at a local park. Kim got the dog, and our bank account took an unexpected four-figure hit. Easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, I suppose. Oh, and no documentation for the dog to prove her pedigree or vaccinations…not even a paper receipt for the cash transaction. I’m sure the anonymous dog peddling woman claimed the cash as income on her 2018 federal tax return.

And so, this is how Kim set me up for the Cheeto trap…

“We can drive down to Palm Springs on Sunday and have a nice lunch and Mai Tai’s at the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar on the strip, then we’ll go over to meet Cheeto. If we like him, we can take him home.” She knew she had me at Mai Tai’s at Tommy Bahama’s. I caved. Kim called Cheeto’s foster parents and arranged the itinerary.

On the Saturday afternoon before we were planning our road trip to the desert to meet this homeless kitten, Kim said that she got a call from Cheeto’s foster parents and they had to change their schedule, and we had to pick up Cheeto before 10:00 AM on Sunday. Damn, the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar doesn’t open until 11:00. Also, there was no way I was going to show up at a bougee bar for some day drinking in the triple digit desert heat with a kitten in a carrier; it would just be too hot for the little guy. Also, I didn’t want to field any nosey inquiries about Cheeto from any curious onlookers. I was immediately reminded of the quote “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” (translated) from To a Mouse by Robert Burns. Or was it that I was actually tricked? The jury is still out for deliberation on this.

It was a breezy 80-MPH early morning drive to the Coachella Valley, and at around 9:00 AM we met with Cheeto’s foster family, who were very nice people. They had other siblings from Cheeto’s litter that were also very cute, but Cheeto was the cutest of the litter with his long, striped, flaming orange coat and his already magnificent orange striped fluffy tail. Looking at him, what immediately came to my mind was that he is a warrior Viking Kattuz and he should have been named something more appropriate like Ragnar or Frode or Gorm. But since he already had a brand name, I didn’t want to go through the rigamarole of the legal system’s rebranding process and deal with its legions of lawyers and reams of paperwork plus it would be too stressful for him to go before a judge at such a young age to plead his case.

We donated some money to Cheeto’s foster humans to help cover the costs of his surgery and his room and board in Palm Springs, popped the little orange fluffball into a cat carrier that we brought along with us, and were on our way back home before 10:00 AM.

A tear rolled down my face as we drove past the exit for the Marlin Bar.

Twenty minutes into the drive, Kim took Cheeto out of his carrier and held him in her lap all the way home. They bonded while I was driving down the Interstate trying to avoid the sea of idiotic Prius and Tesla drivers going exactly 65-MPH while everyone else around them was going 80. We got home around noon.

Our dog of questionable origins, Sydney, went bonkers when we introduced her to Cheeto. Syd had never seen a kitten before and I believe, at first, she thought Cheeto was a new play toy…until the claws came out. The yelp that Syd let out the first time she got impaled on her nose by a sharp kitten claw was both of pain and astonishment.

Now the real fun begins – raising another kitten. The thing about kittens is that they have no sense of time, and they seem to only have three modes; sleep (80%), eat (2%), and play (18%). Three modes and no schedule means that anything can happen at any time of day or night.

If kitty wakes up at 2:00 AM and wants to play, kitty is going to pounce on your head or on your face or walk up and down your body with remarkably heavy paws for such a small animal. This nocturnal behavior was not exclusive to victimizing the humans in the house – Syd got her fair share of harassment too. Turns out that this little kitten found in a hole in the desert was an insomnia inducing, circadian rhythm killing fluffball from the Viking underworld.

You might be asking; how fluffy is he? For starters, he has thick fur growing out between the pads of his paws that requires constant trimming, or else navigating the hardwood floors is more like ice skating than walking. The long, downy soft fur under his belly turns into baby dreadlocks if you don’t brush it regularly, which he absolutely hates. He has tufts of long fur coming out of his ears like a 90-year-old man. But it is his tail that takes the cake; it is a tail of such enormity that it is nearly the size of his body, and he struts around the house with it proudly waving high in the air and with such dignity that it borders on arrogance.

I’m surprised we haven’t received a notification from the city to get a permit for his glorious tail (effectively a tail tax), but I’m sure somewhere deep within the bowels of city hall, a bureaucrat sitting beneath a flickering fluorescent light is scheming.

