I didn’t tell you about it at the time because I was in a blogging funk, and well, it’s all just a bit embarrassing. In early 2005 we adopted our 2nd kitty, Hugo, a fat orange ball of love who was obsessed with food and freedom. And when I say obsessed, I really mean it. This cat was always hungry and would scarf down a bowl of food in mere seconds, come up for air and immediately start begging for more. Every time we opened the front door, all 22 pounds of him would sprint out the door, plop himself on our front stoop, and refuse to go back inside. Andrew often found this endearing, I found it maddening.

This is Hugo back in his Jenny Craig days. He got way fatter even though we didn’t overfeed him!

It gets worse, though. Hugo had a problem with peeing in the house. We couldn’t lay down a single carpet or rug anywhere in the house, or he’d pee on it. Sometimes if I left my gym bag or purse on the floor, he’d pee on it. Whenever we left town or had visitors stay at our house, he’d pee on the sofa. We tried everything to stop the peeing — we had 3 immaculately clean litter boxes, gave him kitty Prozac, tried Feliway, and consulted with the vet many times to rule out medical issues. But it just kept getting worse, and our house was getting to be quite disgusting.

When Melissa and Jen came to visit me last spring – you guessed it – Hugo peed. It was horrible! He peed on the couch and Melissa sat in it. Can you imagine anything more embarrassing than meeting and hosting a friend in your home for the first time ever and she sits in your CAT’S PEE PUDDLE? I wanted to die! (Thankfully Melissa happens to be an extraordinarily nice person who didn’t make me feel bad about it, but still! The horror!)

Plus, I just kept thinking, I pay an ungodly amount to live in this house (hello DC real estate prices) and I am too embarrassed to have anyone over? Seriously? I pay just how much for this stinkhole and I can’t even enjoy it?!

But there weren’t any good options, so for a long time we were stuck. Andrew loved this cat dearly, but we knew we couldn’t keep him. But what could we do? We could send him to the shelter we adopted him from, but we knew that was a guaranteed death sentence. We tried to find a no-kill shelter or foster home for him, but they were consistently full and not interested in taking a cat who wasn’t suited for re-adoption. I probably shouldn’t admit this publicly, but I considered euthanasia at a point when I truly thought we had no other options and it seemed the most humane thing to do. Thankfully, we tried one last effort on craigslist, posting an HONEST ad about Hugo, (we had done this in the past and gotten no replies) and HALLELUJAH someone wanted to adopt him.

Hugo really liked 1) food and 2) squeezing himself into too-small boxes.

This story is getting longer than I wanted it to be, but it really was a several-years-long family saga. There is a happy ending though. Hugo now lives at greenhouse/garden center on the outskirts of the DC metro area. He is the Official Customer Greeter and his new owners LOVE and ADORE him. They send us photos periodically. And he has several acres of land to roam, plus two indoor greenhouses, plus endless amounts of human attention 360 days per year. It’s kitty heaven on earth.

And my house is getting back to normal. The cloud of cat pee smell doesn’t knock you dead when you walk in the front door. We still need to replace the sofa, and the pillows, and put down some rugs, but we’re getting there. (Side note: OMG sofas are FREAKING EXPENSIVE.) We’re no longer woken up at ungodly hours by a starving, begging cat. We no longer have to break up death-match fights between our two kitties. We have about 1/5th the cat hair we used to have. Life is so much better, for me at least (Andrew is still sad). And no kitties had to be harmed in the process. Win-win, I say.

So you can imagine my horror when the other night at dinner my lovely husband suggested that we get another cat. Seriously. He thinks we can try again and get a cat who doesn’t have all these problems. He wants a lap cat. Of course, I told him no, and I assured him that my blog readers would back me up. Kinda like that time you vetoed the uber-sexual poem reading at our wedding – HAVE I THANKED YOU AGAIN FOR THAT RECENTLY?

