Ointment

I also attempted to stick a lubricated Q-tip into a cat yesterday. Thank God—THANK GOD—my attempt was unsuccessful.

A little background: Amy (Lo’s sister) has a tiny little black female cat, four years old and unfixed, named Unguento, because she heals you, like an ointment. Unguento is in heat. Having lived a life sheltered from unfixed animals, I’d only heard the phrase “like a ___ in heat,” but had never seen whenceforth this phrase came. Only when I saw Unguento coated in dust from having rubbed her body on every available surface in the apartment—couches, chairs, people, floorboards, and the bathtub, but sadly, not the male cat Zanahoria, who is so stupid and impotent that a thousand musky vixens couldn’t coax his vacant stare their way—did I realize how true to life that phrase is.

Anyway, Amy read in an ancient veterinary manual that a cat owner could induce false ovulation in a feline in heat by masturbating it with a “glass vial,” or a “moistened cotton swab.” You ask: why not just let the heat dissipate with time? The answer: because cat heat does not dissipate with time. Apparently only stimulated sex will calm the kitten down.

Amy was too squeamish to do it herself and I volunteered my services. I was moved by equal parts curiosity and butchy masculinity. Why not masturbate a cat? So I ran a Q-tip under the tap and dipped it in petroleum jelly, and enlisted Laura to pin Unguento to the floor. I wore half of a set of cotton gardening gloves on my right hand, while Laura wore the other half on her left hand. We were ready for a night’s work.

But she who was all slink and butts-up seconds before turned scrabbly and frightened under the Q-tip. I attempted to breach the—I am trying think of acceptable ways to describe what exactly I attempted to do to Unguento, but I’m having a hard time with this delicate subject. It’s not easy to write this. It’s like that idiotic question, “Do you still beat your wife?” in that one can never give a proper response. Suffice it to say, I tried to do what I set out to do, but only succeed in getting some Vaseline around Unguento’s shit-inflected asshole. I tried again, but she was struggling so hard to get away that I felt like a pervert and a molester for trying to do what I set out to do. We let her go and disposed of our materials, having never crossed the threshold.

Hours later, though, I discovered that my Q-tip had apparently done the trick for that little strumpet. At least she wasn’t rubbing the couch anymore.