Eric's sticky day

Today Ruth and I took the cats to the vet for some standard vaccines. As I was walking into the vet from the car, I stepped on something that didn't come off my shoe right away. I thought I'd play it safe and not step on it more in case it was gum, so I sort of limped towards the entrance to the vet's office.

When we got inside, I put the cats down and started walking towards a chair so that I could assess the situation while sitting down. I took one step and the person behind the front desk told us that we could go straight to the exam room. I paused and looked at the open door. There was an inviting chair just inside of the room that seemed more than adequate for getting whatever was on my shoe off, so I picked up the cats and started in that direction.

As soon as we entered the exam room, I set the cats down and hopped over to the chair. When I sat down and looked at my shoe, I noticed two things; there was in fact gum on my shoe, and I had just sat in some kind of animal urine.

Determined to get the gum off of my shoe, it took me a minute to come to the second conclusion. I thought maybe the chair was just cold, but the fact that my shorts were stuck to my legs when I stood up quickly quashed that theory.

I think I said something brave, like "Ruth, quick! Smell my butt!" but I didn't feel very brave. I was hoping that maybe it was just water, but considering where I was it didn't seem very likely.

Before I could really do anything about it, the vet's assistant was in the room asking us questions about the cats. Ruth politely answered the questions while I continued to stare open-mouthed at the chair, waiting for an opportunity to interrupt. Partly because I'm shy, but mostly because I'm an idiot, I decided that this was going to be a secret between me and the chair. Someone else was going to share in my misfortune today, and somehow that made everything ok.