Everybody Poops (sometimes)*

If the title has not sufficiently warned you, this post will deal with the wrong end of our feline friends (or as my husband would say, Offal... Just Offal). Yes, I made a few clinical references to stools in my prior two posts but today will discuss cat poop in more subjective language. I wasn't sure, since as mentioned this is my first blog, whether salty topics like this qualify The Isle of Manwich as "adult content", so I guess we'll see.

Mungo was an indoor/outdoor cat until this summer when a crisis resulted in a thyroidectomy. The basement is where we sequester cats with stitches or who need to be isolated from food before vet visits, and usually whenever Mungo had to stay down there he was always rabid to get out, hanging around by the door and taking a chainsaw to our ankles to get past us. One reason: he hates the litterbox, and prefers to go outside.

Well, after the thyroidectomy he was so exhausted and frail he didn't care about getting out of the basement anymore, just staying in the dark under the futon or other safe hidey-places. (It turned out he'd gone deaf too, though we didn't realize it until he was in constant care.) And he hit the box like gangbusters, peeing (as kidney cats do) in considerable volume. Since, like The Biscuit on Ally McBeal, The Manwich prefers 'a clean bowl', I was pretty busy scooping up after him to keep things civil, and eventually switched over to an Omega Paw rolling model. I have to say that it has made life a lot easier. The large model seems about right for our now-scrawny old man and I think the regular size would only work for very small cats and kittens.

Lately, as either the KD or just old age has made it difficult for him to poop, Mungo has taken to going on the floor if he finds that a lot of straining is involved. He's been pretty good about using the puppy training pads I lay down by the litterbox on days when I can't check the box frequently, but sometimes if he's really having a tough time of it he ends up mincing around the basement until finally something happens, wherever it may. So I've learned to turn all the lights on when I go downstairs, as our basement floor is conveniently cat-poop brown (it's a dark brown acid stain finish with natural variations, so it's excellent camouflage).

Yesterday I came down to check on Mungo and was taken aback by just such a poo. Without going into detail, it was far too large to have come out of any domestic felid. I actually turned my head and looked around by reflex, disbelieving that Mungo was responsible, like maybe I'd see a sheepish railroad tramp crouched behind the gas boiler or something. It really took a second to sink in, and once it did a wave of sympathy hit. It's no fun to carry all that around, and it can't have been easy to divest himself of. Frankly he deserves credit to stay in as good a mood as he has lately.

My husband has no such sympathy for me, since one of our other cats (Bumper) has a litterbox problem where over a year ago she started going just outside the box, on the floor, so we had lots of puppy training pads on hand well before Mungo needed them. Because the box is in his office, he's usually stuck with the task of cleaning all that up. Now Mungo keeps me in similar occupation. We were observing this morning that cleaning up cat poop is almost all we do anymore.

I still hope Mungo will improve enough to start going back outside once in a while (for his own sake, not mine), but it seems unlikely. I tried to take him out on a sunny day recently and he freaked out and couldn't wait to come back in. So I will be rollin' the Omega for a while yet. And when I don't have to anymore (for whatever reason) I'll work on retraining Bumper to start using the box again, or maybe at least the cat flap. She is mostly blind and a little addled, so it takes time to teach her new things.

But they can learn, with persistence and positive reinforcement. It was Mungo's insistence on going potty outdoors, and his habit of waking my husband up at 3am to do so, that made me first put in the cat flap and then, after months of him ignoring it, to begin a program of treats, assisted flap openings and praise that had him coming and going on his own steam in less than two weeks. That may have been my proudest accomplishment of 2007, and I have a decent arsenal of tricks my own self, so that's saying something.


* with apologies to Michael Stipe