My cat Guzman de la Guzman, aka The Gooze, is notorious for his voracious appetite. Loaves of bread have been drilled into, sausages stolen, biscut after biscut swiped from right off the table. He's The Gooze. Shameless. Fat. Heart of Gold.
Ever since I moved into my new apartment, I have allowed The Gooze to roam freely outside, a luxury he never experienced before. For a reason.
I came home Friday night to find The Gooze completely uninterested in my sandwich as I sat down on the couch to take a big bite. Strange. Then I found that all the food in his dish had not been eaten. Very Strange. I went to bed, mildly concerned, but too drunk to google it.
The next morning, I slept in, without once being woken up by a fishy little toungue running itself all over my face. Now this was completely absurd. I fed my other cat, Walter, who munched furiosuly while The Gooze vaguely lifted his eyes at me when I shook the food box. This NEVER, EVER happens. For a minute, I thought, wow, maybe this is a reformed Gooze, a Gooze with patience, manners, a sense of pride. It was a thrilling thought with a bright future. I imagined myself able to leave gorceries on the table without a friend to guard them. I saw dinner parties where people were relaxed and happy, Gooze Free. I heard absolutely nothing in the morning. Or maybe he had eaten poop.
I brought the Gooze in to emergency pet care, and indeed The Gooze had eaten poop. Poop has the uncanny ability to ruin an appetite, not only because it's poop, but because it is a carrier for coccidia, a nasty little bacteria that will make even the hungriest of Goozes completely catorexic.
The vet gave me some medicine and I took the little fatty home. It had been a wonderful two days. Even my roomate commented on how much better life is with the Gooze in remission. No furry hand shooting out from thin air as I attempt to get into a juicy corndog, no trail of bred crumbs strewn about the kitchen, no trash knocked over with shreds of tin foil sticking to my feet. There might be something to this coccidia thing. The South Poop Diet.
With bittersweetness, the Gooze is back on his fat again and eating like there is no tomorrow. It was nice while it lasted, and all it took was a little bit of poop.
