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Litter Box Queen

Jul 30, 2008 Pets & Animals

Flora, the litter queen

Our once-shelter cat, Flora, brings me so much frustration, kitteny-cuteness and laughter everyday.

Flora is not at all like Cleo, who still lives in our hearts and minds long after her heart breaking battle with CRF. Cleo was the accordion cat; pick her up, flip her to her back, squish her a bit and she’d lay there lazily with a rather let me know when you’re done, ‘kay? expression. She was the sleep-under-the-covers-knead-your-arm-pit cat. She was also fond of sticking her little cat-mouth and nose in your eye or on your forehead after spending seven hours licking it, to sleep.

Flora is not a cuddle-cat. You have to handle a few friendly bone-deep bites and artery seeking claw swipes on your way to scratching her to turn her into melty-purr kitty. Flora doesn’t like to be picked up too much either. Unless, of course, it’s to pick her up and hold her to our kitchen doors so that she can see the outside.

She’s very much atypical Siamese in some of her behavior. There are some pretty insane boughts of energy where she’ll tear through one end of the house to the other as if the devil himself were on her tail. She sproings, too. Random things that startle her—you cough, sneeze, make a noise or something moves she isn’t expecting? SPROING! Up several feet goes the kitty cat.

And play. Lawd, does she play with everything. With feet, with my hair, with toes, with the strings on my pajamas, with the fifty some odd cat toys sprinkled all over the floor, with wires, attempts to play with the bird, pouncing on Raven’s tail. It is all very little-kitteny behavior that makes me grin like an idiot and laugh.

But there’s one little thing…One heart breaking little thing she will do from time to time that just makes me almost turn into mush.

You see, when we found her at the shelter, she was in a cage like every other cat there. In these cages, there is enough room for a cat to sit up, lay down, and enough room for them to use a tiny little paper litter box with water and food bowl near a wall. That’s it.

A lot of the cats were laying in their litter boxes, old ones and little ones alike. I guess that age-old mysterious attraction. Cat + box = bed of win!

Flora was no different when I came to her cage. She was all cat-muffined in her tiny little make-shift paper litter box, giving me sleepy/pretty eyes through the bars of her cage. She was so bastet-poised beautiful when she sat up and stretched when I said hello, I fell in love with her on sight.

But you see, on occasions after I change the kitty litter I will catch her sitting in it. She’s not using the bathroom, she’s not digging about or any of that—I will come ‘round the corner and peer down to see her giving me half sleepy/pretty eyes as she is either muffin-laying on, or sitting bastet pretty on the litter. Part of my heart squeezes a little when I see it and I am taken back, instantly, to when I found her on the shelter.

My mind wonders: Does she do it because she remembers the shelter? Does she do it and think back to her tiny little cage? Does she remember the sound of other cats meowing all around her, the smell of them and the sickness? Does she sometimes hear the sound of phones ringing and hold the memory of people passing by her cage everyday?

I think about this every single time I catch her sitting in her litter box looking so very far away. I bend down and pet her and tell her what a good kitty she is, but I cannot help but feel a knot in my heart.

I keep seeing all those other cats and kittens, sitting in their litter boxes, waiting for someone like me to come along and take them home.

Tags: Flora