Most of the women in my family have hoarding disorder, like those people on TV. It's just something you work around. It's not especially embarrassing to me anymore, but I was at my great aunt's house the other day and thinking about what an interesting background it's given me. This episode with the kittens happened to my friends. It was very traumatic for them and they refuse to talk about it. My mother and I had the privilege of actually birthing kittens. I've done it. It was a scary business. I wonder how many parents got that same question after Watergate when they watched news. I wanted somebody else to be the focus and get away from Raph, but Sissy wouldn't let any of his brothers do it.
Dear Diary,
Raph said yes to Sissy. He likes her a lot. He likes old people. That surprises me. He doesn't get along with younger people. Besides me and his brothers anyway. So I asked him if he wanted me to stay with him and at first he said that the wanted to spend some time by himself but then he learned that she has 20 cats, kittens on the way, and hoarding disorder, so he asked me to come along.
Sissy's spending a week in Ohio at her daughter's house. Her daughter won't come up to see her because of the family shame about her house.
So Sissy gave us a tour and the first thing I noticed was that she has a front porch but it's so full of boxes and other stuff that you can't get in there or see in the windows. And she has other rooms that you can't get in either. The kitchen is more livable and so is the living room. All the stuff is pushed off to the sides so that she has some space. She has a bedroom and only half the bed is available for sleeping. There's stuff stacked on the half by the wall. I don't really fancy sleeping there.
And, oh yeah. She has some bags of stuff against the bathroom door so that it's propped open. Raph didn't really care. Coming from his family, I can see why. But she has a big glorious bathtub that looks like it might be a hot tub. One of those geriatric therapy tubs.
The cats. Oh, the cats. It smells like a musty cat smell. I told Raph that he'd have to deal with the litter boxes because I'm pregnant, but he didn't believe me. I wonder if I could fake a pregnancy test just to pick on him. We got there at night and Raph was jumpy because we had to wait on the doorstep and he was afraid he'd be seen, so I kind of tried to shield him with the screen door. When he knocked, I could see a herd of cats run for cover. Sissy didn't hear the door, but she saw the cats jumping under the couch and heading towards the bathroom and realized somebody was at the door.
She said that we can move stuff around if we have to, but don't get rid of anything and we have to move it back when we're done. She's actually afraid that we'll clean her house for her. Obviously, she doesn't know us very well.
First thing Raph did was sit in the hot tub for a few hours. I peaked in on him splashing around in there while six cats watched. One brave individual wanted to get in and he held his leg up for a stepping stone and said, "Don't worry. Come on in." Then it sat on his knee and tapped its paws in the water. That was pretty funny. I think he spent the majority of the time trying to coax cats to join him.
"You guys should get one of those in the lair," I said when he was finished and toweling himself off.
"No, we'd never get anything done."
Then I tried to make dinner for us. She has a gas stove and I put a big pot full of water on the burner. I turned it on and the gas was so strong that flames shot a foot out in all directions when it ignited. A cat was sitting nearby on the counter and went flying into the next room.
Raph moved all that stuff off the bed. The problem with moving the stuff to free up space is that you have to put it someplace else and there's already a premium on space around here. So he put it under the kitchen table, which already had a few bags under it. I moved the bags away from the bathroom door. I know he doesn't care if I see him, but I care if he sees me.
Dear Diary,
Day 2 of cat sitting.
Woke up to find Raph sleeping on the couch, buried in cats.
Mama Cat's not looking so hot. She keeps looking at me like, "You're a woman. You understand." I made up a little box for her to sit in. Just sits there looking like, "Help! Get them out!"
There's this one cat that keeps biting Raph. He tried to pick it up to move it off the couch and it bit him. He fed it and it bit him. He got out of the bathtub and it bit his toe. He calls it Satan.
Leo came over tonight and said that maybe Satan can see into the true nature of people.
Raph's first words to him were, "There's a hot tub. Want to try it?"
So Leo and Raph got in the hot tub and then they badgered me to get in with them and it's not like a big proper hot tub. Why do I have a feeling that all five of us will be in here tomorrow night? I only took off my pants and got in and Leo said, "I don't see the point. We can see all your goods through your shirt anyway."
"I'd like to pretend, okay."
Raph and Leo were kicking each other. "You see us naked all the time. It's only fair," Raph said.
They just say that kind of thing to embarrass me because they know it works. They could care less if I'm naked.
