When I say I have given up on the carpet, naturally I don't mean I've given up on the tedious process of cleaning the wee out of it. I'm becoming something of an expert at it now. Obviously the underlay has been removed from the offending area for the foreseeable future, which leaves the perfect space for sliding a sacrificial towel underneath to absorb the worst of the effluent. Then comes the oven tray, allowing a concentrated solution of biological detergent to be poured into the carpet and rubbed in. A sequence of scrubbing, rinsing, squeezing, rinsing, scrubbing, squeezing etc then follows until the water coming out is mostly clean and mostly soap-free. Then we're back to the sacrificial towels to be packed under and over the wet carpet to soak up the bulk of the water. Oh, and don't forget to scrub the floorboards too.
I have a conveniently located pile of sacrificial towels to hand these days.
It would be fair to say that I'm pretty tired of washing the carpet every day. And tired of the residual odour that no amount of scrubbing and washing seems to remove. I have a dark suspicion that there is some area of carpet that PoorPuss has made use of that I have not yet found. And yes, I have crawled around the floor with my nose to the carpet inhaling deeply. I have also come to associate the smell of Persil Biological detergent with the smell of cat urine. Which is why, when I got dressed this morning, I gave a start and sniffed my newly-laundered bra, convinced that it smelt of cat wee. My life is so glamorous.
We have tried a variety of techniques to keep PoorPuss calm and happy, and none of them have consistently worked. Occasionally we have a night when the carpet remains unsullied and we foolishly start to hope for a New Dawn.
We are gradually, achingly slowly, homing on the things that make PoorPuss happy, and the things that make him sad. We have moved from Weird Herbal Calming Spray to the Feliway pheromone spray. We have applied a liberal sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda to the carpet. (It may not help the cat, but it helps absorb odours.) We make sure he gets his favourite meal in the evening. We make sure he's snuggled up in "his" corner of the sofa as we go to bed. We leave the door from the living room to the rest of the house open, so he doesn't feel trapped. And twice now, the carpet has remained dry.
We do indeed have a New Dawn. A dawn that cracked at 4am, when PoorPuss came up to our bedroom to tell us that he was bored/scared/lonely. I escorted him downstairs, settled him back in "his" corner, and returned to bed*.
I then lay awake for two hours, until I heard the telltale sound of claw on carpet, and, leaping out of bed, I scampered down to find him digging up the poor, beleaguered patch of carpet. Whether he was about to relieve himself, I'll never know, but once I was there he didn't do so. The thought of what he might be doing made the next half hour in bed even more stressful than the previous two hours had been. Eventually at 6:30 I pottered downstairs to read my book on the sofa. Being too lazy/stupid (your choice) I didn't bother to turn the central heating on, despite sub-zero temperatures outside. Which is how I came to be wearing BigBear's fleece, two scarves and three cushions on the sofa at half past six on a Tuesday morning.
But at least the carpet was dry.
Progress. Of a sort.
* Early in my relationship with PoorPuss, I discovered our sleeping habits are incompatible. He is very talkative at about 4 or 5 am. I am not. To avoid me swearing and throwing things, it has always been better for both of us if we sleep on different floors. It's worked perfectly well for thirteen years. I don't intend to encourage conversation at 4am, hence escorting him back to his own sleeping domain.
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