Earl and the Plastic Bag

I prefer a garbage disposal to a compost pile. I find the notion of a compost pile a bit disgusting in terms of what it might attract before the results are ready to use. Instead, I like buying the compost all neatly packaged and ready to tear open and dump into place. But, while living in a home without a garbage disposal, and being on a strict budget, the need to waste not want not in order to keep the flowers and bushes fed with good nutrients took precedence over my disgust. Thus, at the start of each day, I would place a grocery store plastic bag on the counter to collect the garbage for the compost bin.

On a Saturday devoted to entertaining out-of-town friends, I filled the bag with coffee grounds, eggshells, and bacon grease from breakfast; unused parts of a head of lettuce, a tomato, and a cucumber, leftover crusts of sandwiches, and apple cores and skins from lunch; and asparagus ends, trimmed fat from a pork roast, and potato peels for the dinner I was about to begin preparing.

In addition to my own two children, our guest’s two children added to an atmosphere of general chaos, a situation with which Earl, our Abyssinian cat, was much dismayed. He spent most of the day hiding under our bed.

We fed the children early and hustled them off to the TV room to place them happily in front of the newest Disney movie release. We grownups then poured ourselves some wine and settled into the living room while awaiting the timer for the roast to ding. Everything else was ready to be served and was being kept warm in the kitchen.

I heard a rustle of paper that pricked up my ears for a moment but then, hearing no more, took another sip of my wine. And then, there it was again—the distinct sound of a rustling coming from the kitchen. I excused myself to investigate and found Earl up on the counter with his head in the garbage bag. He knew immediately that I was about to scram him on his way. He abruptly turned from the bag and hopped off the counter. Except, one of the loops from the bag was now around his neck. Knowing full well he’d been doing something naughty, he was already in a state of agitation. But, the addition of this foreign object that was somehow now attached to him ramped his anxiety up to new heights.

He took off running, the bag in hot pursuit. He ran into the study spewing asparagus ends; he ran into the TV room spewing coffee grounds. The children started screaming in delight as he ran up the stairs to the bedrooms spewing eggshells, potato peels, and apple cores.

I chased him down and finally got hold of him just before he headed under the bed. He growled his disbelief at such a humiliation as I removed the bag from his head. He immediately ran away to some dark corner of the house presumably to sulk.

By the time I made it back downstairs, the clean up was already underway. But, what a mess.

My current home has a garbage disposal. And no cat.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2018