Here’s the thing: you might not believe this, but once upon a time I was young and had a cat named Miss Kitty.
That’s no good. Let me start over.
After his parents divorced, young Stu was rather poor and couldn’t afford a dog, so he domesticated an alley cat and named her Miss Kitty.
Miss Kitty was a great little companion. She never even needed a litterbox. She’d go to the door and meow when she needed to … go … then meow from outside when she was done.
In retrospect that may have had more to do with the cost of cat litter than anything else.
Anyway, there was a cat with no litterbox, a boy with parents who lived 120 miles apart, and one year there was Christmas. OK, OK, so there was Christmas every year since either 366 A.D. in Rome or the mid-9th century in Europe, depending on whom you ask. But it was this one Christmas that mattered.
On this one Christmas, returning home to his custodial mother after a delightful holiday with his non-custodial father, young Stu was immediately grounded until well after New Year.
My mother had a variety of issues, and when they fell together in just the right mélange at just the right moment, I usually got in trouble.
She grew up dirt poor without real Christmas trees, so on this particular Christmas she convinced my stepfather to buy a tree that was too large for the room. The top of it brushed the 10-foot ceiling and the bottom branches of this evergreen Godzilla spread six feet in diameter and sat so close to the floor presents had to be stacked beside it.
My mother also had this habit of inviting over people she thought had money, perhaps hoping some of their success would rub off or something. During those visits, in fine American fashion, appearance was more important than reality.
Things must be spotless. Break out the good china. Let’s pretend we always dress up and have four-course meals on random weeknights.
Now let’s get back to that cat.
In the flurry of guest-prep, the non-Stu humans at home did not pay much attention to Miss Kitty. Not being able to get them to let her out to … go … she decided to go where there was a little bit of outside right there in the living room: way back in the corner under the Godzilla tree.
My mother and stepfather smelled it but couldn’t find it. The rich guests would surely think this was a house full of poop-mongers, so something had to be done RIGHT NOW!
With only minutes remaining, she ran upstairs to my bathroom to grab my can of Arrid Extra Dry XX aerosol deodorant to spray around the tree in place of air freshener. It was the ‘80s and everything came in aerosol because we had Ozone layer to spare.
The can she grabbed had the distinctive blue Arrid lid, but no label.
She sprayed madly to clear the air but somehow the house just kept smelling worse.
“It’s not working! Quick – spray more!”
Spectre’s Stu “Blofeld” Clampitt and Miss Kitty several years after the Christmas Cat-Poo Plot. (Photo provided)
Weeks before, young Stu had purchased a can of fart spray at a novelty shop. It was horrid rather than Arrid.
The label fell off in about 10 minutes and the cheap lid broke just from reattaching it. But it was still funny stuff, so, being the son of a pragmatic father, he just put another lid on it.
There my mortified mother was, spraying canned farts around her Godzilla tree moments before her ritzy new friends stopped by.
And it was all my fault, apparently.
Clearly, I had trained Miss Kitty to go under the tree. Being the precocious James Bond villain I was, I knew she’d have people over, I knew she’d be out of air freshener, I tore off the label from that fateful can and replaced the cap so she’d grab it by mistake. Then I took my deodorant with me to visit my father, not to be a deodorized human, but rather to be certain there was no escape from my nefarious machinations. Bwah-ha-ha!
Grounding me through the holidays for the Christmas Cat-Poo Plot was the only fitting punishment.
I really miss that cat.