Recently I was inspired by the enlightened Sars over at The Vine (see last letter) to revamp my cat’s hygeine plan.  As the title of this case file would imply, I had been troubled by an persistent odor emanating from the litterbox.  Despite my vigilance, I was humbled in the face of what had become a shameful blight on my apartment.

I returned from the store where I had bought all new supplies (as well as froggered my way through a veritable blockade of old people on scooters) and proceded to trick out the kitten WC in the flyest of fashions.  I happily imagined my cat getting comfortable in her new digs, all “Yeah, man! We doin’ this!”

My blissful contemplation screeched to a halt, however, when I removed the small paper bag hanging from a hook in the closet: the paper bag in which I store the scooper so that it doesn’t  have to come into contact with anything else–being, by its very nature, perpetually covered with germs.

The bag was heavy–a little too heavy.  I looked with trepidation into its malodorous depths, and what to my wondering eyes did appear?  As Bluemomar would say, “old-ass cat turds.” Nice.  But how did they get there?  The bag was out of reach for the cat, meaning they had come to reside there by human intervention.

I reasoned that it must have been the act of one of three friends who took care of the cat for me over the winter holidays, while I was out of town.  A friend who apparently did not think flushing or throwing them in the dumpster was an appropriate turd disposal solution.  This meant that they had been hanging in a sack on the wall of my closet for four goddamned months.  Well, that solved the mystery of the unremitting stench, at least.

As I sat down to reflect on the case and prepare my notes for submittal to the Agency, I slurped my whiskey and brooded a bit.  Surely the real mystery was why I had left such chowderheads as are my friends in charge.

Case Status:  Closed