Kitten Diary - The Little Monsters - Weeks 2-8

Weeks 2-8

I stop coming home at lunchtime and use an automatic cat feeder to feed them during the day– thankfully they have each other to play with so they won't get too lonely. I have resigned myself to the fact that the house (well the downstairs) is going to stay messy for a while. Any pictures are now permanently laid flat on surfaces, and when they got a bit too curious about a big vase of artificial flowers – that too was moved into the upstairs spare room, which seems to be getting rather full of stuff!

During the course of week two, a new and interesting phase in their toilet routine develops.

It can only be described as....

Sh*t foot

What are you looking at?

I was sitting on the sofa one day and Jason bounced onto my lap. After a while I notice a very strong smell of poo; he absolutely stunk! As I look at him, I notice with horror it’s all over one of his back feet and legs. As I take him into the kitchen, I see it tracked all over the floor. Eeuughh! Using anti-bacterial kitchen wipes, I attempt to clean him first – it’s got right in between his claws and in his fur and takes ages to clean. The situation isn't helped by him struggling and wriggling to get free and my gagging at the terrible smell at such close quarters. As I’m on my own, I have to hold him with one hand and clean with the other. Not easy when he is trying to make a bid for freedom. When he is finally clean, I sterilise the floor and change the litter tray which happens also to be covered with poo –marvellous.

Unfortunately, the situation isn’t a one off; it seems that every time he goes for a poo, in his clumsy attempts to bury it, he stands in it and gets it everywhere, he then tries even harder to get rid of it as he can smell it, and this makes it even worse. I worry about him tracking it everywhere when I’m not in, and when I am in, I’ve taken to hovering at the litter tray when I can hear him in it. When he poops I whip him out of there and I bag the poo! I know that this is interfering with natural cat toilet habits, but really, not having a house covered in sh*t has to be a priority!

Both of them make a mess of the litter tray, but Jason has Sh*t foot down to perfection. I am even more paranoid about them jumping on the kitchen surfaces, but there's really nothing I can do about it. I half-heartedly try to spray them with water to train them out of climbing on them but it’s just a game to them and I'm too much of a softy to properly punish them. In the end I settle for wiping surfaces with anti-bacterial wipes before I prepare food, and shutting them out of the kitchen during preparation.

Its my bag!

Because they are making such a mess of the litter tray, we are using vast quantities of cat-litter. We are getting through 3 and half bags a week and my husband works out that it’s costing £40 a month! Just for the litter! No one else seems to have this problem and to this day we don't know why they made such a mess of it. The food is also very expensive, as they eat so much but they burn it off so quickly (and poop it out so regularly) I don’t like to ration them.

Although they are both very lively and on occasion just plain naughty, they are affectionate and I think they’re going to be real people cats. They want to be everywhere where we are and on the rare occasion I let them have full run of the house, they follow me about, once they’re finished investigating.