Yesterday afternoon I passed along an old story about my cat, Mouse, crapping on the back of my neck, and I don’t mean the usual squeeze-outs but a warm stinky milkshake — an anxiety discharge. She was freaked out by the movement of the car, and leapt onto my shoulder and dumped the chocolate malted onto my neck and onto my blue workshirt.
The boys were with me, and we were driving east along Franklin Avenue. (It was sometime around ’03.) Jett was sitting shotgun and saw what was happening and began howling with laughter, and then the smell hit all of us…”aaagghhh!” My first instinct was to stop the car and leap out. I hurriedly tore my shirt off and used it to wipe the brown ooze off my neck and upper back as I arched my back. I was outside my mind as I went “eewwgghh, eewwgghh” like Humphrey Bogart when Katharine Hepburn is trying to burn the leeches off his back in The African Queen. I was searching for a garden hose or a sprinkler system of some kind but couldn’t find one. I threw the shirt away — I didn’t want it near me. It was awful.
Mouse had done this as a deliberate “fuck you” for subjecting her to the trauma of car travel. When cats don’t like something or more particularly when they don’t like you, they really let you know it.