Oh Be Careful Little Boys Where You Pee

It would appear that our cat, the mighty Sparkles, is not doing his job. How do I know this? Well, we have varmints living in tunnels in our side yard.

This was an issue before we got the cat, but in his first year here he cleaned them up. In the pre-Sparkles era, there were long mounds, devoid of grass, criss-crossing the area between our house and the woods. Then the hunter arrived and they were gone.

Now the tunnels are back, and they are apparently inhabited. We thought at first that this was a momentary glitch in the small-animal slaughterhouse that had been our yard. Perhaps he was concentrating on bird killing. But then several fledglings survived in our neighbor's yard across the street.

Plus, I carried the cat downstairs last night, and he's huge. He's a big, fat lazy cat, which normally would be fine, but there are consequences . . .

Yesterday, everyone was outside playing, and Sam decided that he needed to pee. My wife urged him to go inside, but he wanted to pee on the tree. Because this is somewhat common, we have an out-of-the-way tree that is used specifically for this purpose (it's a healthy tree now, by the way). On the way to the tree, Sam spied a hole and decided to pee in that. Fine, said my wife.

So he drops his pants, begins peeing, and out of the hole pops a little gray head. The animal was not happy, and neither was Sam, who spent the next 20 minutes pointing to the side yard and saying "Don't peepee thayuh."

Sparkles is going to half-rations starting today.