A Mid-Life Crisis, of the Feline Persuasion.

My cat has gone crazy.

Not to say that I haven’t had my issues with her in the past, but this time is different…odd…and a bit unsettling in an eerie sort of way.

It all started last week when she disappeared.

(And, might I add, she is an indoor cat.)

We saw her the night before – she was laying by us on the couch, acting normal.  But the next morning, she skipped all of her usual routines.

(It is important to note that our cat is as much OCD as every other member of our household – she does everything. the. exact. same. way. every. day.  And don’t mess up her routine, or she’ll pee on you.)

She didn’t come upstairs when Chris woke up to get her morning petting.

She didn’t come back upstairs when she heard me open my drawer and pull out my bible to take the opportunity to make me lose my temper while studying my bible by insistently laying right in the middle of it – over and over – no matter how many times I threw gently moved her.

She didn’t even go back downstairs to get her three daily treats before Chris left for work – she never skips her treats.

(If you give her four, she’ll puke.  If you give her two, she’ll meow at you until you give her THREE.  I only wish I were joking.)

I looked for her off and on all day – no signs of her anywhere.  By the time the afternoon arrived, I was convinced that I was going to find a dead cat when I finally found one – she’d never been missing this long.

I began looking under and around all of the furniture, my heart jumping every time I saw something white, hoping that it wasn’t a kitty carcass.

Chris texted me a list of household crevices to check.  Behind the washer, behind the fridge, in the baby clothes closet…

Checked them all – NO cat.

I finally gave up and decided that Kitty Carcass could wait until Chris came home.

A bit later, I was in my office, and as I was walking out, something caught my eye.  I jerked around – and there she was, sitting on a bench in my office, nonchalantly licking herself.

WHAT?!?

Naturally, I asked her where she had been.

Naturally, she just glared at me.

She was skittish for the rest of the day, so I assumed she had gotten caught behind something for a while.

(Or maybe that or she really did die, and the process of starting up another one of your nine lives is a very disturbing experience.)

So since her mysterious visit into the Kitty Dimension, she’s been weird.

Not doing any of her routines (which I do appreciate during my bible study), and doing all sorts of new things she’s never done before.

At least once a day I hear a crashing sound, only to find nothing when I come running.  I finally figured it out – she’s stepping across the dishes in the sink.

Weirdo.

(Of course I always have dishes in my sink.  Haven’t you ever had a newborn?)

She’s laying places she’s never laid.  She’s hissing at the children.  She’s jumpy.  She’s weird.

Oh – and she stinks.

(Which is becoming quite a pattern in our house.)

And finally, her mid-life crisis came to a head.

I started laundry on Thursday, but had one load left, so I left it in the floor of the laundry room overnight.

The next morning, I threw all of the clothes in the washer and turned it on.  When the load finished, I started putting it in the dryer, but I noticed that it didn’t smell quite as fresh as it should have.

In fact, it smelled a bit nasty.

When the clothes were all out, something in the bottom of the washing machine caught my eye.

Was that a…

Surely not…

I used my laundry detergent cup to scoop it out.

OhMyGoshItCannotBe…

I smelled it.

OhNoNoNo…

Yes, yes, yes.

It was a cat turd.

Washed, spun, and soaked, yet still maintaining it’s turdish qualities, thanks to the unbelievable dryness of cat defecation.  Although it was about an inch narrower than it probably started out, thanks to the infiltration into our laundry that the washing process allowed.

Gagging, I threw it out, returned all of the clothes into the washer, set the washer on the maximum-get-the-turd-smell-out setting, and prayed that it would work.

Then I went and told Oreo to please go back to her Kitty Dimension, post-haste.