There he was, sitting on the kitchen floor, playing with his cars. I’d be gone for a couple minutes, plus, the Permanent Roommate was standing in the same room. Granted she was on the phone, and getting dinner ready, but I’d only be gone mere moments. I had to piss.

The worst possible scenario is he opens a couple cabinets and starts pulling out packs of napkins or bottles of paprika. It’s nothing we haven’t let him do a hundred times before.

I was gone, at the most, eleven seconds. Her scream traveled upstairs faster than I did but holding my crotch always slows me down just a notch.

“HE’S EATING CAT FOOD!!!”

I ran back downstairs. Not as fast as I could have but I was still holding myself before I pissed myself laughing. 

She’d dragged him back to the middle of the kitchen floor. He looked up at me, smiled, and coughed out a nugget of cat food. 

“If we are looking at this with a ‘glass half full’ approach,” I said “this will mean he’ll have less hair balls. It says so right on the bag.”