As
I related last week, when the new air conditioner came in, the cat boxes went out. Well, actually they came in as well, inside the living room, but metaphorically speaking they went out... out of their former home in the box that housed the A/C unit the previous owners of this condo must have taken with them.
Neither Dusty nor Jinx were real pleased by this, accustomed as they were to pushing through the cat door into their own smelly little two-box paradise. In fact, we had a few days of concerned confusion, since we didn't see Jinxie actually use the new box (seen to the right) for like three days. We were sure she was using it; we didn't find or smell any poo/pee around the condo, and when I scooped it there seemed to be more than Dusty could have produced by himself, but she was apparently crossing her legs, biding her time, and darting in for a quick squat when we were out of the room or out of the condo.
We still had the old litter boxes, of course, but we had them sitting on the back patio with all the other post-construction junk. We're planning on moving the A/C unit out (and putting it where?) once fall comes, and putting the cat boxes back where they were previously. Besides, where else do you put cat boxes? It's not like you're going to wash them out use them for dinner plates.
The cats didn't get on the back patio for a few days after the A/C came in since it was too fricking hot to leave the back door open. Which is sort of why we got the damn A/C in the first place. It's been cooler the past half week though, and with the restoration of their unregulated access to the unfettered joys of the untrammeled outdoors, or at least the approximately 2x3 meters of them our second story patio affords, the cats were off to explore. They soon found the catboxes, and made use of the one with some litter still in it.
It was a strangely-pathetic image, Dusty, circling and then carefully aligning his ass over approximately a handful of litter... yet there he was late last week, painstakingly aiming his squattage for the 1/10th of the box that still had litter in it. Sadder yet was the sight of him trying to bury it without putting his shoveling front paw in the steaming evidence. I took pity on him, and my nose, and dumped in some more litter. Since then, he's been using the outside box every chance he gets. Sunday I was at the gym for an hour and a half, then came back and showered and went to run some errands. By the time I got home the backdoor had been closed for a good 3 hours, and when I opened it and sat down to eat my Baja Fresh tres tacos, Dusty promptly hustled his ass out there and made his first stop the old litter box.
Free range poo! Perhaps the open sky and fresh air invigorates him?
He's since made a habit of this; posting himself beside the closed back door and meowing plaintively when we return home, or when I get up in the morning. He'll use the inside one if he has to, but he seems to prefer the great outdoors. Shouldn't he feel exposed and vulnerable, or something? Stupid animal.
Jinx, for her part, got over her skittishness and has been spotted utilizing the indoor facilities on a regular basis. Odder yet, she spends more time out on the patio than Dusty, but doesn't seem to be using the outside box at all. In fact, she was inside the inside one, kicking and making bad smells, not half an hour after the successful conclusion of Dusty's latest wilderness expedition.
In other, equally unimportant cat news, the Albertson's supermarket in Lafayette is shutting down. It's no loss to us; we never shopped there because their prices are higher than Safeway's, and since there's a larger, newer, cleaner Safeway literally 50 meters from the going-out-of-business Albertson's, for those rare occasions that we actually go to the supermarket for something.
This is cat-related because... they're selling off everything for 70% off, and they had lots of pet food when we went by the last day they were open. Unfortunately all they had for cats were treats; all the canned food was for dogs. I got a can anyway, since it was like eighteen cents, and opened it up for the cats over Malaya's objections.
"How different can the crap be?" I asked rhetorically, and with the cats following me around and meowing in eagerness, I seemed to have a point.
They changed their tune once I stopped teasing them and put the food down though, and after some curious sniffing, they left it all but untouched. Jinxie actually looked offended, sniffing once and then wheeling around and actually running out of the kitchen. Dusty took a few bites, but even he, undiscerning creature that he is, wouldn't eat the stuff. And here's what the plates looked like after ten minutes.
I dumped the food and was glad to see that at least the garbage disposal was willing to swallow it. Needless to say, I'm blaming the cats for this incident, and withholding their dessert as punishment.
Labels: dusty, jinx, pets
