Here’s a question for cat people:
Specifically, it’s a question for people who live with gray cats.
Over the years, I’ve lived with several.
This little girl was called Mama. She and her kitten Baby Girl were Grant’s cats, that eventually came to live with me too.
This is Baby Girl. She and her mum were lovely.
Except for one thing.
They had some sort of issue about peeing in a box.
They wouldn’t comply.
So, sadly, when they moved to my place in Washington, they had to be accommodated in the Kitty Suites, were pee was to an extent containable.
Abe moved in at the same time.
Gorgeous, sweet Abe, with a heart condition.
He moved in upstairs but one morning I caught him peeing on a wall and he too had to go down to the Suites.
Three little gray cats. Banished.
It felt heartless and it upset me, but I already one cat who would pee inappropriately when he was annoyed.
Really, I couldn’t afford to have 4 of them randomly peeing all over the house.
But the Suites were spacious and warm. They had windows and regular meals. They just didn’t have access to a lap whenever they felt like it.
With the best of intentions, I couldn’t spend all my time in the Suites. It was a bit of Upstairs/Downstairs.
Then we acquired Bridget and Macy.
They were sisters that had been left behind in an apartment and were found there a few days later.
We became very fond of the sisters. Macy was a typical black cat, pushy and full of personality. Bridget was a little shy and she was almost blind in one eye. But she soon got used to us.
We desperately wanted to find them a home together.
Which wasn’t made easy by the fact that Bridget wouldn’t pee in a box.
We found that she would agree to go on paper towel.
Luckily, a very wonderful couple came to meet Bridget and Macy and fell in love with them.
They were even prepared to manage Bridget’s box issues.
The sisters were with us for a long time and we were sad and yet so happy to see them get a good home.
They certainly deserved it.
Meanwhile, time was marching on and at a time when my heart was in bits over all the cats we’d lost, this little creature delivered herself to my door.
“Have you got room for me?” she asked.
I waived my “No more kittens” rule for just one.
Willow arrived to mend my heart.
At this juncture, my personal, “upstairs” situation had devolved into some sort of chaos and with multiple cats, this can lead to “peeing problems”. It did.
And Grant seemed determined to blame Willow. Because she was gray and that’s what gray cats did, in his experience.
Crossly, I always defended her.
.
Now, there have been other gray cats in my life:
Early in 2011, I agreed to take in 6 cats from Eastern Washington where it was harder to re-home animals.
Cinder and Ella were Mum and daughter.
The boy kittens were named Maks, Mikal and Oliver.
Cinder and Ella were adopted together, as were Mikal and Oliver and Maks was adopted by a friend.
To my knowledge the only peeing problem with any of them was when poor Maks was very ill.
So, even though Willow finally got busted by the trail cam, I don’t think the theory that all gray cays pee outside the box holds up.
My Willow just has very particular requirements. That I have yet to properly satisfy. My fault. Not hers. She can do no wrong.