A Letter from the Cat: When Housekeeping Means Demolition Day

A Letter from the Cat:

I’ve loved being with you since you brought me home from the shelter. And you picked a pretty good place for me. I love that big room where I can be outside with my own door. I love my toys and my lookout shelf. And I especially love that you give me fresh paper whenever you get a box.

And to show my appreciation, I’ve been a good girl. I never make litter box mistakes; I don’t try to eat your food; I don’t wake you up in the morning.

But I have a problem.

Sometimes a lady comes over and destroys all my work to let people know this is my house.

I get a warning the night before when you go through the house, pick things up, and put them away.

Then the next morning, you actually participate in the demolition. You pick up all my toys that I strategically placed around the house so they’ll be ready when I need them. You pick up the papers I’ve carefully arranged on the floor. Then, just before that lady arrives, you pick up my scratching posts.

How could you betray me like that? It’s almost as though you want her to do this.

Then the lady arrives with her torture devices. She goes from room to room with that noisy contraption she runs across the floor. And she gives me no warning.

The other lady used to notice me. She’d talk soothingly to me and pet me before she turned on that machine. That gave me time to get under the bed in case it attacked.

This lady just turns it on. I have to scramble for safety.

Then she sprays the furniture with that smelly stuff and rubs away all my carefully marked places. Doesn’t she know how hard I work to keep my signposts up to date?

How are people supposed to know this is my house?

And when she reaches the room with my litter box, it gets even worse. She sprays even smellier stuff on your litter box and the sink. I have to wait for hours for that smell to go away before I can drink the drips from my faucet.

I’m nice to people who come into my house. I greet them. I let them pet me. They all seem to like me.

This lady doesn’t even say hi.

Finally, she leaves. You seem relieved. You think everything is back where it belongs.

It isn't.

You put my papers back, but never the way I had them. I spent a lot of time getting those papers arranged just right, and you toss them down anywhere. Then I have to inspect the bedroom and the living room, rearrange my papers, put my toys where I want them, and rub against the furniture so the house smells like me again.

It can take me all afternoon to undo what that woman accomplished in two hours.

And she gets paid for this?

Humans are very strange.

I’m not a demanding cat. I don’t make a terrible fuss when you destroy my home. I know your friend’s cat gets mad and stays under the bed all day. At least I come back out and go about the exhausting job of putting the place back in order.

But I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should try that shunning thing sometime. You might appreciate me more if I disappeared under the bed for the rest of the day.

Or, if you insist on allowing this barbaric ritual, could you at least ask the other lady to come back?

She understood that this is my place.