Let me tell you about my middle "child":

To Pee or Not to Pee: Adventures in Kitty Litter-ature
I have had kitties all my life. Some have been more difficult to train than others, but a new addition to my family, a three-month-old tortoiseshell kitten named Chelsie, provided the greatest challenge to my “catpertise.” Besides being rather willful about venturing into no-no places and terrorizing her older sister, Melanie, Chelsie (a.k.a. Wild Child) decided one cozy morning that her mommy’s bed was a good substitute for a litter box. Is there anything else quite so delightful as awakening to warm kitty pee on your feet?

Well, after all, she was just a baby. And she had been practicing her Olympic broad jumping on the bed at the time. Surely her youthful exuberance had caused this little accident. Surely it was an isolated incident?

That misguided optimism lasted exactly one day.

When she peed on my bed the next morning, I knew I had a developing problem. My first stop toward enlightenment was the Internet, where I had to get down to raw basics to find pertinent information. Polite prompt phrases like “feline urination” typed into the search engine did not yield much help. However, “kitty peeing on bed” brought forth many possibilities.

I discovered that Chelsie’s problem was not that uncommon among kittens, even older cats. However, each article seemed to provide a different reason for the problem and a different solution. No one, I soon surmised, knew with any certainty any more than I did about stopping a kitty from peeing on a bed. When behavior is involved, trying to analyze a kitty’s motivation is like trying to find common sense in government bureaucracy.

The only common thread was to check first for a physical problem. When I took Chelsie to the vet clinic for her boosters, Dr. Sprague examined her and assured me that the problem was behavioral, not physical. His recommendation was to keep Chelsie out of my bedroom for a couple of weeks.

That was the proverbial easier-said-than-done solution.

For one thing, my bedroom door is a louvered door that Melanie can easily paw open. I installed a latch to fix that physical problem, but an emotional problem remained: I am too softhearted about my little girls. I just couldn’t handle their crying at my door in the middle of the night. They wanted to be with me, and, quite honestly, I wanted them to be with me. Besides, I felt as if I was punishing Melanie for something that was not her fault. I caved within a week and opened up the bedroom.

Chelsie resumed her morning tinkles on the bed almost immediately. My new feather-down comforter was completely ruined, and I was washing my other bedclothes almost every other day. My laundry was becoming rather overwhelming because I also had extra towels to wash when she jumped into my bath water two consecutive nights, and I had to blot her dry. (I was beginning to think she wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box.)

Using one of the suggestions I found online, I bought some vinyl tablecloths to shield my bed and me. I placed one inside my duvet and one on top of my quilt. I thank the infamous Martha Stewart for creating attractive lace-looking tablecloths that matched my bedroom décor. However, sleeping beneath vinyl is not pleasant. You sweat like you’ve been running a marathon in ninety-degree heat, and personally I don’t need that extra thermal aggravation at this phase of my life.

Although chemistry had never been my strong suit, I studied pet catalogs for chemicals that would neutralize kitty pee, eradicate all traces of it, and make my world clean and serene once more. I even found a miraculous liquid in which I could wash my duvet and quilt to make them water repellent.

For several weeks, I also lost a tremendous amount of sleep. With kitties, you have to catch them in no-no acts before you can discipline them. That old trick of rubbing their noses in their accidents after the fact does not work on kitties. Consequently, every time Chelsie so much as moved on the bed, I was awake and watching to see if she “assumed the position.” If she did, I gently pushed her over onto her side to take her mind off the inclination. I didn’t sleep well for many weeks, but I could register some progress with the Wild Child. We had a few accidents, but thanks to the tablecloths and chemicals, the messes were much easier to clean up.

Another tactic I tried was adding a litter box to the two I already had. Somewhere in my online ramblings, I read that you should have one box for every kitty plus one box more. I placed this box in the living room, about ten feet from my bedroom. When you’re desperate, you are willing to overlook interior design faux pas.

One morning, after I had made the bed with one of the vinyl tablecloths on top, I wasn’t quick enough when Chelsie assumed the position. Just as she started tinkling, I pushed her over, and she continued to pee right up into the air like a fountain. At last, however, I had caught her in the act, and I “Bad kittied!” her profusely and sternly. I knew I had made an impression on her, for she ran and hid from me. I went on to work with that guilt weighing heavily on my heart, but she was there to greet me as always when I came home later.

There have been no accidents since that morning. I can’t say whether that last bit of discipline or the tablecloths or the extra litter box or the vigilance of watching her when she was moving on the bed was what effected the change. All I know is that we now remain dry in the mornings, and I have another sweet, furry fluff of love nuzzling my face as we cuddle in pre-dawn moments.

After breakfast, she and Melly...and now their baby sister, Elly Fae...help me make my bed. Of course, there are three purring designer lumps in the middle of the quilt when we are finished, but the bed, Chelsie, and I now remain dry: a cat-astrophe with a happy ending.