8/09/2005 03:18:00 PM|||Garnet|||

That's it. I'm teaching my cat to talk. Or at the very least, to write.

(If you hate cats or are completely unaware of the issues surrounding feline urinary habits, then please, save yourself; read no further as this post does not concern you. For the rest of you sympathetic souls...bear with me.)

When we brought Merlyn home last summer to live with us, Dobby and the girls, we added more litter boxes throughout the house for his convenience. The girls have never had a problem finding and consistantly using the boxes. But this little shit is a different story. Honey didn't want to take him in from my dad because he's had bad experiences with kittens peeing all over everything. Dad swore to Pete that Merlyn would not do that. My dad is a liar. Or a very bad psychic.

What? This is cool. I'm cool. Everything's normal here.

We have SIX freaking boxes throughout the house: three in the basement, one in the living room, one in our bedroom and one here in my office. I have realized of late that he only uses the three in the basement; I haven't seen him crawl into or out of any of the others above ground since he was a wee kitten. Unfortunately, because we rarely live in the basement, it is those three boxes that are most often ignored and fill up the fastest. When this happens, Merlyn lets us know that he does not approve of such crapping conditions by simply peeing on any personal cloth on a horizontal surface: a clean dishtowel left on the dryer, my blanket draped over the recliner and half on the floor, my shorts left on the bathroom floor for a couple of days. He's over a year old and he's still doing this! No, he's not spraying: this is a horizontal marking, not a vertical one. And he's been fixed. He's not angry at us. He used to just pee on Honey's clothes or things on Honey's side of the room. Now he is non-discriminatory. He's not being beaten up by the girls any longer and he gets plenty of exercise throughout the house. He simply does this to tell us that he doesn't like the state of the litter boxes in the basement. If I taught him how to speak, he could just TELL me with words. At the very least, if he could write or scribble me a note, I'd get the message.

Really, when it comes down to it, I must be a terrible cat owner staff member. Honey and I often live under the assumption that six litter boxes should last a good couple of weeks before needing to be scooped. This is a false belief. If Merlyn had his way, I'm sure he'd have us down on all fours scooping their boxes every couple of hours. Sorry, Little Piss Pot, that ain't gonna happen around here.

So I dumped the litter in the boxes throughtout the house and vaccummed all that loose litter that cats love to track onto the carpet, the mat, wherever they happen to land when exiting their shitters. I've replaced with clean litter and have vowed to scoop at LEAST once a week. Promise. No, really, this time I mean it. For real. But if I forget, could you just leave me a note???

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