The Poop Room

If we ever get around to doing any remodeling, we have to create a room solely for the cats' litter boxes - far away from main living areas - which will be ventilated with state-of-the-art equipment and the entire room shall be tiled with a drain in the floor and a fire hose sprayer.

These old homes are lovely - the best, especially for charm and character - but they're not best for some modern uses. Such as the Jack & Jill bathroom that connects my office with my husband's. Where one of the litter boxes resides.

This morning I walked into my office and was smashed in the face by the heavy stink of a fresh cat turd. I mean, SUPER fresh. Hot off the poop line. There was no escaping it, but I have to work in here. All my stuff is in here. I can't just pick up and relocate every time a cat takes a stanky dump - I'd never get any work done.

So even though it's a cool 50° outside, I opened the windows & turned on the ceiling fans. If I could, I'd install a jet engine fan in the back of the litter box cabinet because why not share that with the neighbors? Why keep that all to ourselves? There's so much to go around.

Happy Annipoopsary

This weekend we celebrated our wedding anniversary, but we've been together many more years than we've been married. It's not been dozens of years - yet - but long enough that we have to try to think of memory landmarks to help us remember how long.

The tried & true method - the cats. He got Shitfoot before we moved in together, and that was in 1998. Wait, or was it 1999? I think it was 1999... It was definitely one or the other, so we're accurate to within a year - close enough.

That poor cat. So enamored, were we, having a cat - really his cat but quickly became our cat - that for months David traveled with him on Bart to stay at my place in the city, almost every weekend. So many trips on noisy, stinky, scary Bart. We're certain that's what caused him to go mental. But it also could have been the plane trip out to Georgia to visit his parents that one time...

So stupid, were we, taking him with us. I had someone watching my bird at my place - we could have left him there, but nooo.... had to have that damn fuzzy baby with us. And then the airline had no record of me booking the flight with a cat in the cabin. But this was pre-9/11...

I asked my dad what we should do, seasoned traveler that he is, and he asked me if the cat ever made any noise and I said no. He said we should throw a jacket over the carrier bag and just walk onto the plane. Which was exactly what we did.

The only noise he made was during descent for landing, which is when he lost his ever loving mind and tried to claw his way out of the Sherpa bag. We sat there ignoring the puzzled looks and pointing fingers like we always travel with a rabid wolverine. Don't you? Why the hell did we do that to him?

Now when he wants something from us - usually, food - and we don't act fast enough, he jumps onto something he knows we don't want him on and then he proceeds to knock our shit onto the floor. I hate that goddamn cat. But I love that goddamn cat.

Happy Anniversary.

Harsh Poop

When it's late at night or we've just watched The Walking Dead, I won't go out into the backyard. Too dark. It's a big yard full of zombies waiting to eat me alive. So if I scoop the boxes late, the trash goes right outside the backdoor where I can grab it in the morning.

I forgot this morning, having come & gone through the front door, so it was there when David and I came home from dinner. I'd been telling him a story about a totally ineffectual boob at a temp staffing agency when he said "wet bag of poop" as we approached the back door. I stopped and told him that I thought that was going a little too far, that she seems to mean well but just can't get the job done, and then in his tipsy state he pointed to the wet bag of poop sitting there on the step. Yup. Wet bag of poop.

Whiz Cats

(Tthis is the catalog photo, as you can tell by the lack of litter flung
everywhere and the non-peed-in interior. Also, that pan is way too
short - that cat just sprayed the entire insides of that pretty cabinet.)

Last year I got all motivated to do a little home improvement and invested in a "cat washroom" that would hide the litter box inside a nice-looking piece of furniture, instead of having ye olde plastic shit box right there in the bathroom where we get to look at it every day.

The cabinet, which I put together myself with wood glue on the dowels for added stability, even looked like it was part of the bathroom. It also seemed to cut down on the litter flinging, something our idiot cats excel at. So happy was I, having the litter box hidden away but still in a convenient place to keep it clean... And then one day...

A particular fuzzy little a-hole didn't put his rear all the way down into the litter box (a "high-sided" box) and peed over the side, making a cat piss puddle inside the cabinet, which of course seeped through the joint between the floor and the side, onto the litter mat below.

Thankfully I had the foresight to put the damn litter mat underneath the thing, or else we'd have cat piss seeping into the floorboards (since the linoleum adhesive recently decided to quit and you can pick the linoleum tiles up off the floor and wing them through the house like square frisbees.

Now that same fuzzy a-hole keeps doing it and now I have to put another litter box inside the cabinet that has a freaking lid on it so he cannot keep pissing all over the insides of the cabinet.

