To preface the whole story, Meg doesn't particularly like cats...that is to say, they aren't her first choice for a furry companion. However, on turning around and looking at the cats that were up for adoption at Petsmart, she instantly fell in love with one cat and simply had to have her. Now, I love cats and I've owned cats since I was little, but we already had a dog who had never had experience with cats, we had a small apartment, and Meg had, before, been pretty adamant that we would never have a cat. I was, needless to say, wary of entertaining this complete turnaround in her disposition.
But the cat was cute, and Meg really wanted her (along with saying that it would be something of a wedding gift for me since she knows I like cats) so I caved in and we brought the new kitty home and named her Reisling after one of our favorite types of wine.
Things went sour almost instantaneously. The dog stuck his nose into the crate the minute we opened the door and got swatted across the nose, which sent Meg into defensive owner mode, swearing that if the cat hurt her baby she would kill the cat. I tried to placate all parties involved by moving the cat away from the dog, who, despite the swat on the nose, was still curious as to what the small, weird smelling animal in his crate was, and making gentle cooing noises directed at Meg in order to calm her down. She admitted that she didn't know how the dog and the cat would react to one another and I calmly explained that they wouldn't hurt each other (Jasper, while inquisitive, is a real sweetheart of a dog) they just needed time to get to know one another.
After the initial panic settled down, things became a lot easier. We went a little crazy on the kitty provisions. We bought her a litter box with a nice little weaved box that went over top of it, we bought her a kitty tower, toys, hiding places, a nice set of food and water bowls, and, of course, food to go with it. After two weeks of living with kitty, Meg and I ran off to get married. We asked people to look in on the cat, whom we had left in the bedroom with food and water and her cat box, since the bedroom seemed to be where she liked to spend the majority of her time.
One week later we came home to find that the litter box had gone uncleaned by those we asked to look after the cat, the cat had merrily ripped most of the carpeting out from under the door, and she had developed a taste for cat food that was rivaled only by the world's taste for oil. We cleaned the cat box, spent a lot of time with the kitty, making sure that she knew we loved her and that we were back for good and then we went to bed.
It was from that night forward that kitty started meowing at all hours of the night, for no reason that we can possibly explain. She would get loads of attention during the day and then she would spend all night meowing for more. This calmed down after a little while so that she only meowed around 4am or 5am, mostly when she was expecting to be fed (which wasn't until 6:30am, but she's always hopeful that it will be sooner). I tried everything to keep the cat away from the bedroom door. Barricades she got around, spraying her with water only shooed her away momentarily, but finally, after reading online, I constructed a floor covered in tin foil. Apparently tin foil is anathema to cats, either they don't like the crinkly reflection of themselves, or they find the sweet tin foil music to be something less than pleasing to their ears.
The meowing may have stopped, I don't know, she was too far from the room for us to tell. But Meg soon grew tired of stepping over sheets of tinfoil, balled all of them up, and threw them away. The cat's meowing persisted, but only around feeding time.
Then came the smell of cat urine.
Meg had been after me for some time about the smell, which I honestly thought was the smell of the cat litter, until we discovered that the cat seemed to be peeing on the carpet right next to the cat box. Luckily, this coincided with a bad storm that flooded that corner of the room and necessitated a replacement of the floorboards, the padding, and a good steam cleaning of the carpet. We bought a self cleaning litter box as a last resort, figuring that kitty had decided to pee outside of the litter box because it wasn't always fresh enough for her.
But now Meg can't seem to smell anything other than the faint traces of cat urine when she comes into the house and it is now looking as if kitty is going to be gone for good this time. I can't really blame Meg for wanting to get rid of her. The cat eats her food and the dogs food if he doesn't get to it, rips up the carpet, tore apart our brand new couch, bites our faces when we are trying to sleep, constantly meows in the middle of the night for no reason, eats q-tips, and generally makes life harder to live in that apartment.
But she's so damn cute!
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