Design on a Dime

We've installed a second bathroom in the house. Kinda like in the movie, The Help, where a second bathroom was highly endorsed, only it's not really like that at all. We finally gave in. Threw down the white flag of surrender, and realized after about a week's worth of cleaning up a pile of poop on the rug, that the problem just wasn't going to go away.

But let me back up first, there's more to the pooping backstory.

Remember when (maybe you don't, why would you remember this, really) I had a bright idea to put newspapers down on the floor in the living room when we travelled, just in case the cat pooped? It would make it much easier to clean up, and wouldn't be sitting on the rug while we were gone. We came home to lots and lots and lots of poops all over that newspaper.

I thought it was a rather successful idea.

Until we went to Vegas over Christmas. We were only gone a couple of days, left on a Sunday, home on a Wednesday. What's the likelihood of poop in that short amount of time? But we put papers down anyway, just in case.

Came home to poop on the papers. Picked it up, threw it out and thought I was done with it.

However. It's never that simple, is it.

I had left the un-pooped on papers on the floor that first night. And the next morning when I got up? Twinkle took a shit right in front of me, on the paper.

I stared in disbelief.

We'd never ONCE thought that Twinkle was the phantom floor pooper. For some reason we seem to believe he's the Smart Cat of the family. We had always assigned him a level of excellence that this incident of pooping leveled.

Unless. Unless, in fact, that my putting the paper down on the floor trained him to believe that the entire living room was now one big litter box. And believe you me, he had a good time scratching around on it before he took his catshit. I watched him go to work, I was in such disbelief that surely the cat that we regarded so highly wasn't actually going to take a shit on the floor (newspaper) right before my eyes. But he did. Oh yes, he did.

So now? We've given up. We put a 2nd litter pan in the corner of the living room. And they have all gone cat-shit-crazy with the freedom/luxury of not having to walk all the way to the back room to do their *what I wish was more personal* business.

Now we get to enjoy the sound and smell of all five of them taking turns pissing and shitting while we watch television/read/blog. Because believe me, they have ALL been enjoying it immensely. It's NEW, of course they are all going to use the newly installed bathroom. They line up to take turns in there.

And I only put a small litter pan there, never anticipating that it would be such a popular pooping spot. As a result, Girl Cat's fat ass sometimes hangs over the edge when she gets in there, and I've had to pick poop up off of the floor anyway.

I've hesitated to even write this blog, because I'm sure you haters out there will think that I have a shit-filled house. However, we do clean it as soon as it happens, so it's not like we're going to qualify for an episode of Hoarders. At least not yet. When I cut a hole in my recliner and decide to just shit right here in the living room while I enjoy uninterrupted blogging, then you may need to stage an Interference. Right now we're still of the mindset to clean it up.

But I watch myself ever so carefully, because Hoarders were at one time Just Like Everyone Else. But then came some defining moment, that pivotal moment when they just stepped over the pile of shit and sat down and watched t.v., and the next thing you know, a team of strangers are in your house shoveling decaying cat carcases (carci?) up off the floor. It all begins with that first ignored poop.