For awhile, his antics seemed to have been outgrown. It was likely, I hypothesized, that the little glutton's pot belly proved to be a hindrance when committing thievery, vandalism, and other altogether immoral deeds.

But then two weeks ago, I noticed my deodorant had gone missing. I always leave it sitting atop my dresser, which isn't something to which I happily admit. I need to enroll myself in a brush up course on OCD...because the meticulous neatness I once possessed has loosened substantially and can now only classify myself as "tidy"...which is wandering a little too close to "normal" for my liking.

Fortuitously, the OCD hasn't regressed so much that I don't have multiples of nearly every daily product I use and the missing antiperspirant wasn't as ghastly of an absence as it might have been otherwise.

My temper was already short with the felines in residence, as several yucky messes were left all around my bed and furniture and I seemed to have stepped in every one. My once total adoration of cats has diminished considerably and I've donated serious thought to adopting a pet paperclip instead.

It wasn't difficult to point the finger toward the orange one, the once renowned and often celebrated bane of my existence, and easier still, when my new armband radio's armband vanished just last week. I had opened the radio case quickly before heading to Nick's to watch his family play volleyball, stowing the contents in my purse and rushing off. Later that evening, when I could not find the elasticized band, I surmised it must have fallen to the floor, and thus, must have been commandeered by what I hypothesized to be a subhuman life form. With a bushy, ginger-hued tail.



Well, and bless her, Brenda looked everywhere for my armband last weekend when she cleaned house, finding nothing. I found this very surprising, as Clem could not, seemingly, squeeze his girth beneath furniture with the ease of days past. I was huffy but accepting of the situation—how many tubes of my beloved lip balms have I had to sacrifice now, after all?

One morning, as I was reaching in the top drawer of my dresser for a pair of my moisture wicking socks to pack with my running gear, my fingers brushed cool plastic. My face went hot. I counted to ten. If my inkling was correct, the cool plastic would prove to be my missing deodorant. I closed my eyes and extricated the object only to open them again and groan. If my inklings are nothing else, they are dead-on. Great. I remembered each and every curse I directed at Clem for the perceived misdeed. I cursed him anew then, for his dexterity in hiding my deodorant in my sock drawer. How diabolical can you get!? Seriously! Damn that cat!

And yesterday, as I found the armband zipped in my purse's middle compartment, I fumed that Clem should be so fiendish in his mind games as to hide my missing objects in among my things. To quote my aunt, "That just ain't right," and, as an afterthought, a paperclip-pet is becoming less bewitching as I conclude that office supplies aren't quite as adept at being the fall-men for their owners' lacking mental capacity.