Cat Update

I've gotten a couple of emails since I posted about the poop machine, er, I mean cat.

To quickly recap, Jules and I got a previously traumatized cat with some wacky problems. I even went so far as to drop some money on a cat behavior consultant, thereby earning myself some of the most palpable shame I have felt in years.

Anyway, the update is this: the cat has had two teeth extracted by the vet, one which was cracked and the other which was abscessed and was one of the most gnarly things you will ever see. Pumpkin also is constantly on some kind of medication for her ears which get this gross goopy buildup if left alone for a couple of weeks.

The cat at this point has cost us more money than I even want to think about for fear that I will start lighting money on fire in an effort to ensure a greater degree of value/amusement for my dollar.

In all seriousness though, the cat has been better behaved since those teeth came out. She still poops next to the litter box, but we have at least mitigated this problem by putting the boxes in the basement where nobody goes anyway. Of course, having said that, the cat did decide to drop a bomb in my office this morning after I didn't close the door the previous night, so I don't know that there's really progress so much as there is rationalization.

But at least the cat doesn't yowl and holler nonstop and is definitely much more low key than it was before. She's also the most affectionate cat I have ever seen.

This much headache over a cat and some of you actually have kids. I can no longer tell which of us is more insane.

The Scoop on the Poop, or How I Became a Yuppie In One Transaction

Remember Pumpkin?

Unfortunately our emotionally scarred cat has been causing some troubles at home. Troubles in the shape and smell of poop.

Not using the litter box is apparently a common problem for cat owners, so for the first couple of weeks we just figured it was a matter of figuring out the combination of factors that would make the cat comfortable.

For the first few days Pumpkin used the box consistently, but then one day for reasons unknown she dropped the kids off on the kitchen floor instead of at the beach. Despite a thorough scrubbing of the area (using ammonia free products), she would just pick a different spot near the box to do her business.

Obviously we took the cat to the vet assuming there was some kind of problem, but the vet found nothing medically wrong that would explain the behavior. He suggested we confine the cat and retrain her.

We did this and sure enough the cat started using the litter box again. For 4 days. Then the poop started appearing on the floor.

Another visit to the vet and he prescribed Valium, saying it had to be a behavioral problem. Valium for a cat already seemed pretty odd to me, but hey he's the doctor.

It certainly seemed to calm the cat down at night, but didn't stop the poop machine from continuing her habits.

Since then we have tried dozens of things, including:

- Larger litter box
- Multiple boxes
- Multiple litters
- Feline pheromone relaxers
- Thorough cleaning of all boxes
- More toys
- Aluminum foil in places where cat has gone outside the box
- Food in places where cat has gone outside the box
- Vinegar in places where the cat has gone outside the box
- Leaving TV on while gone with birds playing in continuous loop
- Night lites
- Cat Behavior Books
- And Many More!

Absolutely nothing is working, and I'm starting to get concerned that all these efforts might just be exacerbating the problem.

The latest in this long list is keeping the cat in our bedroom since it seems to suffer some separation anxiety when it doesn't know where we are. This is probably a product of past treatment before we got her. We've made sure to play with the cat regularly and give her some catnip about twice a week (as per cat behavior books) to try to get her more relaxed. It's difficult to tell whether any of this does any good with the Valium right now, but overall I do think the cat seems more relaxed than she did on her first day home.

However, last night Jules caught the cat using the litter box to pee, after which she calmly stepped out of it and went to town right there on the floor of our bedroom.

At this point I don't think I've seen Jules this upset and stressed out since taking the bar exam. I know that there is some reason for the cat's behavior and she's not doing it to intentionally enrage us, but it just never seems to get any better.

Most info suggests that the cat is "middening", which is an extreme form of marking the heart of a cat's territory if it feels threatened. If that is what's happening, the frustration is that we can't figure out what is threatening the cat. It seems that it is just a lot of built up stress from past treatment and possibly fearing that our long absences during work hours mean we are abandoning her. I'm grasping at straws here.

