Eat Beast Update #11: Hooka-Hooka-Hooka-Bleagh

That's the name of the sound I hate. I hate it because I know upon the sound of the first "Hooka" the following things:

1) Eat Beast has eaten something that he shouldn't have. Again.

2) That bending on my hands and knees scrubbing the carpet with a damn rag and stain remover is in my immediate future.

While Eat Beast's stomach is admirable in its ability to digest nearly anything, which admittedly is a keen source of entertainment at times as he devours marshmallows and habaneros like great whirlpools sucking down doomed ships at sea along with their wailing crews, some things simply don't agree with him.

Spiders, bits of carpet (though that one is hit or miss), milk caps, and for some reason rice crackers are indigestible to him. Not that he doesn't try. He's a tenacious little puss, and just because that one piece of banana peel didn't stay down, by golly, that doesn't mean the next piece won't. And if the next piece doesn't then maybe the piece he just threw up a few minutes ago will. (But probably not.)

Still, these little errors in feline gastronomic judgment mean for me that I need to be at the ready with cleaning supplies before the rank of bile and tossed up *insert anything ingestible here* destroy my new carpet.

Normally, it's not all that bad. Today, however, was.

To keep Fatzilla out of the trash and pantry I installed childproof locks on most of the kitchen cabinets. As extra security all pantry items not in cans or unopened bags are stored in sealed glass containers to prevent him from getting into them. The trash is pushed to back of the cabinet so he doesn't reach in through the door crack that he can open with his paw, knock over the trash can and then pull out various tasty trash bits to snack on. Seriously, we have the place on lock down. If we don't he snacks on open bags of brown sugar and bacon greased soaked paper towels as if it were his last meal.

-"By the way, I ate the trash again. You're welcome."-

Fatty also knows that he runs the risk of these raids being just that. Not that it stops him. To him the possible reward is totally worth getting in trouble for.

Now, apparently, after a bit of cooking the other night I had forgotten to close the trash cabinet door the whole way. As I sat on the couch typing away at the thesis in an attempt to decipher just how Slow Food's use of religious language could be unwittingly exclusionary I heard the familiar sound.

"Hooka-Hooka-Hooka-"

I turned my head and became alert. I scanned the room and there, under the table, sat the black form of Eat Beast with neck stretched out, shoulders pointed high in two fuzzy peaks, and mouth wide open with tongue out as bile-ready sluice.

"-BLEEEEEEAAAAAAGH!"

A chunky, chartreuse stream poured out over the carpet. Eat Beast then went to standard sitting position, looked and me, then walked off to the other room at a brisk pace in order to evade the scene leaving me to take care of his mess and wish I had decided to get a turtle instead.

Now chunky, chartreuse throw-up made up of chewed up beet ends and the crusty, moldy insides of an old cream cheese wrapper is a bitch to get out of the carpet. It's a bitch of a stain that even when attacked immediately requires plenty of oxy-clean and elbow grease. Scrub it like the you're bastard offspring of Mr. Clean and Cinderella because beets + bile + old cheese = death to your carpet.

Luckily, after a ten minute cleaning session, I was done. The carpet was saved but a faint stain was still visible if you knew to look for it. I gathered I would eventually forget about it and the stain would be out of peripheral sight and out of mind.

My hands smelled awful, a combination of sewage treatment plant and freshly cleaned office building bathroom. I began to wash my hands when just then, from my bedroom...

"Hooka-Hooka-Hooka-"