My main problem with the idea of having animals in the house (or indeed tiny humans) was having to deal with their toiletry excretions. I don't know why God came up with this system of ingestion of food and excretion of wastage. He was starting from scratch. He could easily have us powered by light or nuclear energy and if there were any by-products (which there wouldn't have to be - He'd God, he can just magic it so there aren't) then they can just be excreted on a monthly basis in solidified crystal form via a handy drawer in the belly (I think He must have thought of that, hence the belly button, but with so much to do in just one week maybe it slipped His mind). There was no real need to come up with something so sticky and stinky and unpleasant. You'd have had to choose to make it like that. Like you got off on dirty anuses.
He could have had us excrete diamonds or angels or anything. Why choose shit? Pervert.
Although I was reluctant to get involved in the whole litter tray business I am now doing my fair share of poop-scooping, amazed that creatures so tiny and cute are capable of producing something quite so stinky. Lion-o's shit seems to be made of some kind of airborne acid that burns at any exposed membrane. But I quite enjoying caring for even the most unpleasant aspects of feline care. I love them and so don't mind dealing with their poo. Is that the definition of love? Perhaps it should become part of the marriage ceremony. Instead of the bit where people get a chance to object. The bride and groom do a poo somewhere in the church and they can only get married once the other had cleaned it up.
Lion-o is a fucking idiot when it comes to toileting. Smithers buries his turds like they were little golden treasures and always comes to watch me when I am digging them back up again (I thought he was a pervert for trying to get into the loo when I was weeing, so lord knows what he thinks about me collecting up the shit that he has so carefully hidden). But Lion-o poos on top of the litter (usually on the wooden one which is where she is supposed to wee) and then claws at the plastic edge of the litter tray as if that will come apart and bury her shameful business. It doesn't of course. The acid filled turds just lie where they were deposited, which makes them easy to locate, but quite unpleasant to deal with.
And I enjoy the hunt. I don't want the cat-cack just laid in front of me. I want the joy of being a chutney ferret. It's like one of those stalls they had at the village fete where you dipped your hand into the big tub of sawdust and pulled out whatever you could find. Though the owner of this particular stall is a bit unimaginative with the prizes. Though there is always the bonus prize of toxoplasmosis.
I am pretty grateful that the Battersea Home people trained them to poo in a box because this game would be a whole lot less fun if I had to search the house and removed the prizes from the carpet. But why didn't they teach Lion-o that the side of the litter-tray is not made of soil?
But it does take a degree of love to clear up someone else's mess. I had another memory from the 1980s as I did the litter trays today about my childhood cat, Oscar. Towards the end of his life he became a bit ill and confused and one time I discovered him weeing behind a chair in the lounge (where in another reality I killed my father). I was only 16 or 17 and knowing myself I would have expected me to run away in disgust or tell my parents to deal with the puddle of uric acid. But I was very sympathetic and kindly called Oscar a dafty before clearing up the mess myself and never (until now) telling anyone about it. So I guess I loved him and wasn't as heartless as I imagined.
I am just delighted we haven't killed them yet. Or vice-versa.
I spent most of the afternoon and evening signing programmes and putting them in envelopes. The offer for all the tour programmes is still on. Thirty-two people have done it so far which is way more than I was expecting. If you donate at least £20 to SCOPE via
my justgiving page and then email your address to herring1967@gmail.com I will send you all the tour programmes from the last ten years (apart from menage a un which has now run out). And I will sign them to you or to whoever you want me to sign them to. I am delighted that these old programmes are still making money for a brilliant cause.
The column about my cats was in the Metro today.