Leo asked, "So what's up with this lady? Her house isn't safe and the cats? Not sanitary. I think you should clean some stuff away from the heat vents."
"She told us not to," I said.
Raph made a face and said, "I'm on a vacation here. I don't want to clean."
Leo said, "Well, she obviously doesn't know what's good for her. I think her daughter should come here and clean this house out whether she likes it or not. It's for her own good. What if somebody reported her to the city? I'm sure there are lots of code violations."
"See, this is what's wrong with you," Raph said. "You're always thinking of what's best for other people. You can't figure out that other people can look out for themselves. You just assume that we're all incompetent."
Ugh. I knew they'd been getting along too well. It was kind of funny that they had a shouting match sitting in the bath tub. Well, Leo defended his position that Sissy's daughter should clean her house, even going so far as to say that she should get legal guardianship over her. I wonder if he said that to piss Raph off. It worked and he said, "GET OUT OF MY BATH TUB!" A cat jumped off the edge of the bath tub and looked at him warily.
So Leo climbed over me and dried off. Raph was steamed. Literally, I guess.
Leo left and Raph and I watched Mama Cat for a while. She's so fat that she can't walk. I had to hold her belly so she could get to the litter box. Raph seems concerned. He's never been a party to procreation before. He keeps holding his phone, ready to call Don for instructions at any minute.
Dear Diary,
We made kittens today! Well, we didn't make them. We helped.
Raph was busy feeding the cats and getting bitten by Satan this morning. It's so funny to listen to him because he talks to them. He was saying, "You're Roxie right? You get the diet food. You have your own plate. Back off. You little ones are smell kinda bad. Stop fighting with him. What did he do to you? I'm going pull out your whiskers if you do that again. Ow! Satan!"
Then he whacked that cat so hard I hear it in the next room and then Satan streaked past me and hid under the couch.
"I need to get out of here for a while," he said. "I feel like an old lady."
"Can't. Daytime. I have class soon."
He looked tragic.
"Don't worry. I'll be back in a few hours."
So I went to class and I turn off my phone so that I wouldn't get yelled at and I looked at my phone when class was over and I had about fifteen calls from Raph and three from Don. Mama Cat had her kittens while I was gone and Don couldn't come over to help him. Although Don hinted that he'd told him to boil water and when he did that he told him to fill it with spaghetti for dinner.
I got back to Sissy's and Raph was strung out like he'd been drinking coffee all day.
"Congratulations, you're the proud father of six kittens," I said as we watched them rolling around each other in a furry ball in their box. They make a funny little squeaking noise like mice.
He won't tell me what happened. Apparently, kitten birthing was too traumatic for him. Like I said before. The boy has decapitated a guy with a garbage can lid, but he can't talk about watching kittens being born.
Dear Diary,
Day 3
Spent the day hypnotically watching the kittens. Raph won't touch them. I kept picking them up and carrying them around all the time.
Raph caught Satan sitting by the kitten box, batting them around. He screamed at him and flung him through the air like a missile.
Watched "The Puerile and the Fidgety" together. Ford finally came back from Morocco. Turned out that Javier had him arrested so he could take control of Gingivitis Enterprises, the family owned company. I looked at him and said, "You're right. We are turning into old ladies." We're going to go out tonight and get into trouble.
Caught him playing with the babies. I told him to pick one of them up and he said, "What if I break it? It's so tiny." But I finally convinced him. So that was cute.
Don and Mike came over tonight. Mikey had a joygasm over the kittens and wouldn't put them down the whole time he was there and instantly named them all Ronno, Hersey, Yoda, Micro, Onyx and Eustace. He asked Don, "Think we could have some of the kittens?"
"Maybe."
Raph said, "I don't know. I don't think I want any of these things. They look like mice. And they have little needles for claws."
Don said, "Butch, are you still bothered because you had to clean them all?"
Raph made a funny face like he'd bitten a lemon. "Don't remind me."
"Clean them all?" I hadn't heard this yet.
Don was rubbing a kitten on his face and said, "Yeah, the mother just dropped them all over the house and he had to take five of them out of their sacks and clean them off so they could breathe and break their umbilical cords and everything. He's a true daddy."
"I'm going out," Raph said.
We giggled at him and Mikey said, "When are we having the kitten shower?" as the screen door slammed behind him.
