As someone much wiser than I once said, "The cleanliness of cats is vastly over-rated.'' In our house we have two, both walk-ins. A year apart, they both sort of spotted our house at the end of the block, big lawn, no dog, a cat door built-in. "Wow!'' they must have thought, "what a setup! Where has this place been all our life?''

I won't say I was in love with the cats, but I tolerated them. They ate dry food, didn't beg off the table and did their dirty business outdoors. Well mostly outdoors. My big mistake was leaving my nylon laptop computer case one Friday night lying open on the floor in my upstairs office. Then sometime over the weekend, our youngest cat, Pooper, as we have so aptly named him, saw this low, flat rectangular case lying on the floor. I know immediately what went through his diminutive cat-brain. "Hey, okay! Old Paul's really coming around lately, putting in an upstairs bathroom for us like this.''

I didn't notice the damage until Monday morning. After getting the kids fed and dressed, I ran upstairs to grab my laptop and when I bent over to pick up the case--"What-the-hell???'' There was a clear puddle floating right in the middle. I thought for a second last night when turning out the lights I must have spilled my diet Sprite. Then I caught a whiff.

I started screaming. I said words my two sons had never heard used before in such daring combinations.

"Daddy! Daddy! What's wrong?'' said Benjamin, our seven-year old.

"The cat peed in my computer case,'' I said still shouting. ``Get the gun!''

"What???''

"Get the gun! The gun!''

I was more furious than serious. But Benjamin didn't know that. "Don't shoot Pooper! Don't shoot Pooper! He's only a poor dumb kitty. He doesn't have a brain.''

Well, that was no lie. I caught the cat, threw him as far out the door as I could. And then tried to clean the case.

It was a mess. It was soaked inside. The padding was wet. Even my stack of three and half inch floppy disks were wet inside.

Those I could dry off with bathroom tissue (though I shuddered to think what it would do to my disk drives when I tried to use them). But a more immediate problem was the smell. I didn't have a clue what to do about that, until a serious cat-owning friend said to soak the case in Listerine. I went to Ralphs and bought the big 32 ounce $5 bottle, poured it in the bathtub and soaked the computer case all day, all night and part of the next day again.

It worked, in one sense--I mean you can't smell the cat pee anymore, though I'm not sure a Listerine-scented computer case is any great advance.

For the next two nights I made both cats sleep in the garage. But the third night was cold and rainy and my boys each wanted a kitty to sleep with them. As soon as I let them back up, they immediately curled up on the bed outside the blanket next to my boys, affectionate and purring.

With me on the other hand Pooper remained cool and distant. If I was reading, he'd come in the living room and sit in the corner, licking himself and watching me with a wary eye. He may have only been a poor dumb kitty but his meaning was unmistakably clear:

Forgiveness was possible, I was given to understand, but it wouldn't be easy.