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34. PURRFECT SWING

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There was a commotion that seemed to center on the bathroom. Now don’t get me wrong: I understand perfectly well the important role a bathroom plays in the lives of humans. They use it for all kinds of things, many of them a little mysterious in my view, and most of them perfectly superfluous, too, but it’s clear that along with the kitchen the bathroom is at the heart of their existence.

And so it was with a modicum of indulgence that I witnessed the events that morning: a long line had formed outside the bathroom and there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on. Odelia was there, of course, still in her pajamas, and also Chase Kingsley, Odelia’s husband, also in his pajamas. In fact when I looked more closely I noticed that all of the humans standing in line outside the bathroom were dressed in their pajamas: apart from Odelia this small gathering consisted of Odelia’s dad Tex Poole, and also her mom Marge.

Tex was pounding on the door of the bathroom with his fist and saying things like‘Hurry up!’ and ‘How much longer is this going to take?’ and ‘It’s been over an hour!’

“What’s going on?” asked Dooley as he came tripping up. He’d enjoyed a leisurely time at the foot of Odelia’s bed, as I had, and was wondering what all the fuss was about.

“Gran is in there and she’s taking too much time,” I explained. “Or at least the others all seem to think she’s taking too much time.” Personally I’m not sure how much time a human needs to get ready in the morning. I’m not a human, you see. I’m a cat, and cats don’t use bathrooms to get ready. In fact you might even say that cats were born ready: we don’t need showers, or to wash our hair or even use a blow-dryer to dry that same hair—silly things, by the way, blow-dryers: first you make your hair wet and then you make it dry again. In other words an exercise in futility as far as I can tell. But what do I know?

“What is Gran doing?” asked Dooley.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But whatever she’s doing, they all agree it’s taking too long.”

“How much time does a human need to get ready in the morning, Max?” my friend asked, posing the question that had been on my mind ever since this story had begun. You see, Marge and Tex and Gran used to live in their own house, and their bathroom issues weren’t my issues, as I live with Odelia and Chase, next door from Odelia’s parents. Only Gran had hired a contractor who promised to build her a new kitchen, but instead of building a kitchen this contractor had managed to tear down the whole house, and as a consequence a new house had to be built, and in the meantime the Pooles had moved in with their daughter and their daughter’s new husband Chase.

“I think it all depends,” I said. “Chase usually takes about ten minutes. Odelia needs at least half an hour, but Gran has been in there an hour… and counting.”

“So…” Dooley made a few quick calculations in his mind, “before all of our humans are ready in the morning, it’s going to take… at least half a day?”

“Not half a day,” I said with a laugh. “That would be ridiculous.”

“No, but there are now five adult humans living in this house, and there’s only one bathroom, so if my calculations are correct it’s going to take them an hour and a half to get ready. So if they want to be at work on time, they’ll have to get up at…” More mental acrobatic feats were involved here, and plenty of frowning, but finally the answer rolled from my friend’s lips: “Six!”

“Earlier,” I said. “They also need to have breakfast, and you need to take into account travel time and time to get dressed. So better make that five.”

“They’ll never make it in time,” he said with a look at the queue.

Also, Tex was now dancing on one leg, obviously in urgent need of the bathroom for other purposes than simply making sure that his corpus was cleansed of whatever dirt that had accrued there during the night—which is another mystery I won’t touch upon here for lack of space: how do humans get dirty simply by spending time sleeping?

“We need a second bathroom,” now Marge announced. “This can’t go on like this.”

“We could always use the porta-potty the workers next door use,” Odelia suggested.

“I don’t think it’s fair to use their porta-potty,” said Odelia’s mother.

“We don’t need to use any porta-potty,” said Tex, his face having turned a vivid scarlet at this point. “All we need is for ONE person in this household to be LESS SELFISH!”

As he said this—or shouted, to be exact—he gave the bathroom door another healthy pounding with his fist.

“Hold your horses,” said Gran, suddenly opening the door and appearing onto the scene. Her white hair was in curlers, and her cheeks glowing a healthy pink. “Can’t a lady have a moment of privacy around here?” she grumbled as she trounced past the line of wannabe bathroom-goers.

“A moment!” Tex cried. “You were in there at least one hour!”

“Has it been that long?” said Gran airily. “How quickly time passes when you’re having fun.”