The Poop Squad

Allow us to introduce you to our two cats, Moe and Trooper.  Cody has dubbed them The Poop Squad.

I've had Moe since he was born under my mom's bed when I was 9 and I have successfully kept him alive, fat, and happy for the last 16 years.  We acquired Trooper on a trip to visit my uncle in Lewiston a year ago.  She was diseased, blind, and clinging to life in a sawdust pile.  We hauled her home and brought her back from the brink of death with three different medications and a couple of trips to the vet.  She is very skittish and runs away every time someone sneezes.  Cody loves this effing cat (despite frequent declarations to the contrary).   He is the only person who can pick her up and she's even started sleeping at his feet on the bed.  He has a special squeaky voice that he uses whenever he talks to her.  When he sees her he says "Helloooo Miss Priss!" and when he feeds her he says "It's time for the FOODIES!" and when we go to bed he says "Bedtime for KITTEHS!!!" He is not alone in ridiculousness.  I call the cats "my friendlies" and I have conversations with them, answering for Moe with my best impersonation of Eric Cartman and imagining Trooper as a sullen young emo cat who refuses to speak, instead writing responses to me in crayon with some of the letters reversed. 

Now let me tell you a little story about how these two beasts of burden repay our kindness............

About two weeks ago, I was decorating a cake in the kitchen when Cody informed me that he was going to clean out the litter boxes.  I told him to just wait and let me do it, but he insisted he could handle it.  A few minutes later, he came back downstairs.  His foul mood actually entered the room a few seconds before he did.  He informed me that both cats were going to the pound.  He reported that there had been some sort of security breach in one of the upstairs litter boxes.

I did my level best not to laugh at his hair-trigger gag reflex as he explained, between violent gags, the carnage that had unfolded upstairs.

I managed to retain my composure until he left the room.  After he went back upstairs to finish his doody duty, I collapsed into hysteria.

Apparently at some point during the last few days, the cats had held a meeting and decided that they were tired of our oppressive litter box regimen.  They would no longer be subjected to the indignity of relieving themselves where they had been forced to.  In order to most forcefully protest our authority, they began to practice what can only be described as free-range pissing and shitting- just outside the confines of the box.

From his description, I can only imagine it looked something like this:

We would have no choice, Cody said, but to burn down the house with the cats inside and then get a new house that doesn't have cats in it.

After some deliberation, we decided that until an enclosed litter box could be purchased, we would have to construct some sort of barrier to prevent the cats from future carpet-pissing.  Working together, we creatively constructed an "accident proof" litter box area in the closet using a board, a ripped open Hefty lawn bag, and some masking tape left over from our painting project.  The cats sat together nearby, watching with disdain as we labored.  While we worked, Cody pondered out loud to himself about which one of them could possibly have instigated this heinous crime by firing the first shot.  He's sent the samples to the lab for analyzing, but we don't have any results yet. Once we know, we will shave the culprit bald and turn him or her loose outside to fend for themselves in the cold.  He's also investigating a motive, but I'm sticking with my cat-powered "damn the man" revolution theory.

By the time we were finished, the setup looked like this:

It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done.  At least we hoped it would.  After the construction process was over, Cody turned and issued a challenge to the poop squad.  "Do your worst, you stinky buttholes!"  Trooper slunk to the ground and sped out of the room, but Moe simply sat there, glaring at Cody with his ears back as if to say "Oh I will, you sad little man....I will."

Later that evening, I was in the rec room watching a movie when the MVP of the poop squad waddled into the room.  After a few sniffs at the litter box in there (which is an enclosed, error-proof box), he reached up with his evil little paw and attempted to push open the closet door a little further- presumably to get in the closet alongside the box and take a big smelly doody on the floor.  I indulged my oft recurring impulse to throw things (see this post) and hucked a magazine at him.  This seemed to get the message across, in addition to satisfying my need for revenge.

There were no apparent problems with either litter box for a few days.  Then on Thursday, when I walked in the door after work, I noticed an aroma that could only be described as "zoo".  It had been awhile since we changed the boxes, so I took it upon myself to go upstairs and change them, hoping to eliminate the pissy odor before Cody got home and hauled both cats out into the countryside to dump them off.  Why did I cover for them?  I don't know.  I guess we have a love/hate relationship.  When I pulled the box out of the closet to dump it, this is what I saw:

 One of them had obviously hung their hind end over the edge of the box and taken a big leak to show us what they thought of our newly crafted barrier.  Touche, beasts of burden, touche.

I have since made improvements to the design, adding additional weight behind the barrier and more masking tape for extra hold.  We will not surrender this war, dear friends.  For you see, we are humans and they are cats.  We have opposable thumbs and advanced problem solving skills.  We have superior intellects.  We have utilized the History Channel's programming to educate ourselves regarding military tactics because we can work the remote control.  No ammunition is too harsh.  We can institute a food embargo or lock them in the bathroom or invite Dwayne's pitbull over to play.  I am currently formulating some strategies for our next move:

 

We may not have won the battle, but we will win the war.  Bring it on, Poop Squad.......