Scraping Two-Week-Old Meat Off the Floor

A scrap of meat, after it's been on a well traveled floor for a week, is barely noticeable.  It becomes the same dirty gray as the painted concrete floor and any of its former meatiness is stamped out of it. I seem to take sweeping more seriously than the proprietor of the butcher shop where I help out. So when I set to sweeping and saw that many of the bits that would not be swept into my pan were in fact very old pieces of meat caked onto the floor, I knew I was in for a treat.  Seriously, this is a treat.  The satisfaction of using a scraper to pop one of those filthy flesh cakes off the floor is unparalleled.  

Scraping two-week-old meat off the floor: Grade A fun.

Arturo

My roommate's cat Arturo is allegedly twelve years old, but I would pin him at 18 or so if I had to guess. He is quite possibly one of the most repulsive and endearing creatures I've known. Bless his heart. He hovers skinny and balding outside my bedroom, wailing a wail that chills the bones. Sometimes I let him in but I am always sorry. He suffers from chronic sinus issues. Wherever he sits, I find his mark, a slug shaped gob of snot. To be fair, it is not an Oregon sized slug of snot, but rather a smaller east coast sized slug of snot, about an inch long, greenish brown and glistening. I have wiped this snot from all sorts of surfaces. Some of his choice targets include my computer, my pillow, my coffee, my soul. Still, sometimes I am feeling charitable, or needy, or drunk (see charitable) and I let him sleep with me. When I kick him out of bed, he will sit on the landing and wait for me to pass, hissing and swiping. And you know what, I am fairly certain that this is why I love him. I probably wouldn't tolerate this behavior from something that sprang from my very own womb but I am allowed to gently kick him aside if need be. That goes a long way.

I can't recommend him to everybody but I will say that if you have a black and white tiled floor, he matches nicely.