Desperate Measures Needed

Any of you that regularly read my blog will know that we've been having some serious problems with our cats acting out. For the record I think it's just one cat, Pria, a.k.a The Bad One, but the paranoid part of my personality thinks that perhaps making these accusations and singleing out one cat as the troublemaker is actually contributing to the revenge episodes.

It started with a few accidents on the bed. At the time, the boys had runny poo from poor quality commercial cat chow, so I thought we were dealing with accidents. Then I started feeding them homemade food and the poo solidified nicely. Yet there would still be little presents on our bed, both number one and number two. I started to notice a pattern. Whenever the cats were upset about something - lack of attention, less than spotless litterbox, time spent with cat-sitter, etc. - we would get a very clear message of revenge. Unfortunately, the preferred spot for these little gifts has always been our bed.

After a while, Rico and I decided to be proactive about the situation. I clean the litterbox compulsively. We make a special effort to play with the cats, give them new toys, make sure they have a good diet, and whatever else seems necessary to keep them healthy and happy. We also decided to keep our bedroom door closed during the day, thus eliminating the possibility of revenge poos or pisses on the bed while we are away. This seemed to work for a while.

The problem is that I love to sleep with the cats. Obviously this has become problematic, as Rico and I wake up multiple times each time Pria or Parceiro shifts around, paranoid that they are about to let fly on the bed. Our quality of sleep has significantly declined, and we finally came to the sad decision that we must keep the boys out of our bedroom at night as well.

Not surprisingly, they are not at all happy about this decision. The first few nights they (and by they I mean Pria) showed their disapproval by pissing on the guest bed and the couch. Then the boys (and again by boys I mean Pria) learned how to open the door to our bedroom by stretching their paws up and leaning on the handle. They were opening the door once every five minutes. Obviously another solution was in order to help recuperate our peaceful sleep.

The other night Rico had an idea. We have a large wicker chest of drawers in the bedroom that slides nicely across the floor and is just the right size and weight to wedge in front of the door so that feline attempts to open said door are thwarted. This keeps the boys out of the bedroom, but it pisses them off and makes them, well, piss all over the house. It also involves us learning how to fall asleep listening to what sounds like someone trying to break into the house. You wouldn't think that little cats could make such an impact when jumping against a door, but they certainly do. It's terrible.

Every morning we wake up and follow our noses to find the lastest pile of poo or pool of piss left during the night. My only hope is that castrating the boys will help this problem. We would have already done it, but getting cats neutered in Mozambique is not a cheap procedure. Right now we are waiting on a check from one of our consulting projects that should be issued by Friday. Once that money is available, we are putting the cats in their handmade wicker cat carrier and marching them straight to the Vet school at Eduardo Mondlane University for the big snip.