The gift of cat poop

People give me stuff. I'm a barista in the state's coolest coffee shop (well, that may have sounded a tad self-serving...let's just be completely honest and say the coolest coffee shop in middle America!) and as such, we've met a goodly number of customers who have over the course of time become good friends. And you know how it is with your own friends, you want to share things with them, things that you enjoy and that you want them to enjoy as well. So, friends have brought us a list of goodies that includes cookies; cakes; pickled eggs; smoked fish; venison steaks, bacon and wieners; home smoked beef sticks; cheese; whole 15 lb. salmon right from the lake; and homemade fudge (if that doesn't sound like a Wisconsin menu I don't know my cheese).

Well, one of the shop's most loyal friends is a spunky gal who has brought a lot of good humor, fun and occasional amiable psychic swordplay to the party. Now then, in order to protect the identities of those involved let us just call this dear lady, oh, just for the sake of brevity let's call her "Lucy." So Lucy has shared with us all sorts of interesting and delightful tidbits and ephemera, including relevant newspaper and magazine articles, books, works of art, sugary yummies and so on. She is also a cat owner and devotee. One day Lucy, my stepdaughter Heidi and I were talking about cats. Heidi owns a couple of cats herself. While I suppose I like felines well enough (I'm really a dog person) I am not at all ambivalent about the smell they produce. Can't stand it really. I maintain that you can identify a household with cats as soon as the front door is opened, regardless of what measures are taken to inhibit the odor.

Lucy insisted that she used a specific cat litter that, according to her, entirely and completely eliminates all catbox odors. I, of course, expressed my doubts and likewise declared her to be a biased and prejudicial participant in the stinky cat debate, whose opinion on the matter should be judged invalid because of her professed affinity for cats in the first place. She dismissed my entirely objective and tactful pronouncement (I think I said something like "No way! You're out of your gourd!") by pretending I wasn't there, and continuing the conversation with Heidi alone, whose opinions also, I might add, I had judged to be without merit. And so, now that I had been effectively pushed out of the stinky cat debate (which was now no longer a debate at all, as I had been the only one actually debating the issue) I took solace in the fact that Lucy and Heidi inwardly agreed with me but were too stubborn to admit that they were wrong.

The next day in walks Lucy holding a small brown top-folded paper bag that clearly contained something at least a little weighty. She held it in front of her as though it were a trophy she had just won for bowling a perfect 300 game or baking the first-prize winning carrot cake at the County Fair. Smiling a little too smugly, she handed it to me on the side of the counter with a "David, would you please give this to Heidi?"
"Uh, sure...what is it?" I asked.
"This is a sample of the litter we talked about yesterday. I wanted her to see exactly what it's like and how effective it is."
"Oh...uh...so this is cat litter?" I asked again, a little confused as to why anyone would even care to parcel cat litter for someone else.
"Yes," said Lucy, "there are actually two separate samples in there. One of fresh, unused litter. And one that has been soiled."

My three outer fingers immediately recoiled from the hold I had on top of the bag, leaving my thumb and forefinger lightly pinching as small a portion of paper as I could without dropping it. Extending the package as far from me as I could I said through curled lips "You mean that there's cat poop in here!?"
"No, no," said Lucy in a singsong voice. "The soiled sample just contains a little peepee litter, and it's in a ziplock baggie. Go ahead, smell it. You will not smell any cat odor whatsoever." (Of course what she was really saying was "David, you silly man, here's what I think of your opinions on cats and cat litter.")
"Uh...no thank you," I replied, which may have come out sounding something like "No way! You're out of your gourd!"

"Gee," I said in mock dismay, "you used to bring me cookies and brownies. Now I'm getting cat crap. I'm not quite sure how to take this."
Lucy, of course, parried my sarcasm with a good natured laugh.

I did store the bag for the better part of the day, half-thinking that maybe Lucy was being legit and really did want Heidi to have it in order to confirm what they had been talking about the day before. And then I realized that "hey, I'm saving a bag of cat poop...just paint 'all-day sucker' on my forehead."

Every now and then I bring up the time that I was gifted a bag of cat poop. You can hardly top that.

Ok, that's two posts now that are scatological in nature. I better remember to do something different for the next one or people might start to think something weird is going on here.