Dante threw up on me while I was sleeping. At first I was upset about it, because it truly is a terrible way to be woken up, but then I realized the dude felt real bad. See: Dante is a huge furry cat. And when summer rolls around, he sheds his massive winter coat—and a lot of it he eats while grooming! So over the course of three hours I watched him barf up four (!) hairballs that were probably four to five inches (!) in length. Uh, whoa! I ain’t gonna lie: I caught two of them in my hands. For some reason cats like to throw up on carpets and beds, and not hardwood floors, or any other easily cleanable surface . . . so when he jumped on my bed and started retching, I held my hands beneath his mouth and caught both of them. I gagged. If you’ve never touched a hairball, uh, it is real disgusting. The texture of it is soft and slimy and alien-like, and of course it is warm and covered in stomach-y fluids.

Yup!

Anyway: Hain’t pretty stuff, I’ll tell you that. Dante felt like hell afterwards, and so I made him a little blanket fort and he crawled inside and whimpered and then fell asleep. I slept beside him for several hours. He woke me up again later in the vening, but this time he felt very good and did not throw up on me. He stood on my chest and gently pawed at my face. I asked him if he was hungry and he went insane and ran into the kitchen. I fed him and gave him water. Dude was probably dehydrated as heck.

He’s OK now . . . maybe better than before. I don’t doubt that having a pound of hair lodged in your intestinal tract makes you feel sluggish.

Sometimes when people get depressed they buy themselves a bunch of shit. I don’t do that. I buy Dante stuff instead. It’s much much cheaper, and I like watching that dude have a good old time. I ordered him a huge tin of catnip and some treats and a ‘Cat Dancer’ toy. This is the dumbest thing ever. It is a just a long piece of metal with a couple of cardboard tubes on either end. It costs about $2. Dante loves this thing. I don’t know why. I mean I guess I could try to imagine why, but yeah, he loses his mind when I pull this thing out. This is probably the tenth or eleventh one I’ve bought for him.

Also, it has great packaging. This is what it looks like:

catdancer

Hah!!! I love it. Look at that mouse, man. He’s all confused and shit. He doesn’t get it. In that sense, we are the mouse. The mouse is us.

(lol)

“The Original Interactive Cat Toy.” That can’t be true. Surely there were other interactive cat toys before the Cat Dancer. Man I don’t know!!!

Dante is in the living room now. I have just fed him and given him some catnip. I love that dude. If I didn’t have that dude I would have a difficult time taking care of myself. He keeps me straight, I guess, in the same way having a kid would. Dante is not my son, though—he’s just my friend. I love my friend. I need my friend. I’m glad he’s feeling better.