My Dumb Cat

As I wrote two blogs about outhouses, my thoughts, as usual, began to string out like a train of freight cars – or like the childhood game of “gossip,” which always ended up far different from the way it started. I thought about the toilet habits of cats and dogs. Or, more specifically, I thought about my cat, Charlie, and his litter box.

People are either “cat people” or “dog people.” I belong to the tribe of cat people. This week I found evidence that a neighbor’s dog visited my front lawn. Not a welcome gift. Dogs must to be trained. Dog people put papers on the floor until their puppies learn to be taken outside for a "walk." Then the beasts shit any place. In New York’s Central Park I saw people walking their dogs with leash in one hand, plastic bag and “pooper scooper” in the other. Every New Yorker seems to have a dog, and every dog must be walked every day. But don’t mess up the parks! Rain or shine, snow or hail, a dog must be taken for a “walk” to do his business.

Cats are instinctively clean. Have you seen a kitten "washing" his face with a tiny paw? Even little kittens use the litter box and bury the “deposits.” I’ve only had one “incident” with my cat, and that was not his fault but mine.

When we lived in New Mexico, Charlie's litter box was in the garage. My friend Sam, a former carpenter, installed a cat door on the big door between the garage and the dining area. The opening had a piece of plastic over the opening. Charlie had no trouble pushing through with his head against the plastic, going out and in several times a day. Before I left in the car, I slid a piece of fiberboard over the opening, to prevent Charlie from jumping out, possibly getting under the car or running outside. He always waited inside the house, maybe not patiently, until I came home and removed the obstruction. He never had an accident.

We moved to Texas, where I put the littler box in the utility room next to the washer and drier. The door to the den had no cat door. I kept the door ajar for almost three years before I hired a man to come and install a cat door. Charlie refused to use it. He looked at the plastic swinging door as if it was a bear trap. When I caught him in the utility room, I shut the door. He climbed up on the washer and howled.

“Now, Charlie,” I said. “You used a door like this all the time in Albuquerque. Don’t you remember?”

He did not remember. He also does not understand English. Sometimes I think he must be a Lithuanian or Hungarian cat. I’ve tried to explain lots of things to him, like “I’m only going to be gone a few hours.” He does not understand. When I return, he looks at me pitifully, as if to say, “How could you abandon me like this?”

From the den I picked him up and bodily pushed him headfirst through the plastic into the utility room. Like a bouncing ball, he jumped right out again. You would think he would learn, after I pushed him through, that the swinging piece of clear plastic was not an obstacle. No. He would not use it.

I left him sleeping in my favorite chair in the den and went to bed. In the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of Charlie calling me from the living room. I put on the light and trailed down the hall to find Charlie standing beside a pile of excrement on the carpet. Honestly, that cat looked embarrassed.

After that I left the utility room door ajar for several weeks until my brother Don came over and took out the plastic swinging door, leaving a neatly framed hole in my utility room door. Without the plastic, Charlie went in and out as his needs required. Problem solved. I learned cats, like some people, never learn. To deal with problems, find another way, even if it leaves a hole somewhere.

One day I was doing laundry and left the utility room door open. Charlie came in and used the litter box. Finished with his business, he came out. Instead of going directly into the den through the open door, he turned and jumped through the hole.

Aesop says: New habits are as hard to break as old.