Look. There is literally no getting around that this is not a happy post. So if you are going to get upset, please for the love of god don’t read it. I’ve titled it in such a way that you are automatically giving up the right to be offended if you keep reading. So let’s just all agree that if we are going to move on from here that somewhere along the line there’s probably going to be at least one dead cat. It’s not a surprise ending is all I’m saying.

Against my better judgment, I bought my daughter a cat. The argument was somewhere along the lines of the reason I had a second kid in that it seemed like a really clever idea at the time until I realized that I had just created way more work for myself with no tangible benefits and by then I had a fucking cat. Technically I had two cats but one of them got hit by a car and died (dead cat #1…what did I tell you). This event was even sadder than you think it was because she was the best cat of the two. She was really beautiful and cuddly as far as cats go and really, really intelligent. Her brother on the other hand, was without a doubt the worst cat in the history of cats. He was boring orange, and he walked into walls (I am not kidding), and if you looked into his eyes you could actually see that he was processing life at the speed of broccoli. Slow broccoli.

In and of itself, a stupid cat is not the end of the world. If all the cat did was walk into walls and generally vegetable around the house I could have dealt with it. However, life decided that this particular cat should *also* get chronic bladder infections. And I would read into this and think, this cat must have done something pretty terrible in his past life to be coming back as a routinely incontinent, vegetable cat but then I remember that I am the one who has to deal with him and that the sum total of my current existence with the cats and the weird children and all of the ways that bodily functions that are not mine seem to go wrong in my life means I was probably Hitler last time I was here.

The first time he got a bladder infection, we discovered it when he started leaving Hansel and Gretel trails of blood drops that left multiple criss-crossing treasure maps from the litter box into various points on the wall. We took him to the vet who charged us $400 to confirm that a) he had a bladder infection b) he seemed a bit confused and c) he was in need of copious amounts of expensive medicine that would be an additional charge (obviously).

We ended up having to lock the cat in the downstairs bathroom for three days in order to contain the bleeding. We gave him lots of clean towels and fresh water and pain killers and antibiotics and a small vial of some kind of drops or another that I can only conclude were concentrated virgin unicorn tears mixed with conflict-free diamond dust because there was approximately one baby fingernail’s worth in the bottle and it cost $174 by itself.

After three days the cat was back to normal. Which isn’t really saying much. And everything was fine until about 6 weeks later when I went to pour myself a glass of wine and came upon the children playing pirates in the kitchen following a red “treasure” trail that led directly into the porch door. FFS.

Back to the vet, who refused to just give us the same expensive medication without first “examining” the cat. Near as I can tell, this involved a stethoscope, a thoughtful look into old broccoli eyes and $149. This time he gave us all the same medications and also explained that the cat was evidently prone to *chronic* bladder infections (obviously deduced through his exhaustive and cost-effective “examination”). And that if we wanted to avoid this happening on the regular, that from then on we should *only* feed him a specialized urinary tract food that would cause him to drink more water and us to take out a second mortgage.

So now we are spending $100 a month on special cat food, for a cat I don’t even like, all for the sake of the stupid children, who I *also* mostly don’t like. Parenting for the win.

The next thing that happens is that the cat gets ANOTHER bladder infection despite being on the special food, and the unicorn tears, and me threatening no one in particular that if he gets another bladder infection that so HELP ME GOD I WILL GIVE HIM AWAY. Back we go to the vet, who now has a framed picture of broccoli cat on the wall, presumably because he’s singled-handedly responsible for the vet’s new vacation condo in Boca.

Now it’s very important for me to convey how very much I am NOT KIDDING about this next part of the story. While I was “calmly” venting to the vet about the fact that the bladder infections had not stopped despite copious amounts of expensive treatments the vet suggested that the only reasonable thing to do at this point was to….and stay with me here….GIVE THE CAT A SEX CHANGE OPERATION.

………..

