He's A Cold Hearted Cat

You might doubt the following story, but I tell you it is true.

This week, Lorenzo, our stupid male cat,  was acting a bit odd.  He kept licking his nose and sneezing on everything.  He would be sitting next to you looking peaceful and then all of the sudden your arm (or my dinner plate) would be covered in cat snot.  Since he had just been to the vet for his follow up appointment, that was required by the state of Illinois as a penalty for viciously biting my sister, I thought the sneezing was due to this liquid they dropped up his nose for some kind of "distemperment" vaccine.  (By the way, I didn't understand what this was for, is it supposed to put him in a better mood?  Or is there some cat disease called distemperment?  Aren't all cats kind of butt holes by nature and no nose drop will change that?)  But as the days went on, Lorenzo kept sneezing and acting oddly.  As is a regular practice of my mom's and mine, I decided to look up his ailments on the Internet.  Google results indicated that he was suffering from a feline "cold" of some sort.  I had never heard of this sort of thing.  It also said that this virus was fully transferable to humans.

Recently, Marina has been on a kissing bender.  She kisses us, she kisses her dolls, and she especially kisses the cats.  It used to be that she would try to grab their paws and try to put them in her mouth; luckily that stage is over (I could always picture the mass of germs from cat urine and other litter box ills attacking her).  Now she kisses these jerks right on their lips (do cats have lips?) and noses.  And last week, this was the very nose that was spraying cat cold virus all over our house.  Two days later, Marina woke up with a stuffy nose that accelerated into a full-blown snot rocketing cold for my little girl.

Eli, as a rather hands-on older brother, tends to be a bit over-zealous with his sister.  He likes to follow her around and sit on her and brutally hug her.  He also likes to kiss her (of course).  While I was telling him to stay away from her face this week, he was planting his little lips all over her snot-wiped face.  Two days ago, Eli woke up with "the snots" (as we call it here).  He is not the most fun sickie.

Even though my kids are sharing a room now and sleeping rather marvelously, I have made poor decisions in my nighttime routine which include various Spanish soap operas (watched from my computer since we made the heart-wrenching decision to cancel cable), going to bed at midnight but then switching on the TV (which miraculously didn't get shut off yet, even though our digital cable box from downstairs is gone) and watching another Man vs Wild or Pawn Stars until the morning hours.  I finally go to sleep only to hear a 4-year-old standing at the end of my bed a few hours later saying he's ready to be awake and watching a show and that he doesn't need to go pee this morning because he went last night.  Because of these poor choices, my body is a bit racked, so it wasn't much of a surprise when I woke up with a sore throat yesterday.  I tried to fight the virus off with pop tarts and wine but so far it isn't responding.

Fat Linda (the second cat) is generally pleasant unless you walk toward the kitchen and she thinks she might be able to trick you into feeding her.  Also, she does have a rather annoying habit of following me into the bathroom every morning and standing in the sink as I try to put in my contacts while she clumsily knocks the case on the floor and then lies down in the sink, forcing me throw her off, but then I get her cat hair on my wet hands in the process, which I then have to wash, then dry, only to turn around and find her back in the sink.  All that introduction just to mention that she has been sneezing unceasingly all day today as well.

So what started with dumb Lorenzo has now been passed to every member of this family, minus Mark, who has not been infected because he has a strict vitamin regimen (this is funny if you know him well because he has a conspiracy theory about vitamin companies and their plot to infect us all with poisons and cancer).  I give him two days.

This is going to be like the swine flu, but instead it will be called the Butt Hole cold, that originated here in my house, caused by the sneezes of a "frisky", aggressive cat.

On a side note, recently I have made various gifts, like hats and blankets, for friends who are pregnant.  And without fail, Lorenzo has located and humped every article.  I am going to have to attach a note with the gift saying this garment has been pre-washed by me and pre-humped by my cat...