Life and death and animals

Do not read this if you are squeamish about cat pee or sensitive about the topic of “putting pets to sleep.”

I am a farm girl and less sentimental than most about the life and death power we hold over our animal friends. I favor limiting suffering, both theirs and ours.

They say that the number one reason for cat euthanasia is litter box problems. Our beloved Lalo is 17 years old and in pretty good health, but six weeks ago he stopped using the litter box. We took him to the vet, discovered a urinary tract infection, and treated it by shooting pills down his throat, to his great distress.

Still, he did not go back to the litter box. Instead, he continued to use any loose matter on the basement floor. He favored the coil of cords next to Vic’s basement desk. When we removed all bags, books, and papers and lifted the cords off the floor, he used the bare floor.

We tried different litter—including the Senior Cat litter that he used to favor. It is supposed to be irresistible. He resisted.

We tried leaving him outside most of the day. He peed on the basement floor at night.

We tried keeping him out of the basement and mostly out of the house. We penned him in the front porch with food, water, and litter boxes. I kept him company when I could. We left him there overnight.

In the morning he would be gone, no pee in the box or on the floor. He escaped to the outdoors by pawing open the inward-opening screen door, as he has done before. He has never learned that getting back inside is even easier. Instead, he waits patiently at the backdoor to be let in for food and water.

Why not let him be an outdoor cat? Because any food placed outside for Lalo would also be food for raccoons.

Even food placed on the porch for Lalo, it turns out, is also food for raccoons. Screen doors do not deter hungry raccoons. They invaded the porch one night, overturned the water bottle, ate up the (pristine) wheat-based litter, and dragged the entire feeder into the woods.

We let Lalo back into the house, mopped the basement regularly, and debated our options. Euthanasia came into consideration.

We tried another litterbox shuffle, different litters, different areas of the basement.

A glimmer of hope. We covered one of his pee spots on the floor with a bit of litter and he used the same spot again. Perhaps if we made a litter box that was almost like the floor . . . .

Yesterday we cut down a new litter box so that it had only a 2-inch rim, scattered a thin layer of litter in it, and put it exactly over the spot he’d last used. He peed on the floor right next to it.

Heavy-hearted, we decided to call the vet in the morning to make the appointment.

But lo and behold, as my mother would have said, this morning there were two wet spots in the box. The first in-the-box pee in six weeks!

Of course, there was poop on the floor in the corner but hey. The old cat has turned a corner. He has won an 11^th-hour reprieve.