I Love Our Cats, But...

Our cats are skating on some very very thin ice with me right now.  

As you probably know, we've been doing some remodeling on the house since September.  It has not been an inexpensive journey, and so far the results are amazing.  They hung three of our framed collector's pieces in the family room today, and it looks spectacular!

In the past, when we talked about remodeling, we both agreed that we wouldn't get new carpeting in the house until we no longer had cats.  What with the potential for the cats to pee on the carpet, the seemingly constant puking and the cat hair everywhere, it didn't seem worth it.  When it came down to it, though, we moved ahead with replacing the carpet exactly because there was an overwhelming cat pee smell in the entire downstairs, cat puke stains everywhere, and cat hair all over the place.  So now we have this amazing "new" house with this amazing new carpet in it.

This morning I was moving stuff out of the master bedroom so that the contractors could start working there.  The cat litter boxes have been in our bedroom for the past few weeks for lack of a better place to put them.  I picked one up to take it downstairs, and set it down temporarily outside the bedroom door to get a better grip on it.  As I set it down, something wet splashed onto my bare foot.  That something was cat pee, that had apparently gotten through the walls of the litter box and was just hanging out on the outside of the box on the liner bag.  Thoroughly disgusted (yes, I know it's just pee), I ran into the bathroom to wipe it off my foot.  When I came back to continue my journey downstairs, I noticed a nice yellow puddle behind the litter box on the brand new carpet (more leaking from the liner bag).  I think I screamed something like "No! No! NO!!!" (very rational, I know).  Thankfully, it seems that the amazing stain protection that this particular carpet touted was working, since the liquid stayed on the surface of the carpet and didn't seep down into it.  I soaked up the little puddle with a paper towel, cleaned off the liner bag to prevent further leaking on the way downstairs, and finished moving the litter box.  Yes, I probably over-reacted, and right now I'm very protective of our extremely nice, clean new carpet.

I made several more trips up and down the stairs moving stuff, and less than a half an hour later, I came back upstairs from dropping something off below, and found a GIANT (okay, maybe eight inches long by three inches wide) puddle of cat puke, liquid complete with whole chunks of cat food in it, on the family room carpet.  The brand new family room carpet.  Needless to say, I was already not in the greatest space mentally about the cats, and this definitely did NOT help.  There was some yelling (by me), and some threatening to take the cats to the county shelter, and then while cleaning up the puke, there was a little bit of crying.  Frustration, annoyance, concern about the new carpet...I don't know!

I came home a little while ago from doing some errands, and there, waiting for me on the family room carpet, were two little logs of cat puke.  Again.  WTF?!?!?!?!?

Last year in the fall I made the decision to put down my boy kitty, Dexter.  I had Dexter for 13.5 years, and he was the sweetest kitty in the world.  He was also sick, needed to be medicated every other day, and was peeing all over our house.  It was a heartbreaking choice, and in the end I was very clear that I wasn't going to let my life be run by a cat. 

We now have two cats left between us, and I love them very much (most of the time).  I've had my girl cat, Monkey, for 14.5 years.  She still has a kitten face, and she's cute as hell, though she has a tendency to leave our socks all over the house and yodel incessantly.  Donovan's boy cat, Franz, is a real character.  He's a total freak (in a very amusing way), and in certain moments is a very sweet kitty.  He also likes to chew on (read: destroy) plants, fake or real.  Sometimes, like today, I wish we didn't have cats.  No puking, no peeing, no cat hair everywhere, no litter boxes, no food and water dishes.  We could travel all the time and not worry about them.  I know I'd miss them.  I'd miss cuddling up with them and burying my face in their fur.  I'd miss the lump of a cat on my left every morning when I wake up.  I'd miss Franz and his seeming lack of personal space boundaries climbing all over us.  But I'd get over missing them eventually, and we would have a nice, clean cat-free house.  I'm just sayin'...

Monkey and Franz