Cheeto developed his own little parkour course in the bedroom between the upper and lower levels of the nightstand, our bed, and the dresser, Sydney’s donut shaped bed, and the windowsills. Rattling the horizontal shades in the wee hours of the morning is his personal favorite. It is his way, I think, of saying, “Wake up hoomans – it’s time to play NOW!” This feline reveille is when the 18% play factor feels more like 100%.

We tried to discourage him from his naughty nocturnal behavior with a spray bottle filled with tap water mixed with a little bit of white vinegar, but instead of dissuading him from his little night terror habit, he gamified it. For example, he will rattle the blinds and look over at me to see if I was reaching for the spray bottle. As soon as I motioned that I was arming myself, he would dive under the bed…and then he would come back up and do it again within 5-minutes. Every now and then when I was stealthy enough to hit my moving furry orange target he would scurry off to some dark corner of the bedroom, and after sulking for maybe 5-minutes, he would start all over again. I think he actually liked getting nailed with the spray bottle.

And if you make the mistake of wiggling your toes while you’re sleeping or hanging your hands or feet outside of the blanket, Cheeto will quickly remind you of his presence with a fang or a claw – not in a vicious way, mind you – but man, has he interrupted some good REM sleep sessions. One minute I’m sailing the ocean blue toward an emerald-green tropical island and the next minute I’m being attacked by a Kraken.

We tried closing him out of the bedroom too. It took him about 30-seconds to realize that he could reach under the bottom of the door and hook it from the inside with his claws and rattle it. The problem is that he has no musical rhythm and it made it impossible to incorporate his door rattling with any piece of music that I could think of while trying to lull myself back to sleep. It seemed as if we had a little orange monster in the hallway. I think if we had a levered door handle instead of a round doorknob, he would figure out how to open the bedroom door in a nanosecond. Don’t think that he hasn’t rattled the doorknob too!

Cheeto has developed some unusual dietary habits. He does not like any canned cat food at all. He has rejected every brand on the market; sorry Morris, you’re apparently a mislead spokescat. But Cheeto does love his Lickables, that is, as long as it does not have chunks in it. If it has chunks, he’ll lick around them. He also loves…wait for it…raw asparagus! One day we were bringing in the groceries and temporarily put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. One of the bags had a bundle of asparagus in it. Cheeto hopped up on the counter and beelined it to that grocery bag, dove into it, pulled out the bundle of asparagus and started chomping the tips off of the stalks. Needless to say, we had to change our dinner menu. What a weirdo.

Cheeto has also developed an unhealthy obsession for plastic bags and not just for playing with; he chews on them and bites off and swallows chunks of them. One day he was not feeling well and was vomiting here and there. Finally, a cat sized bite of plastic sheeting came up and he felt better. We forensically matched it with a bite taken out of a recently delivered Amazon package. I think this also indicates that Cheeto has microplastics in his body. We are now in the habit of keeping all plastic bags away from him but mostly for selfish reasons like not wanting to step in any more cat vomit with bare feet and not wanting to take him to the vet for emergency abdominal surgery at 2-AM.

In our efforts to make life enjoyable, we have purchased many cat related products like catnip laced stuffed toys, plastic balls with bells and feathers, an oversized fake cheese puff bag that crinkles when you touch it, balls of twine, and a laser pointer. A friend of ours gifted Cheeto a nice multi-tiered cat tower replete with scratching posts, a perch, and all sorts of dangly things to bat around. He loves it.

One day Kim brought home a tape roll core made of thick cardboard and casually tossed it onto the living room floor. Cheeto lost his mind for about an hour pouncing, batting, kicking, and chasing that thing around the house. The problem was that he also liked to pounce, bat, kick, and chase that thing around in the wee hours of the morning. This is what happens when you’re a spoiled suburban housecat with an all-access pass and zero rules.

I considered sending Cheeto off to a fancy boarding school somewhere like Shortridge Academy, New Hampshire, Hurtwood House School, United Kingdom, or Collège du Léman, Geneva, Switzerland, to knock off the rough semi-feral edges and polish him up a little bit but after seeing the outrageous tuition of those places I immediately changed my mind as it would quickly land me in bankruptcy court.

On the upside, Cheeto does have a sweet, loving side to him. He likes hanging out on the living room couch with us. He’ll nudge your hands relentlessly to encourage you to pet him. Sometimes he even cuddles with Sydney.

So, we’ll just keep our diamond in the rough gato diablo as he is and adjust our lives accordingly (as per usual) because we do love him despite his lack of a formal education and his overabundance of antics.

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