Coming home, being greeted by 7 inquiring eyes: "where is the food? where is my tuna? where is my treat? will you cuddle me?" is nice, not so nice: stepping into something mushy with your naked toes in the living room ... the perks of living with small furry creatures who will only pee and poop in their litterboxes but throw up anywhere they just happen to be situated.
After living with my cats for nearly 10 years now I still haven't grasped the concept of why an animal that is so meticulous about cleaning and doing their "business" only in a litter filled box - and without special training to do so I might add - they did it from day one, we have never had an "accident" - so quite different from our dog that needed training for a couple of days (which has been pretty fast as I came to find out later) - but the throwing up, which I understand you can't control much ... it seems there is enough time to run somewhere though, because they do that and they never throw up on a chair, sofa or shelf ...
The throwing up really throws me. It would be so much easier if they did it only on surfaces that can be wiped easily or maybe on a throw rug I can wash ... why does it always need to be on the carpet under the bed, or under the table, anyplace you don't spot right away and that is hard to get to.
Why don't they have a natural instinct to throw up only in the bathtub or maybe the sink. Still pretty gross, but so much esasier to clean. Maybe a good thing that I didn't know about cats and their habits of throwing up before I let myself be fooled by the soft touch, cuddly appearance and the cuteness of his helpless "meow" when I got my first cat. Lucky thing(s) ... now that I have them I will certainly never get rid of them, but for a first-time owner .... you better talk to someone who has had cats for a long time. Just you know what you're getting into. Not that this would keep me from getting one now.Then? Maybe ....
I was never bothered by my cats throwing up - says the Don.
For me, it's not that particularly annoying as it doesn't stink and most of thrown up material is hairs.
Mayve it was because I never fed them fodder.
Anyway, the only reason why we switched to dogs was the Donna neing not at all fond of cats and I failed to convince her that her attitude was wrong. Oh how I would love to be owned by another bunch of these proud warriors.
But I have to admit that I'm truly happy with our dogs, now. Much happier than I dared to anticipate.
Posted by: DonParrot | July 06, 2005 at 01:59 PM
Hahaha! I rememebr our two cats when I was growing up doing exactly the same. They were Persians and all that hair seemed to end up beign licked down and then vomited back up... The rule was that whoever came across the soggy mess first had to clean it up. My brother and I got to be very god at identifying that horrible convulsing sound and gauging very carefully where the cat was. If the cat was in the kitchen/sunroom/entrance hall where there were tiles, we'd acknowledge that we'd heard it and go and wipe up. But if we heard the cat right outside our bedroom or in the lounge, we'd pretend to be asleep/outside/deaf and avoid the area till my mother's squeal indicated that she'd found it first!! My brother also got quite good at tossing the cat a few feet - as in, if you find the cat preparing to throw up on the Persian rug in the lounge, you scoop him up and gently toss him 4 feet away onto the tiled floor of the sunroom!!
Great post...
Posted by: Jeanne | August 03, 2005 at 07:07 PM