Okay so listen. I would like it on record at this point in the narrative that I killed neither the cat nor the vet when he raised this like it was a viable option. He even went on to explain his rationale behind it, which basically was that if the cat no longer had to go to the effort of sending the pee all the way through the entire length of a penis, that maybe there would be less complications and that he would get less infections. And also probably the condo needed a new deck and we were dumb enough to be buying unicorn tears on the regular so what the hell, he might as well go for broke. Literally.

And as much as I would have loved to spend FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS (actual price) giving the worst cat in the world a brand new vagina since he couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to pee with the equipment Satan gave him in the first place… visions of how the cat would proceed to fuck up a new in-hole on his stupid cat body that would cost me even more money to fix, prevented me from even considering this as a legitimate option. To be perfectly honest, this may have been the point where I started wondering if this guy was an actual vet.

Sex-change operation declined, we continued to fight the good fight by buying the fancy food and trying to force feed him water as often as possible. (This resulted in exactly the same amount of bladder infections.)

This went on for two years. Then, we bought a very pretty new house that had pretty carpets and pretty walls and did not smell like dried cat blood. I was VERY excited. And then one night about a week before we moved in, bam. Bladder infection. For the still-intact-penis-broccoli cat. Again. And at this point I was already fairly maxed out on stress what with packing and panicking and planning to move into a haunted ghost hotel for three weeks before we took possession of the pretty new house. (True story, probably its own blog).

Essentially I was out of patience for the whole goddamn thing. And while we were having dinner that night I started vocalizing my displeasure by *possibly* making disparaging comments about the cat such as “That bleeping cat better not bleep up my new bleeping house with his stupid bleeping bleep” and “I’ll walk that bleeping cat into the ocean before I let it into my new house.” and finally “You mark my bleeping words that bleeping cat is not going to make it to bleeping bleed all over my bleeping house. The bleep.” And why am I bleeping when I have a deep appreciation for copious amounts of swearing and am not afraid to drench my narratives in it? Because probably I’m slightly afraid of the power of the exact combination of words I used so I’m just going to let you fill in the blanks yourself and hopefully your cat doesn’t die. BECAUSE MINE DID. Fucking cat.

The exact sequence of events was that I tucked the cat into his blanket box with his virgin diamond meds and his water and gave him his painkillers and although I noticed that he seemed a bit lethargic I presumed we were still not on speaking terms over the whole not-giving-him-a-very-expensive-vagina thing. However, the next morning, I took the kids to school and came back to check on him and give him his morning meds and when I went into the bathroom he was bleeding much more than usual and was barely conscious. And even though I hated the little bugger I was *not* interested in having him die after I’d spent the previous evening making cat death threats until the children got so upset by it that I was forced to stop. Cue me driving like a lunatic to the vet a la Greys Anatomy screaming dramatically “DON’T YOU DIE ON ME YOU FUCKING FUCKTARD CAT”.

So the cat died. And the conversation after school with the kids may win out for worst ever. It went exactly as you would picture if you had threatened to kill someone and then that person just up and died on you like a total dick and then you spent the next four days on a rickety chair with a spotlight and two intense, weepy detectives that kept calling you Mommy while you are desperately trying to differentiate between wishing the cat was dead and actually killing it. According to my two detectives, it’s the same thing. And you would think they would REMEMBER that I have this power when they are being total ASSHOLES and maybe smarten up a tad…except this shit never seems to work out in my favour. (Probably on account of me having been Hitler and all.)

Like a year later we were picking up a family friend that the kids hadn’t seen since before I realized I was an actual witch, and he got in the car and said “Hi guys!” and my daughter immediately says “Mommy killed our cat!!” and I turn in shock to look in the back seat and just see the 6 year old solemnly nodding. Not even a hello. Just right under the bus. Boom. And take it from me…that is not an easy thing to just explain away to people. For the record, this is exactly why I can’t ever use my children as accomplices in anything because they will literally give me up as we are doing whatever the fuck it is. So now I’m stuck with these narc kids who have branded me as a cat murderer but are still not scared enough of me to do anything I say.

Just get a fucking fish okay? Do everyone a favour and get a fucking fish.

Fuck.