Sometimes cats are SUCH jerks. I'm gonna talk litter-box here...

[Afromania]

9. I guess so.

Last edited Sat Jan 5, 2019, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)

It came from left field with a vengeance. Originally we had one of those giant sterlite storage tubs the two cats shared. It held 32 or so pounds of litter at any given time and was cleaned daily. A year or so ago a plant I'd been growing for 12 years started losing tons of leaves. Some of the smaller branches drooped and fell off. I thought it was over watering or something, so I cut back, but would often find the soil damp upon the next watering.

At that point the soil didn't smell and the plant kept growing fairly normally. I rooted and replanted the fallen branches and kept watering the original plant normally. Well, one day I went to water and the dirt smelled faintly like cat pee. I had dealt with this before and figured I'd probably have to replace a few pounds of dirt and cover it in foil, no biggie. That was the working theory except kept digging and digging and digging and, well, you get the idea. It turned out when I watered the plant it was diluting the cat pee just enough to not stink. Additionally of the fun stuff that makes cat pee so awful was washed to the bottom of the pot beneath 2 feet of dirt where the ammonia smell was being hidden

I saved what few branches remained and chucked the pot, dirt and what was left of the original plant. From there began the year of litter box wack a mole. Tried more boxes, different litters, different boxes, vet visits, more boxes, theories, paw injuries, more vet visits, theories, even more boxes, lots of carpet scrubbing and even more not so nice names for the cat.

It took almost a year to put together the right combination of solutions to reach a stalemate with this cat. The final solution is something I like to call "litterception". A cat bo foil pan) in front of the cat box that the cat doesn't know is a cat box because the litter is covered with paper. She thinks she's peeing on a flat surface when its really another litter pan in disguise!!!!!

Yea, so now I get to feel smart about how my solution is working. Then I realize that stupid cat now has 4 litter boxes and 3 litter pans she can pick and choose from at her leisure and I STILL need to make sure they are all immaculate all the time. Of course, now I get to tell this story to folks and say LITTERCEPTION!!!!!!