Advice—May 2008

Dear Sparkle,
I am two months old and my favorite thing to do is play. I suppose that’s logical, since I’m a kitten! I haven’t met an object, animate or inanimate, that I haven’t been able to turn into a cat toy. My human loves to watch me jump around and chase things, and sometimes she even plays with me, except lately things have gotten kind of weird. One of my favorite games is to leap into the litter box and roll around and kick out as much of the litter as possible. My human doesn’t like it when I do this — when she catches me, she calls me “Icky” and “Smelly” (neither of which are my name) and then she does the unthinkable: she gives me a bath! Lately this has been happening on a daily basis, and I am very, very unhappy about this, as you might imagine. What do you suggest? Should I stay away from the litter box completely? I thought it was there just for me, but now I have no idea what it’s for.
Signed,
Perpetually Playful

Dear Playful,
I must commend you on your vocabulary — it’s quite advanced for such a young kitten. I also admire your ingenuity at creating cat toys out of every object you encounter. You must have an incredible imagination. But I have to agree with your human — your playing in the litter box is a little strange. I think litter boxes are kind of disgusting and spend lots of time trying to get that gritty feeling of the litter out from between my toes. It is icky and smelly! But that’s really my human’s fault — she really could do a better job of keeping it clean. And since you seem to like spending so much time in your litter box maybe your human should work even harder to keep it spotless. It’s not your fault that you wind up smelling icky because your human left you with a dirty litter box. And besides that, if she really wants to keep you from playing there, the best thing she can do is distract you with a better toy. All that bathing and negativity will do is make you hate the litter box and never use it for what it’s really meant to be used for.

If I sound a little put off by this habit of yours, don’t worry too much — you’re not the first kitten I’ve heard of who makes his litter box into a plaything. From what I gather, the ones that do will grow out of it after a few weeks. Kittens bore easily, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were off very soon, making a toy out of yet another object that your human deems inappropriate. If that happens, feel free to write in again and we’ll suss it out.