Help! I've Pooped Illegally!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 
Oskar, showing off his case of Stink Foot
Oskar ran into the room a little while ago, whining at high volume.
Yeow! Mmm-yah! [Seriously, human,] Mow-ow-ow-ow!
What is it, Oskar?
Mow-ow-ow-ow! He lifted one foot and then the other, doing the Dance of the Great Emergency. He originally invented this song and dance number to express his distress about the first time he puked in my dirty underwear.
Oh, crap, I thought. He's had another poop emergency. He has these occasional poop emergencies lately, because we fed him too much soft food last week, and it is taking his sensitive kitty digestive tract a while to calm down.
I rose from my chair, and he turned 180 degrees to lead me down the hallway to the Palinode's office. The closer we got, the more awful the stench became.
Christ, cat. What the hell did you do in here?
I grabbed a bag and the poop scoop and set about cleaning out the litterboxes. He kept doing the Dance of the Great Emergency in the middle of the room, though, which alerted me to the fact that I was not fixing his situation as he had hoped. Damn. That could only mean one thing. It was indeed a poop-related situation, but it was not a poop-in-the-litterbox-related situation. Damn.
I took the baggie of litterbox poop down to the dumpster and came back up to the office. The stench seemed to have grown. It was soupy thick. I walked in a spiral from the outside edges of the room inward, trying to sniff my way to the source, but it was like searching through a thick fog. Suddenly, I was right in the middle of it. It was intoxicating, but in a bad way, like if you were a Mormon who'd found themself accidentally drunk and was trying to bargain their way out of hell.
It was coming from a black garbage bag that the Palinode had begun to fill with the myriad useless papers we collect. I bent down, lifted the edge of the open bag, and was met with the horrific site of the Great Emergency. Oskar, a cat who, even in times of disruptive bowel issues, is fastidious about doing appropriate things with accidental poop, had crawled inside the garbage bag to unload when he couldn't make it to the litterbox. He had then pushed some of the papers inside partially on top of it to bury the slimy mess as best he could.
I gathered up the disgusting scene, shoved it inside another garbage bag, and made a second trip to the dumpster. Upon my return, I found Oskar lying belly up and purring for my love from the top of the bookshelf.
I fixed it, I said, which is what I always say after fixing whatever has caused him to do the Dance of the Great Emergency, and he squinted his eyes affectionately at me.
If there was ever a cat who could really use his own opposable thumbs, it's Oskar.
the pets, the photographs
Reader Comments (28)
That was very responsible of him!
Xena once had a poop emergency because we'd closed the basement door and she's too stupid to push the flap aside with her empty head. She ran around and carried on while we were watching a movie but we didn't pay attention. She finally gave up and pooped in her cat bed. We felt really guilty about the whole thing.
I was gonna say! My pup once pooped out of her crate but I think that was more of self-preservation issue than a cleanliness issue. Of course, the whole thing is hilarious.
Hmm, I'm not sure if either one would tell us. You are very lucky. We were out of litter..and our cat told us by peeing near the airconditioner...so the smell of cat pee came through the vents, I thought that was pretty clever.
Ugh, poor you!
My kitten once came to me in that kind of there-is-an-emergency-come-sort-it-out way. I followed him to the back sliding glass door where he stopped and glared.
"It's raining, I'm not going out there!"
He gave me an upset look. I thought there was probably a cat taking shelter under the balcony or something - the kitten was territorial but looked to me to defend it.
I tried to ignore him and then broke down. "Fine," I said, stepping out into the miserable weather. "Show me the problem."
He mewed in distress and it finally dawned on me.
The issue was the rain. He wanted me to fix it.
i have a cat that pees in the toilet on a regular basis. she has never pooped in there though. she tends to pee in the toilet when the litter box isn't as clean as she would like it to be. i have no idea why she decided it was an appropriate place to pee. if she ever poops anywhere other than the litter box it is on a rug in the hallway which she then scrunches up to cover her tracks.
That's one smart cat. When my cat has a poop emergency he does it just outside the litter box, never somewhere so intelligent as inside a garbage bag!
I hope you're kitties are a good distraction right now.
Heeheehee! I laughed so much reading this story! First, your storytelling is, dare I say, perfect, and second, Oskar is so funny.
I'm lucky that my cats will rarely poop illegally, but Brancusi will go on and on if the litter box is a little too stinky. I love how you tell them you fixed it.
And finally: awesome photograph!
awe... i <3 cats!!
Holy cow I need a living breathing pet other than stupid fish!
* the fish are not actually stupid. They know who feeds them. They look at me and guilt me. And then I point to where I've sprinkled the food and they swim to it.*
So very lucky that the kitty put it in that bag -- if I come home to find mine having a crying fit, she usually means "I puked on your bed and I need you 'cause I can't change the sheets myself!"
"if you were a Mormon who'd found themself accidentally drunk and was trying to bargain their way out of hell"
Where do you get these images? Fantastic!
Wow, Oskar is pretty amazing. I've never had a cat who would willingly tell me that they'd pooped somewhere they shouldn't have.
Popping outside the litterbox is a hostile act over here. They don't ever tell me where it is, the fun for them is waiting to see when and how I find it. Yes, I adopted a pair of charmers.
That is incredible. Cats really are a lot smarter than dogs. Our golden never met a poop emergency he couldn't roll in.
Love the new masthead!
Oskar is a brilliant kitty. My puppy Montel does the same thing. He will come to me with his head hanging down, looking ashamed and I know he's done something he wishes he hadn't.
Oskar NEEDS to come teach Connor a few things. Seriously, that's one fantastic cat!
The photo is awesome.
The header, brilliant!
Oh my freakin' good lord, Schmutzie. If I didn't adore you enough enough already, this post surely put it over the top.
Bless his heart!!!
Love the dance of great emergency.
Oh do I know that dance! My cat is old and also has poop issues. I don't want to get graphic but it involves baby wipes. Shudder.
I'd be in trouble if I had an Oskar at my house... too many bags of miscellaneous papers lying around. It would've taken me weeks to find the cause of the Dance of Great Emergency.
Only you could write that well about cat poop and get 20 comments. Oh wait 21 :) You rock!!!!!
I need to you to teach me how to teach my cats to be this responsible. Mine just puke on my shoes and then go about their business like "What? This is TOTALLY normal for cats. Stupid human."
And then they turn their noses up at me.
There are no poop emergencies in my home. There are urine assaults, though, in which the message that the litterbox is a day past its cleaning date is delivered directly into bed sheets, pillows or couch cushions to be found only when you are tired enough to really NEED the pee-pee object enough to grab at it or lay down on it.
But that's still better than this particular poop emergency, I'll admit.
That is one damn smart cat. I've had a lot of cats, and while they did manage to get their poop into the litter box, not a single one of them ever tried to communicate with me. About anything. Oh, except the meowing for food. But other than that, nothing.
I did the Dance of Great Emergency just this morning.