Last month, after 3 ½ years of courtship, W. has moved into my apartment. The Problem is, we both have a cat. Where her mouser is a mild mannered male calico mix named Simba, mine is a crazy, cross-eyed, Siamese female named Aunt Suzy.
As far as cats go, Simba is as good as it gets. Aunt Suzy, however, is something else. Over the years she has intermittently pissed in various areas of the household. And she’s not reacting well at all to the addition of a male feline into a domain that has belonged to only her for over a decade.

So she has taken to pissing even more.

First, Suzy began urinating on the living room throw rug we had over the hardwood flooring. She did it so often, we abandoned the idea of having throw rugs.

With no more rugs to defile, Suzy micturated on anything fabric that was left on the floor. Like, if you came home from a long night of bartending and just climbed out of your clothes and left them at the foot of the bed, Suzy would locate that article and leave a gift. So, we stopped leaving things on the floor. However, with no rugs or articles of clothing to pollute, she pulled the sliding closet door open with her claws and deflowered the towels that were on the bottom shelf. So we blockaded the closet door.

It was as if each adjustment we made only caused her to find an even crueler place to deposit her residuum.

Yesterday, the Brother (who lives next door and does not own a cat) stormed over my house holding a hiking shoe in his left hand: “Smell it!” he said.

“Huh?”

“Smell my shoe!” he demanded, eyes glaring. I took a slight whiff and instantly gagged on the putrid ammonium spewing from the opening like sewer locusts swarming up from a manhole cover.

“Somebody’s gonna have to take that cat for a ride,” he spat and stormed off.
According to Encyclopedia Encarta, today’s housecat (felis catus) is a descendant of a species of African wildcat called the Kaffir. The Kaffir cat was bred and domesticated by the ancient Egyptians circa 2500 B.C. to drive out the rodents and snakes that plagued the territory. The Egyptians loved their cats, considered them sacred animals, and even had a Goddess assigned to them: Her name was Bastet and she had the body of a woman and the head of a lynx.

It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that cats were finally treated with the contempt they deserved. Because of their peculiar nocturnal habits, they were believed to be in concert with the devil and were routinely tortured or butchered or lightly seasoned and pan fried and I’m sitting here reading this information wondering what kind of cheese would go well in a Suzy asada burrito, because W. and I have been living in a nightmarish litter box – making daily trips to the laundry room with contaminated articles of clothing, fighting off the noxious smog with all the latest anti-piss, repellent, protector, deodorizing, spray, pump technologies, and forced to perform an involved series of precautions before going to bed each night:

“Everything off the floor?”

“Check.”

“Shoes in the closet?”

“Check.”

“Closet barricaded?”

“Check.”

“Landmines activated?”

“Check,” then switch off the light and snuggle in together, hoping against hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Bizarre dreams then:

I dreamt I was Pharaoh Khufu of the 3rd Dynasty. I was sitting on my throne, contemplating where to put the next pyramid, when Bastet, the Bronze Goddess of Cats, came unto me. “You must breed wildcats for domestication,” she said.
“But these beasts are filthy,” I said. “They make to froth in places where no beast should froth.”

“Bah!” the goddess bah’ed. “Do my bidding.”

“But they consort with the devil.” I added.

“Pish!” pished the goddess. “Do not defy me!”

“They have claws so sharp, they could slice a man in half and deposit a dead bird in his belly.”

“Repent blasphemer!” she shouted, and anointed me with holy water from the Fountain of Isis: warm soothing water, all warmy warm from the hallowed heated fountain of lukewarm warmth . . . and my eyelids suddenly leap open. Confusion at first. Then I see her – the Terrible Secreting Sphinx – on the bed, scratching and kneading and acting peculiar. It is then I feel the foul wetness of Aunt Suzy’s felony seeping through the blankets and defiling my very soul.

“Why must you torture me, Bastet!” I scream, throwing off disgusting damp blankets in a rage.

And I am no longer me. The angst and the fury have morphed me into a different creature. Now I am Menthu – the hawk-headed Egyptian god of war and I am flying through the air, talons extended, toward the terrible Sphinx beast. She sees me, releases a piercing screech, and leaps off the bed. I toss off the covers and swoop into to the sitting room seeking to destroy she who makes to pee on all the places that pee should not be. I see her shivering behind the couch. I’m diving in, seizing the cat with angry claws, tugging and tearing her into pieces with my beak and talons, turning her into a bloody mass of flesh and fur as Simba and W. cheer me on.

