The wash cloth conspiracy

Presented for your consideration:

1) Yesterday afternoon, I discovered a pink wash cloth in our downstairs half bath. I assumed that my husband or my son had made a half-hearted attempt to clean the disgusting bowl.

2) In that bathroom, we also have a dish towel that hangs from a shelf. It's loosely tied to a crossbar. The day before yesterday I noticed that it was untied and barely hanging on the crossbar.

3) My husband does most of the laundry in our house. He sorts the laundry on our bed. His clothes go on his side of the bed. My clothes, my son's clothes, and any household laundry, go on my side of the bed. (He figures if he does the laundry, the least I can do is make sure all the stuff that isn't his gets where its supposed to be... A slight source of contention, but there it is.)

The last few months there has been a beige and white dish cloth that shows up on my side of the bed every third or fourth week. My husband typically uses these cloths in his workout bag. Last night I noted the reappearance of the cloth on my side of the bed, so I picked a nit about it. Why is this cloth on my side of the bed? He uses them when he works out. This makes it his laundry to deal with and not mine. He then proclaimed that he hadn't used one of those cloths in months and months. Well then. How was the cloth getting into the laundry every so often.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: The Boose!

Boose is our younger cat. He is full of foibles and entertaining (if sometimes infuriating) behavior.

After the discussion of the dish cloth, my husband and I discussed all three mysteries. Here is what we have concluded:

1) Boose likes to drink from the toilets. Boose also likes to carry bits of clean/dirty laundry around the house. Since no one in our house knows how the pink wash cloth got into the toilet, it seems that Boose decided that the toilet needed to be cleaned (or something) and dropped the wash cloth into the toilet.

2) Again, Boose likes to drag clean/dirty laundry around our house. He has a particular affinity for small towels, underwear, and fat quarters of quilting fabric. We believe (in a fit of boredom) that Boose attempted to pull the tied dish towel from the crossbar. He must have pulled sufficiently to loosen the casual knot, but not so hard as to drop the towel on the floor.

3) This is the best one yet: the beige and white dish cloth. Since the cloth is small, I usually set it aside on a dresser to put it away 'later'. With the clutter in my bedroom I do not notice it. Boose probably carries it off to the basement. At some point, he deposits the cloth in the dirty laundry pile in the basement. This is not unusual. His toy mice often end up in the dirty laundry pile. The cloth is then washed, folded, and placed back on the bed. At that point, I set it aside and forget about it. Then the cycle begins anew.

Charming, no?