Don was fascinated by the hoarding. He'd do it himself if he could get away with it. He and Mikey wanted to look at her stuff, but I sent them home.
Dear Diary,
Day 4
Took a picture of three cats sitting on top of the fridge this morning. I put the pot on the stove and jumped back two feet automatically. I'm really getting that hang of it.
Raph keeps eyeballing the kittens suspiciously.
Talked to Don a long time on the phone today while Raph was busy cleaning the litter box. I don't think I've ever heard him cuss that much. Don and Mikey are coming back tonight so they can play with the babies and root around for cool stuff.
I feel like Raph's wife. He's not that interesting to live with. You'd think a mutant teenage ninja would be more entertaining.
Although today, I sat in the bath tub again in my t-shirt and underwear while he sat on the toilet lid, reading a newspaper from Nixon's impeachment. "She should start a museum," he said. Pause. "What's Deep Throat?"
I gagged and said, "How do you know about that?"
"It's the informant's name, isn't it?" he said, holding up the paper. "What's it mean? Kind of a strange term."
"Uh… It's porn, sweetie."
"What's it mean though?"
I didn't answer and he kept reading the paper and I forgot about it eventually and then after a while he said, "I'll figure it out on my own if you don't tell me."
So I gave a really sketchy description and he seemed satisfied. That's the good thing about him. He's not terribly curious.
Don and Mikey came over as soon as it was dark and went straight for the kittens. They were both claiming which ones they wanted to keep. Mikey claimed Onyx and Don claimed Ronno. I might even take one myself. If Sissy allows it anyway.
I couldn't restrain Don from investigating around the house. We went out to the garage and found some cool stuff. Raph found a Handy Hannah Hairdryer. Looked like the first one ever made. Don wanted to plug it in to see if it worked, but I was afraid of a short. We found a wringer washer and Don wants to try that out. But I said that Sissy didn't give us permission to play with her stuff. We can look as long as we put everything back.
Mikey found some old disc sleds and whined because he wanted to take one home. They clearly weren't getting the message that this stuff belonged to somebody else. There was a big rusty scale that Don suspected came from a barn to weigh grain. It said I weighed 528 pounds. Some old furniture that's kind of wrecked. There was a bamboo shoot that was attached to the wall. Lots of old dishes in boxes.
Don and Mikey were sent home because they wouldn't stop asking to keep Sissy's stuff. Don kept saying, "She has so much junk. She'll never miss it."
Raph yelled, "SHE WILL TOO MISS IT! WHY DO YOU THINK SHE TOLD ME NOT TO GET RID OF IT?"
He had a point. Caught Raph very cautiously patting a kitten like it would jump up and bite him.
Dear Diary,
Day 5
Woke up and found Raph sitting by the kitten box again. He's getting attached against his will, I think. The mother was about to get up and leave and he pushed her down a little and said, "You should stay with the kittens. Where are you going?" Had a little bit of that tone of voice he was using when he had amnesia and it bothered me, but I didn't say anything.
Things are getting pretty boring around here. There isn't enough room in here for Raph to train and so he's been kind of sitting around, reading old newspapers all day.
I moved some stuff from in front of a door in the kitchen and found that it went down to the basement. I asked Raph to go with me. There are lots of boxes of books and papers and they're all kind of black and soggy and half rotten. "Hope this stuff wasn't important," I said.
There were rows and rows of canned goods on the wall. Raph took a jar and read, "October 1948. Still looks good."
So we took the jar upstairs and he wanted to open them to see what they were like. The rings on the jar like were rusty, but the food inside looked good.
He opened the jar and stirred the peaches with a fork and smelled inside the jar. "Smells good." Then he ate one before I could stop him.
"Those peaches are older than my mom!" I said.
"Yeah, so? They taste fine." And he ate all the peaches in the jar.
And now he's been eating ancient canned goods all day. Sissy gave us permission to eat whatever we liked and I guess this counts. I told him that if he dies of botulism then I'll never forgive him.
I tried to find something for dinner, but she doesn't exactly have stuff that makes meals. Lots of thin, starchy food. She has lots of one kind of thing, but not the other stuff to make a meal. She has three gross of kidney beans under the table, but nothing else to make chili.
Raph was watching wrestling in the living room and yelling at Satan to stop climbing the curtains and I was looking in the pantry. She had Peter Pan peanut butter that was older than me. Then I felt fingers jab into my ribs and I screamed and landed on the floor with the peanut butter jar in my hand. Raph ran into the room, sais drawn.
