What's For Dinner? MOOOMP! MOOOMP! MOOOMP! MOOOMP! BLAAAARP.

Dah dah-dah-dah dah, dah dah-dah-dah dah, CAT PUUUUKE!!!

I'd like to admit right now that I was previously going to write a hard-hitting opinion / editorial piece describing the conflict in the Middle East from the point of view as a Palestinian-American. Before I could get cracking on this article, my girlfriend reminded me that I was not Palestinian. "That's okay!" I replied back. "I really can't write, either!" This all balanced out because nobody apparently gives a damn when we here at Something Awful write hard-hitting opinion / editorial pieces about real world events such as Leprechaun herding and that fat drunk Russian guy who used to be a Communist but is now just bloated and Russian and out of a job. He was that guy who arm wrestled Ronald Reagan all the time in the 1980's while wearing a communist headband. Mikhail Baryshnikov or whatever. I think he's currently either dead or a corespondent for CNBC. Regardless, he needs our prayers now more than ever.

So I don't think it will surprise anybody when I reveal that today's article revolves around the exciting world of vomiting cats. The whole notion of puking pets came from a rather exciting and joyous event today, one in which my cat produced a lump of wet stuff through his throat and instantly deposited it upon the carpet in a nice, presentable package that didn't at all look like a clump of wet grass and snot shot out of a riding lawnmower's exhaust pipes. Earlier in the evening I had taken a wrong turn in Queen Anne and had accidentally ended up in the "bad" side of town, the area where you turn to your right and BAM, it's a mom taking her kids to soccer practice in her SUV. Then you turn to your left and BAM, it's two yuppies drinking coffee in their SUV. Then you look forward and BAM, it's a SUV driving a larger SUV while thinking about drinking coffee at a soccer practice for SUVs. It's all very exciting and wonderful, not unlike the series premiere of "The Snorks," but it grew scary after a while and my girlfriend Emily "Integral" Reigel and I were forced to take a detour into a nearby yuppie grocery store to take refuge from the herd of wild SUVs that were stampeding through town and buying up all available copies of The Wall Street Journal. This store had all the generic types of fruits and vegetables, only they had all been yuppiefied for our convenience. For example, this is how a normal sign in a normal store would look like:

APPLES: 68 CENTS

The yuppie store takes an innocent sign like this, runs it through their yuppifying machine, and produces the following wonderful result:

SWEET GEORGIAN / SCANDINAVIAN / NORSE BLEND RICH BRIER PATCH NATURAL FINLANDIAN APPLES, PICKED UNDER A FULL MOON AT MIDNIGHT BY VIRGINS WEARING ALL SILK*:
2 FOR ONE THOUSAND HUNDRED MILLION ZILLION DOLLARS
* THE VIRGINS ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO FLED MEXICO TO ESCAPE CHARGES OF MURDER

A statue of a Border Terrier. The actual dogs are much less intelligent than their ceramic counterparts.

This store also had a few pots of a grassy substance called "Wheat Grass," a plant that looked like regular grass only it apparently contained a lot more wheat or something. "Oooh, cats like to eat that!" Emily exclaimed while pointing to the wheat grass. "Let's get that, the cat will love it!" Now I'm not one to argue with anybody regarding what cats enjoy eating; I was raised by a family of pro-dog supporters, so I'm used to my pets eating anything and everything not welded to the floor via industrial space-age polymers. As you dog owners out there are undoubtedly well aware of, dogs will literally eat until the food tubes in their stomach inflate and create a straight passageway from their mouth to anus. They'll get so fat that the food will go directly into their mouths, maybe come into contact with a couple strategically-placed puddles of drool, and then immediately exit from their rears like a really gross roller coaster. In my 21+ years of living with dogs, I've witnessed them eat the following things:

Two entire baking pans full of grease. After Thanksgiving one year, my mother put out a couple pans of grease to cool on the back porch. I don't exactly remember why she did this, but I assume she planned on constructing the turkey next year entirely from these pans of grease, thereby cutting out the middle man and creating a waxy, glistening, cholesterol-filled tribute to turkeys across the globe. Regardless, our Australian Shepherd decided to jump the gun and dive into the pan before my father and I had a chance to physically restrain her. We spotted her an hour later, lying on her side and casually spewing out steaming trails of dog-gravy all over the back porch. I don't think I need to explain why leftovers weren't very popular that holiday season.

Three whole rum cakes. Back in the mid-80's, when breakdancing was all the rage and Michael Jackson could still be mistaken for a human being, my parents baked a few rum cakes and we all headed over to the neighbor's house while they cooled. The instant we returned home and opened the front door, we were greeted by a very, very, very drunk Golden Retriever. We're talking like Otis of Mayberry-type drunk here. The dog was leaning back and forth as if her bloated, hairy torso was about to topple off her tiny legs and begin rolling across the kitchen floor like the logs from Pitfall. She eventually shrewdly decided to throw up and fall down the basement stairs, thereby setting a stern precedence for all my future drinking activities in college.

