When Your Adorable Cat Is a Barf-and-Splooge-Spewing Monster
by Matthew J.X. Malady
People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, Alkemy-X creative director Bex Schwartz tells us more about the phenomenon that is animal-to-human domino effect vomiting.
It happened AGAIN. The cat barfed on me and that made me barf on the cat.
— @starbex
Bex! So what happened here?
I should explain that this mutual, associative-property human/feline barfing experience happened before. A few months after I adopted Panda Boo Bear, I was still sleeping unclothed. (This changed soon thereafter due to Panda’s discovery that he could hump his sex monkey til near-fruition and then jump on me to finish his business. I know; it’s a thing. He had two extra sets of testicles, and so there was a lot of cat ejaculate around my apartment. I bought a steamer. It’s better now. He’s been fixed three times.) So one morning, I was snoozing through my alarms because I knew I had a little extra morning-time while an audio engineer was loading in and prepping the spot I was producing. It was summer, and I’d kicked off the sheets. Panda Boo jumped onto my stomach, waking me up. He barfed all over my torso, and I automatically barfed back all over him. It was just . . . when he barfed it was so warm and so gooshy, and I was only barely conscious and so I yakked.
This was the first time this ever happened, so I put us both in the shower and he did NOT want to be shampooed so he jumped out of the shower and then both of us were dripping wet and running around the apartment because I was trying to towel him off, and I slipped and slammed my hip into a doorknob. We were both soaked and naked and unhappy. It was not our best hour as roommates.
That night at picnic club, I was trying to describe how it was so repulsive to be barfed on that I simply could not control barfing back, and since this group of friends were not parents, I assumed none of them had ever been barfed on. Except for my best friend Josh, who calmly reminded me of the Thesis-Recess night in college when I drank so much red sangria that when we started playing Mario Kart, I booted all over myself and all over Josh. (I should note that we scavenged all our living room furniture, so I was sitting in an antique wheelchair for Mario Kart time.) Apparently I said, “I’m not feeling so good,” and then I projectile-vomited bright red horror right into Josh’s lap. And then I passed out and Josh had to hose me down with the kitchen sink spigot-thing and then get me into jammies. Our other housemates came home later that night and found him rocking catatonically on the front porch. Mistakes were made.
So, anyway, the other day I got up and got dressed in a nice dress and some ribbed, woolen tights because it was cold but I was going to go a fancy restaurant for lunch to interview a famous person, and I wanted to look like a professional powerlady. I was sitting at my desk in my “home office” (aka my living room) answering some emails before walking to the office (sometimes I like to work before work), and Panda Boo jumped onto my keyboard. I shoved him into my lap so I could keep writing, and then he instantly barfed. All over my lap and my ribbed woolen tights. And once again, it was so warm and so gooshy that I instantaneously barfed on him. He yelped and ran away. I shucked off my clothes and went to wipe off the cat with a paper towel, and then I rubbed some coconut oil on him for his fur. (After Hurricane Sandy, when we lived in the dark and there were high-pitched pumping noises 24/7, he got really anxious and tore out all the fur on the back of his neck. The vet put him on kitty Prozac and prescription drugs but nothing worked until I read on the internets that coconut oil helps horses with skin issues. After a week of coconut oil application, his fur started growing back. So he gets rubbed down whenever I think he might be feeling anxious. Like when he’s just barfed on me then I’ve barfed on him.)
I threw my tights and dress in the tub and turned on the cold water (because protein stains?) and threw in Woolite. Then I emailed my team that I was running late due to cat barf and chose another outfit. For those of you who don’t wear ribbed woolen tights, just imagine thick tights with grooves that are perfect for trapping cat barf.
Do you have a tendency to become sick and throw up easily, or is this a cat-barf-specific phenomenon? And how does your cat respond when you throw up on him? Does he get pissed at you, or judgmental?
When I get a cold, it always turns into a sinus infection, so I’m often filled with goo and therefore a bit post-nasal-drippy. But that’s like minor nausea and not full-on booting, almost always. Most of the time before Panda Boo Bear came to live with me, I was pretty good about not yakking. But a year or so ago, the vet but Panda on a special “light” version of his dry food, and the smell of those pellets started making me gag. Ever since he’s been eating that food, I sort of get all nauseated after feeding him. He is allowed to eat poultry cat food and fish cat food, but not cow or goat or sheep cat food, because he’s only allowed to eat foods he could conceivably catch and kill. Sometimes his wet food makes me gag, but I’m much better with that than the smell of that dang low-calorie dry food.
Other than that, I’m relatively puke-free except that I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 12 so I am very susceptible to food-borne pathogens from cross-contamination (like if I eat broccoli that somehow got chicken juice near it, or something). Twice I got food poisoning from kale salad and had to leave my old job and run home from Times Square, vomiting in between subway cars or on the trees along my block. Both of those times, Panda inserted himself in between me and the toilet because he wants to be as close to me as possible at all times, and I sort of barfed on him, just a little bit. But it’s only because his head was between my mouth and the toilet. In those situations, Panda was mildly upset that his head got wet, but he wasn’t super angry. He turns into Dr. Panda when I am not feeling well, and that means he’ll be extra purr-y and nice.
In the more major incidents of barfing-on-the-cat, he was much angrier about being cleaned up than he was about being vomited on. I think. He definitely did not want to be in the shower, I can tell you that much.
Lesson learned (if any)?
There are many, many horrible things in the world, and if your cat barfs on you and then you barf on the cat, just think what a minor insignificance you’re dealing with, when there’s so much shit happening elsewhere. Also, I guess, maybe don’t shove the cat into your lap if you’re wearing ribbed woolen tights. And if this ever happens to you, clean off your cat with a paper towel and do not put him in the shower with you. (Note: Panda Boo Bear is a relatively short-haired cat. I’m not sure at all what you do if you have one of those fancy kitties with really long hair. That might require shampooing and conditioning? I have no idea.)
Just one more thing.
My cat humped and ejaculated on all of my pillows and blankets for almost a year, and I had to dry clean things twice a week. And then I got him the aforementioned sex monkey, but there were still times when he would spoo on my body. Then they discovered his third set of testicles, and the vet fixed that, and now he doesn’t hump things anymore. So really, when we’re talking about cat-protein-spilling, being barfed on is not the worst. Scraping dried cat-spoo off your chest is the worst.
Join the Tell Us More Street Team today! Have you spotted a tweet or some other web thing that you think would make for a perfect Tell Us More column? Get in touch through the Tell Us More tip line.