Apocalypse Butt...

When they pick the Four Horsemen, my cat will be tapped for Pestilence.
They (it's always the ubiquitous 'THEY', but who really would be hiring?)will be hopeful, thinking this Apocalypse will finally work...the perfect team!

She will decline, citing that the job will not be challenging enough.

I may have hinted before, but I will re-iterate now, the ritual that is my cat's violation of all things natural and good.

Daylight Hours Preamble:
She suddenly gets cute and cuddly. As there are sooo many reasons she may be kissing up (food, fear of retribution, the temperature dropped below 70) we are never prepared for the inevitable attack.
She'll be next to myself or the Wife, on the couch usually, when suddenly her head will pop up like she's heard something. Still, no real warning as this is also normal behavior. It's like she sees a spirit.
(Now I know why Medieval societies thought they could look between the ears of a cat to see the dead walking the earth...well, that and Middle Ages peasants weren't known for their brights.)

Then she's off the couch, with a slight bottle-brush action going on, like something's startled her. Some portent of things to come, though she doesn't quite know it yet. We do now.
We didn't. First couple of times this happened we thought she really was a watch kitty...or retarded. Well, we weren't wrong on one count...but this wasn't the symptom.
She starts to pace, investigating, moving about the living room.

(When we were in Florida, where we finally came to understand the signs of the Apocalypse, it was a small apartment where we could witness this unfold before us in its entirety.)
She then starts to run.
Run likes she's fleeing something...
Run AWAY! (we know now, she was fleeing her butt)

She would get a few laps down around the small living room, thundering back and forth, gaining momentum.
She would go round, up onto the back of the couch, ricochet off the head of the recliner, and barrel under the work table. Lather, Rinse, Repeat...about 4 times.
Then she'd pull a 'Matrix' kitty move, go up a wall, pull a U-Turn in the air, and bolt into the bathroom (wherein was contained the litter box) without touching the ground.

There was fear in her eyes that whole time. Abject terror at first. (After her first six months it became a sense of fearful resignation, of inescapable pain that may, with any one of these 'episodes', end in her demise.)

The first time it happened, we thought it was hilarious...
Then she was gone...
for 5 whole minutes.

I know what the speed of Light means, abstractly and quantitatively.
I know what the speed of Sound means, literally.
I never really grasped what the speed of 'stink' was until I saw it first hand.

The cat moved at something akin to the speed of light, after rebounding off the last wall and heading for the bathroom doing her best 'Neo' impression.

I heard the digging, scraping, desperate attempt at burial...a process the feline attempted for 5 straight minutes, I think to a small degree out of shame but certainly out of self preservation.

Then I saw her slink out of the Bathroom.
This slink was not one of fear,
it was not one of pain nor of violation...
it was one of weight
she was weighted down...

Remember Predator, when the alien moved through the woods and caused a ripple effect...or the mirage on hot pavement in the summer?
I swear, before the smell hit me, that I saw a shimmer/ripple in the air rolling over and past the feline pressing her down...(I have now found the speed of smell is in direct proportion to the comedic effect it will produce)
This, the very first time our cat did this to us, the last (printable/intelligible) words out of my wife's mouth for the next 15 minutes were, "Aw, the poor little thing looks like she's sick...is there something wrong with....What...the...F##....ACK...KAFF...HURK".

That's when the wall of STENCH hit us. When I say wall, I mean wall. It was palpable, it would have been as easy to cut as the tension of a Republican Convention Michael Moore showed up to for the buffet.
It hurt.
My eyes watered.
My brain, desperate to preserve itself, attempted to exit my left ear..and my wife fell over the coffee table trying to get to the spray air freshener.

She sprayed, I opened windows, and we fought our way on to the front porch. (there was a brief traffic jam at the door to get out, she won by elbowing me in the groin...to this day I still don't blame her)

We heard mewling...and we didn't care.
We spent somewhere on the order of 15 minutes cursing, through the gagging.

We went back inside, the cat lay on the floor panting as though she'd given birth.
The stench had begun to subside enough to not prompt nausea...much.
My wife looked at me with a pleading expression, after walking into the kitchen to gather the tools of scoopage...and I merely shook my head.

She walked into that bathroom like a condemned criminal headed to the gallows. I saluted. The cat mewled.

I kicked the cat.....

The speed of Stink is a formula involving the level of noxiousness, athleticism of the victims, degree of surprise and direct value of the comedy...and will always, ALWAYS catch the unaware or observed....
ALWAYS.....