Saturday, March 30, 2013

Pooping Outside the Litter Box: Update


Petco Mega Rectangular litter box (the two litter boxes we are still using)
As I mentioned in this and this blog post, Garfield was pooping outside of the box and we were very frustrated. We are now back down to two litterboxes (from four). We recently switched to Dr. Elsey's Cat Attract litter to get Garfield interested in the litter box again and also monitored his visits to the litter box as many times as possible. At first, we had to put him back in the box when he was about to poop next to it. My husband concluded that Garfield doesn't like much litter - no matter what brand - in the box. This would be a great discovery except that Chester wants 3-4 inches of litter in the box. Our current solution - which seems to be working (fingers crossed) - is to keep no or very little litter at one end of the box and to have a mound on the other end of the box. Garfield gets to dig on a smooth surface, do his thing, and then cover the evidence with the litter from the other side of the box and Chester gets to adjust the litter to his liking and then do his thing. When one of them is done and we clean the box, we return the litter to the half no litter/half litter configuration.

I will be happy when we switch back  to The World's Best Cat litter unscented for multiple cats. WBC litter clumps better and leaves the box smelling better after pee and pooped are removed. It's also flushable, something that Dr. Elsey's isn't. I don't know that the boys will be pleased when we return  to WBC litter. Chester and Garfield like to accompany us on our now many visits to the trash chute outside of our apartment when we dispose of the contents of the box. Chester loves to run down the long hallway and groom himself on the hallway rug while Garfield likes to investigate every inch of hallway rug, sniff outside other apartment doors, and jump on the table facing the elevators. Our secret hallway  missions are not so stealthy due to Chester's throat clearing and his loud breathing or Garfield's meowing but so far, none of our neighbors has ventured outside of their apartments to check on the strange sounds! Honestly, we'll probably continue our hallway visits now that they are so keen to venture outside, even after we return to World's Best Cat Litter!

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Exotic shorthair Garfield and Fancy Feast

Garfield is very silly and very meowy but he also has a pensive side:

Food, food everywhere and not a bite to eat!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

BuzzFeed list with Exotic Shorthair cats Chester and Garfield

I am so excited - Chester and Garfield are on BuzzFeed in a list called 10 Word Mix-Ups To Avoid, Presented By Adorable Animals. You can see them demonstrating the meaning of the word "tenant" (as opposed to "tenet"). I ran to Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr to repost the article. 

As you may have gleaned from this post, I have wanted the boys to be featured on popular websites and have been at a loss as to how to make this happen. The good news is that there is a photo credit to a Tumblr page called "Cats With Weird Faces" which leads back to me (ChesterSmooshyFace) as the user who submitted the picture.

Tenant: one who rents or leases.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

iPad2 photo of exotic shorthair Chester

Here's a photo of Chester than I took with my Ipad2. It was a grainy digital picture so I touched it up in Picasa:


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Photographic Portraits of Chester and Garfield

We recently had my friend Megan Green over to take portrait photos of Chester and Garfield.

Chester wasn't into the whole posing thing and one of the best photos of him was taken while he was trying to avoid the camera:


Garfield on the other hand was a natural: