It's A Dirty Job And Guess Who Gets To Do It

Yeah, I know. I suck. I haven't been making regular posts like I ought to. There is a verra, verra good reason for that and that reason is...

I HAVE TOO MUCH SHIT TO DO!

Let me explain. No, that would take too much time. Let me sum up (sorry Inago, but that line's too good to pass up).

I live in a HUGE house with one husband, two kids and three cats. I am apparently the only person in this ENTIRE house who knows how to clean. Fortunately, Michael is the only person in the house who knows how to do yard work, cause I ain't doing both.

Michael isn't too huge a mess to clean up after, but he has two problems that will probably send him to an early grave on the day I finally snap. These problems are: 1) he insists on throwing his socks into the hamper from the other side of the bedroom, even though we all know his aim sucks rocks; and 2) he has forgotten how to load his dishes into the dishwasher even though he used to be the responsible adult who did it every day. Perhaps this is payback for all those times I used to forget how to load the dishwasher. If it is, he better knock that shit off, because I am going to take revenge on his underwear very soon if I continue to find random forks, plates, glasses, etc., scattered through out the house (unless they're my random forks, plates, glasses, etc., because even I am not that petty).

The kids are a slightly bigger mess. Cassie leaves her toys, clothes, books and shoes all over the place and can't seem to understand that it's her job to clean them up. And she can't figure out how to clean stuff up unsupervised (read "with Mommy standing over her threatening to take away her Barbies and her movie privileges for all eternity if that stuff is not picked up right now!") "I'm too tired," she'll whine, when I tell her to clean up the mess she left in the living room. "You have to help me!" Oh, I'll help you all right. Give me a cardboard box and I'll help you cart those toys to Good Will! No, just kidding. Really. But don't tell Cassie that.

Sam is still too young to understand how to put toys away, although we're working on that. But her biggest problem is that she thinks throwing food is the current big Olympic sport and she intends to get a gold medal someday real soon. I have scraped food off the high chair, off my chair, of the dining room table, floor, walls and ceiling, and off of one of our cats. I'm considering repainting the entire dining room and cat in a generic spotty beige so you can no longer spot the stains from Sam's energetic eating techniques. Just as soon as I manage to wash today's lunch out of my hair.

So the husband's a bit messy and the kids are more messy, but really, the biggest mess is coming from the cats. Or rather, one of the cats in particular.

Fritti.

**Sigh.** This is hard. I've had Fritti for fifteen years. He's a big orange and white striped tabby that has very little brain but looks absolutely gorgeous and he knows how to make a girl feel special, even though he was neutered at a very early age. At least, that was what he used to be like. Now he's fifteen and he's become crotchety-old-man cat with a serious case of diarrhea. He's been ill for over six months now, and yet is still alive and getting around. But the diarrhea has gotten really, really bad. So bad that two weeks ago I had to banish him to the garage for the foreseeable future, and no, I don't think he's ever coming back out of there unless it's in a shoe box.

Fritti has lost a LOT of weight. I can clearly count his ribs and vertebrae, and that's not good. I feed him at least 15 oz. of wet food a day, and he gets all the dry food he wants (which is about zip, because he hates the stuff). He gets plenty of water, too. And all of this is just going straight through him and coming out the other end in a truly frightening fashion. This started being a problem back in April, and back then I figured he might only survive another month, but some how he has continued to hang on. He's still getting around, is still bright eyed and obviously aware of what's going on around him. He still likes to be brushed and petted, but he's quit using the litter box and he's turned the garage into his personal dumping ground. Although that's better than when he turned the entire rest of the house into his personal dumping ground.

I put Fritti in the garage two weeks ago, mainly to keep him isolated from the other cats because I had to add medicine to his food every time I fed him. In the course of two weeks, he discovered that he likes to defecate all over the area where the garage door meets the floor. That is not exactly an easy place to clean. I have to open the door just enough to run a hose into the garage, then spray the garage door to wash away any poop that stuck too it before I can completely open the door to spray and scrub the floor. Add to this the fact that it's summer, and diarrhea bakes into stone pretty quickly on a hot day, and you've got one really nasty mess to clean up.

Well, **I've** got one really nasty mess to clean up.

I spent all afternoon yesterday cleaning up the cumulative mess that still existed even after I spent an entire week scooping up poop and mopping the floor. I put Fritti in a bathroom so I could throw open the garage door, haul everything out, and scour the garage floor. Some messes were baked so hard I couldn't get them up no matter what I tried. Because of where he's making the messes, half the poop ends up on the smooth concrete floor of the garage up against the door (hard to clean, but not impossible) and the other half gets embedded in the concrete and stone mix of the driveway (thus impossible to clean without a sandblaster). I spent THREE HOURS scrubbing my garage floor! And parts of my driveway. And the place still stank when I was done, but by then I was exhausted and getting high on cat poop fumes so I had to quit.

I took Fritti to the vet this morning. We've upping the current level of meds he's getting, plus adding a new one. A fourth medication is on order. He's also getting hypo-allergenic food to eat. Michael and I are taking the kids out of town this weekend, so I've had to arrange to have Fritti boarded at the vet, because there is no way in hell I can justify asking my neighbor's kid to clean up after that cat. It's just too messy, and at this point, it would be cheaper to pay the vet to handle Fritti rather than pay a teenager to come clean up poop three times a day (although the teen in question is very responsible and has never complained about cleaning up after Fritti in the past, but I feel so guilty about asking her to do it that I pay her twice what I would normally pay).

Fritti is on the decline. I don't know if anything I'm doing will help him or not. He's now also having problems with one of his rear legs, probably because he's got almost no muscle tissue left to support it. I do think that he's gained a tiny bit of weight, but that's probably because he no longer has to worry about contending with the other cats when he eats.

I wish there were something I could do for my poor cat, beyond having him put down (it's the obvious answer, but one I'm not ready for yet as long as Fritti can still get around and he doesn't seem unhappy). We'll have to see what the next two weeks brings.