Litter Box Update

After a week of paleolithic, Minnesotan, cold-ass Little House winter siege, we’d only had one pipe burst. But now my wife’s two cats seemed to be trying to simulate a haunting of our house--tearing around, spinning, clomping into things, batting magnetized items off the fridge and yowling into paper bags. Cabin fever for cats. In nicer weather, they poop outside. “What the hell are they doing down there?” I said from upstairs. My wife thought maybe the litter box needed to be cleaned. She was feeling puny in a female way, so I said I could do it. She ended up following me to the box anyway because she likes to direct me in simple tasks and to confirm that I don’t proceed idiotically. On the back porch stairs it was probably near freezing, but the chill wasn’t suppressing the stink. I said, “It has been getting pretty stinky back here.” She said she couldn't smell the litter pan and I said, “How can you not smell that? It’s like a cat is shitting directly into my nostril!” “Maybe I smell it a little,” wife said. She must have been pretty congested. She went on elseways and I got down to it. Ha haa, cats, I saw all of your poops that you worked so hard to conceal in grit. Must have been a week’s worth of secrets in there. I sacked up the weight of an extra cat in pure shit. Well, to be fair, a lot of that weight was the litter clumped into pee-clods, but still.