Opinion Article 9/17/09
Zachary Newcott
Beth's cat Georgie Fruit has a lot of problems, but his most recent happens to be farting. Originally it took me a couple seconds to realize that the squeaks I heard when picking him up didn’t actually come out of his mouth, but now I’ve managed to forgo the entire picking up process and just witness his farting power all on his own. It’s unassuming at first, but then it envelopes the room in an invisible cloud of barf, a cloud of which there is no escape.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever smelt a cat fart before. I don’t know what you’re into, and I’m certainly not one to judge, but believe me when I say it’s far worse than anything I could produce, even after devouring a pile of spicy chicken fajitas at Molca Salsa. This of course comes at the tail end of a long line of Georgie related problems, and in contrast to his recent run-in with fleas, the farting dilemma is the Mild in the bin of Flaming Hot sauce packets.
Fleas are incredible insects. Much like their brethren mosquitos, they join the special segment of the animal kingdom pyramid which is composed entirely of creatures which have no impact on this earth other than to annoy every other segment of the animal kingdom pyramid. No one is safe. In an act of random cruelty, Georgie found himself a victim by his arch nemesis (aka: the bunny living on Beth’s back porch) and became infected by these horrible pests.
The only solution was a cat bath, and for Georgie the cure was worse than the disease. Although he doesn’t have much fur, his wet body resembled a mummified skeleton scampering back and forth in the shower and screaming wildly. If it wasn’t so funny it probably would have been disturbing. Yet he had his revenge by witnessing the flea bath of his rival Johnson the bunny, who in the midst of his treatment inexplicably began drumming on the sink faucet with his hind legs in a desperate attempt to keep his heart from exploding.
Still, the fleas returned. My old roommates could relate. Their cat Stig also got fleas, and Jon has since resorted to scratching his bites his their car keys, leaving long red stripes down his legs. Micah has since begun to consider wearing a flea collar of his own around the apartment to effectively counteract the parasitic onslaught. Stig meanwhile has given up moving and instead has collapsed in a large round heap in front of his food bowl, lazily pawing at it in request for more.
My solution was fire, and lots of it. Luckily, Beth put out my torch and instead opted to shuffle out the money needed to get medicine from the vet. Money, I remind you, that could have gone to the poor. Or videogames.
Yet, after all of this, Georgie has only repaid us in releasing noxious barf breath from his rear end. Again, I suggested fire as a solution, but I feared Georgie’s gasses would result in a cataclysmic explosion. Then again, pets aren’t really here to repay us for the food we feed them or the poops we have to scoop up for them when they miss the litter box (Why Georgie? Why?). They’re just here to eat and bother us when we’re at the computer, just like children, except furrier. It’s the moments when they curl up next to us and place their heads in our lap that we appreciate them for just what they are, cute little farting machines.
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