Things That Go Doot In The Night

We bought Soot a new litter box the other day because the old one was too open, if you know what I mean. This one is cute...if that really matters in litter boxes...and it has a dome (looks like an igloo) and a ramp and very different from her first one, which was a box which we surrounded with a box for more privacy. We put it in our room because the other cat, Jake, who has a disease had used the one for Soot once when it was in another room and he's a messy cat, litterbox-wise. So we didn't want her to share his nastiness and I wasn't gonna clean TWO cats when I only have one! Jake takes medication that makes his poo runny so that's just gross. Good thing I don't have to deal with that! Soot's a dainty cat too so she would totally freak out if another cat shared her box. When he used her's she wouldn't even use it. I think, once he even snuck in the room and used it when we weren't around and Soot was going to use it and suddenly just freaked and ran out of the room. I didn't know why so I took a peak and there was this huge poo in there not even covered and Soot always covers her poo, Jake doesn't! We were totally grossed out.

Anyway! We've been kinda anxious to see whether she would use it or not because the first day she just walked up to it, slowly and sniffed it then walked away. Finally, we got worried because she hadn't gone to the bathroom the whole day so we took off the lid and she walked right to it and peed/urinated. ha Then later on we had to take it off again and she used it to poo. But there's a reason why there's a dome! We realized that it's really dark in there for her so I took the filter off the top so that some light would pour through...

The next day I caught her walking in and out of it, playfully jumping out and running in. So she finally got used to it, I thought. When I lifted off the dome there was a pee spot in the corner, uncovered! She always covers up because she's driven by cleanly devoir*. Later we took the dome off because she walked up to us and mewed. She went in and peed and didn't cover it again!! We decided it was because she was upset with the new box and was showing her displeasure. So we chased her and sniffed loudly, because it's worked for me when she used it but didn't cover it enough. Once, I sniffed and she ran back in the box and covered it over, but this time she refused! We were scolding her and she just stood there, in the corner, and didn't budge. Finally I picked her up, with a lot of struggling, took her to the litter box and took her paw and swiped the litter so it covered the pee, then she ran out and left. I decided to put the dome back on for the night, even though she hadn't gone poo yet. We still had our fingers crossed.

Then at 2:10 in the morning I woke up to scratching from the area of the litter box. And I thought, "oh my gosh, she's using it, with the dome!" and I was gonna wake up Rich while she scratched away, but thought against it, so I turned over to hug him and he woke up and sat up, "is she in there?", "yeah she's been in there for a while." "hmmp". And he turned over and went back to sleep. I, of course, didn't get to sleep til an hour later, I guess my body thought I was just taking a nap. Finally I drifted off and woke up half an hour ago. Okay have a good day everyone.

*Devoir means:
1 : duty, responsibility
2 : a usually formal act of civility or respect

Me.