Husband called me at work this morning. Seems he came home for a brief break and found one of our cats on the kitchen counter. She’d thrown up all over the mail.

“My ballot was on there!” I wailed, briefly envisioning myself either dropping a sticky, smelly envelope in the polling box, or getting on the phone to County Clerk Steve Druckenmiller to explain why I needed a new ballot. Granted, I’m sure the cat isn’t the only mammal who feels like upchucking every time election season comes along, but it still seems less than professional to explain that you need a new ballot because yours is covered in cat puke.

“Your ballot is fine,” Husband reassured me. “But she did get a little on your Paul McCartney book.”

I made a superhuman effort and resisted reminding him that having these cats in the first place was HIS FAULT. In marriage parlance, this is what you call, “for better or for worse.”

Besides, I still feel like I owe him for accidentally leaving the dog outside the other day while both of us and both Princesses were gone for several hours. Dog, who is an escape artist, tunneled under the fence, and then either got scared by a firecracker or a car backfiring or a threat from the German shepherd next door and tried to tunnel back INTO the house by digging up an azalea and a good portion of vinyl siding and trying to break through a vent that leads to the crawlspace under the house. Best guess on repairs: $250. Good thing Husband never liked that azalea.

The cat has been on a real hurling tear lately, too. Two and three times a day all week. Can’t get to the vet today, but I’m buying hairball medicine tomorrow. Our outdoor cat, Jake, laps up the hairball stuff like Bill Clinton going after a doughnut, but naturally, this cat hates it. It’s not a liquid or pill that you can force down her throat, either – its consistency is sort of a cross between honey and toothpaste, and you have to smear it on her nose and hope she licks enough of it off to actually do some good before she wipes it off with her paw and then leaves a slimy trail on the hall carpet.

Not that it really matters. It’s an improvement on the barf stains.

Then there’s the guinea pig, which also wasn’t my idea, but which doesn’t do more than rustle around in his cage and squeak if he hears the refrigerator open and thinks you might be after a carrot to share with him. On the bright side, he can’t get out. On the other side, he isn’t much of a pet, considering that if you pick him up, he promptly pees on you.

Did I mention he wasn’t my idea, either?

“Jen, do you want pets all our lives?” Husband asked me yesterday, after discovering another pile of cat barf (this one on an empty bookshelf, luckily).

This was shortly after the azalea incident. “No dogs,” I said. “I hate to say it, but I think I’ve discovered I’m just not a dog person.”

“Well, I’m not a cat person,” he sighed, going for the paper towels.

Glad we got that straight. Now, to get the kids in college.