The Buffet Is Closed

Or so I hope.

This post will probably gross some folks out. Not that they'd be reading it. My 3 faithful readers are accustomed all sorts of animal grossies, so I'm not too worried about it.

I have 2 boxer dogs and 3 cats, and a very small house. In an effort to make eliminating as comfortable for my cats as it can be, I have several litterboxes. The equation is you have one litterbox for every cat, plus one more. I don't have that exactly, but one is a huge rubbermaid storage bin, which pretty much counts for two regular size boxes. I think only one of them uses it because there are usually just a couple turdlets in there every other day or so. Then the other two are just conventional litterboxes, which absorb the brunt of their emissions. I swear, you could give them 20 litterboxes and they'd still only use 2.

My dogs make no bones about the fact that they snack out of the litterboxes. I'm fastidious about cleaning them, but my cats do indeed crap when I'm not at home, and the dogs just help themselves. I've taken to gating off my living room during the day so technically I could move the litter boxes in there. But first off, I'm not big on moving litterboxes once my cats have become accustomed to where they are. Secondly, I don't want litterboxes in my living room.

Well, I'd finally had enough of their snacking and crumbs of litter hanging off their mouths and little trails of litter if they decided to take their find someplace else and eat it (my bed, for example). So I had the day off yesterday. I was getting tests done prior to this knee surgery and there's a Pet Supplies Plus right on the way home from my clinic. So I bought 2 jumbo litterboxes with lids and door flaps. Aha, I said to myself, lets see the goobers try and get a turd out of here.

I put the lids on this morning, so I'll know when I get home how it went. I'm not sure how the kitties will take to a box having a cover, they've always been open before.

I'm hoping everything goes well, but I keep having these visions of my dogs sticking their heads through the little doors. I can't even imagine what a mess that would be. And what if one of the cats is using the facilities at the time? The horror...

Chances are they won't do that. Ravi, my 80 lb. male (and the most prolific cat crap stealer, I believe) is a bit head-shy. I can't see him sticking his head in anywere. Stella is probably too graceful to actually cause a problem. But still, I worry. What exactly am I going to come home to? Will the cats be OK with all this?

I'll report on this later. Or if you don't hear me discuss it again it either went really well, or so badly that I can't bring myself to talk about it.