A wooden block. We have a border terrier named "Maggie" and despite everything we do, she just won't die. Seriously, we've been trying to kill her for years and she keeps resisting our futile attempts to make her stop living. It's as if her brain is too stupid to forget how to live. Anyway, one day I had this big wooden block which I was using to hit a foam mannequin's head (don't ask). I eventually decided to test out a little theory that I had regarding Maggie, mainly the theory that "Maggie is really, really, really stupid." I held up the wooden block and said (in the trademark fluctuating "I'm-talking-to-the-dog" tone of voice that will undoubtedly lead to our destruction by superior alien races), "ooooh, does Maggie want the block? Does she want to eat this block? Yes she does, yes she does want to eat the wooden block! Ooooh, look at the wooden block, do you want to eat the wooden block?" My dog-voice instantly triggered the "I think I'm going to get the chance to eat FOOD!" part of her brain, the 99% chunk of grey matter which overlooks the 1% of "I wonder if I should poop now?" part of her brain. After hyping and promoting the nutritional value of this wooden block for a solid hour or two, I eventually put it down to see what the dog would do. Predictably enough, she dug right into the block and began chomping away. Now I figured that would be the end of that and Maggie would resume doing whatever the hell she was doing before, like looking for trees to bark at or recreating exciting moments in history when she barked at some trees. However, Maggie proved me wrong and instead concentrated on EATING THE ENTIRE BLOCK. She gnawed on the thing for about half the day, causing me to forcibly remove the tasty chunk of wood from her mouth and hide it in the trash can.

The last dog, Maggie, would literally attempt to eat anything that either moved or refused to move. She was like Pac-Man covered with a shitty Renaissance Festival dog pelt that leaked grease and oil every five minutes. Since we all hate the dog but my grandmother loves her, we were seriously considering handing over the dog and its monstrous appetite to her. However, we just couldn't do that to a sweet old woman like my grandmother, especially since I began to have reoccurring nightmares about attending her funeral and watching the dog burst from her chest cavity like a scene from "Aliens." I have no doubt that one day my innocent and highly elderly grandmother would fall asleep and forget to feed the dog, causing it to pace nervously around for a few hours before it finally decides to burrow into her stomach and begin feasting on her internal organs. Maggie is kind of like one of those floating metal spheres from "Phantasm," only she seeks food instead of human skulls. For now. Oh, and instead of being a floating metal sphere, she's a dog who cannot float. But besides that, the analogy is just great.

After getting my cat, I began to notice a distinct difference between the eating habits of the two species. For example, as I have conclusively proven today, dogs will eat anything. Cats, on the other hand, won't bother eating your other hand. They don't eat anything except their officially sanctioned governmentally-approved cat food which can only be located in their cat food dish which may only be positioned in one certain location in the house at a certain time. Cats aren't motivated by food... in fact, I have absolutely no clue what they're motivated by. If I had to guess, I'd say "ghosts." Regardless, I have a hard time trusting animals that don't always react on some primal instinct to shovel food into their guts. I can't lure my cat into his cat-box with the temptation of some highly-compressed wad of meat substitute because he doesn't really give a shit about eating. I'm fairly sure cats are somehow able to convert oxygen atoms into chicken atoms, so when you're crouching under your bed and saying "here Fluffy, come here boy" (even though your cat's name obviously isn't "Fluffy") while your cat stares at you and refuses to move, he's actually feasting on a delicious dinner at your expense. Sucker.

Look at all that Wheat Grass! That's enough puke to power an entire army of marauding, undead, barfing cats. We're doomed!

So Emily "Integral" Reigel pointed out the wheat grass and said how cats love to eat that shit. I initially didn't believe her until I realized my cat loves to consume catnip, a substance which looks just like marijuana only it makes you feel slightly less nauseous after smoking it. We bought the wheat grass and headed home to test out this grand experiment on my cat which we have now named "Cat" because hell, he doesn't respond to any goddamn name we give him. After placing the wheat grass a few millimeters from his food bowl, a miracle occurred... THE CAT BEGAN EATING THE GODDAMN GRASS! It was amazing and awe-inspiring, like watching Jesus kick the asses of all those guys who ripped people off inside the Egyptian temple and didn't validate their parking even when they said they would. The cat grazed inside our new kitchen / feeding pen for a while and then marched off to resume his fulltime occupation of lurking in the shadows and plotting my demise.

Cut to today. I'm minding my own business by closely monitoring the business of Emily "Integral" Reigel, when suddenly I hear... THE SOUND. All pets have this universal "holy shit, I'm going to puke" sound which Emily and I have decided sounds like the following phonetic representation:

"MOOOMP! MOOOMP! MOOOMP! MOOOMP! BLAAAARP."

The "mooomp" sound represents the animal forcefully attempting to call up the ball of joy residing in their stomach cavity so they may deposit it on our carpet and present us with a special gift. After a few "mooomps" the animal eventually hits the "BLAAAARP" stage, in which the wad of puke has successfully reached their mouth and is ready to be placed on the floor. This wad may contain items from the following exciting categories which are smash hit inside cats across the globe:

Plastic, organic material (such as corn or human flesh), cloth, buttons, antifreeze, business cards, parts of "DISCOUNT!" stickers, food which the cat refused to digest, and scary things from the 1960's found underneath the oven. It doesn't matter if your house or apartment wasn't even around in the 1960's; it's a scientific fact that ovens have the ability to warp space and time below them, pulling all sorts of useless crap from the past 10 generations into a dimensional vortex and depositing it all in a dusty lump beneath their hulking frame.

We rushed across the livingroom and witnessed our cat (once again, he's named "Cat") give birth to a greasy blob of joy in front of the washing machine. He emitted a "BLAAAARP" before we could pick him up and throw him off the deck to safety, instead allowing him the opportunity to sit down and stare intensively at his newborn creation which was soaking into the carpet and attempting to chemically bond with the fibers. On one hand, it was great because we had finally found something other than the officially sanctioned governmentally-approved cat food that he'll voluntarily eat without requiring me to manually shovel it down his throat with a Fischer-Price beach shovel. On the other hand, it was horrible because the sole purpose of eating the wheat grass was so he could build up enough inner momentum to launch a wet parcel from his stomach. I guess the moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for because you may just get it. This is naturally assuming you have a cat, wheat grass, and the wish of receiving a bunch of concentrated cat puke. And I know the types of people who read this site, so don't pretend like that's not what you're wishing for.

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)