Click here to read all 4 installments of the pisscat chronicles

EJD
02/04/04

A few months ago I wrote an article about our cat Aunt Suzy who had taken to pissing on the connubial bed of W. and I. Since then, many people have written to ask how that whole Suzy-pissing thing turned out, the answer to which is this: “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” Because now our other cat, Simba, is giving us the business.

Here’s the back story:

We tried everything to get Suzy to stop pissing. We bought some overpriced pheromone plug-in technology called Feliway, we conducted various psychological assaults on Suzy’s mindset, we even mounted dogheaded scarecrows on the bedposts – all to no avail. Not until my neighbor Jill and her cat Chef moved out of the apartment complex did the urinary mattress rampage of Aunt Suzy finally cease.

See, Chef, was the biggest, baddest cat in the complex. His nickname is Fat Bastard and he was the established alpha male of the area. He even burgled our house from time to time to flaunt his authority.

Now Simba is also a large alpha male. He always stood his ground against Fat Bastard. Many a night were Willow and I jolted out of sleep by the piercing caterwaul that is two cats tumbling in a tornado of claws, fangs and bloody dander.
Aunt Suzy was another story. Look up “pussy” in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of Suzy sitting there with her legs spread open. Whenever Fat Bastard came around, Suzy would cower on the corner of the bed while F.B. leisurely strolled the apartment, ate the cat food, marked the furniture, and gave Suzy that, “What you gonna do about it?” glare as Suzy spewed her liquid unholy all over the blankets.

It wasn’t until Fat Bastard moved away did we surmise that Suzy was cornered and marking her last piece of turf. The bed was her Little Big Horn and just like General Custer, Suzy was making her last stand (or should I say, “last squat”) against the marauding Fat Bastard?

Anyway, when Fat Bastard left, and the rain of terror subsided, oh did we rejoice! We threw parties, drank much wine, and sang “Happy Days are here again,” naked under the moonlight. But just as W. and I were about to settle into our new, piss-free existence — Simba suddenly began secreting certain noxious fluids of his own.

In other words, “Out of the toilet into the septic tank.”

It happened suddenly. Simba had inexplicably adopted the awful habit of getting into our dinner scraps either from the garbage or the dirty plates in the sink. It was terrible. Human food is poison to cats. We kept waking up every morning to find the garbage knocked over and splotches of seaweed green vomit-slops spewed across the floor as if he were puking his way through the room on a kitty-pogo stick.

*Sigh*

Once again we had to declare martial law: The garbage lid had to be weighted, dishes had to be washed immediately after every meal, and an all out Simba suicide watch was initiated. But you know how it goes. You get lazy. You finish a meal, unbuckle your pants, turn on the TNT Law and Order two-fer and slip into glorious food coma hoping against all hope that this time Simba will stay out of the scraps.

Yeah right.

Last night I lost my temper. Detective Brisco was about to deliver one of his notorious, standing-over-the-corpse quips when I spied Simba, whiskers deep in a leftover bowl of cheese and broccoli soup.

“Get down Simba!” I yelled.

He gave me that, “Who are you kidding?” scoff and went back to licking the bowl. Enraged, I grabbed a nearby butane lighter and whipped it as hard as possible at the furry scavenger demon. The lighter missed wide and Simba took off in a bolt.

Seething, I walked over to the kitchen, rinsed out a bottle of Formula 409 cleanser, and filled it with tap water. I got a black magic marker and scribbled the words “Cat-X” on the label, then sat back on the recliner with the bottle in my lap and waited. When Simba returned and tried to tip over the garbage, I blasted her face with four angry pumps.

Now, I know a lot of you cat lovers believe that spraying water at cats is traumatic to them. But before you condemn me, may I first make a comment about the meaning of trauma?

Trauma is climbing into your bed after a long, hard night of bartending only to find the blankets saturated with yellowy helljuice.

Trauma is waking up every other morning, half-asleep and barefoot, and slipping on a pile of cat-vomit like you’re living inside some sort of Jerry Lewis banana peel gag.

Traumatically is how W. and have been living for the last 6 months so if I have to spit a little water at my cats to stop all that, then so be it.

And oh does my Cat-X™ work like a charm. The puking has stopped. Simba stays out of the leftovers. And we got Suzy all whipped into shape. Like when Suzy starts meow, meow meowing for food. I just blast her once in the face to show her what for.

“Food comes when I say food comes, cat!”

Sometimes, just for fun, W. and I chase them around the apartment indiscriminately spraying after them like a couple of high school berserkers, shooting and shouting, “No justice no peace – mwooh-ha-ha-ha.”

