Poop & Kitty

I imagine that choosing to adopt a cat is like having a baby. Well, I never had a baby, but how different could it be? They both require an overhaul to your daily routine; things you used to do, like bringing home food for yourself for a quiet meal become a square to defending like the big cats in the wild. Babies and cats are expensive. Just in the days before bringing him home, I spent a couple hundred dollars setting up this cat tree he hardly even climbs. I got this automatic food dish when he hardly finishes his first serving. The air purifier I bought specifically for the litter can barely do its job because my new roommate doesn’t do a very good job with burying his poop. Hence, his name. Gone are the days of my lavender incense, clean apartment with sand-less bathroom floors. In my effort to make my one-bedroom suite apartment cat friendly, I scooped into my savings for cat toys and other commodities that might make my home tolerable and this is all my fault. Let me explain.

I wasn’t going to get a cat the day I went to the bank to follow up on a missing payment from one of my jobs— at least, I didn’t plan on going through with it again. It wasn’t until I was making my way home, off the freeway’s exit, and hit a fork at the traffic light. Had I gone left, I wouldn’t be writing this diary of a Whiny Cat Daddy. I wouldn’t had to have driven my beat-up car to an out-of-the-way animal shelter for a cat I wouldn’t even know how to interact with. I hadn’t had a cat in years. What do you even feed it? Beer and hot wings? When the light turned green, I hit that left and as I did, I felt the little kid in my get sad. I felt like my grandmother telling my inner child all the reasons I can’t have one when I was old enough to choose to be happy. Just as I hit the driveway to my complex I U-turned and, fast forward a few hundred dollars later with a hectic work schedule, my final verdict is a mixed bag.

My mornings used to start out with me freely walking into my bathroom to brush my teeth with the door wide open. I now have to tiptoe in the darkest of mornings and close the door behind me because I do not want to wake my entitled child who feels that climbing up my leg with claws fully extended like a mountain climber excavating Mount Everest is okay because Sir Poop the Grey and White Tabby needs to be in the know of apartment activities at all times. That was the first time I dropped my toothbrush and I can still remember the splash it made in the sink of draining water and spit. I was told that cats are independent, but this little kitten is the Pokemon hasn’t evolved to that point. Nonetheless, I think the little fur ball’s play of terror has met his match with this middle school teacher. School is in session and I don’t play that.

Some people think cats can be controlled like dogs. I disagree. Although I wouldn’t exactly call it “control,” I see it more like parenting. My son needs gentle reminders not to climb daddy’s leg while he’s cooking a nice meal for himself, after a long day of work, and that he has two bowls of different dishes that aren’t finished yet, and to stop being a greedy hobo. He needs to be reminded that he can play with toys, but he cannot play with me because daddy is not to be played with. He needs reminders that if he doesn’t remember the apartment expectations, then he has his carrier, jail cell, and ten minutes to think about it whenever he forgets. If he doesn’t, I use his toys as outlaw examples. 

Despite how this may sound, deep down, underneath the struggle, there’s a hint of contentment when I see him peacefully asleep in loaf mode. When he’s spread out, belly up, without a care in the world on my lap, I’m reminded why I got him. I knew what I was getting myself into. In the days before bringing him home, I panicked and wondered if he would even like me and spent several hours researching what makes a cat owner a good host. I’m not an impulsive buyer unless it’s trivial dollar-store products. I’m more of a cautionary buyer who thinks about the long-term benefits and maintenance of a purchase. Frugal-minded, and thoughtful. I’ve been like this since I was a skinny, red-headed child, which is why I have always been attracted to the cheap toy loving, mindful cat.

Growing up, my parents used to say I was the clean one, out of all of my siblings. The older I got, the more that changed, but I was still clean at heart… just not a neat freak. My cleanliness came in phases, which is probably why I always gravitated more toward cats than dogs, and on the night a neighborhood cat decided to have her babies behind a stack of old books, in my grandmother’s garage, was the day my two siblings and I got our first kittens. 

Out of all the kittens, only one out of the three survived. It was the lone survivor that belonged to my youngest sibling, who also happened to be the one that didn’t take the best care of his pet. When my sister and I made sure that our kittens were well fed and felt at home, my youngest brother gave his orange soda and slammed the door on his kitten’s tail one time. Yea, not the best of pet parents, but he was six. While that may sound like a “poor kitten” story, it was actually the other two's fate that deserve that title as my older sister’s cat was run over by my grandmother’s car after she backed out of the garage. My cat went missing within the next few days. We didn’t know where he went and instead of finding him, we found an awful smell coming from my grandmother’s engine. It smelled like rotting cabbage and we didn’t know why until a mechanic found my missing cat. It appeared to have been struck by the fan as she was starting up the car. It was my younger sibling’s kitten that eventually became all of our kitten and we named him Kitty.

Raising Kitty was a bit tricky as my grandmother was finicky about having pets. She didn’t like us having Kitty around, but she didn’t make us get rid of him either. So, ultimately, we could keep him, but he couldn’t bring him inside the house. We didn’t want him loose, outside, because there could be free-roaming dogs or he could be hit by a passing car, so we did the next best thing we could think of at the time and that was to tie him up to the back door of our garage. We were little geniuses. Looking back, however, it might’ve been better to just let him wander the streets. I can only imagine how his 3am zoomies went with not that much room to work with in that little space all day and night. Having done the research now, I understand that zoomies are a release of pent-up energy that cats would naturally have in the wild. Back then, I didn’t know it existed because we didn’t really have to deal with it since Kitty was always in the garage. 

The older we got, the more we took chances on letting Kitty roam the streets freely so he wouldn’t always be cooped up. Sometimes, he would come back scratched up, bruised, and limping, but he would always come back. On the summer of my fifteenth birthday, however, when we let him out he didn’t— and this was also the summer my Santa Claus for a father left. For some reason, I always felt there was a link between the two, Kitty and my father. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because they two both had names that began with the letter ‘K.’ It's the poetry in the alliteration, perhaps. I used to wonder if it was my fault they left. “Could I have done something differently back them to prevent Kitty from leaving? Could I have been a better cat dad and been there more and not just during the good times?”

Anyway, I bought a lot of cat toys for Poop because I saw a video on YouTube that suggested what would be ideal to have for a new kitten. Cats are expensive, but there’s one thing I remember when raising Kitty; I might’ve gotten tired of the toys, the video games, and sometimes even got tired of people… but, I never got tired of Kitty. I would spend whatever allowance money I had to give him something better— food, a new condo, or whatever it is that he needed. Why did he leave and never come back? Maybe he was old enough to choose to be happy instead of staying cooped up and alone most days in his brand-new condo. I heard that my grandmother saw him outside of the house a few times, or that my older brother saw him roaming the neighborhood streets during the day. I never did see him again, myself. 

It’s been two weeks since I brought my new kitten home from the shelter. It took us a little while to understand one another, and we still are adjusting. I think things are calming down from our first fiery week of time-outs and unsolicited leg climbing. He’s becoming less clingy and needy and I’m starting to get some of my free time back. I still, however, have to clean up his poop. It seems he doesn’t quite know how to bury it like Kitty did. He often misses when he kicks the sand all over my bathroom floor. I mean, how does he sniff it, acknowledge his smelly creation, and still walk away? He’s leaving up to his name alright. Maybe I should call his Sir Poop the Asshole… but, then again, if he lives up to that name it’ll be my fault too.