Now, about five years ago I would've just suggested giving the cat back to the foster home or dropping it off at the SPCA. However, this particular cat has been in several homes before ours and dropping an adult cat off at the SPCA is basically a death sentence. We've spent a lot of money at this point trying to pinpoint the problem and we've grown attached to the cat, and the programmer part of me really wants to debug what is wrong. Finally, I don't want Jules to be upset that we somehow failed the cat. That probably sounds pretty lame, but the look on her face when we took the cat to the vet and they told us they would need to keep her overnight for testing was pretty heartbreaking. I don't want to imagine what her face might look like giving the cat away permanently.

So, with all of this in mind, I finally made a move that firmly places me in the category of "psychotic yuppie pet owner". I went and paid for a cat psychologist.

For $165 you get a 1-2 hour phone consultation followed by a month of daily follow up. The pragmatic part of me says this is a silly way to spend money, but when I consider the fact that we've probably spent 3-4 times that already on vet visits and trips to the pet store trying to solve this, I figure the worst that happens is the problem doesn't get fixed and we're no worse off than when we started.

A friend rightfully pointed out to me the following: "The You of five years ago would kick your ass for this." I assure you the shame is palpable.

But I also believe that one of the internet's greatest purposes is to make all shame public. And so it is in that spirit that I present myself for your mockery.

Felis Silvestris Catus

So last week we got a cat.

We couldn't just get any cat though. Jules and I had been searching for weeks on Petfinder and whatnot for orange, already declawed cats.

"Declawed". Yes, a word rife with controversy and consternation. I had no clue.

When we went to the National Adoption Weekend being hosted at the local Petsmart and mentioned that we were looking for an already declawed cat, I immediately had several pamphlets and accusatory looks thrown my way. Apparently cat lovers do not take kindly to the declawing process.

Naturally Julie tried to hold her ground with the ladies at the Petsmart who were explaining to us how cruel the whole thing was, and equally naturally I made it my job to make the situation even more of a mess.

Jules: We're looking for an already declawed cat so we don't have to declaw a kitten.

Me: Babe, look at this pamphlet. Did you know that they cut the whole bone off? This looks terrible!

Helpful Cat Lady: Yes, it's so cruel what they do to the poor kitties.

Jules: We don't have a choice, it is in the lease. We have to get one declawed because of the hardwood floors.

Me: (gesturing to the pamphlet) And look at this!! It's not even legal in a lot of European countries! It's considered animal cruelty in England!

Helpful Cat Lady: Yes, we're working hard to see if we can't make it illegal here too.

Jules: This is the landlord's decision, not ours.

Me: Look at this list of countries it is illegal in: England, Israel, Australia...

Jules: (getting angry) We're not declawing one, we're getting one already declawed...

Me: ... Turkey, New Zealand... did you know capon is illegal in England too? Aren't we serving that at the wedding?

Helpful Cat Lady: (narrows eyes)

Me: Japan and Brazil too, and they'll let you get away with a lot of stuff there. It must be really bad.

I was about to mention to the lady that Julie had wanted to declaw the cat because it makes them more tender when you cook them, but I thought that might be going too far and clearly I was already getting in hot water.

Anyway we eventually were able to get a nice older cat named Pumpkin through an adoption agency called Forgotten Cats and the ladies were very nice.

Here you can see her plotting whether to poop inside the litter box or right next to it.

Like I said, we couldn't just get any cat. We had to get one with a sordid past.

Apparently Pumpkin first lived with an owner who became an alcoholic and got rid of her. Then she lived with a family whose kids tortured and tormented her, including keeping her from getting to the litter box on purpose. For the last sixth months she had been with Forgotten Cats in a foster home in a large cage and had licked/chewed most of the hair on her back legs off due to stress. I think they had largely given up hope that she would find a permanent home because she is an older cat and folks typically adopt kittens.

Naturally with this sad story I immediately wanted the cat because yes, I am a sucker. When we were at Petsmart I wanted the old blind cat that probably had about three months to live and the gigantic diseased one that had kitty AIDS (I was prevented from doing so by the claws).

So anyway Pumpkin is old, overweight, missing fur on her back legs and has some dependency issues due to past treatment.

Needless to say, I love this cat.