Traumatizing? What do I care? If spraying you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

EJD
06/05/05

It’s like the Meat Loaf lyric, “It was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today.”

Because I used to love that cat. But now my hatred rages. I considered euthanasia, of course, but realized I’m much too cowardly to kill myself. So I considered killing Suzy instead. I Considered driving her over to the local Dr. Catvorkian and be done with it. I am apparently too chicken for that as well. I just can’t go through with it.

See, I’ve already driven a beloved pet to the pet-executioner, and it was a heart-wrenching, soul-sapping experience. . .

Barney was an average-sized male mixed breed with shiny black hair and bright white spots. We were living a covert existence in a large apartment complex that enforced a strict, No Pets policy.

One morning I caught Barney pissing in the corner of my bedroom. I was furious. This was not something he had ever done before since I always left a window open for him to come and go as he pleased.

When I saw what he was doing, I leapt out of bed, and gave him a stern “git-outta-here” swat in the right rear buttocks. To my horror, Barney’s leg just swung 360 degrees like a gearless clock hand. Turns out poor Barney’s leg was fractured, which explained why he was pissing inside the apartment, because he couldn’t jump up and out of his cat window.

Awash in guilt I raced to the emergency room where they said Barn was going to need a pin in his leg and a cast which cost about 900 dollars.

Keep in mind, this happened in 1985. I had just moved to San Diego and was bagging groceries part-time for minimum wage. I had nothing to spare. However, money is no object when it comes to an old friend in need, so I scraped some dough together and paid for the procedure.

The vet said to restrict his movement post-op, so when I brought him home, I built him a cardboard cat house with tiny windows, bedding, and food and water. Then I put him inside and hurried off to work. I came home that night to find Barney had escaped the cardboard cat house, got outside, got into some brawls, lost his cast, and returned with a displaced pin and re-shattered leg.

Now I really really couldn’t afford a new pin and cast but that my Inner Voice of Guilt (IVG) reminded me that Barn was an old friend and money is not an object when it comes to old friends, so I begged and borrowed some more money to pay Barney’s medical bills and nursed him back to health.

About or week or two after his right leg healed, unfuckingbelievably, Barney came home with another broken leg. This time it was the left leg and it was the same thing all over again.

Well that’s it, I thought. I couldn’t possible pay for another surgery, but then, you know, that old Inner Voice of Guilt chimed in again saying, Money is no object when it comes to old friend’s in need. So I paid another 900 dollars to put another pin and another cast on another of Barney’s legs and it’s like I’m building some sort of Frankencat Mouser over here, with the pins, and the scars, and the shaved fur. But he’s a good old cat and it was good to have him back.

Three weeks later I received an official notice on my door which said something to the effect of, “Get rid of the cat or be evicted.” And I stood there reading the letter thinking how there is absolutely no way I can afford a relocation. Not now. No way. Not possible.

But money is no object when it come to a friend…,” said my Inner Voice of Guilt.
“Blow me,” I snapped back at my IVG. “I don’t see you chipping anything in, fucking cheap-ass.

So I made the heartbreaking decision to drive old Barn to his executioner. And those meows he meowed from his little cage on the back seat during that fateful drive of death still haunts me today.

This is why I can’t do Suzy like that. I couldn’t live with the two of them meowing their ghostly meows in unison for all eternity, “Please don’t kill us, meow. You’re supposed to protect us, meow.”

No. The decision is made. I will not kill Aunt Suzy. Instead, I’ll just root for cat-cancer. “Come oooon cat cancer,” I sometimes say like I’m rolling craps.
“Come on water delivery truck!

“Come on rabid dog attack.

“Come ‘on Rusty or Rinny or Buster or Spot.

“Come on ‘future-serial-killer-practicing-dismemberment-on-the-neighborhood-pets’ guy.

“Come on someone, anyone or thing, please, take this cat for a ride. I just don’t have the guts to do it myself.”

And I’m praying for the end of time
is all that I can do – wooh-wooooh.

I’m praying for the end of time so I can end my time with you.

EJD
11/03/05

Aunt Suzy is outside my home office window right now. She’s meowing her freaking head off. I’ve tried to write four different columns today and have failed miserably. The reason I am so miserably failing at column-writing is because I can not concentrate and the reason I can’t concentrate because Aunt Suzy is outside my office window meowing her freaking head off.

