Herb, our old nasty tabby, lives on the back porch. We make him stay there most of the time because he's old and nasty. His old, nasty habits include vomiting and crapping outside of the litterbox.

He developed these bad habits last year. He was sick. Lost a lot of weight. The vet couldn't figure what was wrong with him. We sort of expected him to die. The vet put him on a "chicken should be the main ingredient" diet. It has been a slow process, but Herb has bounced back.

He doesn't throw up very often any more. For awhile it was once a day. It's been months since his last vomit.

The crapping whenever and whereever is the bigger issue. He'll go a couple weeks deligently using his litter box. Then one day, SPLAT! Just for the hell of it, he's crapped whereever he happened to be standing.

For this reason, he's only allowed to come into the house on supervised visits.

Lately, he's been pretty good about using the box. I can't remember when he had his last "acccident."

So, this past weekend, we decided it was time to throughly clean the back porch. I'd been cleaning up messes as they happened. But it's not easy to thoroughly clean Herb's liqui-poo off the concrete. Stains had built up over the last year. So, Saturday we rented a pressure-washer and de-stained the porch.

I was confident Herb would be thrilled. Clean porch, clean litter box, clean lounging areas. What more could a cat ask for?

Well, the answer to that is "crap."

Bright and early Easter morning, Herb crapped on the porch. He crapped right next to his clean litter box.