Almost like a chaperone. We’ve taken to calling him the abstinence kitty.

Like I said, alternately endearing, amusing…and irritating. ;-)

Our youngest cat, Luigi, has really stinky poo. Really stinky. And it seems to be his natural condition, because we’ve taken him to the vet about it.

He used to wake us up with his poos, but we got wise, and he doesn’t crap in the litterbox that’s just off our bedroom anymore. Instead he uses the box in the water closet, across from the bathroom. The problem is, he likes to do it when we’re taking a bath, especially if we’ve shut him out of the bedroom to give Billie a few minutes of peace. As you might guess, this makes the bath a lot less enjoyable.

We’ve hit upon the right technique to deal with it: shut him out of the bedroom, open the water closet window wide, and close the water closet doors most of the way. That’s the theory, but remembering to do this every time before you take a bath is hard, even with the excellent negative reinforcement Luigi gives us. In reality the steps are more like, get into bath, enjoy bath, smell toxic poo, get out of bath, cover poo in litter, open water closet window really wide, close water closet doors most of the way, get back into bath. Less than ideal.

One of these days I will learn…

DHI 73: I finished the list, incorporating input from Rochelle, and formatted it and printed it for our house cleaner. These instructions apparently caused much anxiety due to not completely understanding it, as our cleaner’s native language is Spanish. Perhaps a translation will be a future DHI…

DHI 74: I moved a few things to the basement, and generally rearranged the parlor, so that it would be easier to vacuum.

DHI 75: A (very) little help to Rochelle, who was on a roll Saturday night, under the influence of our decorator, some booze, and Disco Saturday Night on the radio station she listens to sometimes. Our parlor is nearly completely cleared out, and will be available for use by company and other civilized folks, instead of just me and Basta.

DHI 76: This one’s a little gross. While watching basketball I cleaned out Luigi’s ears using some Q-Tips. He had ear mites when we got him, and while those are gone, their crud remains in his ears. He doesn’t like having things stuck in his ears, though, so I only got a little way through the job. I’ll do more next weekend, while watching more basketball.

DHI 77: Rochelle and I went out to B & B Pet Supplies, a pet store on Geary, and picked out a groovy new cat climbing tree for Billie. It’s five (cat) stories tall, and Billie has already learned that she can defend the top story from all attackers, which makes her very, very happy.

So another week without a full list of achievements, but considering I took Thursday and Friday off to watch basketball in a sports bar, and sat in bed all day Saturday and Sunday, again to watch basketball, this is an amazing level of productivity.