Yes, that's my couch enveloped in a
flashy layer of aluminum foil. It's all the rage now, yo.
Potty training a puppy is one thing -
you expect to have accidents throughout the first 6-8 months. But
what do you do when your cat, who is old enough to know better,
decides the world is his litter box?
I use the term “potty training”
loosely, obviously the dog isn't using the toilet. You know what I
mean.
It took a good 6 months to get Meatball
to signal properly when he needed to go outside, then another three
months before he could hold it long enough that he wasn't signaling
every hour on the hour.
The cat is another thing.
Leo's been a good cat. He learned to
use the litter box quickly, and never had accidents. Unlike our first
cat, our beloved Tracy-Cat, who frequently enjoyed playing poo-hockey
with her desiccated turds. Thankfully, it only lasted for a few weeks
during kitten-hood.
Leo's sedentary life was turned upside
down once we brought the dog home. Did you know that dogs eat
everything, and ANYTHING? This would include dog food, cat food , cat
litter - including said litter's tasty tasty contents.
The cat box resided in a closet, so the
door was closed up except when the puppy was being crate trained, and
therefore, unable to access it. Same with the food. Up on the counter
so puppy can't get it. There was ample time for Leo to eat and do the
needful, but he was usually indulging in more interesting things like
sleeping, or teasing the crated dog.
Most of the time this situation worked
out okay, but one day we noticed the couch in our back room
looked....weird. It had a blotchy yellow sheen to it. Since I don't
work from home anymore, we don't use the room much. As you can see
from the photo above, it's an old, putty colored, “leather” (or
so they claimed) lump. Ugly and oversized for the small back room,
but it served it's purpose for 12 years. Apparently it's purpose now
was adjunct toilet for the cat.
Why he picked there, I have no idea.
Maybe because the room isn't used often, maybe he had an axe to grind
with the couch. He must have been doing this for a while, because the
underside of the cushions showed each subsequent level of urine
stain, much like rings on a tree.
At this point, everyone is thinking,
“Didn't you SMELL it?”. Well, actually... no.
I have no idea why. Maybe he drinks a
lot of water, but it didn't smell, and I'm just thankful for that
anomaly.
Of course I was completely skeeved out
– I wanted that thing GONE. The carpet too, simply because it was too close to Leo's pee cooties.
Hubby wanted to see if we could salvage
it, or at least make it less likely to get peed on until we get
it to the dump. We bought several bottles of Urine Off and saturated
the couch. Urine Off works great by the way. It didn't matter, I
wasn't EVER sitting on that piece of furniture again.
I should also point out that the back
room is a small, sunken room, accessible only by bare wood steps.
Meatball is afraid to go down them, and we've reinforced that. Maybe
that's why the cat picked that room – the one place the dog isn't
allowed. With that revelation, I moved the litter box back there
too.
Leo christened the couch a few more
times, so after dousing it with magical Pee-B-Gone, it's now engulfed
in aluminum foil. Oh yeah, I find little pin holes in the foil now
and again, so I know he's tried to walk over it, or taste it, but we
haven't had any pee problems as long as we keep the couch covered.
There's only been one other incident.
I'm very diligent about cleaning the
litter box. However, I went on a business trip, and the day I came
back it was time to clean the box. It was late, I was tired, I went
to bed. Bad decision.
Next morning, the entire downstairs
smelled like a sewage treatment plant on a hot day. There had to be a
turd somewhere, probably one the size of a football, I just couldn't
find it.
Then I did. Under my desk. A turd of
epic proportions. A protest poo.
Sigh.
Anyway, I think we've fixed everything
now. As long as the couch is foiled and the litter box is
consistently cleaned, "V For Vendetta" Kitteh rests quietly at my feet.
By the way, on the next nice day above
50 degrees, you best be sure Hubs and I will be outside chain-sawing
that lump of leather into pieces and hauling it to the dump. And the
carpet too.
