It’s been a sad week at the Sommerer’s. The saddest part is that one of the cats has stopped using the litter box for #2. A month or so ago Cricket was peeing on the bathroom rugs, so we’re pretty sure that she’s the culprit.
Brad will be staying here while Lloyd and I are in Missouri with our families in July, and I joked to him, “If you find poop twice in the basement or once in a living area, put ’em down.” Yeah, that was funny until Wednesday night I discovered three piles of poop downstairs. I was pretty upset, and told Lloyd, “This can’t happen.” We’ve been cleaning the litter box daily since the pee episodes, so there’s no reason for her not to use it.
Friday night there was poop and pee downstairs. There was much weeping and Cloroxing on my part, and we decided to take them to the vet in the morning. If this was unfixable, I wanted them both put to sleep. We’re pretty sure it’s Cricket, but what if we only had her put to sleep and it turned out to be Pfennig? That would be bad. (To help us gather evidence, we’ve been using the webcam on my laptop. It has not been helpful so far.)
Anyway, long story made longer, we made an appointment for 11:30, and I wept my way around the morning. I sniffed, “I don’t know where we should bury them outside.” In a very kind voice, Lloyd said, “Lauren, they take care of the bodies.”
I know what that means – they throw them in a dumpster.
“No.” (crumbling into tears)
I sobbingly said that they could go under the hostas, since that’s where they like to sleep when they’re outside.
Lloyd is the best boy in the whole wide world. He went right out and dug a grave.
Well, we took them in and the vet said that ‘inappropriate elimination’ has many reasons, and gave us a couple of things to try. So, we have another litter box in another spot, and are putting some ‘attractant’ in there, because our old cats are becoming too senile and stupid to know what to do. We’re giving it another week or so, and if it keeps happening, we’ll put them to sleep.
That’s it. Warning: If and when this actually does happen, I will not want to talk about it. I hate crying.