Ready to vomit

"Ready to vomit" might not be the most appropriate post-title the day after one presents a recepie, it might get readers worried. But you can all relax, it is not about the Soup, it is about cute cat.

The problem of living with someone for whose health and happiness you are ultimately responsible, is that you (read: I) are on constant alert that something is/will go wrong with that individual. I can worry sick for my cute cat, even without an apparent reason. So when I yesterday morning saw a ball of something on my carpet, the spontaneous thought was that cute cat probably was dying. I am aware of that I worry too much, so I could quickly down-regulate the thought to 'he has vomited on my carpet, and that is normal for a cat'. I went to get some paper towels from the kitchen, cause I might love cute cat, but I am not picking up his hairballs with my bare hands. When I started cleaning the mess up I realised it couldn't be a hairball, cause the dark thing covered in a white sticky something, was all hard. I opened the towel and after a quick examination of the object I realised that instead of a hairball in my hand, it was the little plastic mouse that recently had been skinned by cute cat.

A wave of guilt flushed over me. How could I have let him play with this little plastic thing, that he now apparently had half-swallowed and luckily been able to throw up again. He could have suffocated! How could I not have been more careful?

But something still wasn't right. Cute cat was sitting next to me, indifferent to his near death experience. Looking at me quickly, before returning to clean his paw. His paw, I saw, was all covered in this white sticky thing too. Had he stepped in the vomit? He seemed indifferent too, to the fact that he was licking his own vomit. But since he is a cat, this really doesn't have to mean anything. I looked at the towel again, and at the multi-perforated little plastic thing that once was a proud little mouse. The sticky thing covering it did not look at all like vomit. It was homogenously white, no lumps of old food or anything (I have seen my share of animal vomit, so I am quite familiar with what comes out of a cat). I chose to court disaster, and decided to take a quick whiff of the white sticky thing, hoping to uncover what it might be. It did not smell at all like vomit, it smelled sweet. Braver now I smelled it again, harder now. Vanilla. What the hell was this. Then I saw splashed spots of white all over my coffee table, and around my breakfast bowl with muesli and vanilla yoghurt. And a dimple in the youghurt, uncovering some of the muesli. Someone had been into my muesli. Or rather, someone (read: cute cat) had let someone else (read: a formerly proud grey mouse) into the youghurt, then fished him up again, dropped him on my carpet all covered in vanilla youghurt, shaken the paw to get the worst of the youghurt off, and now sitting all innocently cleaning himself.

Why does he need to be so god damned cute, my little cat? I caressed him, and threw away the plastic mouse. And ate my breakfast anyway.