Elin's Journal

Do not let the cute, innocent Indy face in the icon fool you! My cats are all evil.

Today is already sucking and it is 100% the fault of our cats. Batty is in a snit about being low cat on the totem pole now (this is a status that changes often, between him and Indy; Bandito is somehow now the default top cat at all times...), so he whizzed in the entrance of the hallway that leads to the back of the apartment. (Batty lives in the back with scheduled visits to the rest of the apartment, and Indy has the front end and never ventures into the back, which is Batty's territory.) There was a Mexican stand-off last night between Indy and Batty, with Batty as the aggressor, so I should have known there would be territory battles today in the form of surreptitious peeing. I woke up and immediately started cleaning the hallway entrance. Leaving the stuff to sit and work in (the various carpet cleaning cleansers), I decided to eat breakfast and let Batty have his out-and-about time, since I could monitor him. Well, Mr. Blacksie-Pants waltzes into the front entryway of the apartment, where we have some boxes of comics that need to go into storage, and proceeds to sneak into a corner next to them WHERE HE PEES AGAIN! AUGH! I catch him mid-squat and chase him away, so I can grab him and drag him into "his" bathroom where his personal catbox is. (We have two bathrooms, the back one is his, the front one belongs to Indy and Bandito.) Of course, he flees! And knocks a ton of crap over! And this scares fat, lazy Indy, who spindashes ACROSS MY TOES, CLAWS OUT. He rips giant gashes in the tops of two of my toes! Thus, Loving Patient Cat Mommy turns into cursing, yelling Terrifying Human Monster, so all cats go apeshit and flee for the hills. Indy gets put on the couch, Bandito hides under a chair, and Batty, the cause of all this drama, gets grabbed and unceremoniously stuffed into his bathroom, also known as Cat Jail.

Ignoring my foot, I run to clean up the pee in the entryway (fortunately, on a tile floor this time). Lucky for me, the comic box the pee got on is almost empty and only had dinged comics in it anyway, so the whole thing gets hucked into the dumpster. Meanwhile, my foot is bleeding like a stuck pig, so I run to Batty's bathroom (which is also my bathroom) to clean it up. Batty, who has been in Cat Jail alone for all of three minutes by this point, immediately sidles up to me and starts mau-ing about how he's lonely, so lonely and so sad to have been put into Cat Jail and won't I please let him out? He gets choice words from me about how he is being punished and how he's a pissy jerk. I survey the foot damage and it's choice. One scratch is fairly deep and bleeding profusely, one is shallow and mostly just stinging. But both, both are vertical along the tops of my toes, and I have a hell of a time applying Dora the Explorer Band-Aids (don't judge me!) so they will stay on and stop the prodigious flow of blood. Now Boots and Diego are staring up at me cheerfully from my Neosporin-covered toes. Once the toes are tended to, I go back to cleaning up cat pee, and scoop out Batty's catbox for good measure. Meanwhile, Batty rolls in the tub like he is being oppressed, and in a way he is, because he's going to be in Cat Jail for a good while.

Finally, I washed up and had my half-made breakfast. I have tons of errands to do today and this toe thing is going to make shoes a fun proposition. (I'll probably have to wear flip-flops.)

I'm starting to think I might have to permanently separate my cats, because I am tired of the constant dominance drama and Indy and Batty will *not* back down from each other and get along. I don't know what caused this endless hatred between them, either, they used to get along. I'm also sick to death of cleaning up cat pee. I don't know what kind of a solution I can come up with though, because Batty is bonded with me, Indy is bonded with PD and Bandito is bonded with willworks. When I am out of town or not around, Batty is unhappy. He's a sensitive, high strung, nervous cat, and also kind of prickly in the personality department, so I can't imagine giving him away to someone else. He'd be miserable and whoever ended up with him probably wouldn't have the patience to deal with him.