The cats missed us. Cute, you say? No, not cute. Well, sure it was cute when we first got home and they were all purry and lovey and talky. Aw. But now they have been fighting all morning, because I am in the guest room typing, and each one wants to be in here with me, and of course they can’t be in here at the same time, it’s just not big enough for two of them (well, Linus is pretty enormous). Hiss hiss, chase, chase, Banshee-noise, Banshee-noise.

And Linus apparently came down with the squirts while we were gone. While amazingly neither cat [Mia] did anything deliberately outside the litter box, there are a few drips here and there that I “get to” clean up today with the Industrial Strength Carpet Cleaner I took out a second mortgage to buy from Home Depot’s Aisle for Professional Career Janitorial People for just this purpose. But here’s what’s going to really gross you out, and I mean that as a very real warning: When Linus misses us, he stays awake all night trying to show us how much he missed us by walking around on our pillows and heads and organs with all 20 pounds of his I-missed-you, loving weight. Add a squirty ass, and, you guessed it, on one of the many, many, many, many times he woke me up, I discovered tracks on my pillow. I repeat, on my pillow. Horrifying.

And no, this isn’t the first time Linus has inadvertently smeared poo in our bed. Oh no. Holy Jesus, you say, and why don’t my seemingly intelligent friends shut this orange menace out of their room at night? Well, because then he cries softly outside our door, and it’s too sad. And it’s not his fault he’s too fat to reach his ass to clean it. He wants to be with us so much. Besides, I can always take a shower with Industrial Strength Antibacterial Soap and then wash the sheets in Industrial Strength Laundry Detergent. Eight times.

But here’s what puzzles me. Steve is so grossed out by baby poo [and incidentally, hates the word "poo," so for all you Steves out there, please substitue "feces" or better yet "defecation"] and dreads the far-future in which a stork will leave us a wailing poo-maker. And that’s weird to me, because here we have this 20-pound cat whose ass we have to clean ourselves and whose little smears of poo have three times now made their way onto our sheets, and yet Steve would defend him from any slander, rescue him from any fire-breathing giant [including his wife, should she take it upon herself to bathe the Biggie while Steve is home to hear his cries], buy him anything he desires, and, yes, has proposed that in that far-future-stork-time, we name our own kid after this cat.

Show me the logic. Please.