Herding Cats

Despite my threats on my previous post, I can't foresee ever needing the assistance of a ghost writer.  Why would I need to pay 8 bucks for someone else's brain juices when I have limitless creative juices in the form of my kids squirting all over my house every day of my life?  Take for instance the conversation I had with my eldest today about whether or not I had run out of cheese.  I will freely admit it's always a possibility, but given that I constantly have at least 4-5 different types of cheese in varying amounts in my fridge, her suggestion that I was low, let alone out, seemed unlikely.  I expressed innocent incredulity with her accusations, so she sent me this passive aggressive piece of interpretive art:

I pondered how to punish her insolence all day.  Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long because she said something incredible at dinner tonight.  

You see, my brother got himself a kitty cat named Harvey recently and my teens think they deserve one too.  Jared and I adopted a no animal policy about two years ago after a long stretch of really horrible pets.  I'm not kidding.  It's like we had the exorcist movie in animal form playing on a loop in our house!  Crazy cats that burrowed into crawl spaces and then snarled, clawed, and chomped on your arms and neck if you tried to get them out.  Or how about several breeds of dogs and cats leaking out of every orifice and onto every surface EXCEPT in litter boxes or outside on the lawn?  We owned one cat I liked enough to pay actual money to spay and she disappeared!  I became convinced we were cursed and our home possessed by evil animal karma of some sort.  I guess I could have hired a priest to perform an exorcism, but since I'm cheap, we decided just to outlaw every animal in our house except the five female human ones we were already stuck with.

Flashback to the dinner table where I was accosted for the umpteenth time about getting a stupid kitty.  When I outlined yet again how I had no desire to play cat turd hide and seek, Kayley said, "Don't worry, I'll train the cat!"  I didn't quite catch on at first, but I got it eventually.  She meant she would teach the kitty how to use the litter box!  

The bedlam that ensued was incredible.  Jared pretended to dig in a litter box while talking the kitty through its dump.  I wisely told Kayley it would be like herding cats.  All the other girls just laughed.  Here's Kayley hiding her face and feeling sheepish indeed:

I pointed out to Kaykey that kitties are a lot like human babies - Their mommy has to teach them all the important stuff from the get go or they are ruined, snarling, messes that can't use a litter box even if you show them one!  See Kayley?  Your mommy just blogged about something really embarassing to teach you that I may have run out of cheese, but I still come out on top when the kitty litter hits the fan!