A basic litter box and a bag of litter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scott Peck says in The Road Less Traveled that love is not a feeling. It’s an action. I show my love for the cats by the things I do each day, like cleaning the freakin’ litter boxes.

Every morning, two littler boxes, very fragrant. Made pristine before I leave for the office. Every evening, two litter boxes appearing to have never been cleaned. If this is love, could I have a little less of it?

Now that plastic bags are banned from Safeway and CVS, I beg friends to save theirs for me.  I’ve been reduced to scrounging for outlawed plastic bags as the only safe alternative for disposing of the mountain of cat waste produced by two indoor cats every 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Now you may say, “But, Eleanor think of those countless parents out there changing diapers.” To which I say, shit happens. I raised two kids, and I’m doing my grandmotherly bit now. I’ve dealt with poop in every form. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like cat poop. The pee is possibly worse.

Saffron has a large bladder Dr. Bynum informed me at one of his exams. She palpated his belly while peering at me over the rims of her glasses. I thought to myself, “If you only knew.”

Saffie is one of the pee-ing-est cats ever. Big, sticky globs right down the side of the box. I kneel there tossing litter bits with the pooper scooper at these fetid clumps to make them hard enough to scoop. This is true love, people.

As I leave the room  in the morning with my daily pound of poop, Odie runs in and jumps into the clean litter box. It’s not even his. He has his own box in the bathroom closet – one of those extra deep ones with the massive top the size of a small Volkswagen Beetle that supposedly keep the odors in check and the litter inside. Marketing genius. Most of the time Odie uses his giant box, but sometimes he just can’t resist using Saffron’s.

a cat and a Litter box (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And so I kneel down and scoop the poop.

I dispose of the tightly tied plastic bags in a second, larger plastic bag that lines my kitchen wastebasket. By the time it’s full after a few days, I stagger under its weight, risking my life as I wobble down the stairs, bag clutched in both arms, to get it from the second floor to the garbage can.

This may not be exactly what Scott Peck had in mind, but I know exactly what he meant. It’s easy to love my boys when I’m petting them and whispering sweet nothings into their upturned kitty faces. But it’s the daily grind of those litter boxes that really puts my love to the test.

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