I live with retarded cats.

Fine, fine, I know it's not politically correct to call anyone or anything retarded, but you tell me how to refer to an animal that rips apart an entire trash can to get to a greasy paper towel.  I am aware that cats tend to go for fatty things; they're sort of pre-programmed like that.  But seriously, cats? A paper towel.  Admittedly, t" his was the paper towel that I had used to drain sausage after I'd fried it, but it was not actual sausage.  Further, one would imagine that having discovered no sausage and only a paper towel, one might be dissuaded from ingesting said towel.  This would be a rash assumption.  Because what I found when I got home was not simply a trash-strewn kitchen, but horked-up blobs of greasy paper towel ALL OVER THE GODDAMN APARTMENT because apparently Bounty, Now Available In Tasty Breakfast Sausage Flavor, is every bit as tasty as actual breakfast sausage except not quite as readily digestible.  (On that note, I've been perplexed for years with the cheery statement on the thing of Crisco that "It's Digestible!" Well, I bloody well hope it is, since I'm eating the stuff.)

The sausage-towel incident was just the latest in a string of what I sincerely hope is just Kitty Spring Fever and not actual mental degeneration on the parts of my fuzzy little best friends.  It's tough to tell, because they have differing levels of thought processing and physical finesse anyway.  Wally and Pickle are both pretty bright but also insane, and Pickle tends to the evil side of insane.  Daisy is dumber than a box of hair and also isn't particularly coordinated. Elmira is just sort of there and doesn't do much except hiss at Pickle and meow a lot.  So, I'm not really sure who is responsible for these things.  I'd  blame the dumber ones but the smarter ones are more likely to figure out how to invade trash, etc.

Other interesting cat related events of the past few days:
--Hear series of popping noises from bathroom. Go to investigate; discover Pickle still hanging from the shower curtain, which she has successfully pulled off its hooks.
--Discover Christmas light bulb in litter box. Mystery: did it actually pass through a cat?
--Trail of wet footprints leads to a completely soaked Wally, who has evidently taken a dip at La Piscine du Toilette.
--Desperate yowling from kitchen proves to be Daisy, who has somehow gotten inside a cabinet and has become trapped. With the bag of cat food, which she has now broken into and gorged on and promptly yakked up.

As a Profeshunul Edumacator, I know that we're not even supposed to say "Special Ed" anymore.  It's now "Exceptional Education," because it's no longer enough to be afraid that we're going to hurt someone's feelings. Now we have to go out of our way to make the kids who can't read at 18 feel as though they are in fact better--more exceptional--than everyone else.

But I'm pretty sure my cats are just plain retarded.