No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

We have all heard it; we have all had situations were no matter how kind and unselfish we are we get slapped with a fee, fine, bill or something. Here is one case in point, we took in a baby kitten from our grandma to help her get rid of a cat and so our daughter could have a kitten to play with. It was so small and so cute with enormous blue eyes, who could say no.

The kitten is sure of itself these days; no longer the jittery little baby, it is a wiry nimble feline able to climb anywhere. Yesterday it climbed onto the table when we weren’t looking and ate some of Becca’s cereal! Not a shy creature, it boldly goes everywhere in the house. The kitten has had a very difficult time learning how to use the litter box. It was formerly a barn cat and perhaps the entire idea of ‘litter box’ is confusing to it. We have researched the best methods for training it and are keeping it isolated in a small room with a litter box and letting it out (while supervised) to eat and play a little. I don’t know yet if this will work, but we all are trying our best to make it work.

In the mean time, perhaps to show us they are mad or because ‘the other one is doing it’, our other two cats have begun to urinate and defecate all over the house. You can’t know all of the places a cat goes in a days time, so I find little (or should I say big) surprises all over the house. To name a few places there were 8 piles in the corner of my son’s room, a dozen or more behind the entertainment center, about two dozen piles in the basement, one in the dining room, several urine stained shirts and urine behind the two chairs. Yesterday, I am not making this up; one of the cats had the nerve to defecate on top of our coffee table!@#*&!!

So now all of the cats are under lockdown and our once tranquil house has become a toilet. I feel like I am part zookeeper and part cleaning lady. All of the animals are confined and hopefully controlled while I gingerly lifts bed skirts, examines boxes in the closets, explores the crevasses of the basement and looks under all of the furniture. Carpet cleaners, deodorizers and sanitizers are my constant companions and best friends -- my hands are chapped from scrubbing and cleaning.