The issues presently existing between the cat and I have been well documented as of late. The war he had been waging against me seemed to be intensifying to some colossal kitty climax, the magnitude of which I couldn’t even fathom. However, what occurred the other night was way beyond my craziest drug-induced imagination.
Fast Eddie spent the better part of the evening sleeping on the bed as he always does. I was up late, probably reviewing the latest activity on the Asian stock exchange or something, until I was tired enough to go to sleep. As usual, when I got into bed, that was Ed’s signal to get up and start prancing around the apartment meowing at the top of his lungs as if it were a running discourse on his every action, “Meow! I’m eating from my dish now! Meow! I’m surveying the shoes to determine which one I will pee in, but not until tomorrow morning, just before you put it on! Meow! I just busted ass!”
The meowing subsided only when I heard the unmistakable sound of him crawling around behind the television. Normally this wouldn’t matter – he’s a cat, it’s not like he’s an unsupervised child that’s likely to stick its finger in the electrical socket – except that he had a profound propensity for whizzing behind the television at our house in Columbus whenever he was particularly upset. So in light of that, I shot out of bed and turned on the light.
There he was behind the tv, but the look on his face said nothing about a late night whiz session; it said, “back off shithead, I’m on the prowl.” As far as cat’s go, Ed is a pretty proficient hunter, so I assumed he’d located a mosquito, or worst case, a spider. So I sat back and let him do his thing for a short while. He kept coming up empty, though, and he seemed particularly agitated by it all, so for the sake of my beauty sleep I decided to intervene.
The way the apartment is set up we have the tv in the corner, a printer setting on a Rubbermaid bin next to that, and an end table that doubles as our office supply center next to that (this description is all very depressing. I feel like I’m living in a cell at Gitmo that’s sponsored by Office Depot). So, I went over to the end table to see if I could find his insect.
“Holy fuck! I just shit my pants! There’s a goddamn cockroach the size of my thumb back there!” Oh my god, I’m not kidding. It was huge, and I shit my pants. What the hell do you do in that situation? It’s a fucking cockroach!!!
I turned around to grab a cup (I was going to trap it – what the hell do I know???) and turned back but it was already gone. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit” The only thing worse than a cockroach is a missing cockroach. Holy crap, I was freaking out.
Literally I started pacing the room, not a clue what to do and sweating bullets. I looked in at Sara sleeping soundly and I knew there was no way in hell I as getting back in bed with a cockroach on the loose.
I looked at Ed and he was like, “I told you so, idiot. You should have let me handle this.”
So I decided to grow a pair and go after the piece of shit. I started to remove everything from the end table, one item at time, carefully checking to make sure it wasn’t clinging to the bottom of something. Every 15 seconds I had the creepy crawlies like it was on my back or something. I still do right now as I’m writing this. I emptied the entire end table and found nothing. I mean, it’s a cockroach! It’s sole purpose on earth is survival.
Just as I was sweating my next move, Ed came over and started to crawl behind the end table. At first I was like, “what the hell are you doing! It’s a cockroach! For all I know they bite or some shit! I don’t know!” But he looked at me like, “I got this one,” so I let him go for it and in he went.
“Ahh! There it is! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” It scurried from the end table past the printer and behind he tv. “Holy shit, that thing’s faster than snot on ice! Whatdowedo? Whatdowedo???”
But there was Ed right after him. I reacted quickly too, like a puma, or a mountain lion, racing around to the other side of the tv, and there he was, backed into the corner. Ed held his ground on the right flank, and I held mine on the left, and in that moment, locked in an epic battle with La Cucaracha, Ed and I shared a glance that said it all – I had my buddy back; the Hollywood to my Ice Man; the Shake to my Bake; and there was nothing stopping us from taking that sonofabitch down.
It was beyond my reach, so Ed made a quick move in to scare it from its position. It took two fatal steps to the left and there I was, slamming the surge suppressor onto its godforsaken back, crushing its exoskeleton and painting the wall with cockroach guts.
We both let out a sigh of relief - we had won, and the best part was, we did it together, like Batman and Robin; Spade and Farley; Gerrard and Torres… Ed and I went to bed together that night and drifted off to sleep, dreaming of the thrill of the hunt, and the excitement of the kill.
The next morning I woke up with cat shit on my face.
Actually that’s not true.
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Let it be known that I have no intention of telling Sara about any of this. Can you imagine how freaked out she’ll be to know we had a cockroach in our apartment??? Normally she edits my posts offline and never gets on the actual blog, so I’m just going to post this without her review. Oh man, I can’t even imagine how freaked out she’ll be. Probably about the same as when she finds my shit-stained underwear in the hamper.
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