Monday, December 9, 2013

Honest

We took Miss Kitty to a no-kill shelter today.
Not too happy about it, but it needed to be done.
 
Of all of us, Evelyn feels the most sad about it because Miss Kitty was sort of hers. Miss Kitty liked to sit on her lap and slept on her bed and I always told Evelyn that when she moved out, if Miss Kitty was still around, she had to take her with her.
 
Let's be honest, it's not my favorite thing as a parent, to take away something the kids love, but for the past... year? Ages it seems like, one of the cats (there are 5 in the house) has pooped outside of the litter box and everyday Andrew or I have to clean up the poop.  This gets old, really fast.
 
We got a new couch last year, a nice leather one, and about a month after we got it, one of the cats peed on it.  If you have cats, you know how strongly cat urine smells and no amount of cleaner or spray can completely eradicate it.  I was so upset, the pee was on the part of the couch where I usually sat and every time I sat there, I could smell the pee which made it miserable for me. The problem was, we didn't know which cat it was, so we had to wait and wait until we could catch the cat in the act.
 
We finally caught the culprit, and it was Miss Kitty.
 
Our previous house was criticized for smelling like cat pee from prospective buyers. I wasn't happy when I heard that and was quite embarrassed. When we moved here, we made the decision that any cat caught doing business outside of the litter box would be ejected from the new house. Imagine our surprise when we had to toss out 3 cats! Don't worry, all our cats and dog are fixed. No pee smells after that. Then we had to cat-sit two cats and we found out they didn't use the litter box and the owners decided they didn't want them back, either. So we tossed the fixed male outside, but the 
un-spayed female had to go to a shelter.
 
It has been a rule we've kept since we moved here more than 8 years ago. I love cats, and I accept the cat hair and the litter box chore, and the occasional hair ball on the bed, but I cannot love the smell of cat pee on the furniture or in the house, so Miss Kitty had to go.  If it was summer, I'd throw her outside and she can join the other outside cats, but there's a blanket of snow out there and that would just be cruel to take a spoiled housecat and toss her in the snow. So to a big no-kill shelter she went.
It's a nice shelter and I'm sure someone will fall in love with her and give her a home. We were gone from the house for 5 hours and I have to tell you, it was nice not to find poop outside of the litter box when we got back.
 
About the couch-- I recently found a recipe for a spray that is supposed to work wonders on dog and cat urine, so I mixed it up and tried it out last night and as of this morning, I don't smell any pee. I vacuumed the couch, and pretty much doused the bottom where the cushions go and the cushions themselves. It was all dry by morning and I no longer smell anything but the spray on the couch, but the cushions could use another spray, which to me is understandable, the foam in there probably absorbed the pee.  Tonight, I'm going to flip the couch over and spray the underside and the cushions again. I hope the spray works, because the couch is still in good shape and I'd like to keep it for as long as I can.