I am not very happy with the cat.

Just with her general day-to-day activities, the cat always hovers just below my annoyance threshold. I’m talking about the way she constantly begs for food, the way she steals your seat even if you’re only going to be gone for 1 microsecond, the way she’s constantly pestering you for attention, or the way she sometimes gets in a “I’m going to eat your arm when you’re not expecting it” mood.  But most specifically, the problem is the way she wakes Evie up every morning by intentionally meowing outside her door at 5 a.m. until she wakes up. At least once  a day that cat causes me to grit my teeth. Literally grit my teeth.

So, the cat is already pushing its limits with me on a daily basis and any extra thing, any minor infraction, just pushes me over the top. This was not a minor infraction. What happened was, the litter box is in the downstairs bathroom, hidden discretely behind a curtain. The bathroom upstairs has the same layout as the downstairs bathroom, but we hadn’t installed the curtain because we used to use that area as a diaper changing station. So when I installed the curtain, Nala said, “Hey! Good on ya! I hate walking all the way downstairs for my wonderfully private bathroom!” (No, she did, I actually heard her say that)(Actually, I wish I had, it could have saved me from what came next)

But it is even worse than you are imagining. Because of the curtain to contain the smell, it took a while for us to notice. Because the dirty diaper bin is behind the curtain, when we did start noticing a smell, we didn’t think too much of it. And because Nala was using A BAG OF EVIE’S BATH TOYS as a potty, the smell was also somewhat contained. So when I finally did get curious enough to investigate, I discovered probably a weeks worth of bathroom usage covering the floor and pouring out of a bag of my daughter’s toys.

If you don’t have a cat, rest assured that there is something particularly awful about the smell of cat urine. It claws into your brain and won’t let go. I have tried every chemical we have to get rid of the smell, and it is still there. And this wasn’t helped by the fact that after I would get done cleaning it, I would open the curtain up for it to dry out and Nala would help herself to the bathroom again. You see, once a cat decides where it wants to go to the bathroom, you can’t convince them otherwise.

Let me ask you, what value does a cat add? We used to use her as our main form of guest entertainment, but we have a kid for that now. What does a cat do that’s so fantastic that I have to take a shower in urine smell every morning? How does it balance out?

Why do I have to put up with this??