Organizing Is Good, Isn’t It?
Jodi Webb
It started out as a good thing. It rapidly spiraled into the most terrible of things. My husband and I decided to do a major organizing and purging of our home’s closets. Turns out it was a bigger job than we imagined. An entire weekend job. During that weekend large black garbage bags sat against the bedroom closet doors filled with donations for the local clothes closet. I remember the sight of the garbage bags because in the upcoming weeks Simon urinated in that exact spot—over and over again.
At first we thought it was just a solitary mistake. Nope. Was he unhappy with the litter box. It was scrupulously cleaned out and the litter changed daily. Was he just getting older? We bought two extra litter boxes so he was never that far from the restroom. Was he sick? We envisioned the horror of giving him insulin injections for diabetes. Several expensive tests later the vet determined that he wasn’t sick. In fact, he was in great health. Was he stressed? This was the vet’s musing. On our own we never would have considered this one. When asked about changes in his environment we struggled to remember through the urine smelling weeks and pinpoint when it all began. Turns out it was the Monday after the cleaning spree. Ah, ha!
But what could we do now? Since the bags that stressed him out were now long gone the vet guessed that it had become habit. Despite our cleaning after each “incident” odor remained and Simon had labeled that section of our bedroom as an alternate litter box. We had to re label that section as a non-peeing zone. The vet gave us a spray that smelled like cat pheromones. He wouldn’t pee on another cat, would he? He wouldn’t. It actually worked!
The moral of the story? Ignore your husband when he decides to reorganize the closets!
Leave a Reply