A Cuppa Tea: In the Afternoon

I had a rough morning...

​It started out fine, I slept in—until about 8:15—then I showered—I shower in the morning: it wakes me up, relaxes my muscles, clears my mind, and, kind of, lets me outline my day, although my day never actually unfolds as framed—I stepped out of the shower, dressed, and walked to my bedside table where I keep my glasses, completely unwittingly, assuming, of course, that my morning routine will continue, as normal, and I would make some breakfast, some tea, put on some classical music, check my email, collect orders that were placed over the night, audit my ads balances, and update my website, however after I put on my glasses, in the semi-dark room that is my bedroom, I noticed a slightly darker spot on my nice, white comforter, and thought, “Oh, if that little shit did it again...”

I turned on the light and, sure enough, my little Calico cat had left a nice spot of pee on my comforter. Dinah, my Calico, has been doing this lately, she’s unsatisfied with my level of attention towards her these past few days—I’ve washed that comforter a couple of times in the past week--in fact, the first time she did it, I left her enclosed in the bathroom with some food, water, and a litter box, you know, to teach her a lesson, of course she hasn’t got a clue why she’s spending the day in the bathroom, so although my pride might feel slightly less tarnished...; she got out of the bathroom and climbed on my lap while I worked that evening, all the while knowing that just moments before she had left another surprise for me, a surprise that I would not find until much later.

I keep two litter boxes in my house, and I’m very vigilant about changing them, because who likes the consuming smell of ammonia as it quickly fills every crevasse of your dwelling? I’ll tell you who: nobody, not even cats because I had neglected to clean out the most popular of the two litter boxes as often as normal, and my entitled little Calico decided she would show me exactly how she felt about that.

​So, I cleaned out the litter box.

I decided, also, to clean out the other, although it had hardly been used, the “other” litter box is the nicer of the two, it’s got a door; it was this litter box that I left with Dinah while she spent her punishment day in the bathroom, it was still in the bathroom this morning because I just hadn’t gotten around to moving it back to where I keep it. So, I lifted it to take it back, and underneath the litter box was a tiny puff of smashed poo. I am never going to fully understand how my tiny Calico managed to move this large, fairly heavy litter box, take a poo, and then move it directly over her poo, and somehow drop it so that it smashed, almost perfectly, and not slid all over the bathroom floor, as well as the bottom of the box.

So, I was standing in my bathroom looking, first, at this squashed poo, and then back at the pile of my comforter and sheets on the floor, and back at the poo, and, again, the pile on the floor. I take the litter box outside to give it a good rinse on this beautiful, wet, cold day and left it out there to dry, and then I came back inside. I started organizing some things, including my wash, because I figured, “What the hell, today’s just going to be the perfect day to take care of it anyway.” And then, after I started my wash and some, at that point, light cleaning, before getting back to my breakfast, tea, Mozart, emails, orders, audits, and updates, I noticed several little smudges on my coated, cement floor so I opted to investigate. I followed the smudges, erratically throughout my cottage, and reasoned that I should start my investigation with the...bottom...of...my...shoe.

At some point, while I was outside cleaning poo off of the litter box, I stepped in dog poo, and then dragged it haphazardly around the entirety of my home...



I sat down, in order to, you know, kind of, appraise my morning:

​“My cat had pee’d on my comforter because I hadn’t changed the litter box, which she, apparently, doesn’t actually use, in favor of the space beneath said box, and while cleaning the poo off the box--that she doesn’t actually use—I then, gracefully managed to step in poo, which was also not in, but in the immediate vicinity of the box, and took it inside in order to trek it around my cottage managing, auspiciously, to aid in the very crime that my lovely little Dinah had originally attempted, which in fact, inadvertently, started...everything.”

After several minutes of reassessing my life choices, and realizing that, sometimes, your only option is to just start somewhere, and it really doesn't matter where, I lit a few candles and a diffuser, started boiling some water, played a little ditty on the banjo, and leapt into action. 

Needless to say, my cottage is now very clean, it smells like Eucalyptus and "Ocean Breeze", the floors have been swept and mopped, twice with Citra-solve, and, yes, I did have that cuppa tea while the reposing melody of Mozart blended with the Eucalyptus and "Ocean Breeze", and now, all I have left to do is start a fire, and wait for Dinah to find the perfect spot on my comforter to leave a spotta pee.