House/Cat Sitting Day Six Sept 21st

An uneventful day if memory serves me right. I cleaned out the cat litter...

...an amazing contraption, that ! These three trays are the new way of cleaning the litter and are supposed to save you from getting your hands icky but, for what it's worth, you get your hands ickier - those are words aren't they? icky and ickier?

Anyway, first you prepare a bag to put the used litter in. Of course it will consist of 5 or 6 grocery bags as you layer them together, one at a time, making sure the one hole each seems to come from the factory with isn't directly over the one hole in the other bag.

Then you face the litter box. You snap up little end pieces to release the surrounding 'wall' part, which is covered in litter, I might add. You tap that off into the litter below [pieces going AWOL all over the place] and set the 'wall' aside. You loosen the top tray lifting it off the one below, just a bit as I came to learn, and slowly start shaking it from side to side. This is to loosen the little 'packages' and encourage the loose litter to make it's way down through the grate in the bottom of the tray you are holding into the tray below. If they don't loosen, then you shake harder - sure some of the litter and...whatever that chunk was might fling themselves off the edge and land on you but just remember - this is a 'new' way and you can't expect to learn it all at once. Anyway, if that doesn't work [and it didn't], you set the tray down, battle two spiders to the death, wrest the screwdriver from their cold dead legs and use that to poke and pry the stubborn pieces from their strongholds. This takes about 5 minutes - you can't rush technology...

Once the sifting is done and the 'gold' revealed, you tip the nuggets into the garbage bag which is never, I repeat NEVER open wide enough. Mountains and molehills alike- no prejudice here - tumble to the floor some of them not as compact as others breaking open and spilling their contents even further afield - ick!

Now you take the tray with the grated bottom and set it on the floor. [Hope baby doesn't need to crawl here for a while...ick!]You remove the second tray, which is now full of the sifted litter, and set it on the floor. [Don't worry, I'm not going to play a shell game and ask you where the little nuggets are...I can see them, and smell them, plain as day!]

You now put the grated tray inside the third tray - which bless it's little heart has been sitting there all along minding it's own business and causing no trouble at all. Poor thing - it's about to get a 'dirty' done to it because you now take the sifted litter in the second tray and pour it into the grated tray which is sitting in the third tray. You pick those two up together and slip the second tray beneath the third tray and put this cute little sandwich[ ick] together on the floor. [I think I'm ready to attack the Rubik's Cube now!]

You put the 'wall' back on - pausing just long enough to wish you could add few more stories to it and when the kitties jumped in you could hold them hostage until they promised to clean up after themselves...or no food again EVER [maniacal laughter] ...oops - did I say that in my outside voice?

Now to gather up all those little packages on the floor, coax them into the garbage bag and sweep up and wash up the floor where the packages and trays left their 'mark'. Then you have to sweep yourself off and and have a wash up! Oh yeah...a newer way is a better way...oh yeah, where'd you ever hear that tripe???

That took care of the entire morning. I spent the next little bit gathering up the squash and cleaning up more of the garden beds... Ahhh, fresh air and clean dirt ;)