Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Who's the Bigger Idiot?

Okay, I can't decide. Is Ratman really the bigger idiot in this family or is it ME for staying married to him for 22 1/2 years? C'mon, I REALLY want to know.

Our daughter found a kitten about a year ago that was dirty, flea ridden and hungry. Being the rescuers that we are, we took her in. We cleaned her up, had her spayed and declawed, got her shots, the whole nine yards. We named her Wednesday. Two reasons: we love The Addams Family and that was the day of the week we found her. Aren't we clever?

Wednesday is giving us problems in the form of peeing on the couch and on MY bed! I swear I want to kill her. We have researched high and low to figure out what is wrong. We have tried giving her more attention, we have tried spanking her (which I don't like, but we have to do SOMETHING and we don't beat her, just a few slaps on the butt after we show her what she did), keeping the litter box VER clean, sometimes cleaning it TWICE a day, and on and on. We have finally narrowed it down to this: When our daughter's fiance left her a nice note telling her to move out (yeah whole other post), she moved back in here with HER cat. Wednesday doesn't like it when he poops in the litter box that they share. Once he has done that, if we don't clean it RIGHT THEN (for example if we are gone, or sleeping, or just don't notice it yet) she gets mad and lets us know it by peeing on the furniture. We are sure this is the problem.

But what to do?

Ratman is just full of lovely ideas:

1) If we stop feeding Harley he won't poop in the box and Wednesday won't get mad. Ummmm, I guess he has a POINT but, ummm, yeah.

2)If we stop giving Wednesday anything to DRINK she can't pee. (See #1)

And the best idea he has come up with yet:

3) Making 2 litter boxes.

Okay, I tell him "If we make 2 boxes, Harley will just poop in both of them so she will still get mad", to which THIS was his solution: "Put their names on them."

So yeah, I gotta know, which of us is the bigger idiot? UGH!

3 comments:

Triana said...

NAMES! Ha! :) Personally I was thinking two litter boxes myself, until I read, duh, Harley will us both of them. Of course.

Karen said...

I had a problem with a cat doing this years ago and had some good luck with "retraining" the cat. This is done by getting kitty their own litter box, then putting kitty, litter box, food and water in the smallest room in the house for a week. In my case, this was the bathroom. Keep food on opposite side of room than litter box.

After a week, kitty was retrained. She did like having her own box though. She liked pooing in the shower before then.

Also, I used those rubber mattress pads on the bed until I trusted kitty again.

good luck!
Karen

kandi-itsmyblog said...

Karen,

Thank you so much for your comments. This is something we are considering doing.

We have 2 bathrooms and we are actually thinking of putting a box in each one, keeping HER in mine for a few days letting her out now and then, but making her stay enough that she knows there is a clean box there for her. The other cat rarely, if ever comes in my room, and never into my bathroom, so we are thinking that it might work. I will just have to open up my room to her, which at this point I am not doing since she likes to use my bed as a litter box! Luckily, I have caught it right away, soaked most of it up with a towel, and then sprayed really mild bleach water and soaked that up with a towel. There has been no odor left behind at all and no stain on my mattress.

Knowing retraining worked for you is great! That helps TREMENDOUSLY!

Thank you again! I will have to keep everyone posted!