Such a cute little kitty

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I’m a dog lover, and not so much a cat lover. I think I understand the appeal of cats, and I certainly understand and respect that Leah is far more a cat lover than a dog lover. So I have tried to accommodate, if not welcome our cat overlords.

But Zoe has stressed my accommodative powers, weak as they are, to the limit.

Zoe is affectionate only under very limited circumstances. If he’s hungry, he will purr and rub up against your leg. He looks and sounds oh, so affectionate. So you put his food down, he eats a little, and he walks away. Once you have served your purpose, you are no longer a part of his universe. One time he escaped from my truck at my mother’s house and disappeared for two weeks. I helped Leah search for him, and we eventually found him hiding under a neighbor’s deck. When we took him to my mother’s house, he was absolutely in love with Leah, me and my mother. For a while. And then we fed him.

He lies on the couch with us sometimes as we watch television, but that’s just a coincidence. He was going to lie there anyway. He does not seek out petting or cuddling; in fact, he actively rejects it.

“Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side.”

So the first problem is that he provides no emotional benefit to Leah, his loving owner. She tries. Oh, yes, she tries. But it does no good. He is just not interested.

The second problem is that he’s a mean cat with the other cats. He bites them and jumps on them and generally gives them a hard time. Based on my observations of some of the other cats, that’s not particularly unusual, but in his case, it seems to be more than purely feline instinct. He seems to pretty much just hate everyone.

The third, and most severe problem, is that he’s mean with Leah. He’s a biter. A few years ago he bit Leah on the arm, and she ended up with an infection severe enough that she had to make daily visits to an urgent care facility for antibiotic injections (in the butt) for a week. She was so sick for the first visit that she had to call a friend to take her to the doctor.

And then, almost a year to the day, Zoe bit her again. This time she ended up in the hospital for IV antibiotics.

And now the fourth problem, the one that precipitated this post: It’s his bathroom habits. It’s not just that he spends all day outside and then comes in to use his litter box. It’s not just that he tracks litter everywhere in the house; I know that’s a problem for many cat owners. It’s not even that he seems to make a circuit of the entire house to make sure there’s litter in every room. The real problem is that he is apparently oblivious to his own excrement once it leaves his body. He steps into the littler box, squats, pees, and then turns around and walks directly through it to leave the box. So he walks around with wet litter on his feet, spreading in throughout the house.

That’s not the worst of it. The worst is that he does the same thing with his poop. Last night, when he came into our bedroom and plopped onto the floor, his hind feed had poop on them. Our bedroom is the only room in the house with carpet, and the only place I walk barefoot. So I (we) walk across a carpet that has cat pee and poop residue on it.

And sometimes he jumps up on our bed to nap. He likes to lie on my side.

I have said to Leah in the past that Zoe is not fit to be an inside cat. It’s not that I don’t like cats. He’s just too mean and too dangerous and too dirty to have inside. I have suggested that she get a good cat, one that will be affectionate and, possibly, hopefully, reasonably competent at using a litter box. Maybe even one that likes to ride in a car with us. But Leah has had Zoe for around 10 years and can’t think of him as anything but the cat she wishes he was. She doesn’t want to just toss him outside, never to come in again.

To be fair, there are some considerations about this. He is on a special diet (no, not human arms) because of his delicate digestive tract. He has to eat canned food, and the other cats would eat it all if we fed him outside. He has to have eyedrops twice a day for his glaucoma, and that’s a two-person job (if one is not a lion tamer) and one most easily accomplished inside on a countertop. With newspaper spread to keep his feet off the countertop. So if we did toss him outside — I mean if we set him free to be the outdoor cat he is truly meant to be — we would probably have to bring him inside sometimes. Under careful supervision, and without access to a litter box.

So that’s out little dilemma.

That’s my view on the subject. Now heeeeere’s Leah!

I will admit that he’s the cat from hell*, but I just can’t toss him out to become an outdoor cat. I really shouldn’t care, I don’t guess, but I do, and I don’t know why. This has been a problem through our marriage, and we wish and hope that we can resolve it. If anyone has any advice, please feel free to give it.

* Mark again. Zoe was found as a tiny kitten wandering in the parking lot at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. We don’t know who his mother was, but I have often said that his father was the devil.