Mysteries in a multi-pet household
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Phantom gets to grips with grit while Yoyo sucks up to the slats
MY ENTIRE mini-zoo is full of puzzles. Some I understand; some I don’t.
Yoyo, the brat-cat, for instance, does something that surprises me. Every evening, when I take him up to his bedroom, a quiet little nook with windows on one side, he jumps up on a table and peers outside, up into the sky. His head bobs up and down as he gazes upwards.
There’s nothing there, no tree, no bush, just sky. Even the roofs to other houses are lower than the window – yet there the boy is, reacting to nothing.
I decide to wait. Nothing seems dangerous. Perhaps eventually, I’ll understand why he’s reacting to empty sky.
One puzzle, however, seems especially urgent to clear up. Phantom, my elderly American shorthair, lives in the large bedroom on the third floor. Now, every morning when I go up to clean his room, I find the water in his bowl dark and muddy.
I also find puddles of water on the floor around the bowl.
That dirty water worries me. It’s vital for your pets to have fresh, clean water available at all times. Without a hygienic water source, your cat or dog might suffer health problems.
Why is Phantom’s water so dirty?
This boy is extremely fussy. He wants his food bowl filled to a certain amount, the furniture in his room placed in a certain position, the litter tray kept clean.
This litter tray has caused some problems. For years, I used a gravel-type kitty litter. It was easy to keep clean and always absorbed cat-smells.
Then, last year, the distributor stopped importing it. Now, in Bangkok, only clumping litter is available.
This stuff is easy to clean. When the cat urinates, the litter clumps into balls, which can be removed with a scoop.
The problem is that the litter turns into cement at the bottom of the tray. To remove it, you need a hammer and a screwdriver, and lots of patience.
Some people line the tray with paper before they pour the litter in, but these people don’t live with fun-loving cats who think that paper is another toy to scratch, rip, kill, and scatter all over the house.
A German company has invented a litter that doesn’t turn into cement. It works all right, but it has drawbacks. One bag is quite expensive, but overall, it’s cheaper to use than the gravel because you don’t need as much.
The biggest drawback is that this litter is very light. After a cat uses the litter tray, bits of the litter stick to her paws and end up tracked all over the stairs, the floors, and even on tables where some cats sleep.
Then one day Phantom shows me what he thinks of this litter. While I clean his room, he uses the litter tray. Then he steps out, with a real cat frown on his face.
The seven-kilo boy tries to walk across the floor as regally as he can, but he’s shaking first one paw, then the other, nearly falling over when he tries to shake two paws at the same time. Finally he reaches the water bowl, where he dunks one paw in and swishes it around. Water spills all over the place, but he doesn’t care. He has three more paws to clean.
For Phantom, the solution is easy. He now has two water bowls in his room, one near the tray, the other close to his food.
Yoyo finally shows me what he’s doing too. The windows in his bedroom are louvred, slats that open and close with a crank, that is, a handle you turn.
The boy isn’t reacting to something in the sky, but to his reflection in the window slats.
Oh, let him have his fun.
