She's pushing it. And not in the cool Salt-n-Pepa way.

Wait.  I thought Salt-n-Pepa were just two girls.  And one of them was nicknamed Salt.  And one of them was nicknamed Pepa.  Who's this third girl?  I don't get it.  But I don't care enough to look it up on Wikipedia.  All I know is that song rocks.

Okay, dude, and speaking of Push It, my all-time favorite commercial has that song on it.  I tried to embed the video, but it wouldn't work.  But if you want to see it really quickly, it's here.  It makes me laugh so hard.  I miss seeing it on TV.

Anyyyywayyyys, this post is about Xena.  She's the pusher we're speaking about here. 

We've had a relatively drama-free four years with this little woman.  I mean, when we first got her, she was supposed to be spayed.  Turns out, she wasn't.  She got knocked up within days of coming to our house and had kittens.  So there was all that drama.  But aside from that, it's been all good.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

Ben got an idea.  Not his best idea ever.  He took away her litter box. 

"It's spring!" he said.  "She needs to do her business outside.  I'm sick of cleaning out her litter box.  She uses the bathroom outside all summer.  She just needs a little...nudge...to start doing that again."

I told him I thought this was a bad idea, but I let him do his thing.  I told him that, if Xena got mad or confused and peed or pooped somewhere, he was the one that was going to clean it up.

And she did. 

She peed in our bed. 

So I went to the store and got more litter, retrieved the litter box from the garage, refilled it, put it right back in the laundry room, and gently showed Xena that her bathroom was back.

And I made Ben clean up the mess. :)

The next day, she peed in our bed again.

Ohhhh Ben was mad.  He put her outside and made her stay out all night.  "I'm going to take my gun and take her into the woods and shoot her," he muttered to himself into our newly-changed sheets. 

Keep in mind that Ben becomes The Devil at night.  From 10 p.m. until, like, 10 a.m., you don't mess with him. He is really grumpy.  Happy the rest of the day.  But Grumpy Pants late at night.  Which it was when this happened.  Oh, and he was probably extra grumpy because he discovered the pee in an unpleasant way.  He lay down in bed, pulled up the covers, and the pee was on the covers, right in his face.  Not pleasant.

The thing that cracks me up is that Xena is Ben's cat.  She was Ben's idea, and he has always been more of a cat person than a dog person.  They have this special little relationship.  She adores him.  And he adores her.  So this was uncharacteristic of him.  I told him to give her one more chance.  Maybe she was still confused.  Or letting us know that she was mad.  Or maybe she was sick.  And that, if he wanted to get rid of her, I was not going to let him shoot her.  We'd take her to the animal shelter and pay the fee.

We started closing our door always.  She can't go into our room anymore.

And maybe that made her mad or something, because then she pooped in our laundry basket.  And do you want to know how I found it?  I stuck my hand in it while I was absent-mindedly watching TV and folding laundry.  I stuck my hand in cat feces.

As I went to clean my hand off, I noticed that Gage's coat was left on the floor (note that I said the word "coat" and not "jacket."  Yes, it's supposedly spring, but Idaho doesn't understand that.  We will be wearing coats until May.), and that Xena had peed on that, too.

If it hadn't been a Saturday (because the animal shelter is closed on Saturdays and Sundays), I would have taken her straight there and paid the fee to give her up.  I was pissed.

Get it?  I was pissed.  And she...well...pissed on Gage's coat.  Get it?

Anywayyyyyyssss...

I planned to take her to the animal shelter the following Monday, but she behaved really well that Sunday, and I thought, "Okay, one more chance.  If she does something like this again, she's outta here."  I have the address and phone number of the animal shelter on my fridge right now.  Ready at a moment's notice.

But she's been an angel for about...two weeks?  No errant pee or poop.  My friend from my spinning class taught me how to check for a UTI in cats - a common cause of using the bathroom not in their litter boxes.  She says you lift them up by their stomachs and see if they yowl and flinch.  So I tried that, and she wasn't bugged.  I think truly she was just really mad at Ben for taking her litter box away.  And then I think she was mad that we haven't let her into our bedroom.  So she let us know her feelings, and now she's fine. 

Oh, and an update - we haven't seen her Special Friend, The Big White Jerk, in ages.  Maybe he got sick of Xena's moodiness and moved on to less angry females.  Maybe she let him know that she was just not that into him.  Who knows?