For those of you who don’t know the ongoing saga of Piss Cat, as we not-so-lovingly refer to her, here you go: Aunt Suzy is my cat from before I got married. She is half Siamese-half spawn of Satan and has been urinating throughout our household for some time now. In the last year, it had gotten really bad. She pissed on the couch, she pissed on the recliner, she pissed on the rugs, she pissed on the flooring, she pissed in our shoes, she pissed on the bed and every once in a while, while we slept, she pissed on us. It’s been an oppressive existence and we’ve been enduring the tyrant’s rain of terror for about 4 years now.

And yes, we tried, we really really tried not to blame her for her megalomaniacal ureter. Suzy has been with us a long time. We consider her a family member and really truly do love that old Piss Cat and I’m quite certain Piss Cat loves us too. But you can only live under the domain of a tyrannical micturator for so long before a putrid cloud of resentment forms. And whenever I consider the love/hate dichotomy of our relationship, I can’t help but hear the Roger Daltrey song that has been the soundtrack to our existence for so many years now.

“Love reign o’er me, rain on me.”

We tried everything to make her stop. Nothing worked. In recent months we started covering the living room furniture with these big, ugly, blue plastic tarps. Of course, Der Fuherer just emptied herself on top of the tarps, which is preferable, I guess, to her soiling the furniture, but it did present its own set of difficulties. Like, for instance, what happened the other day – an incident I call, Catastrophe at Reclining Chair. . .

I had been working in my office all afternoon and decided to take a TV break. I proceeded to remove the tarp from the recliner. Not noticing the puddle of cat piss on the center of the tarp, I grasped a corner to shake it up and off the couch in much the same way your shake a beach towel to dispatch the sand. In doing so I threw the puddle of urine into the air which then showered back down upon my head and face.

Only love can bring the rain/that falls like tears/like tears from on high.
As the unholy monsoon cascaded upon my person, a bolt of rage surged through me. It was as powerful a bolt of rage as any I’ve ever experienced. It was the kind of bolt of rage that stabbed Nancy Spungen in the gut. It was the kind of bolt of rage that pulled the straight razor across Van Gogh’s ear. It was the kind of bolt of rage that thrusts a person into that other, nether universe – where it’s always dark, except for the orange glow of hellfires that blaze on the hillsides and light the underside of the immense black clouds that float low in the atmosphere.

As her feline ejecta soaked into my hair and shirt I could hear Roger Daltrey screaming out a great, screaming, despair-filled scream.

Love! Reign o’er me. Rain oh’er me! . . .

I saw Suzy cowering in the corner and I became flooded with the desire to twist off her head and pour splintered chicken bones down her throat.

…LAAAAAOOOOOVE, Rain over me, reign over me. Rain oh-oh-oh-oh oh-ver me, me-ee-ee-eeeah-uh meeee.

And then, like the song that has been the soundtrack to our lives for so many years, the urge to murder my cat ebbed into a soft, throbbing sorrow and I returned from the nether, other alternate universe of dark rage. It was then that I made a decision. From now on, Suzy would be banned outside. With that, I gently placed her onto the stoop and shut the door behind her.

That was 5 days ago. She’s been meowing her freaking head off ever since. All day long, from the moment I wake up and put her outside, until we let her back in at night, she stands by my office window going, “Meow, meow, meow.” She’s out there now, meow. She never stops. Just goes, Meow, meow, meow, meow, incessantly, like she has a cyborg throat. Meowmeowmeow all day. It’s like Siamese water torture. She also says “Mmow” (I’m cold) and “Muh-ow,” (I’m lonely), and Muwwo-mow-muw (Can’t you see I’m dying out here?) and now it’s deadline time for Sordid Tales. But I can’t write Sordid Tales because I can’t freaking concentrate. And while I realize, maybe this time, I can get away with writing a column about how I can’t write a column, I certainly can’t keep doing it. I’m beginning to think that it might be time to make some difficult choices.

EPILOGUE: The decision was made to take Aunt Suzy to the Humane Society. It was an extraordinarily rotten thing to have to decide. I was so distraught with the idea of having to turn her out, I couldn’t even bring myself to do it. Instead, I made W. bring her to the Humane Society. I mistakenly figured it would be easier for her because Suzy wasn’t her cat.

It was a pussy move.

When W. came home from the Human Society, her eyes were red and wet from sobbing. She had managed to stop crying for the moment. But the remnant of her breakdown was all I needed. As soon as I saw her face I began sobbing. My sobbing made her start sobbing all over again. We fell into each others arms and sobbed together.

Only love can bring the rain
that falls like tears from on high.

Ed Decker
R.I.P. Aunt Suzy