Wetting Belles

Since I applied the same policy to the cat-room as I had to the library - blocking off the one wall against which Millie was wetting - she has used the litter-box exclusively. I have started again allowing the other cats into the cat-room while Mills is there, but only permitting one or two at a time, if they are quiet and still. Millie is coming out more and more but still doesn’t care for the other cats, any more than they do for her. The only ones who do not hiss at her are, predictably, Moxy and Neville. However, integration can take as long as it wants; the important thing is that our soft and smooth newcomer uses the litter-boxes, instead of a wall. I hope she doesn’t realize there are three other walls in the room…

In a strange twist, I think Sable is wetting outside the litter-box, too. At first, I blamed it, unfairly I now believe, on Millie. It occurred in the library, after all, but not against a wall. It was in the middle of the floor - much less troublesome to clean up and sanitise, if no less troubling, period. I thought it had occurred when Millie sneaked downstairs during one of her excursions out of the cat-room. I closed the door to the basement thereafter when Mills was free. The second time it happened, I wondered if I had indeed closed off the downstairs. The following times, though, the puddle was under the hammock that Sable often used; indeed, the hammock was a little wet with urine. The latest time, Sabe was still in the hammock, with some fluid under it and, as I saw when she vacated the bed, some on the fabric. This had transpired despite my washing it.

This is quite recent. Whoever is doing it - and I suspect Sable now - just started. I have removed the hammock to the storeroom, and the misdeed has not been repeated. If Sable has been habitually wetting outside the box, I would have found some other examples by now; if under the bed, where she still sometimes lies, I would have smelled it. I think this is a very rare instance, and related somehow to the place (the library) and the item (the hammock). What the cause is, I cannot say. Like Millie’s problem, it will likely be forever cloaked in mystery. But I can live with unsolved puzzles if they don’t recur.