I'd rather be changing diapers.

See this guy?

(I'll wait a minute so everybody can go aaawwww .......)

***

He's a lovebug by day and a fiend by night, a sweetheart with a true devious streak, a purrer and a talker and a cuddler, but only if you're standing while you're cuddling him, and he really merits his very own post. This is not it.

This is the post about his litter box, which I accidentally dumped all over our living room yesterday.

Among the cat's not-so-many faults is that he is a terrible tracker of kitty litter. Every time he uses his box, he leaves a trail of litter going all the way back to the living room, which is where he spends most of his time. (Unless he's napping on our bed. Or looking out the kitchen window at the birds who love to taunt him so. Or on my knees, at the computer, helping me to type, as he is now.) I sweep it up as much and as often as I can, but the constant presence really does get tiresome.

We thought perhaps changing the litter would reduce the tracking and found a silica version to try. It's supposed to be very absorptive, although it doesn't seem to be, and it also isn't very good at reducing odors.

Yesterday was warm and sunny, and I came up with a great idea: to put the litter box out on the living room balcony in the sunlight so the UV rays could evaporate what had not yet been absorbed, as well as just generally sterilize and de-odorize the entirety.

A few hours later, as a late-afternoon tempest starting kicking up from the lake, I went to bring the box back inside, pleased, because my idea had seemed to work. Pleased, until I knocked the box against the edge of the balcony door and dropped it ... and kitty litter went everywhere. And then beyond everywhere, as a gust from the tempest swooped into the mess.

The silica crystals are light and airy, and trying to gather them, especially with the force of the wind on them, was as difficult as trying to scoop up those little styrofoam balls from the inside of a beanbag. And they were lost in, on, under, and between every cranny imaginable: the hems of the curtains, the convulated form of the doorsill, the door's locking mechanism, the cracks between the floorboards, the rough pile of the rug.

After sweeping up most of it, I brought out the vacuum cleaner for the rest and began to calm down a bit. Until accidentally sucking up a toy – the cat's toy, of course – causing the vacuum cleaner to jam.

A bit of home applicance surgery later and I was able to finish the job, hopping onto the coach with a magazine right before Gilles arrived home.

All in a day's work.