Ringo

A Mouthful of Moss

The first time he brought the moss in I thought it cute and kind of funny. A mound of dirt sewn together with a root system belonging to a crown of green fuzz, dropped with a thud on my white carpet by my eccentric Birman cat Ringo. It left a mark.

Why he did it, I will never know. The real question is, “Why does he still do it?”

Living in a loft just outside a vibrant downtown, my small apartment’s windows opened to a rooftop covered with soft green moss.  Too much moss in fact. So much so, that my landlord made plans to have it professionally removed. Yet, the day when the contractors finally arrived to spray my roof with bleach solution, they found it bare. No moss, only lined roof tiles with the occasional claw mark scratched across it. Looking down at them on my now moss-free roof was a strange white cat with brown markings and deep blue eyes staring at them with no apparent emotion.

The confused workers checked several times to make sure they had the correct address. They even called my landlord. “I don’t see any moss,” one of them said into a cell phone.

Pulling into my driveway, there stood three men in work bibs and my landlord staring incredulously into the steel blue eyes of a 10lb cat standing above them on the roof with a look of smug apathy and superiority.

“Is this your cat?” my landlord asked when I opened my car door and got out.

“Umm..yes,” I answered.

The question of where the moss went quickly became answered when I opened the door to my quaint loft apartment that just the prior morning wore a carpet of brilliant white. My floor was now littered with dirty green moss. In the few hours I had been at work, my cat destroyed any chance of me getting my deposit back.

Quite possibly the worst part, my landlord stood behind me seeing the apartment apocalypse that my cat had caused.

Mounds of green moss were everywhere. Green on top and dirty on bottom, the stuff of outside lay inside strewn on nearly every inch of floor in my apartment. Lumps of moss even lay on my favorite spot on the couch. I have yet to get an answer on why he did this. Revenge for leaving him while I went to work perchance?

The moment that will be known in history as The Day My Cat Brought in the Moss, my landlord and I stood in the doorway of my loft afraid to enter; not knowing where to step. I did a little side dance and jump and made my way into my kitchen where my cat hadn’t left any moss behind. My landlord was quick to follow and we stood in horror at the moss graveyard in my living room.

To make matters worse, upon hearing our entrance, my Birman cat Ringo, AKA the Killer of Moss, came in an open window with a mouthful of roof green. He jumped down and made his way into the living room where he batted the green mound for several minutes. With one final death kick he pushed the moss from underneath him. There it was. The moss was now officially dead according to Ringo.

With no understanding of what was currently taking place, he approached me and my red-faced landlord and raised his back and tail and rubbed the side of his body against our legs.

I fearfully stood there. The red in my landlord’s face drained from his cheeks. He knelt down and scratched Ringo’s back, behind his ears and under his chin.

Without saying another word, my landlord stood back up and walked out.

For several minutes I stood in incredulous shock at my filthy living room floor. My cat Ringo stood beside me with a look of pride for a moment before scampering to the open window and back onto the roof.

Needless to say as long as I’ve had Ringo I’ve never had to remove moss from my roof. That day I saved my landlord a lot money. That afternoon I painstakingly picked up every bit of moss then shampooed my carpet back to white.

Still, I didn’t get my deposit back.