ownership

It has been  a few months since I participated in the following chain of events. My wife brought home a very “cute”, emaciated, female, and filthy light (it was hard to tell the exact make and model) colored cat. The cat was tiny, kitten like (although almost three years old as told by the accompanying shelter paper work), and very friendly.

Because she was ill, and positively disgusting, she was quarantined in the study (a tiny room which we have done our best to make comfortable as well as functional). As it turns out the cat was a Siamese (read completely psychotic) . It became the cat “Amy’s” secure space even after she was deemed well enough to join the rest of the household in their relentless pursuit of claiming the controlling stake in the ownership and control of the house. Amy is friendly and easily acclimated herself; playing with our neurotic dog and are older female cat. The older cat still hisses and takes swings at Amy from time to time, but I have caught them playing late at night.

Roughly a month ago we decided to remove the extra litter box from the study; this was Amy’s executive wash room, but the space was rendered almost useful. I forgot to mention that; unlike other more cat like cats, Amy likes to play with her crap and roll in the litter box. She also loves to spread the litter around like an old zen monk in a garden of sand and stone she spreads the litter and carefully places her turds. It was time. We showed Amy the new litter box and we removed her old one from the study. I wiped every square inch of the study (it was covered with a thin film of cat snot) and we moved back to more normal patterns of life.

A few days went by before we realized that Amy was not using the new box for her daily constitutional. She had decided it would be much better to perch herself above my laptop bag and crap into the pockets. She lived, and I discovered this little surprise before sliding my lunch and laptop into a bag filled to the brim with cat pee and crap. We patiently showed her the new box. She pissed on our jackets. We showed her the box again. She made a pee pond in a corner behind the front door. I considered having her live in the basement with a few hours a day of house time, but then imagined having a small sea of cat piss just below us and showed her the box again. We decided to reinstall her litter box in the study and lock her in the study at night. A light sentence really. She cried piteously over her loss of new found freedom. We did this for about a week then removed her box again.

Two days later in the wee hours of the night I ventured into the kitchen and looked into the pantry (a closet off the kitchen with our washer dryer) only to see her gently dangling her butt over the hamper and finishing taking a crap. She spotted me and launched into the air and made a beeline for her safety spot in the study. I shut the door to the study and went to bed listening to her scratching at the door and meowing pitifully. I addressed the crap in the hamper in the morning and we washed the clothes three times in vinegar and detergent.

Letting Amy out of the study in the morning she rubbed lovingly against my leg and ran to the kitchen for her breakfast. She has not repeated her offense since “the hovering mystery shitter” episode; I believe that with whatever thinking capacity she has we have come to an agreement. I say I believe she gets it, or I have normalized the smell of cat pee and crap, and she is stealthily building her empire.