And now, journalism.
The summer before I went back to grad school, my best friend Sybil (calling her that to protect her identity and because I've been watching Downton Abbey) went to rehab. She was to spend the entire summer at Dawn Farm in Ann Arbor, so my dearest friend, who I was sharing a bedroom with, was not going to be back until days before I would be leaving for Milwaukee. Also, my boyfriend wanted to break up, since he was getting dumped anyway. I get that, I do. He should at least be allowed to start sleeping around. Anyone would want to. But at the time I didn't follow the logic. To be fair, I had just gotten home from Las Vegas, and he was vile to me in the car. He didn't call me for two weeks, and I had to be the one to call and say I was outta there. Really, I wanted to break up too. But I was afraid of being alone.
Sybil had a cat named Lipo. A blonde, gigantic, Maine coon nightmare. He knocked things over. He bit. He lunged. He spat. He clawed. He begged. Demanded. He had a high-pitched girly meow. This combined with his swishy walk, which accented his fluffy back legs (they looked like bloomers), made us suspect he was a gay kitty, which would be fine. But he was totally untrained. He was Sybil's master. If I was going to spend the summer alone with it, this was going to have to change.
At the time I was working as an editor for SGI Publications, the organization that printed The Current, Ann Arbor's free event mag, back when things were printed. Good old times. But poor times. And scary times, since I had made a decision that I might learn soon to regret. I was probably depressed, and I'll be honest, a little addicted. Sybil and I had both been in programs. Going back to school was the left turn I needed, and the Farm was what Sybil needed. It occurs to me now that Lipo's survival may have depended on whether be learned to behave like a normal cat. Anyway, I was determined to train him so he wouldn't be so goddamned annoying.
The neighbors at our complex, Golfside Lake, called Lipo Henry. Lipo would demand, by way of screechy, incessant meowing, to be let outside to wander about the grounds. He had his claws, but it still made me nervous. Sybil couldn't go to bed until he returned in the evening, which could sometimes be in the middle of the night. I'd try to stay up too, but passed out on the couch many a night. Sometimes Lipo wouldn't come calling (and it was really calling) until after 3am. Once it was after being skunked. That might be another story. More adventure than two drunks need, let's put it that way.
I trained Lipo out of many bad behaviors. Getting up on the coffee table. Getting fed in an unlimited capacity throughout the day. (He was obese. My friend Hammy said he saw him trip once.) Lunging at your leg and clamping on with claws and teeth. No more of any of that shit. Mostly it was a matter of ignoring his yawling, and sometimes a matter of standing up in a grizzly-attack posture and saying fuck off loudly. I did let him outside during the day. Even though he had once digested, then regurgitated, the hind leg of a king-size bullfrog on our floor. (I was hazy and didn't have my glasses on when I found it. It looked like a chicken wing.)
But the cat hated me. I could feel it in his gaze.
One night, after he'd been out, he shit his bloomers. I didn't know why, but when he stepped out of his state-of-the-art litter box, his back leg fur was just obliterated with brown wet shit. This meant I would have to bathe him. Sybil had regularly bathed Lipo, which turns out, as Reddit shows, is a thing people do. But Lipo had claws, and strong strong arms. Giant paws. Sybil never finished bathing him without bleeding, sometimes bandage-worthy bleeding.
I could not let this cat bleed me, so I thrust him in the tub by the neck - no plug in the drain, warm water running - and frantically splashed water onto his hind quarters. Pinning him down with my elbow. Cursing. Both me and him. He growled. He snarled. He hissed like a cougar. When he tried to scratch or bite me, I pile-drove him face-first into the water. He got me, but not much.
He was almost clean, except for this pine needle that just wouldn't splash off near his rear. I couldn't believe how obstinate this pine needle was being. I didn't want to touch the cat with my fingers, but now it appeared I had to. I have a mortifying aversion to feces. But don't we all? What are our thoughts and feelings about touching shit? Isn't that why we go through so much toilet paper? Is it really so irrational that I thought I should balance myself on the edge of the tub at my hip, and pin down with one arm, and just throw water with the other?
So I gingerly picked at the thing. It still wouldn't come. The cat yowling. Me yowling what the fuck why is this so difficult to do? Can't one thing be easy? Lipo crying. Then I realized that the end of the pine needle was inserted directly into the cat's anus. That was why he pooped his knickerbockers. He was trying to shit out this object. (This reminds me of a funny Jim Jeffries bit. This isn't it, but it's the same show.)
Now there are several species of conifer to be found in Michigan: scotch pine, jack pine, white pine. The species that grew at Golfside was red pine, which I forgot temporarily when I reached out and pulled on the needle. I extracted about four inches of red pine needle from that cat's rectum. I'm not sure how to describe the sound he made. The O Long Johnson kitty reminded me of it.
After I flung the pine needle away in disgust, I realized that Lipo was no longer fighting me. I let him out of the tub, all clean, and didn't get bruised in the process of drying him. Not only did he not bite me, he purred. I dried him thoroughly, and he waddled away in shame, his pom-pom legs curly and damp. He didn't persist at all in his meowing for food, or to be let out. Even through his training, he'd still give it two or three tries. But he was quiet. When he started getting dry, he curled up on my belly where I lay on the couch. Never ever had he done that before.
From then on, we were much better friends. I spent the summer indulging heavily with a younger friend, a co-worker of Sybil's. At the end of it, Sybil returned. She hadn't embraced sobriety yet, and I probably didn't help that along, but she did eventually. She has. I'm still testing my bottom, but I do have a PhD. Sybil ended up having to give Lipo to a friend after all. Being sober meant a commitment that didn't allow for having a cat. The friend put a pink collar with fake rhinestones on him, and renamed him Oscar de la Rentay.
The end.
Look at the mess we had in that place. Nice place for a mirror though.
Aim: the cheapest toothpaste for those who are giving up. And peroxide, for cat servants who give baths.
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