Milo: so handsome. And occasionally? A little ornery.
This is how my Monday began last week: by scrubbing poop skid marks off the bathroom and living room floors with damp paper towels and then tossing the towels out the front door so that they would not stink up the inside trash.
The fat cat is apparently having problems with his pottying.
My son loves the cat more than the rest of the family loves the cat. (At first, I wrote, “He loves the cat more than the rest of the family,” but had to change that, because it could be interpreted the wrong way. I am certain my son loves us more than he loves the cat, though he loves the cat a lot.)
The rest of us are fond of him (the cat, but also my son, of course!), but honestly, the cat is a bit of a pain. He often bites if you try to pet him for more than ten seconds. He claws at the door even though we have nicely tried to train him not to, and seems to like scratching the couch and pine dresser the most when I am watching, just to annoy me.
One day a few summer’s ago, the cat disappeared for a day. We have mountain lions and bears around, and frequently you see notices about missing cats on the post office bulletin board, along with their adorable, fluffy photos. It’s usually not good news for the cat when its picture shows up at the post office. We hadn’t gotten to the point of putting up a sign yet, but when we realized he was gone, that he hadn’t bothered us for food in a day, all of us cried a little, even my daughter, who was often the target of the cat’s most ferocious episodes. His favorite thing was to sneak up behind and scratch her, occasionally even drawing blood, when she was getting ready in the morning, possibly because his food is in the bathroom, tucked away close to the sink and mirror. I’d be in the kitchen preparing breakfast and would hear her shriek. Not so fun.
Turns out that the cat was not eaten by a mountain lion, but accidentally shut in my neighbor’s basement. It’s a walk-in basement, and she had left the door open while doing her laundry one day. Fat cat snuck up there, was nosing around, and was trapped in there by my unsuspecting neighbor, whose boyfriend told her later that night that he sure thought he was hearing strange sounds coming from down there, but she thought he was making things up. It wasn’t until the next day when the door opened and the laundry was finished that fat cat raced out.
Somehow, he survived a night without food.
My son is worried about fat cat and this new pooping on the floor problem. He is nagging me to make a vet appointment. Here’s the only problem with that: the vet is expensive, expensive, expensive. I will probably do it, but I am already a little stomach sick about how much the bill will be. And I think I already know what the vet will say: fat cat is old, and sometimes the elderly have difficulties with their digestion and toileting. But wait! Here is some better food which most likely will cost more than what we buy for ourselves that will solve all of fat cat’s issues. Also, to be completely safe, maybe we should run some expensive tests, do some blood work, just to make sure that it’s nothing more serious.
I remember my days growing up when we had five cats, and all of them lived outside, and all of them had dried food that they shared out of a common bowl, and we loved them, but I don’t remember them ever going to the vet for anything more than routine shots, certainly not for their digestive troubles, because who knew what their digestions did, being that they lived outside and took care of their business on their own without our help, thank you very much?
That is what I woke up to this morning. The beginning of this ordinary holy day. Because somehow it must be holy. If God is in every breath, every moment, God must also, somehow, be in every poop, even if it ends up on the floor and is the first thing I see upon waking (thanking God all along that I did not step in it when the lights were off and I first stumbled into the bathroom). Certainly not the way I planned to begin my day. But maybe in this ordinary, unexpected cleaning, there was a little ordinary love: for a fat cat who is getting old, for my son who loves him. Not a lot of love for sure, because I was annoyed and crabby about the whole thing, but a little bit. I often think about that verse from Zechariah, which says something like, “Do not despise the day of the small beginning.” No need to despise a little bit of love; it might be enough to make even this ordinary day holy.
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