We used to have three cats. I had Mao before Jerad and I got together (sheesh, that means he's almost 8?), then about a year after we started dating we decided to get a kitten (Tobee). Whie we were at the vet getting that kitten neutered, there was a sad little kitten there that had been abandoned and was begging us to take him home (Winston). So then we had Mao, Tobee and Winston. After a few years Winston moved a few blocks over and fell in love with another family and their cat. We thought he was missing then randomly saw him while we were on a walk a few months later. He had doubled in size, was wearing a collar, and snuggling with another cat on someone's porch. Since he was clearly loving and thriving in his new home we didn't try to take him back figuring that if we did we'd have to keep him locked up all the time or he'd just be escaping back there. Awhile after that, our cat snatching neighbor stole Tobee. She lured him away with canned food then locked him in her house. Again, he was happy, and although she was a psycho she was taking good care of him so we decided it wasn't worth the drama.
We decided once we moved to a non cat napping neighborhood we'd try getting another cat. Meaning I talked about it all the time and Jerad didn't shoot me down. So about 2 months after we bought the new house I adopted this guy:
(he has 2 eyes... its just a bad pic)
He was pretty chill, and playful but not batshit crazy which is just what we'd wanted. Kittens are cute when they're running around, but no one wants them climbing up the curtains. Or your legs. So, Jerad named him Monster and he hung out mostly under our bed for 2 days.
Until I found him a friend (also through the Humane Society):
Jerad first named him "Beast" short for Wildebeest (seriously I don't know why I let him name anything), but since he looked almost EXACTLY like our old cat Tobee we ended up changing his name to Tobee since that's what we kept calling him by mistake.
Once Tobee came, Monster warmed up to the world and the two kittens because inseparable. They are total lovers.
Oh Monster's second day at our house I was in Marshall's room changing his diaper when Monster peed on his bed. Like it was no big deal. Hmm. I threw everything in the wash and chalked it up to him being in a new place and being confused. Then a few days later one of them peed on me in my sleep. It was harder to make an excuse for that one since there was a litter box in the same room. Right after that Jerad went out of town and one or both of them just stopped using the litterbox. They're both neutered and not old enough to spray so I had no idea what was up.
Dogs I can deal with. What the heck do you do about a CAT that refuses to be potty trained? Its not like you can kennel train them. I've always just put a litterbox out and the cat uses it. No training required. Over the next few days whenever I came home I'd have to search around and find the pee. Cat pee is horrrrrrrible. It smells bad, you have to use special enzyme cleaners to get it out. You really have to wash anything that gets cat pee on it the second it happens otherwise its super hard to get it out. A clean freak like me was going crazy.
To make matters worse, they seemed to like peeing on the beds, especially if they were unmade.So I'd get up in the morning, make breakfast, then find that I had to change the bedspread, blanket, sheets, and mattress pad. DAILY. I decided if I couldn't fix the problem, they were going to have to go, starting with the black one who I think was the culprit. I'm all about committing to caring for an animal for life but this was ridiculous. I eased my guilt by telling myself we'd be able to find them a home asap since they were still kittens, already neutered and had their shots.
So I started googling. I started out by confining them to our bedroom so that I didnt have to worry about the whole house. I read that cats like things CLEAN, so I started cleaning the litter boxes twice a day instead of the once a day I'd been doing. I made the bed the second I got out of it in the morning. I made sure there was no laundry left on the floor (since for some reason one or both of them liked peeing on my discarded pj's or bath towel). I vacuumed in the morning and at night.
After a few days and just when I thought we were making progress, one of them (I'm pretty sure Monster was always the culprit) peed on a hand towel that had fallen into the sink. Oi. I read that apparently some cats don't like certain types of cat litter. Who knew? So out with the Tidy Cats and in with the expensive all natural wheat litter. Side note; I could totally understand why a cat would prefer it, it has a texture like beach sand and doesn't smell like chemicals. Accidents got fewer and fewer however during this time Monster got diarrhea that would not go away. Before we adopted him his foster family had been feeding him Science Diet, and we switched him to Purina which is what Tobee had been eating with plans to eventually switch them to Felidae, like Mao eats, once their kitten appetites slowed down.
Apparently Purina kitten chow does not agree with our little kitty chow connoisseur. Since cleaning up liquid cat poo does not agree with ME, we switched back to the Science Diet Naturals. Which is $27.99 for a 7lb bag. Kill me now. Luckily Petco was having a killer sale of about a dollar a pound and I stocked up. I should have stocked up more... we're on the last bag :/
Luckily the accidents stopped altogether and the kittens can now roam the house without me having to worry. Which is great, because I was all out of tricks. The only other thing I was going to try was buying the special Cat Attract cat litter, which we didn't end up needing to do. We still keep them shut out of Marshall's room and the guestroom unless we're in there with them but its been almost 3 weeks without a problem so I think we're in the clear.
Now we're just dealing with all the annoying kitten stuff. Like, they DO climb the curtains. And they run laps across our bed at 1am. And 3am. And 5am. They knock water glasses off the night stand. They play too rough and scratch us. They attack our legs if we move them at night. They taunt the dogs through the sliding glass door. They gang up and bully Mao. They both meow too much. They steal the farm animals from Marshall's cloth farm. They attack my feet when I'm making midnight bathroom trips. They unroll the bathroom toilet paper. They steal Jerad's contact pods.
BUT... I can live with all those things and know that eventually they'll grow out of them. They also sure do like to cuddle and they're both very patient with Marshall. I guess they're here to stay.
PS: y'all have seen this right?
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