2001-08-14

Breeding

Chickens, when you've been married for a certain period of time, as is the case with the houseboy and myself, you start getting asked The Question.

You know...The Question.

Fortunately, the pressure is somewhat off of us as of late, as our respective siblings have been doing their fair share of breeding, providing pinkish, cherubic children to coo over at roughly two-year intervals.

We have a cat.

We got a small taste of parental panic on Saturday, when we noticed that Whitey B. was not her usual snarky self that morning. She'd flop on the floor, making feeble scratching motions, then get up, go to the litter box, strain, yowl, produce nothing, and return to the kitchen to repeat the whole cycle all over again.

I've never seen her quite that miserable. I mean, she's usually miserable in that put-upon, poor-me way that cats are, but this was completely different.

I got down on the floor in front of her, putting my nose to hers. "Ishck? You okay, Chief?"

She got up and went back to the litter box.

We tried batting her favorite toy, a little stuffed monkey named Kochalka, at her, to no avail. She was not having it.

"Maybe she's just constipated," I said, trying not to think about the logistics of cramming her into her carrier and taking her to Angell to find out what her problem was. I started feeding her some of her hairball medicine.

"I don't think so," replied Kev, "She did her thing earlier while I was brushing my teeth, so I just scooped it out and flushed it down the toilet."

"Huh."

Kev paused for a minute. "You know, though, she came back to inspect her work the way she always does, and of course there wasn't anything there to inspect and it looked like that kind of stressed her out."

"Really?"

"Well, yeah."

"Maybe it's kind of like when you think you've just taken a really big dump, and then you turn around to flush and there's nothing there, you know?" My sister and I have often discussed this phenomenon; it's called a Ghost Shit.

"So you think maybe she came back, couldn't find her last bit of work, and figured she hadn't done it yet?"

"Yeah!" I went nose-to-nose with Whitey again: "Ischk? Did Daddy stress you out by taking your poops away?"

"Meow."

"Yeah. Mean ol' Daddy."

We gave her some milk, and that seemed to calm her down some.

Later in the afternoon, I heard her scratching around in the box. Delighted, I scooped her up and carried her into the living room, dangling her in front of Kev. "Daddy!" I cooed, "We made poopies!"

"We did?! Awwww, whudda goo' gurrrlll..."

"She's a goooood Whitey Poopbutt..."

Whitey just glared at us.

As you can see, we're in no immediate hurry to reproduce.

lisamcc at 5:26 p.m.

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