My girls think I'm gross

The girls can't believe I would take, let alone post, a picture of Belle in the litter box.

Julianne keeps asking if he was using the litter box when I took the picture. I refuse to answer. What fun would it be if she knew for sure?



The litter box has a story, however, and I think Belle is cuter than just a picture of a litter box, right?

We are leaving tonight to head to Florida to visit my inlaws for a week. The past two years Belle has stayed in the garage with a huge food dish, a dishpan as a water dish, and two litter boxes. Prior to that, he stayed in the shed outside where whoever did Clarence's chores could give him food and water each day. He's showing his age these days, though, so neither of those seemed like a good option.

I harassed my mom about keeping him and she surprised me by agreeing. I started trying to figure out ways to make it a bit less painful for her and suggested to Clarence that maybe we should invest in an automatic litter box. As we were discussing it, my best friend called and, during our conversation, I mentioned all this to her.

Her cousin had recently offered an automatic litter box to her and she'd refused, certain her cat wouldn't adapt well. She offered to call and find out if they still had it and how much they'd want for it. In the meantime, I started researching them online and decided I wanted a ScoopFree box.

She called back and described the box to me-it was exactly what I had decided on. They gave it to me! We stopped and got the litter, cleaned it up and set it in place. He seems to think it a bit strange, but he has used it without any problems.

A young man from church we can trust is coming to feed the rabbits and chickens so we gave him a key to check on Belle a few times. Mom is off the hook, Belle gets to stay home instead of going to Grandma's, we won't worry so much about him while we're gone, and my house shouldn't smell like the litter box when I get home. It's all good.

We'll be gone for a week and a half. Santa Clarence gave me a laptop for Christmas so if I happen to have wireless internet available, I may update here while we're gone. Otherwise, I'll be back toward the end of the month.