Normally there's a little orange flattie parked in my garage. Not three-bedroom's worth of furniture!

 We have an old cat. My wife brought two of 'em home from the pound over 10 years ago. I didn't want 'em 'cause I knew I'd be the one changing the litter, lining up people to watch 'em while we were away, and so on. I sternly put my foot down. She begged. I sternly held fast. You husbands know how well that works for a guy. So, we got two cats. One of them got outside a couple years ago and became a coyote snack. However, the remaining cat stubbornly refuses to get tossed, er, I mean, sneak outside.

I mentioned she's old. I think she's 19 or 20 years old, which in Jeep terms is about the equivalent of 700,000 on the odometer. While we were in Moab last week the damn thing decided to use our bedroom carpet as its litter box. I don't know if it was senility or spite for being away, but the house smelled nasty, so yours truly got to spend the entire weekend gutting every bedroom in the house for the caret installers coming tomorrow.

In truth, we needed new carpet in the bedrooms anyway. We bought our house from a retired old couple and they had installed white carpet throughout. I don't need to tell any of the parents out there how long white carpet lasts with three young boys. We'd already converted the main living areas to hardwood, but the kids' bedrooms looked like the casino floor at Circus Circus. And the defiling of our bedroom carpet by the "damn cat" (as I lovingly refer to her) was the last straw. So, for about $1,600 we're having all new Stainmaster carpet laid down. Considering we've had our carpets cleaned at least 10 times at an average of $120 per cleaning, it's something we should've done long ago.

Now, if I can just find where to buy a pet coyote.....