Larry is a street person living here in Chicago. His thing was to steal newspapers and resell them at “L” stops. He was on crack, he had eyes as big as Jamie's, which is to say he had orphan-Annie eyes. Whatever reality Larry was living in, I didn't want to share it and yet, there he was, living in my newspaper warehouse.

He'd been invited into the warehouse by the ever trusting Al Martin. You know the logic: he's a newspaper thief, he's on crack, he'll steal everything he can to sell for more crack. Let's give him a key to the warehouse? That's how he ended up in the Paulina newspaper warehouse. Paulina was a hole. Actually there was a hole in the roof. During rain storms, the water from the roof, about the size of a football field, poured through this hole. We survived by moving the newspapers away from the hole. But that's another story.

So, along with the huge rat colony in this warehouse, they made donuts in there by the way, we enjoyed the company of Larry. He showed up, broke the door lock and we couldn't get rid of him.

I'm told that there is some sort of mental disorder that causes people to decide to spread their feces. I can tell you from having had it done to a WC I wanted to use, that it creates a mark of territory. Sort of like some animal marking its territory: you do not want to deal with it.

So Larry did that to us at the Paulina warehouse, the men's room became his room. There are no words I can use to describe the sight and smell of human feces spread all over a wall. We abandoned the building (it was torn down and condos replaced it.) and moved to newer digs on Fullerton. We thought we'd left Larry and his feces wall behind, the agreement being that no one was to tell Larry where we'd moved.

We were not even done celebrating when Larry showed up at the new digs. Al denies to this day that he told Larry where we moved.

Now at this time, we hadn't yet connected Larry to the feces on the wall. As you can imagine, we had another, more colorful name for this... phenomenon. But, within a short period, the new men's room sported the same colorful stain.

It began to connect when I donned a haz-mat set of clothes (they were thrown away after this incident) and cleaned what the cleaning crew ignored. Then I faced down Larry and Al. I believe I had some moral authority, after cleaning up this situation. When I was finished, Al just looked hurt. Larry, who I threatened to arrest if he ever returned, he left. And, bingo, no more feces on the wall.

So, I was considering this long ago situation as I cleaned up after Jane's cats. She is ill this week. And the cat's welcomed me to their world by doing a Larry in the litter box. No greater love have a man for a woman than to clean up after her cats.