It was Mikey. I yelled at him for a few seconds and said that nothing they did could appease my anger. So Leo tickled me under the arms and made me laugh.
Leo was reading the Nixon newspapers because Raph seemed to get a real kick out them. Don and Mikey were hunting around in the pantry and then they all sat around eating fifty year old food for a while. I'm sure they'll all die.
Don wanted to get into one of the rooms that's blocked off and he and Mikey worked at moving the stuff so they could open the door. We finally got one of the bedroom doors cracked open and it was full almost to the ceiling. There was an old rocking chair on top and the room looked like it was locked in time, back in the fifties when it was last used. It's actually kind of cool.
Mikey found a Victrola under some boxes and a pile of records and we listened to Paul Whiteman Orchestra, which I'd never heard before, and looked at Sissy's family albums. Felt like we'd all gone back in time.
Raph took off. He needed to beat up some guys before bed.
Later, I played in the hot tub with Leo, Mike and Don and felt like a 12 year old. We made quite a mess. We drank Dr. Pepper out of wine goblets. I don't know why. It was Mike's idea.
Don's phone went off and he bent over the edge of the tub to answer it. Leo kept give me these really funny looks, like raising his eyebrow ridges at me. I'm laughing now as I write it. Mikey wasn't paying enough attention to take advantage of the situation. He was busy trying to get a cat to drink Dr. Pepper out of his goblet. Leo couldn't resist the temptation and slapped Don on the ass really hard.
"Hey, that's unwanted touching!" Don yelled. He turned around and said, "Mikey, that hurt."
"It was Leo."
Leo looked perfectly cool. Don said, "I'm an abused child."
Finally Leo said, "It was me okay."
So Don pushed his head under the water. Lots of splashing for a while. Water was everywhere.
"I bet this is what rich people do," Mikey said.
"Yeah, drink Dr. Pepper in old ladies' bath tubs?" I said.
After a while we got out and tracked water all over the living room. Mikey broke a glass. Don wanted to take the hot tub apart and see how it worked, but Leo threatened him in Japanese and he dropped it.
Dear Diary,
Day 6
Tragedy has struck this little family of cats. One of their number is a kitty cannibal.
We woke up this morning and Raph found one kitten's head in the box and the rest were missing. But what do you know? Satan was asleep in the box. The mother was nowhere to be found. So Raph grabs Satan by the neck and shook him until I ordered to put the thing down. Leo spent the night here with us and he was rather annoyed that Raph would try to strangle a cat.
Leo, was the only one with any sense at the moment and looked around the house for the other kittens, thinking that the mother may have moved them. Meanwhile, me and Raph just yelled at Satan and stared sadly at Onyx's head and wondered what we would tell Mikey.
Turns out that either Don or Mike let Mama Cat outside when they left last night and so the kittens were alone and vulnerable the whole night.
Raph was in an understandably foul mood after that and kept stomping around and causing newspaper landslides. "THESE DAMN NEWSPAPERS! I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT HERE! IT FEELS LIKE JAIL!"
Leo tried to sooth him. Said he would make tea and that they could sit in the hot tub if he wanted, but Raph threatened to drown Satan, so he decided that would be a bad idea.
Boy, Raph's had an awful day. Leo has consequently had a pretty bad day. Raph went down stairs to fetch more canned peaches and found a nest of cockroaches under a box. They were the biggest ones I've ever seen. He nearly ran outside, but Leo body slammed him against the kitchen door and I was afraid they would fight each other and Sissy's house can't take it. I'm afraid they would fall through the floor and into the basement.
So Leo took him out to the garage and let him beat him up for a while.
I had the sad duty of telling Mikey and Don that their kittens were eaten in the night and had to listen to them bawling on the other end of the phone. I think they have really bad luck with pets. Plus, they still had some residual guilt and grief over those rats.
Raph and Leo came back in the house and Raph sat down for a while and read a TV Guide from 1980. But he kept throwing things at Satan whenever he came in the room. I was glad to have Leo there. He knows how to manage Raph, if you can ever really manage him.
"What are we going to tell Sissy?" I said.
Leo thought for a second and said, "Tell her they ran away." Smart ass.
