Ten fifty nine pm. Thursday. October something - the 8th I think. This is the moment - the specific point in time - when I first feel a little tickle in the back of my throat. I coughed. I thought nothing of it but then I noticed the tickle hadn't gone.

(Go easy on me please, oh Entity that doles out the nasty bugs to those immunosuppressed by the proliferation of the anti-bacterial industry.)

Bluejack came over and told me that the resident cat is spraying and needs to be fixed. He said the place smelled bad, which I knew, but which I thought was because of a neglected litter box. I'm not a cat owner so I don't know these things. Anyway, I guess when he said "spraying" I really didn't take it literally. Later I told Mary and Wayne what he said and they educated me in horrifying detail.

Spraying.

It's so much more disgusting than I could've imagined. Like a skunk they said: it's not easy to get rid of. All the while, their porker woman cat, Mojo, was totally mauling my backpack which had man-cat fumes soaked into its fibers. Some kind of big sex sachet for her, I guess.

Of course I freaked out thinking he's squirting all of my stuff while I'm away in retaliation for my being really mean to him when I'm around because he's such a pest, a beast, and a threat to clothing and skin. But they said I'd know if he'd gotten anything of mine because it would totally reek. Nothing in my room meets such a repugnant criterium (workout clothes from Wednesday excluded), so I think I'm OK. There's a lock on the door now and the cat is 100% prohibited.

No spraying in this room without my consent!

When I saw Julie next I told her about her cat. I told her too that the county will fix him for cheap. So get on with it! She said she'd haul his balls down there on Friday. (Let's all hope, OK?)