Monster Cat Turds

Perhaps this is not an appropriate subject for a physician to be blogging on, but hey, what the hay.

I travel with my cats, TJ (a grey tabby longhair/male) and Sabine (a black domestic shorthair/female). Both are "fixed" . . . although TJ still sometimes tries to do strange things to Sabine (who rebuffs him) that I would approximate to a sad, sorry mating dance.

He's actually doing it right now as I blog. It's funny.

When I am on the road, the cats sleep with me in my room . . . with the door locked, and a carrier and a litter box nearby. Sabine takes the pillow beside my head - and TJ curls up in the small of my back. Chalk it up to previous traumatic experiences . . . tornado warnings and baby hurricanes and the like. I like to be ready to jump and run - with my "children".

Lately, Sabine (who has a mild form of hemophilia - we joke that she's "French" and royal) has been exhibiting symptoms of either allergies or stress - specifically hair loss, itching and excessive licking. One of the things we're doing between the two animal hospitals I'm working with . . . one in Asheboro and one in the Eastern N.C. burg where I'm on assignment . . . is changing food. And if I change Sabine's, I must change TJ's.

It's been a bit dicey . . . routines are much harder to re-establish on the road. Cats are nothing if not creatures of habit. They like routine and sameness. Mine have both been on Fancy Feast since they came to "Mary-land", and, as a vet told me yesterday (shaking his head), "Fancy Feast is like CRACK for cats". It's hard to get them to eat anything else. But we have finally found a combo that seems to be working.

These days, unless there's a C-Section scheduled for 7 AM, I generally set my alarm for 6:30 AM (I can usually be ready for work in less than thirty minutes). But lately, I've been rudely awakened . . . not by my trusty cell-phone alarm . . . but a smell . . . in the wee hours of the morning (around 5 AM).

It's not a good smell.

You see, both cats have taken to dropping MONSTER TURDS at approximately that time . . . one right after the other. They then make a grand/loud production of pretending to bury them . . . but actually wind up leaving the turds still exposed to air. I think it's a dominance thing.

In a closed bedroom, with no fan running or window open, it is difficult to describe the smell. Exquisite, foul, acrid/fetid, not quite GI-bleedish (any doctor/nurse can tell you, the WORST smell in the world) but very close . . . a smell that permeates and infiltrates everything in the room . . . and is not stopped by pillows over one's nose or bedcovers.

It can make your nose stuff and eyes water.

So I wind up getting up and scooping (whoever invented scoopable litter is a fricking genius - if they made millions on the patent, they deserve it). And then I'm up. And I can't to back to sleep with the smell still lingering in the crevices of my scarred-down sinuses, so I let the pussies go downstairs and I get up/take a shower/turn on the fan.

Sometimes I do have to crack a window.

I think the furballs are plotting with my Mother to turn me into a morning person.

It's working.