BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

When you have geriatric felines you are going to have problems. That is just how it is.

I’m sure you’ve read some of my other blogs where I’ve gone on about having to give insulin to diabetic cats, or running sub-cutaneous fluids into a fleabag with chronic constipation. You’ve likely even read the blog about – and laughed at the picture of – the hemorrhoid cat. So, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that I am now lamenting the selective incontinence of one such “kitteh”.

Jasper, or as I like to call him, “the stupid one” – mostly because he’s as dense as a brick – has taken to relieving himself in one corner of our dining room. We stay on top of it, of course. Our house is lived in, not filthy. But, I have to admit, it is a bit of a battle. And, no matter how many chemicals you use to destroy the human detectable odor, the cat can still smell it and returns to that place over and over.

Since I am sequestered away in the office all day, we lock “TSO” and “TFO” (The Fat One) in the basement where the litter boxes are located. Granted, the basement is unfinished so it isn’t exactly plush – which is how E K prefers her dungeon – but, for the kitteh’s sake we do make sure they have their “cat pyramids” and “cat beds” down there. And, since that is where their food dishes are as well, they are all good.

Now, before I get a ration of comments telling me how I need to handle this, or that I am a bad person because I need to take the cat to the vet because he’s trying to tell me he is ill, just put a governor on it and step away from the keyboard. E K and I have been rescuing cats for better than 20 years. We have more than just a little experience in this arena. PLUS, we have, in fact, taken him to the vet. He’s fine. Nothing wrong. No urinary infections, no diabetes, etc. He’s just old and suffering from “I don’t care anymore syndrome.”

So anyway, on with the story. “TSO” will do the same thing in the basement on occasion, meaning he’ll leave a puddle on the concrete floor 10 steps from the litter boxes, just because he can. Fortunately, that is much easier to clean up than the hardwood in the dining room, but I digress.

Just the other day it was raining. Since we live in an old house at the bottom of a hill, in a dip in the road, with all of the property around us sitting higher than us, drainage occurs. See where I’m going with this? When such drainage occurs and the ground is saturated, some seepage also occurs. We don’t get “major flooding” down there, but we get a few puddles and minor streams running toward the floor drain.

On this particular day, the O-spring, fresh off finishing her homework, headed downstairs to take care of the afternoon feline feeding – something that has been added to her list of chores in recent weeks. No more had she gone down into the basement than I heard “Ewwwww! Jasper! That’s disgusting!” Given that I was sitting in the office upstairs doing some work, you know she had to be pretty loud.

The “Ewwws” and scoldings continued for a minute or two, and finally I heard her clomping back up the stairs. The basement door opened, the slammed, and I was greeted with my daughter yelling at me from the bottom of the first floor staircase.

“DADDY! Jasper peed ALL OVER the basement!”

“What do you mean, all over?” I asked.

“He peed EVERYWHERE! There’s only only little places to stand where it’s dry. It’s GROSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

When I finally stopped laughing I called back to her, “Honey, it’s raining. That’s just water from the basement leaking.”

It was quiet for a moment, then I heard a very calm and perfunctory, “Oh.”

Crisis averted. I wonder what she’s going to do the first time she has to change a diaper?

More to come…

Murv

My child is freakin’ brilliant.

I realize you’ve all heard me say this before, but hey, it’s the truth. She got her looks from her mother and her brains from me. Just don’t tell E K I said that… The brain part, I mean.

But seriously, The Evil Redhead and I ended up as some downright lucky parents, because the O-spring truly is brilliant.

Quirky, yes. Not quite Ally Sheedy from The Breakfast Club quirky, but then we don’t ignore our daughter like the parents ostensibly did to the character in that movie.

So, maybe with a little more luck on our side, the O-spring won’t end up being an “outcast shoplifter pickpocket with ungodly bad dandruff” who eats potato chip and pixie stix sandwiches for lunch.

Of course, knowing her current culinary tastes, potato chip and pixie stix on Wonder bread would probably appeal to her quite a bit. Hell, throw a few slices of bacon on there and even I might give it a go.

But, back to this whole language thing. Something I’ve never brought up before is the fact that our child used to be bi-lingual. Yes, I said used to be. She’s back to speaking only one language these days, although she does know a smattering of Spanish. But, back in the day she was fluent in two different languages.

