Tribbles

Warning: This post is extremely graphic and in completely poor taste. Please skip reading if you've just eaten, are squeamish or have a severe phobia of vaginas. That means you, big brother Stretch.

Jumby was in the hospital for almost three weeks. While it was mostly routine as I (impatiently) waited for him to dutifully recover from the penile enlargement he insisted on having at the age of five, it was a long and tedious three weeks.

Having disabled children in one's family means there is a high likely hood one will overdose on cold hospital cafeteria food and make eyes at all the cute residents. It's just a fact of life.

Still, after the initial two hours, I was pretty much ready for Jumby to be sprung and released back into the wilds of my care. However, the health care practitioners thought differently. I was forced to twiddle my thumbs and peck away at my blackberry while cursing out loud in front of all the pediatric patients about what an absolute atrocity it was that there was no available wi-fi.

So it was with great fanfare and much ado last Thursday when Jumby and I were finally granted the keys to the kingdom and fled from the sterilized confines of the hospital ward we had been living in.

After picking up a celebratory slurpee and driving home I put the little duffer down for an overdue nap and with great relish plopped my arse down on the couch, opened up my lap top and inhaled the sweet fumes of the Internet for the first time in weeks.

The house was quiet with the exception of the hum of my computer and I kept hearing a sound I attributed to a baby bird outside my window. It was starting to drive me a bit insane so I went to close the window next to me only to realize the window was shut.

What the heck?

That's when it dawned on me the sound wasn't a baby bird but a baby kitten mewling it's first sounds of life.

Greeeaat. Just my luck my first afternoon home and my daughter's cat decided to bring forth the life swollen in her belly. I needed a bunch of kittens in my house like I needed another hole in my head, I thought to myself cynically as I closed my laptop and got up to search for the new litter.

Hunting around the house, I opened closet doors, searched my kids rooms, the laundry room, basically anywhere it would look attractive and safe for a first time mother to populate the world.

Nothing.

Then I thought, try looking under your bed Tanis! Cursing under my breath about what a pain in the tookus that would be to clean up if that was were the darling cat decided to pop actually was, I padded into my bedroom.

And just about had a heart attack.

The damn cat wasn't having her litter under the bed, she was having them ON my bed. At that very moment!

Gagging a little bit I died a bit on the inside when I noticed all the goo smeared all over my bed. The very bed I was wanting to crawl into and take a nap after I had checked my email. The very same bed now soiled with the inner liquid remnants of labour. Ugh.

Still I was curious so I reached out to pet the cat (I'm not completely heartless; it wasn't that long ago I was splayed out and in labour. We momma's feel one another's pain,) and check to see how many rodents were squirming around kittens had been born.

That's when I noticed something akin to a water balloon sticking out of my cat's ass.

Can we say Tanis freaked right the farck out?

So I did the only thing that made sense to me at the moment when I realized something was going horribly wrong with my daughter's cat's birth process and may soon have a medical emergency on my hands of the feline variety.

I twittered.

Then I called my husband (who ignored my call), my father (who told me not to worry), my friend (who laughed at me) and the vet (who placed me on hold and forgot about me. Twat.)

Apparently the males in my life aren't as useful in moments of feline distress as I would have hoped them to be.

So I went back to twitter. And freaked out in a spectacular fashion.



For all of my fellow tweeters who encouraged me to stick my hands in and help a cat out, I have this to say to you: You are all out of your ever loving minds if you think I was touching that hot mess.



My bedspread, the one I had so lovingly picked out to complement my bedroom decor looked like it was straight out of a crime scene from a serial killer's latest killing spree.



Telling myself to pull it together, I hauled my arse off of twitter to go and see if the world had ended in my bedroom like I was sure it must. Peeking through the fingers tightly covering my eyes, I was relieved to find out my cat wasn't birthing water balloons but instead had just pushed out another slimy black kitten.



That's when I noticed this:



And vomited a little bit in my mouth but not enough to deter me from grabbing my camera so that you all could share in the gorey glory with me. I am nothing if not thoughtful first and foremost.

Heh.

It was right about then that I started wishing Jumby and I were still in the hospital.



I bent down to have a little talk, eyeball to eyeball with my labouring cat, about safe sex and abstinence when she blinked at me, stood up and turned around so that my eyeballs were now in direct line with her back end.

That's one way to end a conversation effectively.



Why am I watching this? I asked myself. Visions of my daughter popped in my head and how excited she would be that her cat had finally delivered the highly anticipated kittens. Surely she would be disappointed if I didn't give her an accurate play by play description of the miracle happening before me, I thought as my stomach threatened to return the contents of the slurpee.

That's when kitten number three decided to pop out like a groundhog and check the weather.



Really, the similarity was uncanny:





My husband (who has a stick up his arse about having cats inside the house instead of outside in the giant 20 acre yard we own) would be so pleased to hear about today's exciting events, I grinned.

That's when I noticed yet another pool of seepage spreading across my bedspread and with my luck into my brand new mattress. Yum.



As per a helpful twitter suggestion, I ran to the kitchen to get a garbage bag to slip under the blanket in hopes of keeping my white mattress white. When I returned with my prize clutched in my hand I was treated to a new surprise.



I mean, really, a woman can only share so much. Bad enough I was going to have to burn that bedspread but I had just finally worked that pillow into perfect comfort.

So I did what any pillow lover would do. I yanked it out from under her and hid it on top of my dresser and then went to go grab a stiff drink.



Suddenly, I noted the time. Crap on a stick.



There was much squealing and excitement as my children discovered the joy of life festival taking place in my bedroom. I made them put away their knapsacks and wash their hands and swear on their lives they wouldn't touch any living breathing creature in the room because the last thing a labouring cat needed was to be molested by two over-excited preteens as she tried to squeeze her offspring out.



I may or may not have laughed a little at my son's extremely white face after he viewed the carnage of birth on my bed. I never claimed to be mother of the year, yo.

Hours later and the cat still had a huge pregnant stomach. It was starting to become obvious if she didn't hurry up and have these kittens I would be sleeping on the couch.

Greeaat.



By 11 that night she still only had three kittens with more on the way. I looked at her, she looked at me, and we squared off. Who was going to get the bed for the night.

I'm bigger, bitch, I told her as I carefully put her and her kittens in a box and carried her to my daughter's room.

My bed only has room for one pussy and it ain't yours, darlin.

Later that afternoon, a full 24 hours after she popped out her last kitten the birthing cat from hell gave birth to two more tribbles kittens, one of which was a still born.

With a luck of triumph on her face, she jumped out of her box and carried each of her kittens back to my bed.

Where she takes them every day after I lovingly remove them every night.

Something tells me that I'm not going to win this war.



As my husband has joked more than once, apparently there is room enough for more than one cooter in my bed.

Whether I like it or not.