I was reminded of a possibly apocryphal story in which a couple had an enormous water bill, and couldn’t figure out why. Eventually one of them stayed home sick, and discovered that their cat was an obsessive toilet flusher.
I was musing last night about what cats love about flushing the toilet. I figured that it was the total disconnection between cause and effect: “I do something up here, and something totally unexpected happens down there. And it’s noisy and swirling!”
I imagined a cat toy that comes in two parts:
A button or lever that sits flat on the ground, that’s easy for the cat to push on and engage.
A little battery-powered car, with big wheels outside its body so that it can run upside down or right-side up. It’s configured so that it tends to drive in circles, or certainly not only in a straight line. It makes noise when it moves. For extra points, it’s got a little brain in it that prevents it from driving too far away from the button.
When the cat pushes the button, the car jumps to life and drives around for, I don’t know, 45 seconds. The cat gets fascinated, and repeats ad nauseum.
There are cats everywhere in Essaouira. I see at least a dozen every time I walk 100 yards from our riad. Moroccans seem to love them much more than dogs. We can probably chalk this up to their cherished role in Islam.
Our bedroom is on the top floor of our limestone farmhouse. There’s kind of an outdoor landing outside our bedroom door, which you cross to descend stairs into the rest of the house. We’ve occasionally seen cats on this landing, as they cross rooftops and balconies and lick their tongues into the corners of the evening.
Last week, on three separate occasions, we’ve found, well, piles of crap in various corners of this landing. Large piles of crap for a cat. If the location wasn’t accessible only to cats, you’d think a dog was responsible (some of the cats around here are big, muscular beasts). And, without getting too graphic, these cats were not getting enough fibre in their diets.
What to do? The cats come and do their business in the middle of the night. There was no way to fence off the landing, or access to it from the roof. There was only one solution.
I made like Farley Mowat, and marked my territory. We figured a little human urine might turn off the fickle felines.
And we were right. It’s been four nights now, and there’s no cat poo in sight. Darren 1, Feral Cats 0.
Our hotel is right next to the Royal Dublin Society, commonly known around these parts as the RDS. The RDS is pretty much like Vancouver’s PNE, or any large exhibition grounds. Yesterday we saw a sign advertising a Supreme Cat Show at the RDS, and had to pop by to watch the feline strangeness.
In truth, it was less strange than I hoped. I did manage to get a few photos (as always, click for larger versions).
These cats just shouldn’t be:
I like the alarmed look on this cat’s face (and the creepy-looking kid at right):
This isn’t a cat photo, but what do you suppose this woman has in her Coke bottle?
