No, You Clean the Litter Box!

catWhen my wife and I exchanged vows, not a word was mentioned about cleaning the litter box.

Perhaps my response would have been different if there had been. Something along the line of: “With the exception of…, I do.”

Needless to say, The Box is a sore point in our otherwise blissful relationship.

I am a dog person, she likes cats. I like dogs because they do their business outside. She likes cats because regardless of where they do their business, she doesn’t have to clean up after them. I do.

One might think it only fair that she clean up after her own cats. But my wife is squeamish. She delegates the task to me by saying, “You like icky things.”

Which is true. Being a guy I have a very high tolerance for repulsive things. Here are a list of things that don’t bother me:

  • Changing diapers for my younger siblings (all seven of them) in an era before the invention of disposables.
  • Living downwind from a hog barn. For those of you who don’t know, the stench of hogs can bend sunlight.
  • Cleaning game. You don’t really know icky until you have gutted a bottom dwelling fish pulled from a fetid swamp.

Yet nary one of these unpleasantness has prepared me for the foulness of our three cats.

We have tried various foods, ranging from the tasty to the bland, in the hopeless pursuit of olfactory relief. Heck, we could feed them chalk and they would still transform it into something wickedly rank.

But it doesn’t end there.

After I am done sifting turds and scooping clumps into the trash – each cat, in rapid succession, will leap into the box to undo what I have done. But let us not dwell on the cats,

The real problem here is my wife.

We have to ask the obvious. Why doesn’t she clean up after her own cats?

I think we all know the answer. Couples do this to each other all the time.

Not a day goes by that I don’t tell her I love her – but saying “I love you” is just repeating words. She needs something more convincing; something to test my love – every day.

So every day she asks me to clean the litter box and every day I protest. Every day she insists and every day I cave in. It is our ritual.

It’s like dancing.

Author: Almost Iowa

www.almostiowa.com

28 thoughts on “No, You Clean the Litter Box!”

  1. Funny.

    The remaining cat adopted us through the cat door and does his business outside. We both cleaned the cat box.

  2. I feel like we split the icky jobs. Both having grown up on farms, neither is particularly bothered by…well…much of anything anymore. That said, he is always the one to clean the hedgehog hutch. I can’t really put my finger on how that happened.

    1. Cleaning a hedgehog hutch is definitely a guy job. It’s not because the guy is sexist – but the hedgehogs are. It’s just one of those things. Maybe one day they will join the modern age – but some species are slower to change than others.

  4. I have changed from a dog to a cat person. I don’t mind the litter box, but it ticks me off when they use it immediately. The dominate one gets in the other one checks his watch and smokes a cigarette waiting impatiently. Funny stuff.

    1. We don’t allow our cats to smoke (but who knows what goes on when we are not there), still when our dominate cat uses the box, the other one drum his claws on the tile. It’s very annoying – but I suppose that is the point.

  5. My hubby monitors the status of the litterbox. Which is incredibly ironic, since he, at one time, used to be allergic to cats. But he’s like that, that way. Incredibly industrious and he follows the definition of the verb “to husband” to a “T”. I have an inkling that the same might apply to your matrimonial situation?
    I must also comment on this line: “the stench of hogs can bend sunlight.” I used to live about 700 meters from a hog barn. The stench, when the wind was blowing toward our house, was inconceivable. Especially on a humid evening. It would wake me from a sound sleep. The sound was worse, actually. Ever hear a screaming pig? Terrifying. Even worse, though, was the taste of our tomatoes. Every spring and fall, “manure management” found the hog barn people spreading liquid manure on the fields immediately adjacent to my vegetable garden. I swear, I SWEAR, the tomatoes tasted like bacon.

    1. We live in hog country. Hint: Hormel is just down the road.

      I don’t mind when they fertilize their fields. They have the knifing-in process down to a science and it only smells for a day or two – but when they park the poop-pumper truck less than 50 yards from my bedroom window…. that can be a problem.

  6. A bit of a stinky dance, but hey – if it works for y’all! 🙂 Very funny post – and there is quite a bit of truth told in your jest. We often do what we don’t want for the sakes of our mates. BTW, I find Science Diet (while extortionate) does help. My 2 are forever coming in from outside to use their litter box – makes me crazy. Cats! 🙂

    1. BTW, I find Science Diet (while extortionate) does help.

      I need the stink. I sprinkle the cat litter on the gopher mounds that infect our lawn and pasture. It is a (somewhat) humane way of getting rid of the little scamps.

    2. I think Science Diet changed their something, and I’m quite sure whatever they changed killed my cat. He died within a week of opening a new package of cat food. You might want to know where the ingredients are coming from.

      1. Ouch, sorry to hear that, Pam. Down at Running’s, they sell cat food in 100 lbs bags. It’s called BARN CAT and only works for felines who have a gut lined with Tungsten.

      1. Even God had a rough time with her. I mean the Israelites have Pharaoh the Sham and The Pharaohs after them with their Wooly Bully. Moses is at home drinking a brewski, thinking he has done his job. In comes the Mrs. and says, “Mo, get off your buttski and go out there part that Red Sea.” Scary woman, Mrs. Mosses.

        1. The text says Moses smashed the first set of tablets. Truth be told, it was Mrs. Moses who had “issues” with the first draft, either that or it was Betty #32.

  8. A tale that is in itself the perfect metaphor for a sound marriage – leaving my glib satire and lunacy aside for once I was rather taken with this story.

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