The most beautiful woman in the world took the seat next to me at the bar. She was graceful, tanned and stunning-- with thick dark hair and bright green eyes.

We exchanged the obligatory glance and nod. Before I could work up the nerve to blurt one of my lame pickup lines, she did a double-take, then did something no gorgeous woman had ever done to me before: She initiated a conversation.

"Excuse me", she began, tentatively, "but do you happen to be a... cat owner?"

"Why yes", I replied, trying to keep my answer short, so as not to screw it up, "Why?".

"Well...". She glanced away and back again without finishing her sentence, as if she were reluctant to continue. She hesitated, (I hoped), because she was too shy to tell me that she finds guys who own cats to be sensitive, caring and irresistibly attractive.

"It's.... It's THAT!", she said, finally, pointing to my bare forearm and leaning back on her stool.

This was not the answer I had been anticipating. This was not being found irresistible. This was more like mild revulsion. And what was this arm thing? I looked down and saw nothing at all unusual about my arm-- no strange tattoos, no open sores... just a small cat scratch and a tiny speck of black dirt.

True, my only real skill with women seems to be my ability to repel them, but what happened next was bad, even by my low standards.

When the tiny black speck I had mistaken for dirt leapt from my arm into her beautiful hair, she screamed and ran, bumping into people and knocking over tables on her flight to the front door. Apparently, I had fleas... again.
For a cat owner such as myself, fleas are just a part of the problem. They are only one of "The Three 'F's: Fur, Fleas & Feces". Come to think of it, there are actually four 'F's, if 'fragrance' or (more accurately), 'funk' are taken into account. If I can ever find a word that starts with 'F' and means 'property damage', the list will become "The Five 'F's"

The statement 'I own three cats' ought to be just as preposterous as 'John Wayne Wears Tutu's' or 'Mother Theresa ran a sweatshop', but alas it is true.

There are two theories about how I allowed this to happen. The first, is my son's. He says he talked me into getting the first one to keep him company when he was home alone, after school. Then, he conspired with our cute, blond neighbor, who charmed me into adopting her cat when she moved to San Francisco. The third cat was a stray who refused to leave after my son accidentally fed it a salmon filet.

The second theory is my physician's, who claims I suffered a series of minor strokes.

Their given names are Simon, (the elder); Fluffy, (the neighbor's); and Max, (the stray).

Their real names are 'Simon-- The-Destroyer-Of-Worlds'; 'Atilla-The Hairy'; and 'Maximillion-The-Anointer'.

Of the three, Atilla, (Fluffy), is the least destructive, although that isn't saying much. She is the least destructive in the same way that Pretty Boy Floyd didn't kill quite as many people as Bonnie & Clyde did. I should have seen this coming. When Fluffy was still next door, I had popped by to chat with our cute neighbor.

"I've never seen shag carpet in a kitchen before.", I said.

"It's tile, actually.", she admitted, "My Fluffy sheds alot."

No kidding. This cat sheds her weight in hair twice a day. For an eight-pound cat, that works out to 480 pounds of hair per month. Last year, all of my car payments combined were twenty bucks less than what I spent on replacing vacuum sweepers.

Then there's Simon-'The Destroyer-Of-Worlds'. What the mighty Colorado River took thousands of years to do to the Grand Canyon, 'Simon-The-Destroyer' has done to my house in less than ten.

In his mind, all vertical surfaces are scratching posts: door frames, mattress corners, wicker hampers, umbrellas, pianos, dining room table legs, curtains, and anything that is even slightly upholstered. So are all horizontal surfaces.

I studied probability in college. One problem asked us to calculate the odds that-- given a million chimpanzees with typewriters-- one of them would accidentally type the works of Shakespeare. I never did figure that one out. However, Simon-the-Destroyer has clawed an extraordinarily-accurate map of the moon out of my living room carpet.

Finally, there is 'Max-The-Anointer'. Max has two problems. One is liquid; the other is solid... mostly.

He has a litter box. He chooses to sleep in it. Peeing and pooping are done elsewhere, or more accurately, EVERYWHERE else.

As far as the solids are concerned, Max is like a potty-training toddler who doesn't quite get it. A child who understands 'not-in-your-pants', but does NOT grasp the part about 'in-the-potty-instead', is right where Max has been his entire life. And just like a toddler, bestowing these gifts fills him with great pride and the notion that he deserves praise and treats.

The liquid problem involves a compulsion about marking his territory. In this regard, Max seems to be in kitty-competition with Simon. As Simon makes his rounds, destroying things, Max will follow and claim them for his own.

"Door frame?", thinks Max, "Mine. Sofa? Mine. Mattress? Mine. Living room carpet? Hey, nice map of the moon, pal! Too bad it's... MINE!"

It is said that we learn something new everyday, but "we screw-up and THEREFORE learn something new everyday" is a much more accurate description. A few minutes after the most beautiful woman in the world bolted for the door, an almost-equally beautiful woman had taken her vacant seat. The new thing I learned from her was that phrases like '480-pounds of hair' and 'solid... mostly' are guaranteed to generate a less-than-enthusiastic response to questions like, "Do you want to come back to my place?"