Cat Farts

My late dad was a farter. He would fart all the time. But unlike my farts, which are quite loud, his were the silent but deadly type. I can’t remember the first time it happened but one night as we sat around the living room watching TV, Mom and I smelled the pungent odor of methane. Knowing neither of us had farted we both cast an eye at Dad with a disdaining look. Dad, playing the forever innocent one, looked around the room, grinning slightly, then inquired, “Where’s that cat?” in an effort to blame his flatulence on a poor nonexistent feline. At the time I could only guess that cat farts were silent but deadly. I could never have imagined the truth.

It wasn’t until I grew up and got married that I would learn the truth. My lovely wife had had several cats as pets over the years while my family had only dogs. After we had been married for several years my lovely wife began to pester me about getting a cat as a pet. I resisted simply because I did not want the responsibility of a pet. Finally one night I gave in after a friend told my lovely wife that she had found a stray but couldn’t keep him. We named him Spencer. He’s mostly Maine Coon but he has a birth defect, a stubby tail. Spencer was our only cat for many years. But I never smelled his farts. Either he never farts or they don’t stink.

Then several years ago we acquired Emily, A black and white tabby. We saved her from the local Humane Society. She got along with Spencer just fine mostly because she ignored him. Emily is a darling, and a pain in the butt at the same time. She was queen of the house until a couple of years ago. That’s when Molly, Miley and Maxx showed up at out back door. Molly was a couple of years old but the other 2 were still kittens. We fed them, but had no real intentions of taking them in. After all we had two cats already. We did however banter the idea around. The Maxx showed up with an abscess on his left hip. We had to rescue him or let him die.

After his recovery we took in Miley, his sister, then Molly. Unfortunately the three ‘intruders’ don’t get along well with Emily. Why? I don’t know. It’s a cat thing. Maxx and Miley chase Emily all the time, especially Maxx. The 2 ‘kittens’ will actively stalk Emily! Many a time we have had to sprits the two offenders in order to keep them from chasing down Emily. Maxx has actually caused Emily physical harm. So in order to have some peace in the house we began to allow Emily to sleep in the bedroom with us at night and spend a lot of her time in the bedroom alone. We even put a litter box in our bedroom for her along with a food and water bowl.
It’s not a perfect solution. Emily is a high maintenance cat. She all but refuses to drink from a cat bowl and insists on drinking from the faucet at the bathroom sink or from a measuring cup! And she constantly wants either out or in the bedroom at all hours of the day and night.

For the longest time Spencer was the only cat we allowed into the bedroom and onto the bed even after we got Emily. But as I mentioned we had to let her into the bedroom in order to keep the peace. It was after we began letting Emily sleep on the bed with Spencer and the 2 of us that I discovered just what Dad had meant so many years ago. My lovely wife was the first to experience Emily’s nightly gift. Emily likes to curl up at the head of the bed, generally between us or on my lovely wife’s pillow on the other side of the bed. She does so with her tail section aimed at my lovely wife’s face. Emily is a tail wager. She will wag and thump he tail constantly for a while before settling down. This means a face full of tail fur. Since my lovely wife uses lip balm just before retiring she gets a mouth full of fur. But this is livable when compared to Emily’s farts. I on the other hand had yet to experience the wonders of cat gas.

I don’t work but my lovely wife does. She is constantly changing shifts so there are times when I’m left to sleep alone, well almost. It was during one of these times that I got the full force of a cat fart. When it’s only me in the bed Emily will most often sleep at the foot of my side of the bed. But sometime during the night she will wander up to the head of the bed and park herself in front of my face, her tail to my nose. The most disturbance this causes generally is that I will have to put my hand on her tail in order to keep it from constantly slapping me in the face as I try to fall asleep. Then one night it happened. Emily was in her tail-to-my-nose position and I was drifting off to sleep when the overwhelming order of rotten eggs greeted my flaring nostrils.

The nauseous gas was worse than my Dad’s farts had ever been. It took me a moment to realize Emily had farted right into my face. I fought down the urge to heave, not to throw up but to heave Emily right out of the room! I rolled onto my back in order to gasp some fresh air as I made silent comments about the lethality of cat farts. I wondered just what she had eaten in order to produce such a deadly potion and whether it had been especially concocted for me and me alone. I was still trying to clear my sinuses when Emily, having delivered her gift of gas, arose and walked nonchalantly to the end of the bed, as if smug in the fact that she had, in her own little way, enriched my life to some small degree. I suppressed the urge to kick her off the bed. As I drifted off to sleep the true implication of my late dad’s words, spoken so long ago, came to light. “Where’s that cat?” She’s here, Dad, she’s right here.