Raph threw a TV Guide at a cat that was attempting to sit in his lap and picked up a Sears catalog from the 1970's. "Maybe she'll be glad. They were just little furry terds anyway."
Don and Mikey came over to pay their respects and Mikey sat on the couch, listening to "A Summer Place" and weeping over the little box that contained Onyx's head. It was so pathetic that it was hilarious. Don declared that he could never love another cat like his Ronno. I think they were both having this ecstasy of misery. They only knew those rats and kittens for a day or two before they died.
So Leo took his mourning children home and I didn't envy him at all. He was pretty annoyed with them both as they were about to go out the door sniffling, loaded with ancient peaches and he yelled at them, "If I ever have children I'll name them Buffy, Xander, Willow, Onyx and Ronno! There! Are you two happy now?"
Raph was tired of company and practically threw them all out.
Listened to more of her record collection. Raph played "Love is Blue" by Paul Mauriat and I said it felt like we should be stoned when we listened to it. He cracked a small smile.
When I went to bed, he was lying on the couch petting Mama Cat. The two grieving parents. I had to get rid of the box they were in because Mama Cat kept looking in it like she was confused and it was too sad to watch.
Dear Diary,
Day 7
Raph had one of his panic attacks again last night. What a great way to end his vacation. I wish he would get these at home sometimes and not when he's with me.
He's a tough guy, you know, and so it surprises me that this happens to him. But I've noticed that it only happens when he's had a bug scare.
I woke up because the living room light was on and I can't shut the bedroom door to block it out. She has a sewing machine in front of it. I spent a few minutes trying to get back to sleep, but I heard a noise that I couldn't place and I thought I should check on the cats.
Raph was sitting up on the couch, breathing really hard. He was leaning over and scratching his plastron and I thought he was going to throw up. At first I thought he had botulism from those peaches. He saw me and waved at me to go back into the bedroom. So I went back to bed, but I could hear him breathing as clearly as if I were right next to him. I hate listening to that. He hyperventilates so hard that he's vocalizing his breaths in this loud rasping voice that I think should be used in horror movies. It would be very affective.
It got quieter and I ventured back out into the living room and he was still sitting on the couch, breathing hard. But he was a little better.
I brought him a glass of water and he spilled a little because his hands were shaking so much.
"I'm fine," he said in a weird and grinding tone. "Fell asleep too fast."
"Want to sleep in the bed? There's room."
He said no, but followed me in there anyway. I fully expected to wake up spooned.
"When I was real, real small I fell in this hole," he said. I was surprised he was talking. Looked like he was almost asleep, so I don't know if he even remembers saying this. "And it was full of bugs and I was too small to get out and I yelled a long time and Sensei pulled me out after a while."
Woke up in the morning spoon free. Then I felt that he was holding my wrist and I had to pry every finger free.
He doesn't acknowledge these attacks and it's expected that I won't either. Spent the rest of the morning putting everything back. Raph drop kicked Satan a few times. I'll be glad to get out of here. Wasn't much fun.
Explained what happened with the kittens and Sissy just said she wouldn't have to get rid of them then. She wanted to talk about her daughter and her son-in-law the dentist. And of course we couldn't leave until nightfall, so we had to spend the day with her. But it was okay. Raph likes to talk to her. She told us a story about an uncle of hers who died in an outhouse. Had a heart attack or something. One of her neighbors lost a hand in a combine accident.
In other news, I talked to Leo on the phone while Sissy was telling another story about her dead husband accidentally locking her and her daughter in a rest stop bathroom. He wanted Raph back pretty badly. Don and Mikey were wearing their black bandannas and listening to sad music. He said, "I feel like I'm in this hell where I'm attending a funeral that never ends." I asked if they were listening to his Enigma or Delirium and he didn't answer or honor my knock against his music. Mikey's threatening to write a threnody in Onyx's honor. None of us know what that is, but we're sure he'll make us read whatever it is when it's done if we don't put a stop to it.
I was waiting for the jab about Raph's reproductive organs and as she gave us a bag of miscellaneous stuff that she didn't want, she said, "You know, my sister lives a few houses down from my daughter and we went down there for a day. I got to see some cows mating. Haven't seen that in years."
We weren't paying attention. We were both looking out the door at freedom.
"That bull was nearly as well hung as you, Butch." I don't know if she talks to all young guy that way or just Raph.
It's good to be out of there. I don't want to see another cat as long as I live.
