Weirdest Google Search Ever

It was probably the weirdest Google search I've ever done.

"Best ways to clean poo butt cat," I typed into the search engine.

Dealing with poo and dealing with other's poo is a part of life. Parents with babies do it. Nurses do it. Plumbers do it. And anyone who has a pet will do it. Poo is a part of life.

Nobody likes to talk about it, but inevitably poo happens. And sometimes it doesn't always happen exactly like any of us want it to happen.

My wife and I don't have kids, but we do have a 5-year-old cat who occasionally will have a poo butt. Thank goodness this does not happen often. But sometimes, "stuff" gets stuck to her haunches.

When this happens, our house goes into lockdown-mode. Kitty gets swooped up and put on our back sun porch where she can't accidentally mess up anything. She usually doesn't mind this, since she wiles away most of her summer days and evenings catnapping out there. That's also where one of her litter boxes is located and where we often feed her. In short, she's used to the porch.

But she's not used to the porch door being closed on her. She knows she has the freedom to roam the house when we are home, but when we shut the door she knows something isn't right.

She immediately becomes suspicious and her cat-brain often figures out what is going to happen next.

"I know I have a poo butt and I've observed that the Laps have locked me out here on the porch and when those two things occur, something I really, really don't like is about to happen," is what I'm sure she would say if anyone bothered to ask our cat and if she could talk.

Our usually friendly cat becomes skittish and will glance at us in a way that reminds me of how Gary Coleman used to say, "Whatchu talking about, Willis?" to his brother on the TV show Different Strokes. She kind of squints and looks over her shoulder as she furtively grabs a bite of Cat Chow out of her feed bowl.

After the cat is sequestered on the porch, my wife and I hustle to arm ourselves with various cleaning products. Dry paper towels, wet paper towels, baby wipes, cat calming wipes and scissors are gathered and taken to the porch. We have to make sure to quickly close the door behind us, because our cat will usually try to slip in some how knowing what is about to happen.

My wife is usually the holder and I'm the cleaner. They're both unpleasant jobs. Even though our cat has no claws, she still has teeth and the ability to wiggle like a python lying on a waterbed. We consider it successful if we can hold her still for 30 seconds and actually get some cleaning done.

And then of course, there is the cleaning. The problem with our cat is her genetics. Our vet says she is a "medium long-haired feline" and that long hair on her haunches will occasionally get in the way of her doing her business and result in a poo butt.

I prefer to cut out as much of the mess from the squirmy cat first. I follow that up with a succession of wet and dry wipes with some scissor work when the squirmy feline makes it possible.

Usually, these episodes last about 30 minutes and we leave the cat pouting on the porch to finish the job we started.

And after this last episode, we decided that there had to be a better way of dealing with this occasional issue, resulting in my strange Google search.

I found a number of suggestions ranging from monitoring the cat's diet (we do) to rolling her up in a towel to help minimize her wiggliness (not sure this would help control a python on a waterbed) to using an "inexpensive bikini-area trimmer from Gilette" to cut out the mess.

After scanning hundreds of these suggestions, I now feel like a certifiable expert on this matter. Yes, Brad Aaron Hollerbach might even be THE world authority on methods of removing wayward cat excrement. One might say that I'm the Grand Poo-BAH.