Anyone Want 2 Cats?

I'm only sort of joking here. The cats had a rough day today and we're thisclose to kicking them out on their furry behinds.

We had Shawna, the missionaries, and my mom and brother over for dinner tonight. It was lovely, we had teriyaki chicken and a chocolate haupia pie for dessert. As we were walking the missionaries to the door we found cat vomit on the floor. Lovely. At least it was on the pergo, which is super easy to clean.

After Shawna left I started getting ready for bed. That's when I noticed cat puke on some of my nice clean clothes. Even more lovely. The common thread between both piles of vomit is that both contained carpet fibers because Neko can't stop eating our carpet (and everything else he can fit his mouth around) and they came back to haunt him. Stupid cat, STOP EATING THE CARPET!

Right as I was about to head off to bed I heard a loud crash in the kitchen. We lock the cats in there at night and they like to find ways to be destructive while we're not looking. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before going to the kitchen because the two incidences of vomit had already used up my cat-patience for the day.

We had cooked the teriyaki chicken in 2 glass baking dishes. The cats got up on the counter (where they know for a FACT they are not allowed to be) and pushed one of them off, thus destroying one of my few nice pieces of bakeware and splattering teriyaki sauce and chicken bits everywhere. Did I mention I spent 2 hours this afternoon cleaning my kitchen?

I'll be honest, this pushed me to violence. I whacked Neko with a pillow. He's lucky it wasn't my foot. Or a frying pan. I woke Aaron up and asked him to help me clean up the mess. He was very cranky from being woken up to attend to yet another cat mess. He ranted and raved about getting rid of them as we cleaned up the broken corningware (sigh..) and as I scrubbed the floor (twice!) and the cupboards to get the sticky teriyaki off.

After Aaron went to bed I sat the cats down and gave them a stern talking to. They didn't listen. They never do. The hard thing with animals is that they don't really associate things the way people do. Neko can't put the broken dish together with the pillow whack. He doesn't associate his carpet eating habit with puking. He sees them as completely separate and independent things. Which makes me wonder, how on earth do people train their cats?? I know they do, and I know it's possible, I just don't see how!

But, the most infuriating part of it all is the fact that I knowingly left 2 dishes full of chicken and teriyaki sauce on the counter because I was too tired and lazy to do anything with them tonight. Of COURSE they were going to get up on the counter. They always do. And of COURSE Neko was going to start eating whatever was up there, because he always does. It's not our stupid cats' fault they broke the dish, it's mine. But that doesn't stop me from being mad at them and whacking them with pillows. I guess we all need some training.