Yesterday I just turned off the vacuum cleaner in my bedroom when I heard my husband shout, “Holy cow! Mary, come look at this!”

By the time I was within ten feet of the utility room, I smelled what he wanted me to see. It was a giant cat turd coiled like a snake ready to strike, in the litterbox, unburied. “I’ve never seen one that big,” he said.

Fighting nausea, I thought, this is what my life has become. I stepped a little closer and asked, “Is that blood?”

Jim looked down. “It sure looks like it. I wonder whose turd that is?”
With three cats in the house it was hard to be sure, but I suspected that it might belong to Charlie. He was the cat who went on vacation to parts unknown for most of the summer. The blood was probably some residual effect of his adventures.

“We should probably take it to the vet to see if there’s something wrong,” I said. While Jim double zip-lock bagged the “thing,” I called the vet’s office.

“I’m Mary Ingmire and I have three cats. One of them made a giant deposit in the litterbox and it looks like there is blood on it.” They must have thought I was a prank caller, because who opens a telephone conversation with the description of a turd?

Anyway, the nice lady told me to bring it in and not wait until tomorrow to do so. “What time can you be here?” It was close to rush hour traffic time, so a fifteen minute trip might take a half hour. “We close at 5:30, but you need to get it here before then so someone can examine it.”

Jim put the double zip-locked item into a Lowe’s shopping bag and I wanted to put the thing on the roof of my car. Since I didn’t have time to tie it down, I put it on the floor in the front and I hurried off.

They were somewhat surprised when I showed up at the vet’s office, but were glad to know my call was for real. The receptionist held out a chart, presumably mine, and said, “You can put that on this.” She didn’t want to touch it either.

Fifteen minutes later the vet came out carrying the chart without the turd in one hand, and a syringe and bottle of something in the other. He also assume Charlie was the culprit. “He has a bacterial infection and roundworms.” The syringe had stuff in it to cure roundworms. We were to give the pills twice a day for seven days. I wish he had come out with a gun and shot me there. Giving pills to a cat is like trying to shove a piece of boiled spaghetti up a soda straw. It ain’t going.

We’ve managed to get two pills into Charlie so far; only twelve to go. By the way, in the middle of writing this post, Jim came into the room. “I hate to interrupt you, but I think you need to see this.” He led me to the other litterbox and pointed out a turd that looked like an uncoiled snake. “I didn’t see any blood on it,” he said.

So this is my life.