This is looking increasingly likely to become a reality show starting Friday.

At least the mediator the Feds are sending in is a black belt in aikido, and can kick the shit out of the moron negotiators if they have another fight over chairs.

Looks like me and Chaplin are going to be fighting over who gets to eat the cat food.

I’m not sure what this is a sign of, but it’s got to be a sign of something.

I can be completely out of every ounce of substances edible to humans, but if I’m tired, I’ll just say “Fuck it, I’ll pick something up tomorrow.”

But if I’m even almost out of cat food, it doesn’t matter how exhausted I am, I’ll go to Ralph’s and haul out eight pounds of food for my little buddy.

I mean, I generally eat three meals a day at work and can order in when necessary. But I still find it a bit odd that I’ll feed Chaplin long before I feed myself.

I knew Chaplin wasn’t going to react well to me being back at work all day today, after being home with him for the last 2 months.

Puking all over my bed, though…that’s a new one.

Bad kitty. Good thing I was already planning on doing laundry tomorrow.

When I found fleas on Chaplin, one of the first things I did was order up some Frontline Plus, having gotten assurances from several other pet owners that it will keep fleas off him for good.

I bought it from an “Amazon Marketplace” seller who listed her location as Wisconsin for about $20 cheaper than I’d been able to find it elsewhere online, and waited.

Usually when I order stuff from anywhere in the US, it takes less than a week to get here even with slow-boat service since the mail service in LA is actually pretty efficient.

It still wasn’t here as of Monday night, so I was wondering where the hell it was since my credit card got charged for it last Saturday.

I emailed the merchant, and she said “Oh, I use a drop-shipper, so I’m not sure when it was shipped. It should be there in the next couple of days though.”

I went down to get yesterday’s mail this morning, and I realized why it took so long: The drop-shipper was in Australia.

What’s really funny is the drop-shipper put a receipt in with the Frontline, despite a specific request from the Amazon merchant not to printed right on the receipt. I could see why: It showed the price the person I ordered from paid, which was $18 less than I paid her.

I think next time, I’ll order direct from Australia.

It is a moment many a pet owner has had, and it’s never good. You look at your pet, and you think you see something moving.

And you move some fur and you look closer and you realize: It’s a flea. Your pet has fleas. Oh god, there are FLEAS IN THIS HOUSE! AAAAAAAAAAAH!

That was me this morning right after I woke up. I leaned over to pet Chaplin, and when I ran my hand up the back of his head, out crawled a big, nasty flea.

I’d seen something on him yesterday but couldn’t conclusively identify it, and decided to ignore it out of wishful thinking. However, having looked at pictures online, I knew this second one would be the start of a very long day.

I have to say this: God bless L.A. and its mobile everything. By 9:30, the groomers had picked up Chaplin and whisked him away for a flea bath.

Certainly not the cheapest solution, but money well spent in my opinion, since it allowed me to keep my blood on the inside of my body. I don’t think that would have been possible had I tried to give him a bath.

But the real pain in the ass was the washing. When you find fleas, you have to wash…everything! Every blanket, every pillow, every single thing that might possibly harbor eggs that you can cram in a washing machine, you cram.

The problem with this is that the washer is downstairs. I’m still on the pegleg, so going down stairs is a painful hassle, involving taking stairs one at a time while clinging to the railing with whatever free hands I can muster.

I can’t carry anything heavy while trying this and it’s hard enough to carry anything unwieldy with two good legs, so it was damn near impossible with one. I did five loads of laundry and I thought my shin was going to disintigrate.

But I got it done, and I vacuumed the couch and the mattress and his carpeted scratching post to get any last little whatevers out of there. I also went online and ordered up some Frontline.

Chaplin came back from the groomers smelling like Mountain Fresh Tide, and substantially whiter in the white portions of his fur than he did when he left. I’m still not sure they didn’t actually bathe him in detergent instead of flea-bath.

So now I’m left, in a substantially cleaner yet still somehow dirtier-feeling house, paranoiacally looking at every wee movement I catch out of the corner of my eye, praying it’s not another flea.

Because I am not washing all this shit again, I can tell you that much.

Using the tried and true method of “weigh self holding cat, then put cat down and weigh self, then subtract,” I was aghast to discover that Chaplin now tips the scales at almost 17 pounds.

I put him on the “weightloss/hairball control” formula of cat food when he hit 16, and while he stayed at 16 for a while, I can’t figure out why he’s suddenly started gaining again.

The only thing I can think of is that since I’m now home to notice that his food dish is empty as soon as he finishes with it, I might be feeding him more.

Still, it explains why I fear my ribs are going to crack whenever he comes and sits on my chest.

I’ll have to keep a better eye on his food, otherwise I’m going have to get him a little kitty treadmill.

So much so that he decided to do his impression of Stephen Colbert in front of the Gigantic Damn Television:

No need for anyone to send me this story about what I can only imagine is Chaplin’s long-lost brother.

The detail that it was a black and white cat was not lost on me.

Tonight’s reason: I had to put on a bunch of IcyHot because of a sore shoulder/neck, and he’s been trying to lick it off.

Obviously, I am not permitting him to do so as it is definitely not edible for humans or cats, but I’ve chased him away several times, yet he still keeps coming back.

Weirdo.

Kitty apparently decided to sit on my cable remote just as my TiVo was trying to turn the channel to get Prison Break recording.

Because of this, TiVo recorded an hour of some weird OnDemand program about gardening and building large sculptures out of PVC pipe instead.

I believe I’ll be hiding the cable remote somewhere kitty can’t get to it from now on.