Setting up a gag
How to set up a gag:
- Estimate the size of a kitten's stomach. This can be done by considering the external dimensions of the torso, allowing for the thickness of fur, skin, bones and muscles, then subtracting a proportion of the remaning space for lungs, bowel, and other organs.
- Double it, i.e., exaggerate your volume estimate by enough that you can't envisage it would properly fit inside the kitten.
- Clean up that much recently deposited, partially digested cat food from the carpet in the hallway.
This is, of course, the way to set up an involuntary gag. Some of you may be able to do it without gagging. I couldn't.
Apart from that uncomfortable start, it's been a perfectly normal day. A spectrometry-Gideon has just dropped a thick brick of scripture on my desk for my spectral enlightenment; I'm hearing more proposals for noise reduction techniques that sound like they'll end up as "take away the number you first started with"; I'm still employed; and the people I work with are intelligent and humorous. I can't complain.
Comments
How to spread the gag:
4. Describe steps 1-3 on the Internet!
In other word: EEEEEEEEEEEEEW! Man, it's that time of year around here, and everyone is catching the latest vomit bug. I am hearing vomit stories every day. It has me a little rattled, I must confess. (Not too rattled to be amused by your misfortune, though. Ha!)
I like it when the vomit presents a compacted, yellow impression of the cat's insides, slightly curved, as though it regurgitated a snake. The cat looks at it, perhaps not comprehending that this thing was just expelled.
Grossness follows.
Lily, being siamese, was a prodigious vomiter, and usually in 3's. Finding the third was the challenge, since it consisted of pale yellow liquid. Finding it underfoot was disgusting. Finding a complete set under the covers - or worse, smelling it under the covers after you'd settled in - no words can describe.
More grossness follows. Read at own risk.
Old Gandalf was a past master at the yellow slime trick. He, being an indoors/outdoors cat, would go outside and eat some long blades of grass. Then, an hour or so later, he'd choose between tiled laundry/bathroom floors, lacquered hardboard kitchen/dining floors, or carpeted bedroom/study floors. Did I say choose? That's probably too strong a word. He used the carpet -- a puddle of slime with a non-digested blade or two of grass.
Lu-Tze & Isadora are strictly indoor cats. That leaves hairball hawking and stomach upsets. I hope the anti-hairball food lives up to its claim.
OK, the worst I've seen was the cat of a girlfriend, a former barn cat that had been partly tamed and would grudgingly let you touch it for 30 seconds after it awoke. She'd eat, barf next to the bowl and then eat the barf. Those two belonged together.
I have only one good hairball story. At least I think it's good, though that's probably only because of the memories. When I was a kid, we spent a summer in a rented house in Forte di Marmi, a resort town north of Pisa - complete with our own, dedicated beach umbrellas at the Ursa Maggiore beach club. We met some older Americans from New York and they introduced us to a terrific artist, Rosario Murabito, who lived in a big house on a cliff in a little village, with a huge terrace overlooking the sea. I think it's a museum now. He said he bought it after the war for back taxes after he'd been stopped for speeding.
Saro was an old kid who collected everything. The walls were crammed with pictures, but his real treasures were kept in glass cases. Those were his knives - his Corsican and Sardinian revenge knives (he loved to act out the act of taking revenge) and, notably for this story, his hair balls. These were huge hair balls from cows. Big things, really round and densely packed. We took immense delight in them.
Saro died in the early 70's.
:D:D:D
An artist who collects cow hairballs!
*steps back for better perspective*
When humans aren't expressing stupidity in group behaviour, they can be entertaining and endearing.
Hello,
I knew a Saro Murabito once. During the 50s. I was little but I remember him. He and my mother were friends. So I was sad to hear that -- if this is the same Saro and it seems likely--that he died in the 70s. But given his age when I was small, that's not unreasonable. Thank you for your site...gave me back a tiny bit of my own history! Peace! Val jvaljon1@aol.com
Amazing! I was Googling the internet for Rosario Murabito today and hit this site.... just amazing to me that two of you knew my uncle Saro. Yes, he died in 1972. And my Aunt Grayce, his wife, just died in 2003, at the age of 94 - promoting his wonderful art right to the end! Now do either of you remember the erotic nature of most of his artwork?
Nice link to see some of his work:
http://www.galleriarte.it/index.htm?artisti/murabito/htm/main_Mur.htm