Living In The Animal Kingdom

Firstly, I'd like to thank all the kind persons who wrote me about that heinous raccoon. Secondly, let me just say that, happily, he hasn’t been back. Or that, if he has, he must have dined first because he ignored both my garbage and Boo’s horrid food. (Which in itself is sort of like garbage, no offense meant to Boo--I’m just, as the vernacular has it these days, sayin’.  Which doesn’t quite work when you split it up, does it, so here it is one more time: I’m just sayin’.)

Since I’m still waiting for that magnetic cat door to happen, Boo and I have had to regress to our pre-cat-door life, when Boo got in and out through our bedroom window. Of course, the raccoon could certainly get in that way too, but I always close this windowat night in hopes that he won’t. In hopes that everyone won’t, if it comes to that, but, as the vernacular also has it these days: Let us not go there.

Naturally, as soon as I began to relax about the raccoon, a brand new animal entered our house, and it did not need an open cat door to do so. That’s because this animal was a flea.

General Flea and his army (ten million at least) marched into my house in silent black waves and bit every single part of my body. And since I’m pretty much allergic to all signs of life, the bites swelled up into vibrant red welts. So itchy and ugly and leprous was I that for the first time ever I was actually glad The Cowboy was not on his way over to see me as he would surely have hollered and hightailed it back outta Boringame fast.

“Has Boo had his Frontline?” Hank Fitz wanted to know. He meant the supposedly non-toxic stuff I squeeze onto the back of Boo’s neck every month. It’s supposed to ward off all buggy evil to the tune of four million dollars a squirt.

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t think it works.”

The truth is it probably works fine when it actually gets onto a cat, but when I apply it alone, which is of course every time, most of it gets onto the floor as Boo springs forth and goes into orbit.

“Perhaps it’s time for a new application,” said Hank. “I’ll come down tomorrow and you can hold him down while I squeeze.”

It’s amazing what two people can do in one second what one person cannot do in one year or for that matter ever but don’t get me started. Let me just say that when Hank Fitz (surely the most uxorious of all my P. Husbands) arrived he had a box of Flea Fogger Time Bombs in hand. After we Frontlined Boo and tossed him outdoors, we shut all the windows, set off the bomb, and flew like crazy bats from the house.

“The label says not to go back for two hours,” Hank said.

“Good, that gives us just enough time for lunch at Duarte's."

Since Duarte’s is in Pescadero, we actually needed more like four hours, which was fine with me as this  gave the fleas even more time to die.

And now let us all hail Hank Fitz, for one week later I no longer itched, and another week later I had no more welts. And just when I began to relax about both the raccoon and the myriad fleas--well, I think you can guess--another animal entered the house.

Not of its own volition, mind you.  Boo brought it in, and not in his fur. I saw it this morning when I awoke.  It was on the rug under our bedroom window, all curled up—and I do not mean as in with a good book.

“God DAMN you,” I said to the murderous Boo, as he lolled around on his nonchalant back. “Why can’t you be like a regular cat and leave your victims outside the front door?”  Outside being the operative word.

It's a stiff bloodied thing with a tail like an earthworm, and I am waiting for a husband to dispose of it for me.  Which, lest you think otherwise, I do realize means I'll be decorating it for Christmas.