Average Jane's Household Pets

The neverending dramas of pet ownership continue to play out at our house.  In the last week:

• Our 17-year-old cat known as The Possum was back at the vet for digestive difficulties, the details of which I will spare you.  Almost $200 later (not including the liquid medicine that she absolutely loves...NOT!), she's back to her usual self.
• In an effort to keep the catbox-room funk from lunging up the basement stairs and assaulting everyone who enters the house, I installed a cat flap in the door that leads down to the basement.  When it came to manipulating the flap so they could go in and out, all four cats were, as they say, "ate up with the dumbass."  They could not grasp the concept of pushing the flap aside with their empty little heads, so I ended up removing the flap.  Now I have a closed basement door with a plastic-framed hole in it that allows the basement odor to waft upstairs more gradually.  Sigh.
• My bad luck with betta fish continues.  During a routine water change, my fish began to act distressed - for no reason that we could determine - and he died within a few hours.  I'm ready to throw in the towel as a fish owner but my husband was determined to soldier on.  He bought a new little betta on Monday afternoon and it has already taken up residence in the old tank with the faux jaguar skull.  Let's hope things go well with him.

Comments

[Suzanne]

We put a cat door in the door leading to the basement not for odor containment, rather to keep the dogs from cleaning the litter box. Yeew. Works like a charm. :)

[Huts]

We installed a cat door and had to remove the flap as well. They were too scared to try it, so now, we have a hole in the door for them to walk through. At least it keeps our child out.

Good luck with the fish, they shouldn't need much maintenance.

[cagey]

I am willing to bet the heads of my own little pretties that if the flap was between them and their FOOD source - as opposed to their toilet, they would have learned how to deal.

[Jane]

Oh, their food is down there, too. That's why I'm planning to put the flap back in soon. Now that they get what the hole in the door is for, they should be able to connect the rest of the dots (I hope).