The story you are about to read is true and has brought my children endless laughs at my expense.
I have two cats, Bocephus and Dallas (pictured above), that produce about 30 lbs. of used clumping kitty litter in about a month’s time. Before the glorious day that my wife and I shelled out $120 for the Scoop Free automatic kitty litter box (which is absolutely awesome in our opinion!!), we just had 2 side-by-side litter boxes with your average “multiple-cat-super-deodorizing” clumping litter. I am embarrassed to say that both litter boxes were in our walk-in closet. Gross as it sounds, when you wear a t-shirt under scrubs everyday of your working life, nice clothes are generally not a necessity. The primary reason for this locale was the fact we could baby gate the closet off. This was to prevent our Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Sara, from partaking of the “buffet”. Any chance she got, Sara would make a bee-line for the closet and had about a 50% chance that one of us left the gate open. The tell-tale cat litter on the end of her nose and chewing-gum like lip smacking pretty much let us know that the tootsie roll bandit had struck again. Ah, but I digress. When Sara didn’t beat us to it, we would scoop the cat box out and place the contents into the plastic container that it originally came in. (Those 30 lbs plastic buckets made nice air tight poop receptacles).
At the end of the month, I would purchase another 30 lbs. of litter and switch out the full bucket with the now empty new bucket. Then there was that time I forgot to buy more litter and the poop bucket was overflowing. Something had to be done. Normally, I would have just carried it out to the trash and replaced it with the bucket from the new litter, but…
To set the stage appropriately, I had just finished cleaning our bathroom top to bottom, my two girls were upstairs finishing getting in their pajamas after a bath, and dinner was about 15 minutes away. MISTAKE ONE: I decided to recycle the old plastic bucket by dumping the used litter into a tall kitchen garbage bag. The bag was adequate in size and while it weighed probably 40 lbs. with saturated litter and cat crap, seemed sturdy enough. What I didn’t know was that (just like the old Folger’s commercial) someone had secretly replaced our Hefty tall kitchen garbage bags with eco-friendly-made-from-recycled-material-but-totally-suck garbage bags. (Let’s see if he notices). MISTAKE TWO: My 6 year old is sitting on the tub edge, drinking a glass of water, and watching the process as if to say “You poor, poor, silly, daddy. Even I know that this is bad idea.” She offers to help and I say, “Nope, this is a daddy job.” I lift the bag up and shocker: the bag tears and cat crap and litter spill everywhere (including the water fountain style water dish for my cats that is next to me at the time).
Fortunately, my daddy filters kick in and I say out-loud in a nice even tone, “Wow, that’s interesting.” In my head it was more like, “Mother-f#$%^&!” Again, my daughter offered to help. I was a little more stern in my dismissal this time. I could hear my 3 year old in the background playing outside the room in one of the closets. I got up and went to get a broom. When I got back, my agitation began to grow when I noticed all the kitty litter in the cats’ water dish. MISTAKE THREE: I thought it would be prudent to empty the water dish and sanitize it immediately. When I picked up the fountain, the cord caught the leg of our bathroom vanity, jerking the water dish out of my hand, and spilling about a gallon and a half of water onto the floor creating what could only be described as ”Kitty Litter Poop Soup”. At this point, my eldest daughter once again asked if I needed assistance with a “that is totally gross” screwed up look on her face. I was becoming slightly unhinged and mustered a “DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.”
MISTAKE FOUR: I left the disaster scene to try and gather up some old towels and a mop. That’s when I heard the crash and unmistakable screaming of my 3 year girl. I ran back into bathroom to see her sitting in the middle of the toxic mess, covered from head to toe in poop soup hysterically yelling “YUCKY KITTY!! YUCKY KITTY!!” over and over. At that point, I realized that we had reached defcon 4 and I had to call in reinforcements. Mommy came running in and immediately rushed the 3 year old up to a tub for decontamination. My older daughter vanished, obviously concerned that I might actually recruit her to assist, leaving behind only her glass of water perched on the tub’s edge…
MISTAKE FIVE: The madness consumed me and I may have actually developed a twitch at that point (pretty much like Clark Griswald at the point of any Vacation movie when he snaps). The final chapter to this story begins with me knocking over the glass of water with the broom handle. As it shattered on the tile floor and created “New and Improved Kitty Litter Poop Soup – Now With Broken Glass!!” the absurdity of the situation smacked me back into the present. On my knees, I closed my eyes and took my first deep breath in about 10 minutes. This was the perfect example of manifesting one bad event after another to create the ultimate toxic disaster. I laughed out-loud as I locked myself in the bathroom and scrubbed until there was not a grain of evidence left of the nightmare that had transpired. The girls were sitting at the dinner table waiting for me with a questioning look that said ”is daddy going to be OK?” I sat down and with a smile said, “Who would like to hear the story of Kitty Litter Poop Soup?” All hands shot up. The story was also a bedtime favorite for about a week.
This is the link to the website for the automatic litter box that forever changed my life.
http://www.scoopfree.com/WorksGreat/ScoopFree_in_Action.html
Results may vary, but my cats love it!
Wishing all a soup free litter box change,
Dr. Keith
