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[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. The first two essays are here and here. One is about comedy, the other is about my home city of Toronto.]

1. I live with two cats. One is called Marty, the other called Luda. They have very different personalities. One is difficult to live with, the other is a wonderful pet. I wonder if you can guess which one is the nightmare when the only information provided is their names.

2. Luda’s full name is La Muerte Peluda. Marty’s full name is Mardi Gras, or Marty McFly. As you may have guessed, I had no input in the naming of either cat.

3. We also call Luda other names, such as McGurnigles and Squeakers. As far as I’m aware, everyone who owns cats does this. One name clearly isn’t enough, and yet the animal does not seem to be confused. I can think of no rhyme or reason as to why I would do this, or why we call her half the names we do. I don’t feel embarrassed about it at the time, only once I sit and think about it.

3a. The only other name we call Marty is “asshole”. There’s no mystery to that one, we just don’t like him very much.

4. I only started living with cats when I moved to Toronto. Now that I think about it, most places I’ve lived in Canada had some kind of animal involved. I have only came to this realization now. I’m not sure why I’ve never connected those particular dots before.

4a. When I first moved to Toronto in 2003, I slept on a couch for the first 3-4 weeks. This couch was donated to my cause by an unbelievably nice guy called Jeff. He had a cat called Indy. Indy slept on the couch. He wasn’t happy about my encroaching on his territory, so he woke me every morning at 7am by sitting on my head. I’m apparently allergic to cats, so this wasn’t an ideal situation. I remain in Jeff’s debt for his hospitality. If anyone wants to crash on my couch, you totally can.

4b. I lived in an apartment with a lady who had two kittens. They were unbelievably cute and determined to get into my room. I was equally determined to keep them out. It was a constant battle to keep them from running under my bed. I can’t remember their names. They were also on heat all the time. It turns out that cats are pretty annoying when they’re in heat. I didn’t know that until the kittens started yelling at me and humping things.

5. Luda is incapable of meowing like a regular cat. She opens her mouth in the same way as normal cats do, but no sound comes out. It’s like she’s got a mute button that got switched on, and now we can’t find it to fix the sound. She should have subtitles. The most she can ever manage is a squeak when you pick her up when she doesn’t expect it. This is a surprisingly pleasing arrangement.

6. Marty takes huge shits in the litter box, and yells the whole time. At this point, I’m 90% sure I could take a dump in the litter box and Holly wouldn’t notice the difference.

6a. After Marty has pooped, Luda refuses to poop in the litter box. They sit there, steaming and stinking up our washroom and she just won’t get near them. She shits in the bath instead. This is a convenient alternative for all parties concerned. 

6b. In case you’re wondering, Luda has very small, appropriately cat-sized poops. The only exception to this is when I woke up and saw that she had six inches worth of poop hanging for her bum. I spoke about it during my standup comedy (near the end of the video). It is a true story, and remains to this day the only remotely annoying thing Luda has ever done.

6c. I’m going to stop writing about poop now.

7. Marty is an asshole. He wakes me up in the morning, every morning, but never at the same time. He’s the most temperamental and unpredictable alarm clock you’ve ever had that is capable of hiding in your closet. 

7a. Most of the time he’s waking me up so that he can get more food. I feed him just before I go to sleep, so he always, ALWAYS has food in his bowl in the morning. He never goes hungry, he just likes being fed. Apparently ‘fresh’ cat food tastes better.

7b. When he’s not hungry, he wants to go outside onto our deck. Most of the time, he wants inside again immediately. This is one of his least annoying behaviors, because when he is outside he is no longer annoying me.

7c. There are three things Marty needs every morning; fresh food, fresh water, and clean litter. I will get out of bed and ensure that he is looked after. He will yell at me if I don’t. If the yelling doesn’t work, he’ll jump on the bottom of our bed and meow at us. If this fails, or we tell him to shut up, he’ll move to a corner of the room and talk to himself about how horrible we are. This is usually enough to get me up and about. Once I am out of bed, he will go back upstairs and wake Holly up. For no reason at all. I can only conclude that he hates us, and doesn’t like us sleeping any longer than absolutely necessary.

8. Marty is pretty fat. There seems to be little we can do about this. We don’t feed him very much, and he runs around the apartment endlessly, so I’m sure he’s fine. There are times during the day where he’ll just go insane, running around for no reason whatsoever. He’s weird.

9. Marty used to drink from the tap in our bathroom. It’s a behavior that he picked up from Holly’s old apartment where the faucet used to drip. There’s no drip in our new place, so he’d jump up beside the sink and yell until someone turned it on for him to drink. I’m slowly training him to drink from the water bowl instead of giving everyone a hard time.

9a. Training cats is exactly as hard as you think it is.

10. Marty also seems to be fascinated by what Holly does when she goes to the bathroom. He paws at the door as soon as she goes in there, often hard enough to open the door. I’m not sure what he’s hoping to find, but knowing my wife as I do, it’s sure not going to smell good.

10a. I couldn’t resist making that joke.

10b. I’m sorry, I promised no more poop talk.

11. I love both my cats dearly, almost against my will. I can understand why crazy ladies like having them around so much. I still want a dog, though, in the vain hope that it would be able to make Marty shut the fuck up.