Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Speaking of Pee

You may know that we used to have two cats, Katafanga and Kathmandu. Kathmandu is the nice one and Katafanga was the one with lots of personality (who also bit people a lot). Both cats were fifteen years old. Katafanga died of cancer in his face about six months ago. About three months ago poor little Kathmandu had a major stroke that left her lying on the ground pedaling her feet in circles in Seth and Elise's yard. After approximately $1200 worth of vet tests and two months of intravenous fluids, we discovered that her stroke was apparently idiopathic (they don't know what caused it) and she has regained 98% of her mobility.

So that is all great - we have our sweet little old lady cat back. The bummer part is that she is still a little addled from her major brain episode. She used to be an indoor/outdoor cat and although she spent much of her time inside, she did all her pooping and peeing outside (and has for the past 14.5 years). When we tried to let her outside after her stroke, she wandered around looking confused and the one time she got out accidentally she was gone for two days and we only got her back by scouring the neighborhood and crawling under a nearby apartment building to retrieve her.

So now Kathmandu is an inside only cat. Which means that not only is she inside but her poop and pee are also inside. She has been great about using the litter box but we have a tiny house and there is no "out of the way" place to put the litter box. Thus it is in our bathroom. And even though I try to clean the box every day (I don't always succeed), there is always scattered about cat litter on the floor of the bathroom and it constantly reeks of cat pee in there. It doesn't help that Kathmandu is old and addled and basically walks into the box and immediately pees with her butt facing the door (she often misses and ends up getting pee all over the floor). It also doesn't help that with her balance being slightly off since the stroke, we took the door off the litter box and have just left the opening open.

If any of you more experienced indoor cat people have recommendations for how to reduce the litter scatter or the pee smell... let me know. I love Kathmandu dearly and I will continue to put up with a bathroom that smells like pee and a situation where I get cat litter on my feet after a shower or during my midnight visits to the loo. But my quality of life would significantly improve if someone had a genius solution to this problem.

Yours in pee,
c.

1 comment:

TiffAnn said...

sorry C.... I don't know what your litter box is like, but I used to have problems with Kit-Kat (and Ellie) missing the litter. I went to an open (i.e., no lid) box with very high sides. I use giant garbage bags as a liner (box goes INTO the bag), so urine never touches the pan itself. Keeps the pee inside. No answer for the litter scatter. I sweep all the time.