mleku on Nostr: i was just saying about how my cat has been quite loopy today and then i hear he is ...

i was just saying about how my cat has been quite loopy today and then i hear he is having a bit of an incident of liquid poopies and then he jumped and flipped the litter tray off its slightly tenuous fixings as a preliminary stage of training him to use human toilet

i have now melted some holes to hitch the elastic strap hooks into so it won't happen again but i had already decided earlier today that i would start the next stage of his human toilet training

this has been a long term plan, based on stuff i've seen several times over the years about these litter trays you can buy that slot into your toilet and have breakable parts that let you slowly open up the floor of it so the cat starts to get curious and consider using the hole since it's in the "toilet place"

then you expand the hole a bit more, and it becomes easier for them to just use that hole, even tho the litter is still there as before, and once you have them pooping and weeing through the hole, they are able to recognise that the white porcelain thing is a toilet and they will then perch their ass over it and do their business

i also seriously thought about this plan because of my "first mate" on the hypothetical ship that i may manage to acquire later this year, that teaching the cat human toilet would mean he could probably recognise ship toilet and save a lot of hassles with one less thing to weigh things down and need to be bought.

it probably helps to have a widget so kitty can hit the flusher but i'm not sure that is that important, i don't mind hitting it when i smell something or hear him in there, to finally be rid of the nasty clay litter- which is the best i can get here (recycled paper pellets are the absolute best) because i am pretty sure it is the stuff that is causing his persistent cough, as it started with a different kind of non-clumping litter i tried one bag of and i have also had problems in general

in this time of year, there is very little wind here and so the particles in the air in general have got a lot worse, and because i don't want him running outside, getting beat up, or worse, bringing parasites back in with him (ticks are very common this time of year) ... yeah, i should have an air filter, in fact two, arriving tomorrow, and most of the time this place is too cold to keep open so i am also wondering how much this has been affecting my health in general, especially the plastic resin compounded fibre board that is all of the walls upstairs and part of it down here

it has been a bit of a learning experience in general about "nature" and nasty particles because we are 500km away from the sahara desert here, which usually once or twice a year has really bad dust storms and some of them float over here, and i got really bad allergic reaction from it, and found substantial relief by wearing a dust mask during the worst parts of it.

never experienced such things before, in australia, on one occasion in particular there was some bad bush fires that turned the sun red, and it was vivid as i step outside into the natural light and it's so red, and i've been on dry fine sandy beaches blasting wind that you have to cover your breathing tubes with some fabric until you get off the dusty area, but sahara desert dust is something else again. super nasty. apparently quite beneficial for the west coast of south america though, and probably the general fertility of all of the atlantic islands, which are not nearly as volcanic anymore as hawaii (which is a much younger island).