Even after twelve years of being together I look at my husband and think “We used to be so compatible! What the hell happened! How can we be so different…how can you not want the things I want?! (and vice-versa.)”

And that goes for lots of things, including how we spend our money, free time, what constitutes a fun vacation, how we rear the children, how many children we have (apparently we are done, according to him…I guess he gets the final say *grumble*), etc.

Kitties…

Ten years ago my coworker’s cat had kittens and he was giving them away. Luckily, my husband loves cats and he agreed we could get one. So we drove out to this guy’s cabin the woods of Otis, Maine to look at a litter of part maine coon kittens. My husband picked up a picture-perfect cream colored long haired kitty and said “This one’s cute…” but in a strange fit of red-headed solidarity I snatched up the long-haired orange one and said “I WANT HER!”

My poor husband, who has lived with other cats in his life, got scratched by the new kitty and developed “Cat Scratch Fever”. Yeah…it’s not just a song! It’s real! The lymph nodes on the side of neck and under his arms swelled up painfully and he took antibiotics for weeks. Poor guy. I was immune, but my unlucky, rare-flower/precious-snowflake of a husband came down with it.

When I was pregnant, litterbox duty became his job and I don’t recall him complaining too badly.

Nina the cat is the meanest, snobbiest feline you have ever met. My husband and I aren’t allowed to touch her if we want to keep our fingers attached to our bodies. But…she adores my two young daughters (ages 8 & 6.) She sits between them on the mudroom bench in the mornings as they put on their shoes. Most nights you’ll find her sleeping on my 6 yr-old’s pillow. It grosses me out because, as much as they clean themselves…ick…get your stanky cat ass off my kid’s pillow please! I lift her off the pillow, she wails at me, and then she sneaks back in when I go to sleep.

A year ago my husband and I made the mistake of visiting a local shelter with our kids to, and I quote, “just have a look around.” My husbad said “We are NOT getting another animal!”

You know damn well we did though. My husband was drawn to a pretty diluted tortoiseshell cat named Emma. We played with her for a bit and then went home and tried (not hard enough) to talk ourselves out of going back to get her.

Sometimes it’s the little battles that keep everything fresh. We don’t do the whole “storming out, go to bed angry” thing which really helps.

Bear will probably come around! I know a guy whose mum took in a stray cat. He was bewildered and always talked about how stupid it was, how untrainable it would be and how much he hated cats.

After a few petsitting trips, he called me up to ask if the cat might like to go into the house as it had just started raining, and if I would wander all the way down there just to check on it.

Oh hey, if the cat is still fairly young, those cardboard scratching pads are really nifty. I have one stray-turned-pet that took to it right away and didn’t scratch anything else.

Though my 7-year-old-adoptee won’t even acknowledge its existence.

Toxoplasmosis really isn’t the end of the world. A whole lot of humanity has it, and most of the time nothing at all ever happens to you. No, you don’t lose your mind or whatever; humans aren’t the usual part of the mind-altering chain (it goes from mice to cats and back, I believe). You’re not going to become a zombie or suddenly adore the smell of cat urine (which is what it does to mice, so they travel near cats).

Also, so long as you practice good hygiene after cleaning the cat’s litter box, you won’t get it. Bonus points if you never touch anything that digs in the litter; my family just has bags we wrap around the box and then invert, rather than scooping.

For litter smells, there are deodorants you can sprinkle over the litter, or you can try different types of litter until you find what works for your cat. Some cats are also smellier than others. And if you don’t let her get into things, or go outside, most cats never pick up a funk on their skin. Put the litter box somewhere that isn’t in the main house and that doesn’t get too much air flow into the rest of the building (laundry rooms work great).

A less fixable problem here may be the cat clawing on things; unless you can teach her to use a scratching post, you’re a bit out of luck. You can try squirt bottles to discourage her, but cats are pretty good at figuring out that if you’re not around, they can do whatever they want.