One day while at work my husband sent me a picture via email of a cat and asked if we could take it home. Apparently a guy in his office found it and he already had two cats so this little guy needed a new home. My knee-jerk reaction was not only no but hell no. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that if it was me wanting a new pet and we had was one, Cass, my husband would have said hell yes to me. So in an effort to be the partner he is to me, I said yes, but you're cleaning the litter box. Oh, the other stipulation was that I got to name him.
I knighted him Tuzigut (if you ask why that will be another long story). So Tuzi, as we took to calling him, came to live with us. Honestly, not sure that Cass cared all that much, When she got too close he batted at her and let her know what his boundaries were. So my loving husband bought cat litter and his little litter box, or his potty. While he cleaned it often, my husband not the cat, I would still come home complaining that the house smelled. I knew it was something I would learn to deal with. Unfortunately for Cass the temptation was too much. The litter box had a dome top to reduce the smell,(and give the cat some privacy) but that didn't slow her down. She'd finagle her head into the box and go to town like it was a frickin' buffet. You would have never known she was chomping down on the Tootsie rolls except she would come into the living room with a cat litter mustache like a "Got Milk": as. A few times I caught her with her head in the candy dish. I would yell her name to make her stop but it would scare her. She would jump and the dome lid would pop off and get stuck around her neck. Then you would have to helop her out of her pastic head piece.
Even though I would complain (loudly), my husband said this was just something I would have to get used to, it was part of having a cat AND a dog. So I tried, really I did, to keep the complaining to a dull humorous roar. Eventually, Tuzi figured out how to use the doggie door and started utilizing the backyard as his potty. While I didn't enjoy the occasional smell wafting from the sage bush, but between that and the litter box Cass' snack pack, I could deal with it. So for a few months we all lived together happily. Our new feline friend began to grow on my as well. He was sweet, when he wanted to be And that was something I could relate to. But not everything was going so smoothly. It all began slowly, occasionally. Nothing major. We started finding Cass sitting at the patio door, waiting. Sometimes she was inside, other times outside. We honestly thought nothing of it for who know how long. We would just open the door for her and she would happily come through. Occasionally, we would laugh about her being fussy. But then she started whimpering, in the middle of the night, to be let in or out. We thought she was hurt but it was primarily to get our attention. My husband was convinced she had gotten too big for the doggie door. We argued about, took measurements of her and the door and shopped for a new door. But then one time I saw her poke her head through the door, as if to just check and *BAM* out of nowhere Tuzi jumped and swatted as her head. She quickly pulled her head back through the door. She would then resume her sentry stand by the doggie door. When I told my husband he was partly proud of the stealth attack by Tuzi but ultimately knew we had to protect Cass' right to potty. But how do you discipline an animal who could care less about your needs, desires and mandates or your treats? So we continued to open the patio door for our bullied dog when we had a perfectly good doggie door. Oh, but its not like we could get rid of the dog door insert cuz the damn cat continued to use the doggie door.
So what's the solution? How do you make a dog and a cat share a dooggie door? How do you show a cat that you are the alpha in the house?
I don't know.
Tuzigut ran away one night and never came back. My husband was convinced that a coyote ate him. I on the other hand, refused to admit 1.) he died because I didn't like the little box or 2.) that there was something close to our house that could potentially eat us. I chose to believe he just moved on to another house. I mean that makes the most sens right? Not a coyote that would have made its way down the river bead that was behind our house. Com'on he ran away before! That's how we got him! He was a feline whore! Not lunch. Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment