Tag: Kitty Litter

No cats in the house

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We have a new resident living at La Maison du Talley:  Izzy Osborne the cat.  My mother recently moved from a house to a smaller apartment and her cat went nuts.  Screaming, scratching, and peeing on everything and everyone.  The Nana was beside herself with anger over the mess and with worry about what would happen to her kitty.  This cat and I have history.  For the last 7 years she has attacked me, drawn blood, hissed, growled, spit and slapped at me almost every time I got near her.  There was an air of loathing in her yellow eyes every time she looked at me.  Mean is an understatement!  I have repeatedly teased The Nana about the cat being the Devil’s own and that her kitty brain was busy plotting evil, hate, and plague.

Stamps-With-Foot and I grudgingly agreed to bring her to our place to live in the back yard (I refuse to have a cat in the house – refuse) because I didn’t want my mother to get even more upset.  Izzy wanted nothing to do with us for the first few days and even walked back to The Nana’s old house a couple of times.  We went and got her – visualize armor made from a catcher’s mask and welding gloves – and once she figured out that we would feed her a couple times a day and not let Brodie use her for a chew toy, I guess she decided to stay.

She is a whole new cat…  She purrs when I feed her, she will let me touch her, hasn’t attacked me even once, and her look of revulsion toward me is gone.  While sitting in the yard on Sunday, she got into my lap and demanded some scratching – it was shocking.  I was even able to pick her up yesterday without pulling back two bloody stumps from where my hands used to be.  It is like she has experienced a complete reversal of personality.  The thought has crossed my mind that she is just trying to lull me into a comfortable place, biding her time until she can corner me in the shop and eat me or catch me napping and come at me like the face-sucker from the Alien movies, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt for now, pet her when I feed her and pay her some attention when outside.  You never know, she might earn her keep and find a mouse or two trying to invade the yard.

An update on the removal of the giant outdoor cat litter box.

/ Matt Talley / 4 Comments

As mentioned before, the previous owners of our home filled what used to be a cascading koi pond with a couple of years worth of used cat litter.  The removal of this “gift” was a project that I was NOT looking forward to, but it had to be done.  While it was officially still winter, I started the spring prep in the yard/garden and the litter box was the first project on my list.

I dug the bed out and hauled the old liner and kitty-nuggets away.  I had thought about turning the area into a raised root vegetable planter, but the thought of any leftover cat poo getting into my food gave me the shakes.  Stamps-With-Foot has been eyeing my vegetable boxes with intent to “ maybe add some flowers” so I decided to give her some space to plant non-edible flora in the backyard, which by agreement is my gardening domain.

There was already a course of interlocking wall block down, so I rearranged the foot print and after a trip to Home Depot for material, I laid four more courses down to give her a two foot tall planter with about  fourteen square feet of planting space.  (As a note, I have mad masonry hammer skills.)

After finishing the walls and filling the new planter with topsoil and a fresh layer of compost, I soaked the blocks with water and added moss bits from the old wall/garage roof to the seams because my little wife really likes the mossy look of old walls.  I blended some moss up with yogurt that next weekend and spread it on to assist the growth process.  By next summer the planter will look like it has been there for twenty years and the odd floral planting will not “happen” to show up next to my veggies.  The pics below show the original ivy-covered state and how it looked up until late summer.