Oh, Not The Cat Litterbox!

      The litterboxes at Roseholme Cottage annoy Tamara.  I do them in a fussy way that creates a kind of trash-bag "tent" inside and minimizes contact with the dirty litter.  On trash day (or earlier, if need be), you just free up the bag, carefully force the air out, twist the open end shut and it's ready to be thrown out.  We use ordinary clay litter, and with care, it's good for a week.

      The problem isn't throwing the litter out.  It's loading up the new bag.  There's a trick to it, one that I cannot explain clearly enough.  I change two litter boxes and she has been changing the remaining one.  Several months ago, after the cats had managed to pee over the edge of the covered box for the umpteenth time, I modified that box to be like the other two.  She finds the arrangement incredibly frustrating -- because it is.  The bag goes in the box on its side and you lay down a few sheets of newsprint and cover them with litter.  Then you put the lid on, trapping the bag at the corners with as much slack above as you can manage.  That's the easy part.  The upper corners of the lid have one-inch holes drilled in them.  Starting at the back, you poke a finger from the inside out, until there's enough of the bag sticking out to clamp a spring clothespin (C47) on it.  Once all four corners are done, you fold the open end of the bag under the front of the litter box and over the top, and move the front set of clothespins so it catches both the outside of the bag and the poked-through inside of the bag.  It's topologically complex.  It requires a kind of three-dimensional visualization that I find difficult.  Done right, it creates a little tent inside the litterbox.  Done wrong, it's frustrating to the point of seeming impossible, especially when you try to sort out where things went off course.  And I can't explain it any better than I just have, which isn't good enough.

       Don't scoff.  It took me about half a year to get the process down to routine and I still sometimes have to stop and rethink it.  It's sort of like an external-frame tent, which my family used for camping for at least five years.  Every year, the first night of the first camping expedition was a process of awkward rediscovery, and a good time to learn new expressions that children should not ever repeat, possibly even after they grew to adulthood.  My father could produce amazing, hilarious invective if he was angry enough -- and it was a very bad idea to laugh at it.

      Tonight was no damn fun.  We didn't even invent any new swear words.  At least we managed to get all of our trash and all of our neighbor's trash out to the street.