So, back me up here, ladies. Tell us that one cat is enough. The next thing that lives in my house better be a baby. Or perhaps a Chia pet.

Thanks for all of your comments and emails of concern. Hugo thanks you too and also asks if you will please give him another bowl of food now, thank you.

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I have been to the tanning salon three times now. The first time, I was so petrified of burning my glow-in-the-dark skin, I requested the lowest level bed and only went for nine minutes.

Nothing happened.

The next time I went in, the crew of gay, orange tanning experts told me to increase my time to 14 minutes. I thought that an extra five would surely do the trick and put me on the path to becoming Miss Hawaiian Tropic.

Again, nothing happened.

I was starting to think that they were selling me a definct tanning bed, but judging by the orangeness of the employees, I was pretty sure there were plenty of UV rays floating around that place. Yesterday, I went in and told my story to the new orange gay guy, and he convinced me to lay in the bed for the full 20 minutes AND rub some kind of sugary coconut smelling elixir (tanning accelerator?) all over me first.

I followed his directions, although quite hesitantly for fear of becoming completely lobsterized in the bed after minute 17. I was pretty sure by minute 18 I had developed cancer of the everywhere, and by minute 19 there might have been some hyperventilation. When the bed shut off at minute 20, I was prepared for the worst.

Something happened, but it was a good something!

I guess gay orange guy #3 was right, because not only am I not red, I am finally one shade tanner. Which is still about ten shades from where I want to be in 1.5 months, but I finally feel like I’m well on my way to becoming orangetan.

I swear we feed him diet cat food in very limited and measured portions. He eats no table scraps. And yet, he just gets fatter.

The upside? At least there is someone in this household who needs to go on a diet more than I do.

(Side note: I personally would like an ark full of kittens, puppies, baby cheetahs, and baby pandas, please. And a full-time pooper scooper. Just in case you want to get me a belated birthday present.)

The good news is that we live toward the top of a hill, so most of the water flows away fairly easily. The bad news is that we live in a basement, so we get a few hundred bucketfuls that never make it to the gutter.

Sometime this weekend, we noticed that our storage area flooded, which isn’t a huge deal because most things weren’t touching the floor. But then I noticed that water seeped into our back hallway, which is where we keep the kitty litter accouterments.

Before we discovered this, the cats apparently decided that wet carpeting was totally beneath them, and Hell No they are not stepping on it to get to their litter boxes and, and they would rather poop on the bathroom rug.

And so one of them did. And then Andrew stepped on it. And then I got to clean it. Awesome, I know.

I made a stop by the Social Safeway, because apparently the $300 I spent on groceries last weekend might not be enough for the onslaught of houseguests arriving in two days. I know I only have to feed my sister and one other very petite person, but I have enough to feed a high school football team. I think I am having a bit of a yogurt obsession, because I bought 15 small flavored yogurts, one tub of plain yogurt, and a tub of frozen yogurt. So really, if any of you out there are worried about a yeast infection, please come over. (I am not, but rather just like yogurt lately. And maybe my guests will want some? You can never have too much food for guests!)

Then, I got a haircut. And bangs! I figure the wedding is far enough out that if I don’t want them, I can grow them out. But I think I like.

And the cats? They sleep ALL DAY. Seriously, the three of us didn’t move an inch between 8 AM and 4 PM.

If I can handle cats, I can handle a baby right? They both just sleep, eat, and poop! Or did I perhaps watch one too many episodes of a Baby Story today? Help!

This was especially funny when we went through the Taco Bell drive-thru and Hugo tried to escape out my window and into the restaurant. Perhaps he had a craving for a CrunchWrapSupreme? The guys working the window definitely thought we were insane for having a very large Toonces-like cat in the car.

