"Mercy" I cry!

I would have to say that this past Sunday morning was one of the worst mornings of my life. D left Thursday for a camping trip with the guys and was not due back until Sunday afternoon. I had spent most of Thursday night cleaning the spare room in anticipation of a friend staying the night Friday. Friday night was spent drinking wine and watching season 1 of "Sex and the City". Saturday morning, we woke and spent the day in Seattle. Arriving back home after 9:00 that night, my girlfriend and I polished off a couple of warm slices of banana cream cheesecake from the famed Cheesecake Factory and parted ways. There I was home alone--but you see, even when I am home alone, I am never really home alone.

In addition to my husband, I share my home with four others. Koji, Stussy, Bella, and Ginger--two cats, two dogs. Yes, that's right, four animals. And yes, I often think I am out of my mind. Four very distinct personalities and four small, but very lively, life forms. Fighting sleep I stayed up until just past midnight to hang out with the dogs. Finally, I relegated them to their kennel and readied myself for bed. On my way upstairs, I shut the door to the spare room to keep the cats off the recently laundered sheets and grabbed the phone just in case I needed to call 9-1-1 in the middle of the night.

At 5:30 AM the next day Ginger began barking signaling that she was ready to start the day. This is not unexpected. Not able to read or tell time, she wakes up every day of the week at the same time. I try to ignore here hoping that by some miracle, she will fall back asleep. But no such luck. I roll out of bed carefully and make my way downstairs.

Ginger is my "morning dog". Similiar to my husband, she greets the morning everyday with the energy of a tornado. As I make my way down the basement stairs, I see her waiting patiently at the front of the pen with what appears to be a smile on her face. Her tail is wagging and she looks glad to see me. Bella on the other hand, is much like myself, sharing the belief that mornings always come too soon. Unlike her sister, she remains half asleep on the bed and barely manages to open one eye to peer up at me as I make it to the bottom of the stairs. I pick up Ginger who is poised for the day. Bella is another story. I have to climb into the pen to pick her up and as I do so, she stirs and begins her routine of running from me. With no where to go, I soon have her in my arms and they both follow me up the stairs.

I open the backdoor to take them out and Ginger is quick to oblige. Again, I am forced to contend with Bella. "Bella come," I demand. No response. "Bella, come," I repeat. I am quickly losing my patience. I enter back into the house at which point, Ginger follows. Now Bella is running from me. She dashes behind the couch. "Damnit dog!" I holler. Now I have done it. The cardinal sin of dog training. Motivated by fear, there was no way she was going to let herself be caught. Just then, the phone begins ringing. It is barely 6:00 AM. The phone is upstairs, I had taken with me in case I needed to call 9-1-1.

The nearest phone is in the spare room, so I go running, both Ginger and Bella in tow. As I open the door to the spare room, I am immediately greeted with the foul smell of shit. What the hell?!? "Hello!" I answer out of breath. It's D. I turn my head to spy the biggest pile of crap right on top of the newly washed comforter. "Damn it! One of the cat's shit on the bed! I must have locked Koji in by accident." I am still frantically trying to get the dogs out to the backyard. "I can't talk right now!" I scream and hang up. Bella is darting round and round, countering my every move with a dash. Now I am really screaming. At last I corner her in the spare room. She is under the bed and I manage to grab a leg and pull her out. At long last, I manage to get the dogs outside, so that I may begin the dirty work of cleaning up the shit in the house.

I grab a plastic bag to pick up the shit, tie it off, dispose of the evidence. I return to the room and remove the comforter with the intention of laundering it yet again. As I peel back the comforter, I noticed that the sheets are completely kicked off the mattress. What the hell? I grab one end of the sheets when I notice a huge wet spot on the bed. My worst nightmare had just been realized. One of the cats had pissed on the mattress. Now anyone who has ever owned cats knows that the smell is practically impossible to get out. "Fuck!" I ran downstairs to grab the Nature's Miracle and my Bissell and set to work on cleaning the stain. It was going to be a long morning.

After a few applications and several passes with the Bissell, I brought the dogs in and decided I needed to lay back down. By this time my stomach was burning from the stress. I took two Peptos and grabbed my cell phone. I would try D again. No answer. So instead I called my mother to tell her about the morning I was having. I found no sympathy there. Instead she was laughing her ass off. After getting off the phone, I decided to stay in that room for a while, away from the animals. Except for a few noises, the dogs were pretty quite. If there was one thing I knew about dogs, they were a lot children. If they are too quite, you can be sure they are up to no good.

Getting up from the couch, I made my way into the kitchen. Nothing. Shortly, Ginger comes up the basement stairs with a box of Lever 2000 in her mouth. "Give me that!" I say and put the box on the counter. Just then, I spy a second box. This one torn to shreds in the middle of the living room floor. A few feet away is the bar of soap riddled with teeth marks. That could not have tasted good. Then I see what used to be my eyeglasses mixed in with the pieces of cardboard on the floor. They had managed to pop out the left lense and crush the frame. The right arm had been bent forward and the pad behind the ear chewed off. It looked as if it had been sent through the garbage disposal.

I have never felt so defeated. And by four animals, that when added together, weigh no more than 30 lbs! Silently I picked both dogs up and walked them down to the basement. I returned to collect all the evidence. It would have to be saved and shown to their father when he got home.

As soon as D came through the door, I marched him into the spare room where I had stored all the evidence of the morning. One by one I presented my case. And you know what he did? He laughed his ass off, too!