The Litter Gauntlet
02.17.05 / 11:50PM / Joe
Thought I'd do a cat update. It will not be long before Zoe turns one, and I'm slowly starting to think that the worst is behind us. As she storms out of kittenhood, she's bothering Annie less and causing less trouble around the house.
We're not there yet. She will still pounce on Annie for no reason, or suddenly fashion an interest in something on the kitchen countertop... but it's nowhere near the crazy claw-and-fang kitten attitude we had half a year ago. She may always be more vertically oriented than Annie, meaning we may never break her of scaling shelves or jumping up to the kitchen sink, and that's just going to be her personality. She's also much more stubborn than Annie. Zoe usually needs to be yelled at (or physically removed) two or three times before she'll give up on something, like batting at a window blind pull or climbing over Rhonda's vanity at 3am. After the first warning, she'll just turn around and go immediately back to it. It's actually sort of cute, when it's not 3am.
Those fake cat claws I mentioned before? Even more awesome. Now that she's less violent, the claws last even longer. We're at the point now that we can go for a week or two without having to replace even one of them... while during the height of Crazy Kitten Time we were gluing on a new claw nearly every day.
Here's Zoe today. Full grown, but still kitten-lithe. I tell ya, I like having an all-black cat. Even her nose, lips and whiskers are black. She can cut a pretty scary figure if she wants to... a shadow with glowing eyes and white fangs. And the red claws. Owing to cat aging curves, we place Zoe as roughly the equivalent of a 15 year old human, and Annie is about 55.
Our biggest cat development has been the creation of our Litter Arena. The problem of litter bits getting tracked all over the house has tripled lately. We have to blame impetuous youth for most of it, although Annie certainly drags her share around, being a longhair. So here's what we did:
That is my former 8 foot gaming table, repurposed as the cats' poop parapet. Their respective litter domes are at the end of the path, and the inset table is lined with the honeycombed plastic tracks used for flourescent lighting in drop ceilings. The idea being that the litter on their paws will fall off into the grooves of the 6-7 feet they have to walk to escape the arena. Note that we positioned the trail between the basement's cinder block wall and a faux partition to keep the cats from circumventing the path entirely.
The use of the eggshell lighting cover actually comes from my Mom, who had a similar piece built for her cats. Mom took it one step further and enclosed the whole thing inside a box, so the cats would have to jump up and over to escape the trap.
It definitely traps a huge portion of the litter they carry out of the boxes. Not all of it, invariably some particles will make it upstairs to the kitchen/living room anyway... plus their feet isn't the only place cats can carry litter around, ahem. Still, seems like a good idea. Or at least a funny one. | 
