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  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License

after cleaning out the litterboxes, i am once again amazed at how much lighter the cats must become every day. it’s my routine to scoop out the litterboxes first thing every morning. i often ask myself “how masochistic can you get to start your day this way?” but i play the ole’ game that’s a native language by now: turn it into something else. i call it “put a sunday dress on it and just keep on going”.

for litterbox duty, i have an entire wardrobe of sunday dresses:

• pretend i’m looking for buried treasure (without a map) (but then it’s a relatively small area to cover) as i poke around with the scoop.
• think how much better it will smell - how nice it will be to breathe. (this is one the dog won’t play along with because, for reasons i hope i never understand, the dog finds it aromatic.) (and i swear the cats torment me and entice the dog by not bothering to cover up some deposits.) (or maybe they’re just especially proud of those. who knows?)
• imagine i’m ridding my entire life of the stinky, undesirable messes caused by other people: just scooping them out, bagging ‘em, and tossing them in the garbage can to be hauled off way far away.
• and when in my more-calvinistic frame of being, nothing will work but to think about how good it’s going to feel to finish and check this off the list.

this morning ritual is quite the event for the cats, too, who magically appear to watch and lament, “you’re not getting rid of that, are you? it’s a part of me. oh, really. how could you?” [emphasis theirs] then, in one of the few bonding moments between them, one cat turns to the other and says “can you believe she’s throwing that away?”

once scooping is finished, i sweep around the litterbox. i have actually considered getting one of those small kiddie swimming pools to use as a litterbox in hopes of containing the litter spray. no matter how deep the litterbox, no matter how large the litterbox, those cats just flat out prefer the corners. (either that or i’m right: they have a sadistic streak.)

what about lidded litterboxes, you ask? forget about it. my cats won’t even think about using those. “too confining”, they say. or “it’s dark in there.” and the ever popular “i would NEVER” delivered in the i-am-a-cat-so-i-don’t-have-to-justify-this-to-you manner.

one cat even had the audacity to refuse to use the lidded litterbox on the grounds that he was actually helping me. seems he was operating under the grossly delusional idea that i needed something to do. (but now that i think about it, he could’ve been sincere. i mean, given that the only exercise my cats get is watching me work.)

once our daily family ritual is complete and everything put back in its place, the animals are worn slap out. the dog stretches out within 2 feet of wherever i am. and when she’s really tired, she stretches out on my feet so she can sleep soundly, assured that i can’t move without her knowing about it.

one cat (the black one) runs to claim his chair (the white one) (the only piece of light-colored furniture in the entire house, of course). the pastel tabby (i think they call it) retires to the bed where she contorts, preens, and sheds as much fur as possible.

all of them settle down eventually, resting up for another big day tomorrow.

and who says we don’t live lives right smack dab on the edge . . .

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