So, I have this cat named Jester.  I've had him since inexplicably finding the beast in my basement window well last October.  He's sweet, cute, and a lot of fun, especially when he isn't shitting his guts out.  Or tracking them all over, exactly as if doing so fulfills the special role assigned to him in the Great Chain of Being and the Web of Life by a supreme being on an off day.  Of course I know better.  Jess is actually the finely tuned result of millions of years of feline evolution which now allows him to stain my carpet 20 times faster than any creature alive a mere 10,000 years ago, the woolly mammoth included.  A case study in the survival of the shittiest, you know, which not even Thomas Edison could improve upon despite hundreds of experiments with an endless variety of overly ripe fruit filaments in a glass bowl. 
     Jester has been blessing us with these laboriously personalized waves of tsunamic diarrhea since early February.  In that time my vet and I have tried to modify their frequency and duration with everything from a change of diet, deworming, and cortisone shots to antibiotics, marathon pleading, and illegal campaign contributions to my representatives in Congress.  Not being an utter idiot, I finally decided to take him to a different vet yesterday. 
     Jess was SO good.  I was really proud of him.  He got into his carrier with a minimum of shoving.  He survived the 10-minute drive to and from the vet's with less caterwauling than I emit when going to and from the least painful of social functions.  And he only hissed once, which was quite understandable since the vet was pushing a 6" long Q-tip up his butt at the time.  Otherwise he was calm and collected.  Even when he spotted the office cat wandering by.  Even when the Rottweiler in the waiting room was growling at me as if I was the man with the needle.  Even when the $136 bill came.  Yes, Jess was just a fine boy, right up to the moment he flooded the garage this morning with his, ummm, pent up excitement....
     The poor baby really had the works done to him yesterday, so it's understandable that there was so much excitement pent up in there.  Besides that Q-tip, he had to endure tooth tapping, and blood drawing, and watching the veins in the vet's neck swell most threateningly when his staff interrupted the exam for the tenth time to ask a stupid question when all he could think of was that it was 5 p.m. on a Friday and those college friends of his who had majored in law were already sitting by their pools of more or less clear fluids.  Somehow, we all survived, though I suspect a few staff members may be looking for new work come Monday.
     The good news after all this is that Jess does not appear to have feline leukemia, feline AIDS, or heartworms. 
     The bad news is that he has a heretofore unsuspected broken tooth with an abscess that's going to require extraction under general anesthesia eventually and a week of antibiotics for now.  And that he might be much older than we thought - maybe as old as 12 years, in this vet's opinion, judging from Jess's eyes and the Deely Bobbers he was wearing. 
     As far as Jess's chosen career as a major producer of diarrhea goes, the vet has us giving him yogurt in an effort to re-establish a proper balance of bacteria in his bowels (poor Jess only has one or two types when he should have 8-10 - how about you??).  Vitamins have been prescribed as well.  Fortunately, it turns out that Jester LOVES both, which means we only have to force the antibiotics down his throat.  The vet said we could also try feeding him the excrement of a healthy cat, but try as we might, we couldn't find that in our grocery's pet food aisle.  Just as well - maybe there will be a discount coupon for it in the special ads that'll come with tomorrow's Sunday newspaper.
     If none of this works, I guess we'll just try something else.
     After all, there are millions of little girls all over the world who celebrate their birthday every day and I'm sure many would be thrilled to receive a special furry gift from a place as exotic as Ohio....