Catpiss

I suppose this was inevitable. A fitting conclusion to the “Cat Excrement” trilogy. Nala’s having a hell of a time lately. Or I am. Anyway, this thing she’s doing has evolved to cover just about everything. The cat just does whatever she wants whenever she wants to. I don’t know what to do.

I know she’s just a cat, but she’s also company. And she’s been pretty damned good company for about four years now. She showed up at my place, and she’d obviously been around people on some level. She was extremely good at conning my girlfriend into letting her in the house, and she pulled that off within the hour. I had a pretty bad mouse issue at the time, and Nala was good at what she did from the start.

I think my girlfriend named the cat after some popular cartoon character or something. I’m pretty sure it was from “The Lion King.” I’ve looked up the name origin, and it’s supposed to mean gift, or possibly the Swahili meaning “dubious.” Both meanings seem to have some basis in fact these days…

I’ve had other pets through the years, and I guess most of those relationships have ended badly as well. I had to give up a dog that I’d had for a couple of years (Eliza has a great home, and I’m able to visit her at my pleasure), and my girlfriend’s blue heeler passed on in the same year. That dog’s passing hastened the end of my relationship with the girl…We had fundamental differences of opinion on so many topics…

But the cat, it seemed at the time, was a good call. Nala’s been the best of my cats through the years. Dr. Pangloss was great while he was still around, but that cat met a mysterious end involving a late night phone call, a basketball game, and a bottle of Jim Beam. I’ll never be able to determine the whole story of what happened that night in April of ’03…

I don’t know where I’m going with any of this except that the cat’s litter box was changed two days ago, and it hasn’t been used. I haven’t figured out yet where she’s pissing and shitting, but I’ve certainly ruled out the one place all that junk is supposed to be. I suspect there’s been some activity on a downstairs bed. Probably an upstairs one two. I don’t smell the catshit yet, but I’m sure it’s out there. It will be a little gift to me somewhere down the road.

I should count myself lucky, I suppose, that it’s summer, and the windows are all open on the place. I guess it’s airing itself out enough right now to now to avoid a present problem, but this will all come home to roost soon enough.

The cat offered a lot of resistance to my idea of keeping her in the shower room for the weekend. I wanted to get this thing all under control back on Friday. I’d had an oral surgery that day, and my brother was bringing over his dog for the weekend. Nala doesn’t play well with others, so I thought that might be a good time to just keep her in that room with a completely cleaned out litter box, and see what happened. What ended up happening was that she saw my brother’s truck with Chop-dog in the passenger seat. (The dog’s name is Chopper) The cat went nuts. She ran like I haven’t seen her move in a long time when she knew she was being contained in that room. It just wasn’t going to work out, and I didn’t feel like hunting her down at that point. My mouth hurt.

So the dog stays with me for the weekend on the sunporch, and the cat kind of has her way with the place. That’s fine and all, but she still isn’t using the damned litter box. At all. For the moment, I’ll chalk it up to her being pissed off at the presence of Chop-dog and the inconveniences this has caused her.

She started screaming at me about two months ago. I think she was telling me at that time that she had fleas. So I’ve taken care of that problem, but it looks like Nala just isn’t going to let that thing die. Or maybe I haven’t gotten all the fleas…I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore, except that I’m doing a shitton of laundry.

The screaming has subsided, but now it seems there’s just a lot of indifference. She doesn’t much care about much of anything, and the only things she seems to care about are contrary to me maintaining a standard of living that doesn’t involve catpiss in every room of the house.

She wasn’t even mean to the dog this weekend (a stark contrast to her true nature), and I fear she may be ill. I’m not in a position to pay a bunch of money for her to kick the cat-hiv. That’s a pretty big fear of a diagnosis, but she’s lost a lot of weight…Back to the vet soon…

I’m pretty sure no one reads this, but any ideas or suggestions are welcome. The clock’s ticking on this cat, and it’s too bad, because she’s damned good company.