Cat barf.

Yes, the saga of the unwashed dishes continues. To understand exactly what happened, you need to know that The Professor and I each have a cat, and both cats are overweight. I inherited my cat from my mother, and he came to me tipping (or should I say “squashing”) the scales at 19 pounds. He’s been on a diet since last August, and is down to 14 pounds. The Professor’s Warrior Princess arrived in September looking very svelte, but quickly plumped out after a couple of months of apartment life. She started her diet in December, and is holding at about 16 pounds right now. She’s convinced she’s starving, and needs to be watched closely so that she doesn’t steal food from my Clueless Wonder. We never need to worry about the Clueless Wonder stealing from WP, since WP never leaves any food behind from her meals.

Two nights ago, the Princess was in an especially foul and hungry mood. Twice I had to scoot her off the dining room table. Once I heard suspicious sounds emanating from the kitchen, and just as I rounded the corner to investigate I heard her jump down off the kitchen counter. She knows better than to get up there. But she was scounting for tidbits. Or, as I learned later, scavenging.

There were two days worth of unwashed dishes on the counter by the sink at the time. The Warrior Princess found an unwashed platter that had been used to cook a couple of small steaks, and had apparently been licking that when I surprised her in the kitchen. Unaware of that at the time, I returned to my computer, and she wandered off towards the bedrooms. I assumed she was finished with her attempted raids for the evening And indeed she was.

That was because she was busy being sick from the grease she’d stolen from the pan. She barfed twice in the hallway to the bedrooms, and twice more in the master bedroom. The Professor came home from teaching, and immediately discovered the mess in the hallway. At first he tried to blame it on my cat, but it was pretty obvious from his cat’s behavior and the stomach contents that WP was the guilty party.

Here’s the best part. He wanted ME to clean the mess up. Cat barf makes him puke. How convenient. After I finished in the hallway, I discovered two additional pools in the bedroom and had to clean those up as well. The Prof did clean the hallway carpet after I removed the offending puke piles, and promised to scrub the bedroom carpet the next morning. I note that the bedroom carpet had yet to be scrubbed this morning, however.

The Professor did wash the dishes the next day, although they are again accumulating. He cleaned the bathroom floors thoroughly yesterday. It isn’t that he doesn’t do work around the apartment. It’s just that he does it when the mood strikes him, without prioritizing. He refuses to wash dishes after dinner, preferring to let them age until the next afternoon at the earliest.

It’s not the first time his cat has gotten sick on a dirty dish left within her reach, and it won’t be the last time. And I have no idea how to resolve this issue. All I know is that I really resent being the one to clean up his cat’s barf because he won’t wash the dishes on a timely basis.

After our little talk about the dishes, The Professor gets upset when I try to wash them. He always says I haven’t given him a chance to get to them. He actually accuses me of being “anal” when I even try to clear the dirty dishes off the table and take them to the sink too soon after we’ve finished eating.

I’m beginning to think I need to change the name of my journal to the Dirty Dishes Diary.