I asked Fred to put Kara and her babies in a carrier for me Friday night, because the cat hair had been building up on the carpet since I’d vacuumed the week before, so he did that, and I started vacuuming, and then I discovered that a little towel I’d left on the floor next to the padded teepee where the kittens have been sleeping was wet. I sniffed it (shut UP, how else am I going to know what it was wet from?), and it didn’t smell like anything at all, actually. I brought it downstairs and made Fred smell it, and he suggested that maybe bitty kitty pee doesn’t smell like regular cat pee, which is entirely possible, who knows? So I finished vacuuming and put more little towels down just in case the kittens were peeing, and kept in mind that I needed to buy some plain clay cat litter on Saturday.
Fred had to run some errands on Saturday, so he picked up plain clay cat litter for me, and I set up a couple of small litter boxes on either side of the teepee. The kittens took turns climbing into the litter boxes, and I took their little paws and moved them through the litter in a scratching motion, and then they looked at me like I was torturing them and cried, and climbed out and ran around and played.
A few hours later I happened to be in the room when Inara climbed into one litter box, scratched around, cried plaintively, climbed back out, went to the other litter box, scratched around, peed, and climbed back out.
CLEARLY A GENIUS.
She’s not using it every time, but I did see her use it a second time, on Sunday. I think those babies are certainly on their way to being litterbox trained. If I could just get them to stop trying to eat the litter, I’d be a little happier, though. They’re completely uninterested in regular kitten food, but considering that they’ve got warm milk on tap just about whenever they want it, can’t say as I blame them.
(Kittens tend to try to eat the litter at first, which is why you can’t litterbox train them with the clumping stuff. Plain clay litter won’t hurt them, but apparently the clumping stuff causes all manners of bad things to happen. Or so I’ve heard.)
“Okay, lady, I do like the belly rub. But be careful. I don’t like when it tickles.”
“You unnerstand? Okay, good. Let the rubbing begin.”
::giggle::
“::giggle:: Stop! Stop! No, don’t stop! Stop! No, don’t! It TICKLES!”
Ton o’ kitten pics over at Flickr.
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.