The Bed Wars

Everyday when I got ready to make the bed, Brewsky would be in it. I would pick him up, set him on the floor, and proceed with my work. He resented this and would jump back into bed before I could even pull the covers off. I would put him on the floor again, and he would jump back into bed again. I’m a fast bed-maker, but some days, he would jump back into bed as many as eight times. I didn’t know what to do. For six months, I was tortured. For six months, I lay awake worrying. Finally, I realized that I only had two choices: quit making the bed or kill the cat. These choices were so grim that I decided to devote six more months to thinking about the problem. 

One day as I watched him gobble down his supper (he eats like a dog), I thought that maybe I could use food to bribe him to get out of bed, so I tried it. It worked, splendidly. I would throw a few kibbles down the hallway, and off he would go. Sometimes, I would either be too hurried or simply not in the mood to do this, and so it was that I gradually went back to setting him on the floor. To my surprise, he no longer became angry. Most days, he’s even downright patient, and will observe me stoically until I pull the spread over the pillows, which is his cue that he can jump back in and not be taken out again. Ever now and I then, I will put him back into the bed myself, pet him a little, and wish him happy dreams. He seems to appreciate this. He’s hardly an unreasonable cat, and I’m happy that I was clever enough to think of an alternative to murder.

How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps

When I got Brewsky 18 months ago, I resolved to rid him of those failings that are so regrettably common to both cats and women, things like vanity, aloofness, selfishness, disloyalty, obsessive grooming, and a perverse refusal to obey simple commands. In short, I resolved to do with him what I have failed to do with Peggy after 42 years of unrelenting effort—I resolved to make him into a good dog in the hope that he would serve as an inspiration to her.

He is only influenced by immediate punishment, and even then the effects only last two or three minutes, after which he returns to doing the same thing for which he was punished. This is where technology is useful. For example, I installed an alarm system to keep him off the kitchen countertop. When I leave the room, I flick a switch and if he jumps up on the counter while I’m away, three diesel-strength airhorns emit 185 decibels of sound simultaneously. Except for urine on the countertop, cabinet doors, and sometimes the ceiling, this works amazingly well because he knows he can’t wear down technology the way he wears down flesh and blood people who have more to do in life than control a recidivistic cat.

Breaking him from burying his shit has proven to be a greater challenge. As I observed him in his toilet one morning, I reflected upon how pointless it was for him to bury that which I would have to dig up anyway, so I resolved to cure him of the habit. To accomplish this, I began carrying his litter box to whatever part of the house I was in, and when he would start to bury his poop, I would run at him screaming while using my Deluge-a-Kitty Water Cannon™  to knock him right out of the box and into whatever wall, chair, or table was within his line of travel. Now, he only shits in his litter box when I’m asleep or away from home. The rest of the time, he shits on my pillow. On the one hand, I have been largely successful in preventing him from burying his poop, but on the other, things haven’t worked out quite like I planned.  

I have also had excellent results in getting him to sleep during the night instead of keeping me awake by miaowing loudly while running full-tilt throughout the house (after which which he would sleep all day while I stumbled drowsily into walls). My method consists basically of locking him in a room with a vacuum cleaner everyday (he’s terrified of vacuums), and connecting the vacuum to a timer so that it will turn on for a few moments every fifteen minutes. Now, he’s the one who stumbles drowsily into walls, only he does so at night while I'm sleeping peacefully.

These are just a few examples of the kind of work I have done with him and the outstanding success I have achieved. If you would like further ideas, feel free to buy my $30 book How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps. You will find it anywhere good books are sold, which basically means that if you'll send me a check (certified only, please), I’ll send you a link to a Word document.

In closing, I feel it only fair to inform you that Brewsky appears to be losing his mind, as you might have guessed from his haunted expression. He cries piteously for hours, drools, refuses to eat or groom himself, and spends his every waking moment staring in transfixed horror at the same empty spot on Peggy’s bed. I suspect that the problem is hereditary, but since he was a shelter cat (I wanted a dog, but Brewksy was half-price so I got him instead), I have no idea who his parents were, so this is mostly conjecture based upon the absence of environmental stressors.