little shit kitten and I... a love story

There was a time when I lived in the south of Georgia in a little house with four housemates, two of which were cats. One of the cats was a cat and the other was really a kitten that had probably been removed from it’s mother entirely too early. If I remember correctly my housemate had adopted him from a box in front of the Piggly Wiggly on a random tuesday. I’m sure the idea made sense at the time, however it soon became apparent that the little kitten made no attempt to clean up after itself. The little bugger did eventually figure out how to use the litter box, but due to its fairly inappropriate diet (of whatever was available) and the resulting runny cat poop that it led to, the kitten figured out that it felt better if it dragged its rear through the kitty litter before going about it’s day. Unfortunately this meant that you could be relaxing somewhere in the house and a cute cuddly little fecal-encrusted kitten that was coated in kitty litter might find it appropriate to pounce on your face in a playful little cat game. This would happen at random intervals throughout the day.

it was less than entertaining.

Little episodes like this would inevitably end with me holding the little dude at an arm's length as I walked (gagging a little perhaps) into the bathroom where he would hang suspended over a hot and steamy bathtub as it filled into a enormous cat-cleaning reservoir. He would hang there limply by the scruff of his neck for minutes on end until the water was sufficiently deep and then with one last crazy little kitten look, he would lock his gaze onto mine as if to say:

“you think you have me now... but the ferocious little shit kitten will strike again!!!”

there would be a terrifying cackle that would accompany his fall into his sudsy exile.

then the little bugger would kick and squirm for a few minutes until all of the shit fell off and I’d fish him out, dry him off, and go about my day. As time went on, he would come up with new and even less entertaining ways to exact his revenge.

I would close my bedroom door at night, (There are few experiences more unnerving than sharing a bed with a shit kitten) as well at during the day while I was at work, because there is something somewhat invasive about having a shit kitten going through your personal effects while you are away. The challenge was that my bedroom then became the mecca of all kittendom and he would do his best to gain access at every opportunity. His early attempts were barbaric at best. By his reasoning, if he could see under the door, it must be possible to GO under the door. Because the little guy pooped about once every other hour, I think his head had been stuck under the door for approximately 6 hours when I got home from work. He had obviously struggled for the first few hours, based on the perfect snow angel of poop that surrounded his heaving little body. He actually seemed quite grateful when he fell into the tub that time, although his whiskers were crooked for about a week.

After that he took a different approach: rocket kitten...

Little rocket kitten would vary his angle of attack on a daily basis, but every attack involved hiding just out of view until he perceived my door was open wide enough to propel his little shit kitten body through the gap a speed that would preclude me from noticing. The first couple of days ended up being dedicated to refining the parameters of the attack, mostly I think because his whiskers hadn’t fully extended back out, leading him to careen, deflect, or bounce off of various surfaces of the door and doorway. However, after a week of trial and error he had the mechanics reduced to one unknown variable... the location of my legs at the time of ingress. Try and try as he did though, he never gained access as rocket kitten.

however, when one is up against as formidable a foe as shit kitten, there will inevitably be a defeat. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I’m fairly sure how it came to pass:

After practicing the art of rocket kitten deflection in the wee hours of the morn, I closed my door and proceeded to the bathroom to take a shower. At some unknown point in the timeline, my housemate, who was ignorant of the dangers of self-propelled shit kittens, ventured into my humble living space to look for a pair of socks (since he had run out of laundry two days before). The devious little animal was probably paralyzed at first with the realization of the flaws of his earlier attempts and the magnitude of the opportunity laid out before him, but it probably took less than a second for him to accelerate to blinding speed and vanish into some dark corner of my room.

when I think back to that morning, I do remember hearing a muffled cackling for a moment before I left for work.

I returned hours later to a house with no kitten in sight. At first it was somewhat comforting, but after searching under the furniture and realizing I could lie down on the couch unmolested, a quiet uneasiness began to take grip in my belly. In a flash it was in my mind, the fear and panic which animated my legs to my doorway, where I flung my door open a found... him. My Nemesis, hot, tired, dehydrated and miserable, sitting in a veritable sea of urine and feces on my down comforter and pillows after THIRTEEN hours of curiously crawling over every square inch of my room.

I picked him up and sat him down on the bathroom floor, gave him some water and cleaned him up and we had a nice long heart to heart. We worked through a lot of things. I told him about my issues with his general sanitation and cleanliness, while he worked through his feelings about sharing of personal space. we really bonded.

After that day, things were great. He cleaned up after himself and I would greet him every morning at my bedroom door. He would follow me into the kitchen and while I was cooking breakfast I’d get a piece of ice out of the freezer for him to bat around the floor. He was so adorable chasing that little chunk of water around.

You could almost say I loved the little shit.