But first, I get to maneuver the cabinet out of the spot it's wedged in, thoroughly clean it with copious amounts of bleach, wait for it to dry, then put a seal of caulk around the joints, wait for that to dry, and then clean the litter mat so it can be used again without reeking of cat piss.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to add this project to my list of shit to do. It's going to be a latex glove and chemical festival. And maybe when I'm all done I will take a ginormous crap in their brand clean litter box. Give them something to think about.

Sooper Poop Scoop

The guest scooper gig went great. No one dropped any atom poop bombs or piddled anywhere she shouldn't have. Good poopers, those kids.

But there was one problem... My dear friend has the flimsiest poop scooper I think I've ever seen. How I didn't snap it like a toothpick, I've no idea. The contents of our boxes would have caused that thing to explode into a kajillion plastic shards.

So I'm going to get her a belated housewarming gift. It might seem silly, but when you have a sturdy - possibly bulletproof - poop scooper, it makes the job so much easier, and easier = not as sucky.

With a sturdy scooper you know you can dig into every corner without any concern that the handle's gonna snap & fly up and spew litter every fricken where. Like into your face. Which has almost happened to me. It only takes that one scare. Cold shiver. Can't let that happen.

Guest Scooper

Very exciting... tomorrow I get to be a guest scooper in beautiful Walnut Creek for my friend Steph's poopers, Olive & Daisy.

A whole new scooping adventure in the burbs. I wonder if they're cooking up something special for me. Let's hope not.

Facepoop

Spent the day working... Actually working, like, on a project, using my words, writing about technology stuff, and at the end of the day checked Words With Friends to see if was my move and already tired from searching for just the right words for work started playing my turns in each of the five games I'm in at the moment only to have my opponents immediately take their turns and have it be my turn again which caused my turn to seemingly never end and already so very tired from all the words and having mostly all consonants in one game and only all vowels in another was reduced to playing words like "elf" and "nay" and "tire" which aren't at all as valuable as words one might be able to play with a reasonable mix of both vowels and consonants and having to play boards that are either almost full or totally fugged up by going only in one direction jammed all up into a corner made me wish I'd never clicked that stupid link and instead went straight to the couch with my blankie and a kitten.

Poop-Saving Time

Why are we still doing this? Saving daylight? We all know this doesn't save any daylight, right? Daylight is daylight, like poops in a litter box. It's either there or it isn't. It can't - nor shouldn't - be saved.

The cats certainly don't care about saving daylight. They sleep through all of it. And their stomach clocks don't adjust for weeks.

Maybe I should ship a week's worth of cat poop to Congress and let them know how much I appreciate that we're still diddling our clocks back & forth like it matters in any possible way.

Family Poop

Just when I think I'm out of poop subjects, another one comes down the pike.

Last night I enjoyed a wonderful dinner party at my brother's house to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday. We feasted on delicious sautéed lamb and pork chops, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, crisp salad, steamed asparagus with homemade mayonnaise, and biscuits. Dessert was a decadent chocolate birthday cake filled with coma-inducing chocolate ganache.

It felt like another amazing Thanksgiving dinner, all of us gathered around my brother's enormous, handmade dining room table, sharing stories and passing plates of delectable fare back & forth... And as always, stories of the kids' past antics came up. Things they said, things they did, or things they ate when they were little...

As we sat there laughing at our end of the table, the far end became quiet as my nieces and I watched a secret being passed from one ear to another. The Telephone Game had begun, starting with my sister-in-law. As it came to me I heard my dear relative whisper in my ear, "We're playing the telephone game and Bobby* ate cat shit."

While we'd been laughing about Sally* playing with electrical outlets and surviving, turns out my sweet darling nephew asked his mother if he'd ever eaten anything strange. Rather than answer him audibly, she sent the answer to him on a hushed, liberating journey through several ear canals.

When the secret eventually arrived at its final destination, in his grandfather's ear, Grandpa was certain the original message had been corrupted. Nope. Shortly after he'd learned to walk, Johnny found the litter box one day and reached in to help himself to a little kitty roca.

And then we had our chocolate cake.

*Names have been changed to protect the traumatized.

CatTrans

Do your cats supervise your work while you scoop their poop? Ours do.

They follow me from one box to the other (thankfully we're down to just two) and observe my technique, maybe trying to make sure I don't miss a single poop.

All they need is tiny orange vests, hardhats, and coolers and they're set.

Sh*tfoot

I love kittens. Who doesn't love kittens? If you don't love kittens then you're obviously an asshole and kittens (and puppies, and everything else in the world) is better off without you.

