The Cat Has Shat

The unthinkable happened this weekend.

Our female cat lost her everloving mind and defecated in our house, twice. Then, she peed. In my office.

I can't look at her the same way now.

Fat Cat has always been a twitchy, bitchy thing. Teenage daughter apparently found her several years ago and convinced her loon of a mother to let the cat stay. Once the crusade to save the world was over, teenage daughter lost interest and man child assumed cat care duties.

In that filthy, free-for-all, house-destroying environment, three humans, two cats and a dog shared space. Fat Cat was the weakest in both personality and brawn. The other cat was an enormous orange tabby with testicles intact. He didn't know his own strength. The dog was something small, yappy and psycho. Fat Cat never stood a chance. She basically lived in man child's room under his bed to avoid the near constant attacks from the other two animals.

When she came to us, she was riddled with ear mites, obese and sporting a matted coat of hair. She growled like a dog whenever she felt threatened and it took months for her to make an appearance in the general population of our home. We took her to the vet and got all of her physical medical problems fixed. She was put on an eating schedule and as a result, she naturally slimmed down to a reasonable weight. While still a nervous creature, over time Fat Cat assimilated pretty well.

She did begin to pull her hair out in white tufts which caused us to have to vacuum nearly every day and she would often turn up her nose at any wet food that wasn't fish but we could live with these small neuroses. She still startled at the slightest thing and she groomed obsessively but overall, she improved a hundredfold.

Then, disaster struck.

Our automatic litterbox finally bit the dust. I rushed out and spent a ridiculous sum of money on a new, fancier model. When we unpacked it, Dallas and I were thrilled with the flashy mechanics, built in ionizer and odour control filters. We may actually have done a little happy dance in the laundry room, oohing and aahing the first time we watched it in action. Our male cat wandered in, gave it a curious sniff and used it almost immediately.

Fat Cat, on the other hand, had a nervous breakdown and decided to use the office as her own personal toilet, instead.

What Dallas and I didn't know was that some cats need to be conditioned to use a new litterbox. Apparently, you are supposed to leave the old one sitting next to the new one but you don't clean the old one. According to theory, cat will choose the new, clean box because they are fastidious. Whatever.

WHY IS THIS NOT PRINTED IN LARGE BLOCK LETTERS ON LITTERBOX PACKAGING?

How are ignorant saps like us supposed to know such things? The old litterbox didn't just die one day. It was a slow, painful, frustrating, decline over a period of several months where the rake would jam or chatter or run for hours. So, when the thing finally quit for good, Dallas threw it into the outside trash bin, WITH GUSTO, relishing the sound of it splintering into pieces. This was after I'd taken a screwdriver to it in an effort to fix that bloody rake. When I realized it couldn't be repaired, I tore the rake out with my bare hands (in a mild fit of premenstrual rage). The point is, we couldn't get it out of our house fast enough. Big mistake.

Dallas was up and out to Wal-Mart first thing Saturday morning to get the same kind of litterbox that we had just thrown out to try to appease Fat Cat. I was online reading about anti anxiety medicine for felines until I wrenched my head from my ass. Long story short, Fat Cat spent most of the day and all night Saturday locked in the laundry room, bleating like a lamb, until she gave up and used the 2nd new box.

Yesterday, we let her roam free but it was a stress show. Every few minutes, we'd say, "Where is she?" "Can you see her?" and truthfully, I never want to be THAT occupied with my cat's bowel habits EVER AGAIN. Last night, after wearing our nerves thin, we gave up and went to bed figuring that the ultimate test would be how she handled herself overnight.

She used the box. Oh joy.

I'm not convinced she can be trusted, though. She's neither smart nor sane and her choices were limited because we blocked her access to most of the house. Still, we didn't awaken to another mess and this is a very good thing because if we had, she'd be on her way to man child's apartment with the imprint of my shoe on her arse.