The Luv Doc: Cat Poop!

Dear Luv Doc,

This girl I have been dating recently really loves animals ... I mean really. She's always fostering pets and volunteering to work at shelters. She always has several pets around her house, too. I like animals myself, but I'm not as passionate about them as she is. Anyway, the other night I was spending the night at her house and we were spooning on her side of the bed, and I heard something behind me and turned my head just in time to see one of her cats pooping on my pillow. I pushed the cat off the bed, and she woke up and was mad at me for "scaring the cat." So am I crazy? Was I wrong to try to keep the cat from pooping on my pillow?

– Scat Cat

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Damn, son! That is some messed-up shit. Sort of makes you think that if Satan actually does exist, he is occupying the body of a house cat. On your pillow, too! Nothing ruins a good spoon like a pissed-off tabby dropping a deuce a few inches from your head. I have been blessed to have never had to listen to a cat pooping at close range, but I have drunkenly stumbled through a few litter boxes, and I can tell you that the smell alone would ruin any man's spoon fluff – reason enough to back off on the wet feed, and if you've priced cat food recently, you know that shit's expensive. Literally.

Even though a pile of cat poop is hardly a severed horse head, it sounds like someone/thing is sending you a message. No, it's not Vito Corleone. Mafia types rarely exact revenge by shitting on people's pillows – certainly not while they're sleeping. The logistics of that operation alone make it unfeasible, and let's face it: There is no way a made guy would risk the indignity of being caught crapping on someone's pillow. No, this deal is much more ancient and nefarious than that. Pillow-pooping is definitely OG, and probably dates back a few thousand years at least – shortly after the Egyptians got inventive with pest control.

I think we can safely assume that Egyptians had a tolerance for pillow-pooping because in ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death. It probably helped matters that a few thousand years ago, everything smelled like cat shit. In fact, even though by all accounts Queen Nefertiti was supermodel-hot, her morning breath would probably make your eyes water, so a little cat poop on a pillow was probably adorable.

Although our fondness for felines has cooled somewhat over the millennia, it's still not kosher to get mafia-style payback on a nocturnal pillow-pooper. Really, even taking a cat for a "drive in the country" is frowned upon. You take a few cats for a drive in the country and all of a sudden you're short a billion songbirds.

So, the message this cat is sending by pooping on your pillow is not that it wants to poop on your head, but rather that something new has been introduced into its environment that is causing it stress. Very likely that something is you. So, if you want to continue spooning with your animal-lover, my suggestion is to go buy that cat a new litter box or two and then maybe lock the door next time you decide to hang around for a postcoital spoon.