Faux Kitty Blues

Dear Sammy,

I live with a truly weird person. She is cat obsessed. That’s only normal thing about her. I live with seven other cats, and we get along pretty well. We all have our own bed, our own food dish, and even our own litter box. I have no complaints about her care. She’s great. The problem is, she has to have everything she sees that has a cat on it. The house is full of cat blankets, cat tea towels, cat glasses, cat coasters… You get the picture. That’s not weird either. We are fascinating. The problem is her latest acquisition. It’s a cat shaped pitcher, with a tale handle, and you pour out of the mouth. That’s gross, but I could live with it if she didn’t use the cursed thing to fill our milk dishes every day. There’s nothing that will make a cat lose her appetite quicker than seeing another cat spit up in her dish. My person thinks it’s just the cutest thing, but I, and my cat mates, are losing weight because we can’t enjoy our morning milk. We’ve thought of breaking it, but she puts it away in a display case after the morning spit. How can we evict the unwanted new arrival?

Nauseous in North Highlands

Dear Nauseous,

First let me say, ewwww! You are right. The spitty kitty has to go. The person who sold the thing should be banned from retail forever, but you only need to get rid of one. This calls for a well executed operation. You have a small window of opportunity here so you have to be quick and coordinated. The next time she pulls it out, you need to distract her so she has to put it down in a vulnerable spot. Since there are several of you, it should be easy to confuse her if you work together. As she is starting to pour, you take action. One cat pretends to get scared by something and runs away, two others start fighting, another jumps up on the table (if that is off limits), it would be helpful if someone could really spit up (a little palm tree helps here). You get the point. If everyone starts misbehaving in different directions at the same time, she’ll be forced to set down the spitty kitty and go after someone. That’s when your point man takes over. Hopefully, she’ll set it on a counter or table and one swift swipe will send it to ugly pitcher heaven. If she sets it on the ground, and knocking it over doesn’t break it, leave a little gift, if you get my drift, inside. Even if she doesn’t throw it away after that, she’ll never put food in it again.

Sammy