(Don’t worry people, we didn’t really let him wander around the car while it was moving)

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, which is generally the reason for going up there. We did a tax-free Target shopping run and met up with Jessica for long overdue manicures, pedicures, and wedding chitchat. Now just watching the Oscars and getting ready for the work week…

Step #1: After 7 days of quarantine in the tiny bedroom, bring Cat 2 into the regular living quarters for Cat 1 to sniff. Remind Cat 1 that he is the King and this will always be His Territory.

Step #2: Observe Cat 1 freaking out and trying to blend inconspicuously into clear glass window. At night, it kinda works!

Step #3: Let Cat 1 assert dominance over Cat 2. Helps if Cat 2 is fat and lazy, and may or may not help if he has glowing devil eyes.

Step #4: Feed Cat 1 expensive, organic, special formula food because full-bellied cats are happy cats. Chicken would be a bonus here. Whatever you do, do not scoff at filthy dirty kitchen floor.

Step #5: Team up the cats to chase enemy mouse together. Yes, there really is a mouse in that photo if you look closely. (Also, dead herbs due to lack of green thumb and 8 inches of snow.)

Step #6: Wait a few days and in no time they will be cuddling on the bed!

Oh, and we also found out he isn’t two years old but actually more like five. But we didn’t really care. Right now, Hugo and Howie are living in separate rooms and we plan to keep them apart for about a week. Howie definitely knows that something is going on in the bedroom, though, and he really isn’t thrilled.

In weirder (and tragically funnier) cat news, my sister and her hubby took their adopted Persian kitty to the groomer this weekend. I guess they had to go to a new one, and she must have thought that rats are cuter than cats. Because she SHAVED the whole cat! Poor little Ellie now looks like a cross between a poodle and a rat. Anyone know how long it will take this hair to grow back?

Before:

After:

I love Howie a lot, but he did not grow up to be a lap cat. He is loving on his own terms, which sometimes mean biting toes at 5:20 am and chasing the rat that lives in our drywall. (Yeah, welcome to city life!)

Andrew has been begging me to get a second cat ever since we got new landlords a few months ago. I was able to brush off his pleadings while he was considering accepting a new job in in another state, but now it looks like we are staying here for awhile longer. It’s not that I am against getting another furball, I am just worried that it will upset the balance we have finally achieved in our tiny apartment. A new pet can change a lot of things.

This weekend we must have met 25 different cats in DC and Virginia. Shelter kitties. Foster kitties. Cute kittens. Fat cats. Sleepy cats. Scaredy cats. But none of these cats were the One.

Tonight we made a trek, literally, to see if Freddy the foster kitty might be the One. After work, we took the Metro and then walked a mile along a busy road in a semi-sketchy neighborhood. Fortunately, the worst we encountered on the walk was a giant mud puddle. As soon as we got there and met Freddy, Andrew was in love. Freddy is fat and orange and purrs nonstop, practically begging you to bring him home and take a nap on the couch with him right away.

I told Andrew that I wanted to think about it overnight. But do you think I will really be able to resist?

The good news is both cats are still alive. I wish I could brag and say that Howie loved his cousin from the first moment they met and that they spooned on the couch cushions all weekend. But I can’t, because Howie was a big, mean bully; he hissed and growled at everyone almost constantly. Luckily for Willow it was all an act. In the end, Howie was a big weenie and ran away from her when she wanted to play.

Here is Howie doing his mean puffy staredown (hey! puffy like his mom!) while Willow just lays there like it’s naptime:

But don’t underestimate the kitten smarts! Willow hides where Howie is too fat (ahem, I mean big-boned), to even dream of going:

In an effort not to be too feline obsessed, other weekend updates include:

- Manicure and pedicure with the lovely newlywed Jessica, my freshman year roomie.
- Buying these shoes from Kohl’s for $22 and only getting one small blister from them (I almost bought these, these, and these, but instead I showed Fiscal Restraint. Go me!)
- Picking up my knitting needles again! Woo hoo! Updates coming later this week.
- Going to Andrew’s ten year high school reunion, which was fun because? Open Bar!