Susan and me in Cuba!

When I left NYC and moved back to LA, I was homeless for the first year. If I wasn’t traveling, I would stay with my mom or with my new bestie Susan. Susan was my first boss ever, at Playboy, and I loved staying at her house. She had four bedrooms all to herself, a big back yard and three cats, Coco, Maggie and Eli. Coco was the mom and Maggie and Eli were her sons. Susan’s first vet thought Maggie was a girl, hence the name. She’d make me coffee in the morning and we’d chat in the kitchen with birds chirping and the sun shining. Life was so carefree.

One night we had gone out to dinner and a movie and came back home. We entered her house through the backdoor and all the lights were out. There was something on the rug that the cats were playing with. At first we thought it was a bird or a mouse. It wasn’t moving at all. The cats must have mutilated it, we thought. I thought I saw a tail but couldn’t be sure. Susan turned on the light and it took us a moment to figure out what it was, MY USED TAMPON. Susan shrieked “OH MY GAWD” and I just stood there doubled over with laughter. Maggie had shredded my used tampon and it was all over Susan’s nice sisal rug. Finally I caught my breath “Oh let me clean that up,” I offered.

Susan’s cat Maggie

Maggie was going crazy playing with my used tampon shreds, carrying it in his mouth as if it were a dead mouse. I had to chase him around the house to get it out of his mouth. Susan was visibly disgusted. I went to bed and during the night I heard the cats scurrying around in my bathroom. When I woke up the next morning, heard Susan scream again, and saw that Maggie had taken another used tampon out of the trash and had proudly shredded it outside Susan’s bedroom door. I cleaned it up, didn’t think much of it and we had coffee in the living room and I sat on the floor playing with the cats.

We went out again that night and came home through the front door this time. The lights were off and when Susan turned on the living room lights she screamed once again. My used extra large maxi pad with wings from the night before had been dug out of my trash and shredded on the floor. But not just anywhere, it had been shredded in the exact spot on the rug in the living room where I sat that morning drinking my coffee. It was Maggie! Maggie was obsessed with me. This was the funniest thing ever. Susan’s cats were using my discarded sanitary supplies as cat toys. We decided to come up with a company called Tampaws where we could recycle the sanitary supplies and turn them into cat toys and market them to upscale hippies at Whole Foods.

Susan politely asked me to close my bathroom door during my menstrual cycle. I honestly couldn’t stop laughing. But sadly all good times must come to an end. One time I forgot to shut the door but Maggie didn’t care. He had moved on from me and my scents and had no interest in the Tampaws anymore.

Stoli and I cruising West Hollywood

I thought Tampaws was dead in the water until I had two recent resurfacings. I worked for a bit at a friend’s property management company in West Hollywood. My friend’s dog Stoli and I fell in love with each other and I’d walk Stoli a few times a day and cruise with her around the hood in my car. I had put some of my used sanitary items in the office trash can. The next day I came in and Chris, the office manager, told me that Stoli had gone to town with the Tampaws I had left behind. Chris said the office looked liked a crime scene. Stoli was in the office as well and had stuck her nose high up into my crotch, begging for more. I had a new Tampaws customer!!

Not the actual possum…

The second instance happened when I went to Susan’s to hang out and spend the night. It had been a while and I had even forgotten about beloved Maggie and my Tampaws. That was until a few days later Susan let me know that the next night the neighborhood possum, that comes in periodically to eat the leftover cat food, had taken a liking to my Tampaws. Susan had caught the possum “red-handed” shredding my tampons everywhere. The possum loved my Tampaws, I was back in business!

So who knows, maybe down the road, I can make my millions producing Tampaws. And remember, it was my idea first!!

I just have to share that Susan’s beloved cat Eli was hit by a car and died last Saturday, poor baby, RIP Eli xo