I'm debating whether to turn my mother into the cops. It seems she left a "stash" sitting on the kitchen counter, available and tempting to whatever innocent party might happen to walk (or crawl) by.

The stash in question is catnip and the being who crawled by it--and then turned and crawled back--is her new cat, Charmin. (Or Prince Charmin, as I like to refer to him). Being nocturnal creatures, cats get into the darnedest things. One morning she awoke to find an entire role of toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom shredded beyond recognition and one very satisfied cat sitting in the hall, licking his paws and looking pleased with himself.

But the other morning Mom awoke to find her normal docile cat replaced by the Tasmanian Devil of Warner Brothers Fame. She came downstairs and a whirlwind tornado spun itself at her feet, from the middle of which she heard panting and gasping. After the dust cleared, she realized it was Charmin--high out of his mind. Apparently kitty got bored, investigated the kitchen counter and hit paydirt.

Wheeeezzzz.....the tornado whirled away, chasing his tail and pouncing on dust particles.  Bailey, my mom's dog, came down to investigate. Charmin usually steers clear of Bailey but the little high-on-life kitty raced over to him, looked in his eyes and said, "Bring it." (Bailey wisely chose to hide under the bed.)

The effects soon wore off and Charmin collapsed, exhausted, like a 21-year old college student after a night of pub crawls. He had that slightly dazed, "What the hell just happened here?" look about him followed by the "I think I need to ralph" look.

Bad kitty? No. High kitty, but not bad kitty. And not bad Mommy either. Who knew Charmin had a drug habit? Maybe it's best not to call the cops after all...