The face of an angel

But the bottom of a devil.

I am, of course, referring to my cat Missy. She's a bit of a looker, all tabby fur and little white socks. However, she has been somewhat ill-behaved of late.

I was sitting in the toilet yesterday, innocently having a little wee, when along came a familiar little face. Missy likes to join me in the bathroom for reasons best known to herself so I prepared to give her a little stroke. But she wasn't behaving in quite the normal way. She was kind of poised for some sort of action.

The sort of action she was poised for became clear all too soon.

A few seconds later, the bloody cat started blithely pissing away on the bathmat. Right in front of me! I couldn't believe it and whipped out the bathmat - which I had just put through the washing machine (it was smelling a bit funny - now I know why) and she finished off her business against the side of the bath.

I couldn't believe it. We provide her with a lovely litter tray, regularly emptied, it may even be the slightly fragrant stuff. Hell, the tray itself is lilac and everyone knows that lilac is lovely.

*ooh, England just scored. Yay.*

So I had stern words with the little mog and pointed and said no firmly a number of times and showed her her rightful toilet area. And, obviously, washed the bathmat again and shut the bathroom door so as not to allow her in the area - to avoid temptation.

But what do I find today? A nice little pile of (fortunately solid, neat and not too smelly) poo by the back door, next to a little puddle on the carpet. She'd only bloody done it again! I apologise for the language, but really, the cat is six years old and supposedly fully house-trained. There is no excuse for such behaviour.

We think we've figured out the reason though. After toying with the idea that maybe it's because of some abuse in her childhood, issues of self-esteem or a cry for attention, we realised that at pretty much the same time she started misbehaving, we changed her litter to a different type. I guess she doesn't fancy the look of the new stuff, that lovely bathmat/carpet is more to her taste.

Stupid wench.

Anyhow, we move house at the end of next week (literally just around the corner) and the new place has no carpets except for the stairs - and I can't see her squatting to do her business on the stairs. All we have to do now is make sure she behaves until then. With the added stress of moving.

I have decided we can move house without hiring a van. So we're going to attempt to move, variously, a fridge, a bed, a futon, an ikea room divider, a table etc taking most of the big stuff between the two of us on foot. HF isn't convinced, but I'm hardcore. It had better not rain though, cos that would really fuck it up.

More on that story later.