If it's Yellow Let it...............
Two weeks ago.
"Why is the cat making such a fuss?" I shout as I remove myself from the front of the TV.
"Gabriella and I are giving her a bath!" Charlottes shouts back overtop Boot's disproval of her cleansing routine.
I run downstairs to the laundry tub to where I wash Buddy-the dog- and find,...nobody? "Where are you?" I ask the house. No response. Just the pleas of the cat, begging someone to come and free her from her current situation. I run back upstairs and follow cat sounds. Cat sounds that I've never heard before. I've never heard them before because I've never bathed a cat! Cats are self cleaning. Why I've seen cats spend hours (it was a slow day) licking themselves clean. One time I was out in an alley with a co worker and we both were observing how a cat goes to great lengths licking themselves washing, and I commented that I wished I could do that. He said 'Go ahead he looks like a friendly cat.'
Back to matters at hand.
I open the bathroom door and find my two granddaughters bathing the cat in the tub. NOT! The cat's in the toilet! With the lid closed because, 'She was scratching us!'
I open the lid to a cat projectile. A projectile with the GPS coordinates of under the wife's and my bed. Somehow she managed to fit under her target, dodging more exercise equipment than I would like to admit. Or use. Or pay all the easy monthly payments for.
The girls are bleeding a bit causing a few tears. The floor and the little rug in front of the tub that the wife gets mad at me if I get it wet,...is wet! But most important, the toilet bowl is super clean. With the cat clawing cleaning power of Boots!
"We-e-e were helping youuuu clean (this part is then interrupted with the backward nasal pull of about a pound of boogies) the-aaaa caaaaat." Explained the two sobbing defeated girls.
"And you thought that putting her in the toilet and flushing it a few times would do that?"
No answer, just tears and the backward reverse of of mucus was their only response.
Why is it, and what is it about the toilet that frightens and fascinates kids? They, at first cry and fret over being over it. Sitting on it scares them to tears but then five minutes later they use it as a time portal and flush teddy bears, trucks and balls through its black hole. And that's is if I'm lucky. I've had the toilet in the main bathroom off more times than the three little pigs had houses. Each time clearing a traffic jam of toys that couldn't make it in to our sewer system for the rats to play with. That would then eventually end up on the 'For Sale' table at the sewer plants annual toy sale. And here I must say a poorly attended event. I just go to see how much I've lost and if it's worth the risk to reclaim.
We now are experiencing a water shortage and the 'If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown flush it down' rule is followed at our house. The grandkids are over for four days a week and the four yr. old twins are great at following this rule. I think I'm also helping them learn colours as they place three yellow toys in the toilet bowl before the find a brown plastic farm cow and try to flush the whole mess down.
The girls are no better. They use half a Costco roll of toilet paper every time they sit down. If they make yellow twice (sorry but it's a toilet story I had to get a bit graphic) in a row there is no water in the bowl, just a paper pudding that won't flush. It becomes a solid platform for Big Bird to perch on.
Last Tuesday their pet Goldie who stays at our house died. Goldie is a goldfish that they got for free as prize from church that cost us $30 bucks for a bowl, gravel, water treatment and food. Anyway,.. they all fought for the right to bury Goldie at sea via the toilet. A right of passage I was more than willing to stay out of. And I did, as the oldest, Gabriella, was able to overpower the other three and with little noise. It wasn't till about four that afternoon that I went to check to see if I had to use the plunger to flush any of the toilets. And there in toilet no.1 (my command central) was poor dead Goldie floating in a bowl of,....well it was yellow and going off mellow. Gabriella had laid it to rest in the bowl and because of the no brown rule she had thought it had to stay till brown o'clock. And there it stayed, there all day. The boys had been using it for target practise standing on the edge of the tub peeing!
I felt so sorry for old Yeller that I fished her from the commode and we buried her in the backyard beside Peaches ( a treasured Guinea pig). We said a few words about what a good fish she was, and how she or he was a friend to everybody. I paid the minister a couple of hundred bucks and we said good bye. I was hoping to trade him some exercise equipment for his services but he seemed to need the cash. I'd hoped it wasn't for more goldfish. Oh well Boots probably would of clawed me to death had I tried to remove anything from her under her bed hide-out. She takes residence there every time the kids come over now. A temporary residence I myself have sometimes thought of too.
"Grandpa! The toilet is throwing up!" one of the twins now inform me. "I was just walking by and it puked stuff all over the floor. It got grandmas rug in front of the tub wet too. Boy are you going to be in trouble!" I didn't ask why his socks were wet or where his constant companion Brownie was. I somehow knew as to its location.
Hundreds of dollars spent on toys and educational stimulants to further their mental and physical development and it's the toilet, trying to be used as a time portal that's become their educational stimuli of choice. It's times like this that I wish for the old outhouses. 'What's that you say? You dropped Brownie down the hole. Oh look! Do you want him back? No? That's what I thought...is that the cat down there? GIRLS!'
Bob Niles
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