Allow me to explain…

You see, we knew the o-spring was at the head of her class when she was still dumping loads in Pampers and falling asleep face first in her strained green beans. Well, to be honest we used cloth diapers and a diaper service in order to be a little more environmentally sound, but we won’t go into that. The thing is, even at that early an age, the child was fascinated by everything and couldn’t wait to assimilate any information she could possibly absorb, just like a dry sponge in a bucket of water.

However, we had no idea just exactly how far to the head of the class she was until one day when I arrived to pick her up at the day care.

She was all of about 2 1/2 years old at the time. We had already discovered that when the other kids in her age group were down for a nap in the afternoons, she refused to join them. Instead, she would spend nap time wide awake, and would put the time to good use by designing highly advanced, non-polluting mass transit systems using Legos and Lincoln Logs. Being quite the multi-tasker, she would simultaneously be explaining the theoretical properties of singularity event horizons to her caregivers. A couple of them even admitted to referencing the dictionary in order to understand her.

However, it wasn’t until this particular, fateful day that we discovered our child was a universal translator with delusions of grandeur. Well, actually, according to the stories we were told, said grandeur may well have not been a delusion at all.

It seems our child – who at the age of two had a vocabulary rivaling that of a college freshman as well as the comprehension and clarity of enunciation to use it effectively – also spoke fluent “toddler gibberish.” It actually surprised us to learn that she spoke this language, because she had only studied it for two weeks before moving straight into American English. However, the wide eyed care givers at the pre-school had been witnessing it first hand, but had never made mention of it. Until this particular day when our child had elected to use the ability to her advantage.

She was sitting in a time out chair when I arrived, her tiny little brow furrowed as she plotted her revenge against the system that had placed her there.

“What did she do this time?” I asked. I wasn’t all that surprised by the time out issue because while it wasn’t a regular occurrence, I knew she could be stubborn and temperamental.

“Inciting a riot,” the teacher told me. “And attempting to escape.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you know she speaks two languages, right?”

“Ummmm. No.”

“Well she does. English and Toddler.”

“Toddler is a language?” I had to ask because I hadn’t made it to that chapter in the parenting books. For the record, and much to my surprise, yes, it is.

“Of course.”

I took the teacher at her word, but was still a bit perplexed. “So, what’s that got to do with inciting a riot?”

“Well, you see,” she explained. “Normally we use this to our advantage. When one of the other toddlers is throwing a fit, or we simply cannot understand them, we send your daughter in. She gibbers with them, then comes back to us and explains the situation in English so we can address the need or problem.”

“You’re joking…”

“No, Mister Sellars, we’re serious. She’s an immense help to us. Until today.”

Again, for the record, she was serious. “The riot, you mean?”

“Yes sir.”

“Go on.” I was still skeptical, but willing to listen.

“Well, there was a particular toy your daughter wanted to disassemble and rebuild today, but we had to put it away because it made too much noise and it was disturbing the infants.” She motioned to the nursery next to the toddler classroom.

“So, that was the riot?”

“Oh no,” she replied, shaking her head. “We explained to your daughter that the toy had to be put away but she became very agitated and demanded access to it. She kept muttering something about missing a quantum event for a temporal dilation window or something.”

I nodded. “I see.”

I could actually empathize, as I had stopped the O-spring from building a time machine on several occasions myself.

“Anyway,” the teacher continued. “When we wouldn’t comply with her demands she went over to the other toddlers, gibbered for a few minutes, and then it happened.”

“The riot?”

“Yes. Several of the toddlers formed a barrier between us and the exit and began screaming as a distraction, while your daughter directed the others to build a tower out of the large blocks. Once the blocks were in place she climbed them and opened the fire exit.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious, Mister Sellars.”

“But obviously you managed to stop her and the other kids.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t easy. Somehow she had managed to get my car keys from my purse, and if she’d been able to reach the pedals it could have been a different story…”

As I said, the O-spring doesn’t speak “Toddler Gibberish” any longer. And, of course, that was several years ago. However, her ongoing brilliance never ceases to amaze me.

More to come…

Murv

PS. Another “for the record” – While this story is obviously embellished for entertainment value, as usual, the core of it is entirely true. The O-spring really and truly did translate for the teachers at the pre-school for a period of about 1 year, which is something they found absolutely amazing and would tell us about regularly. And, one particular Autumn day she did, in fact, use that ability to incite a riot as a distraction, build a tower with help from other kids, and open the fire door.

I shit you not. My kid is freakin’ brilliant. 🙂