But you know what I don't like about kittens? Sometimes they poop on their feet. Or they step in their poop. And then they enthusiastically jump up onto the bed to cuddle up for the night and you realize... that smell is too intense - too close - something is very wrong...

When one of our cats was still a kitten his nickname was Shitfoot. Easily once a week he'd step in it or somehow get it onto his foot and parade around the house while shaking one back leg like he was in his own little conga line.

I remember chasing him around with a wet rag trying to clean him up. What a treat that was. There's a reason I don't have kids. To change their diapers I'd want to take them outside and hose them down. It just seems easier.

Grand Ol' Poops

As I scooped out the box this morning I couldn't help but recognize the strong similarities of the contents of the litter box to the leaders of the republican party (and their right wing media entertainers).

So many turds of varying shapes & sizes. Some oddly shaped, others fairly consistent in girth and heft. Some just tiny, turdlet afterthoughts (afterturds), others quite large and imposing. Some that could easily wear a tiny, nerdy sweater vest, others that could easily fit in a radio talk show host chair.

But the one attribute they all share down to the last fecal particle is the stink. No exceptions. They all stink. To high heaven. When will they be scooped up and chucked out with the rest of the trash?

Critters

Living with cats often feels like living with any sort of wild critters you might find in nature - raccoons, large squirrels or chipmunks... river otters...

What raccoonottersquirrelmonk wouldn't love regular meals, snoozing in fleecy beds, iPad games and tons of toys?

The amazing thing is that they crap in a box and not wherever they feel like. Though that's not to say we haven't received certain messages now & then from certain raccoonottersquirrelmonks with a point to make about box substrate it didn't like or its opinion about a neighbor's cat it particularly didn't like.

They may not always get it all inside the box all the time, but they make a good effort and who wouldn't be happy about that?

Swimming Poops

I knew a cat that was trained to use the toilet. She would enthusiastically jump up onto the seat, do her business and then wait for you to flush for her. No more litter, no more scooping, no more stank.

This is a dream come true for cat owners - getting rid of all the litter boxes in the house and the mess they include. Except I remember that she expected a clean toilet bowl at all times, so I'm not sure what happened when her people had to be away all day. Or if someone forgot to leave the lid open... Whoops.

I fear, though, with three cats and only two toilets, we'd run into problems with this idea. First, the training - having one toilet out of commission during the training & transition, but later on there would still be problems.

When we get home from being away all day, the cats get up and greet us and one by one, they use their boxes while we're using the toilets. We would have a line for each toilet while we all waited for each other to do our business and then jump down. I don't think I'm ready for that.

The Poop Dance

Every time one of our poopers puts a poop in the box, he or she - though mostly it's the boys - will go tearing around the house as if in a fit of joy for having taken one of the best poops of his little life.

Sometimes it seems like they're racing away from the offensive stank, which is understandable, but most of the time it seems to be the pure celebration of  the incredible lightness of being that follows a satisfying poop.

We should all celebrate such a feeling. Come bursting out of the bathroom leaping and skipping while shouting, "Great poop! GREAT poop!"

It's Not the Poop

It's the plenty. It's amazing, how much poop three cats can deposit into a litter box in 12 hours. You'd think they were on a heavy diet of bran muffins. Whatever's in those cans of chicken and turkey bits, it's highly effective on feline GI motility. We should all be as regular.

But what's more amazing is the smell. The sheer strength of it. It's impressive. A small, furry, adorable creature is able to create such a pungent smell that it can drop a human in her tracks from 50 yards out. I get it - message received - that is your box - I'm happy to poop in the toilet - not a problem.

I just wish they could scoop their own poop and put it in the trash. Though without thumbs, that would be quite a mess. If only I could sell it to the neighborhood dogs. Win, win, win.

Signal Turds

We have one pooper who, every now & then, likes to leave a generous offering in the box, but instead of covering it up, builds a litter hill to place it upon so that all the cats in a four-mile radius might pick up on the scent and be reminded that he and he alone is king of this one house.

Everyone deals with insecurity differently. I am glad that when I'm not feeling quite so confident that I don't have the urge to crap on the front porch where all my neighbors can be reminded that this is MY house. I suspect my neighbors are glad about this also.

Turdlets

This one time, when we lived in Vancouver (BC, 'Canadia'), I awoke early in the morning to that distinctive aroma to see what appeared to be, what could only be, tiny turdlets on the floor of the bedroom. Just waiting there, waiting for me to find them and take them back to where they belonged.

I never did find out who left them there, or why.