BAD Kitties!

I’m sick of winter, yes, but I’m also sick of writing about the crappy weather. So…let’s see…what else can I talk about?

Well, I could talk about how I’m usually greeted each morning by two happy, playful kittens when I start descending the stairs. Today, however, they were nowhere to be seen…so I knew something was up.

Sure enough, I reached the bottom step – and nearly stepped into a mound of brownish-black…dirt. (What did you think I was going to say?!) Yes, it was only dirt and not something of an earthier (read: smellier) nature – but that didn’t make me any happier to see it.

Both kittens were lying meekly on the floor at the diametrically opposite point in the room from the mound of dirt and trying to look utterly guileless and innocent.

Yeah, like I bought their act.

It’s at this point that parents of real-life children ask their little darlings who created the mess and hope that even if the guilty party won’t admit it, the narc in the family will point a finger. Kittens, however, aren’t quite as cooperative. For one thing, they don’t have pointer fingers.

Since Twinklebelle is usually the culprit at torturing the plants on the plant stand by the stairs and has earned her share of water gun squirts in an attempt to teach her not to torture said plants, I assumed it was her fault. But what does that really matter? I mean, I can’t punish her by forcing her to clean up the mess. I can’t put her in a time-out. And I can’t take away her iPod or TV watching privileges. So I kind of think I’m screwed.

Oh, hey, I know…I could refuse to clean out her litter box! That might make me feel a little better as it’s not exactly a chore I look forward to. But once the smell overwhelmed us, I’d wonder WHO exactly I was punishing. So…no. That’s not a solution.

And, for some odd reason, Twinks likes a dirty litter box! Every day when I grab a plastic bag and the litter shovel (and gas mask and industrial strength gloves) and head toward the litter boxes, Twinks runs alongside me attacking the plastic bag. And when I actually scoop out some dirty litter, she takes swipes at the bag as if to say, “Hey! That was some good stuff I took great pains to hide in that box! What do you think you’re doing unearthing it?”

There are times I even resort to bribing Twinks with treats and then shut her in the pantry while I clean out her litter box. The last thing I want her to do is claw a hole in the plastic bag so that I’m leaving a trail of dirty kitty litter as I walk out to the garage. Can you say, “Yeeuccckkk!”?!

I never had this sort of trouble with my first cat, Tux. Or maybe I just don’t remember anymore. But I don’t recall her chewing on roses or swiping at plants on the plant stand. And, as she was a rather fastidious cat, she was more than happy to let me clean and sanitize her litter box.

And our other kitten, Jinx? Well, she’s no angel either. She learned how to take a flying leap off the top of the chair into the big potted plant in the dining room, which caused me to have such apoplectic fits, she learned just as quickly how to scramble out of the big potted plant. But since she has grown and doesn’t fit quite so easily in the big potted plant in the dining room, we haven’t had to deal with that issue lately.

Kittens? You gotta love ‘em. But for the life of me, I can’t remember why I was so determined to have tiny, little furballs at home instead of mature cats that no longer need to explore the world with quite so much, um, gusto.