The Great Mysteries of Life

I have a cat. His name is Rudi. He's fat.

"Hi, my name is Rudi and I'm a catfoodaholic."

My Darling Daughter-in-Law calls him RudiFatTudi.

As you can tell from the picture of this beautiful boy, he's got fairly long hair. I couldn't get him to show you his tail when I pulled my camera out this morning, but it's long and gorgeous and very fluffy. (I could have named him Fluffy, but there's no opera character I know of named Flufolfo.) When I got him from the Humane Society in Tucson, his tail was bigger than his body (and remained so until his addiction surfaced).

Rudi is an excellent groomer. He spends long hours making sure his coat and, especially, his tail are in pristine condition. But you know what that means. He ingests a lot of hair. A lot! I feed him food that helps his digestive system and food that encourages the hairballs to slip right through. I give him that liver-flavored glop to lubricate his insides. My effort is all to no avail. The boy gets hairballs and, at the most inopportune times, hacks them out and deposits them at some central location.

So here's the mystery. It doesn't matter where in the house he deposits his hairballs. I will find some reason to walk to that area of the house and step squarely on the hairball with my bare feet.

This morning I walked to the other side of the bed to pull the sheet up and suddenly felt wet, squishy yuck under my foot. Yuck. Major Yuck! I didn't even hear him hack it up, but it had to have been recent, as it was still dripping with his digestive juices. (Wait—you're not eating while you're reading this, are you?!)

Can you please explain to me the mystery of why his hairballs act as magnets for my feet? If we can solve this mystery, we might also be able to find a cure for cancer and become fabulously wealthy.