I took two of my seven cats to the vet yesterday. We picked up one today because she had a kitty lump removed. Fortunately it was not malignant -- no, it was just this really disgusting cyst with a lump of fat in it. The visible lump turned out to be much smaller than the one that we hardly saw on her back; now she has a huge shaved spot on her back and a nasty attitude.

*crickets chirping* *someone yawns*

All right, already! I'll get to the point on this story! We also took one of the two older sister kitties to the vet for some obvious problems. Am (who has a sister named Si) is sixteen years old and kind of senile. This geriatric cat has been drooling, her fur keeps matting up, and she has this huge stick-out turd in her asshole. So we took her to the vet to get her looked at.

The vet said her teeth were fine, though she doesn't have many left. She is getting mats in her fur because she is too senile to clean herself. We ended up having to shave the mats out, which meant holding her in a neck grip while the vet got the shit kicked out of her hands. Then we shot her up with antibiotics and her yearly vaccinations, which didn't help her mood.

*heckler shouts "Get on with it!", throws popcorn*

I'm getting to that! My point is, the vet day seemed to be a shit day. It started when we put Am and Charlie in a crate and drove over the mountains to the vet's office. It's a two-hour drive; and an hour into it, Gilbert, Mom, and I heard this loud, frantic thumping from the back seat. (We also had three dogs in the car and at first I thought it was one of the klutzy hunting dogs.)

Suddenly the worst smell in the known universe wafted in from the back of the car.

"Hold on," I said. "I'm gonna deal with this."

I knew what had happened: Charlie had shat in the crate out of anxiety. The road between Dyer and Big Pine is horribly curvy. And as it turned out, she was also carsick. The entire crate was coated in projectile cat barf and, right in the middle of the mess, was a giant pile of shit. The cats meowed pitifully at me as I quickly opened an old grocery bag and nabbed the shit. Then I spent the next ten minutes trying to dig the sticky, gooey cat puke off the blankets. It didn't work; I was forced to take the cats down the hill covered in puke.

When we got there, I had my own shit emergency, which turned out to be constipation. I occupied the vet's single toilet for nearly twenty minutes trying to get out this monstrous log, the biggest I've had since surgery. (Thanks a lot, pregnancy!) It finally fell in the bowl and splashed my ass cheeks. For some reason, it turned out to be a million wiper as well, so I spent another five minutes wiping my ass with half a roll of toilet paper.

"Well, that's the end of the poop fiasco today," I muttered, my asshole throbbing from this practice childbirth. Alas, the shit gods heard me say that.

Some people have wondered why I call myself The Shit Volcano. Until today, I have been unable to define its meaning.

The vet took Charlie out of her crate, examined her lumps, and said she needed surgery to remove the infection. She shot Charlie up with night-night juice and put her in a cage in back. Then we pulled Am out of the crate. I discovered that Charlie had once again shit in the crate; I had to crawl inside to clean it up. Am would rather have stayed safe inside that crate with that brown, steaming pile than come out and face the horrors of a brand new vet. (We'd never taken her here before.)

After evaluating her teeth, the old country vet examined the shit plug protruding from Am's asshole. Now, if you know anything about volcanology, you know not to mess with plugs in pressurized vents. But the vet went right ahead and removed the shit spine. We prepared for an onslaught -- but nothing happened. Am remained stubbornly stopped up.

"I see what the problem is," said the vet. "Her anal glands are impacted. They also look inflamed."

Am yelped as the vet stuck her thumb up the elderly cat's ass and squeezed. An ooze of black, bloody, sticky poop and jelly popped out of her ass, covering the vet's hand in black gook. It smelled like a mixture of grape jelly, Lysol, and poop. Not in any condition for this, I gagged.

"That's one of them," muttered the vet. "This other one appears to be swollen shut. Let's see if I can't get her some relief with a catheter."

Am watched her go with bulging eyes. Even in her senile state, she knew this couldn't be a good thing. Especially after the vet returned with what looked like a six-inch long needle.

"Now hold her still," she warned. "This isn't going to be comfortable."

Am struggled and yowled like a scared kitten. It took the vet a good fifteen minutes to squeeze the offending grape-flavored poop from Am's asshole. This time it erupted full force, squirting the vet, the table, and the wall with black, bloody goop. I'm not sure who was more unfortunate -- the vet with her shit paint or me with my arms covered in deep rabbit kick marks from Am's panicking episode.

It was after this that we shaved her and poked her full of needles. Needless to say, Am is not happy with our new vet.

And now? Now I am paying for Am's indignity. The vet sent home a tube of antibiotic for Am's infection. I am forced to apply this cream to a cat's asshole twice a day for two weeks.

Merry Christmas for me! Though I suppose Am had it much worse. At least I didn't have to get my asshole mined.