Sure, many negative things emerged from the Soviet Union: abysmal customer service, frightening post offices, hideous architecture from the 1960s onwards... but I remain convinced that the worst holdover from the Soviet Union is the cat pee box. While in the West we developed litter boxes filled with a variety of clumping, odor controlling cat litter, covered litter boxes and even self-flushing litter boxes, the former Soviet Union gives you this horrid contraption:
Pleasant, huh? And I bet you can guess how wonderful this contraption is at odor control. Now there *is* kitty litter to be found here; however, thus far I have only located it in one store at an outrageous price – something like $21 for a mere couple of pounds! I have three cats; at that price, I’d be spending my entire salary on litter. Instead I’ve opted for the following method of odor control:
Ok, so perhaps this isn’t the best solution, but it improves the air quality of my apartment quite substantially. You know, as opposed to raw, uncovered cat pee. Then of course, there is the problem that the cats don’t like to use the box if it has recently been used. They prefer to go outdoors, but I'm not exactly skilled at waking up to let them out in the middle of the night. After several mornings of awakening to a puddle near my front door, I have resorted to this as well:
I really must find some affordable kitty litter, if at all possible. Of course, it it’s anything like the litter I found in Russia, it might very well mix with cat pee to form a cement so solid that it cannot be cleaned out of the box. (Obviously, I have given up on the idea of pretending I don't have cats by keeping the litter box outside. This came about the morning I awoke to discover that my brand new, superfantastic Payless boots sprawled in a puddle of piss. I'm still trying to get the smell out. If anyone wishes to send me a bottle of Out! Pet Stain and Odor Remover, I'd love you forever. Really.)
5 comments:
Kostia's parents have a cat pee box. It is super nasty. Another post-Soviet household item I cannot understand is this plastic grid that people put in their kitchen sinks. It seems its only purpose is to collect grease and make the whole thing unsanitary. I think the theory is that the sink is germy and the grid provides a buffer between it and your dishes, but it's a hell of a lot easier to clean the sink than to clean this plastic thing. Kostia suggested that the grid was supposed to keep stuff from going down the drain, but since its holes are bigger than the ones in the drain, I am not buying that theory.
Down with cat pee boxes and plastic sink grids!
Hmmm... I don't think I've ever seen this plastic sink grid, although it sounds both foul and like something that would be quite related to ye olde cat pee box. I woke up early (!) this morning to the smell of uncovered cat shit. Joy. But not the cats' fault, as there's nothing for them to use to cover it. (Well, Bagira seems talented at folding the paper towel around her poop. Unfortunately, that means that if one of the other cats poops after her, it just sits there on the damn pee-tray. Yuck.
Well, here in SPb, and I presume in some other parts of the former Soviet Union, kitty litter is easily found, though I don't know if it's as expensive here as Jane says it is in Bishkek - not having a cat I've never priced it. But I think for people like Kostia's parents, for whom little has changed since the Soviet Union, paying money for some fancy sand for your cat to shit in seems pretty absurd. Even cat food seems a little crazy to them, though they do supplement the cat's diet of table scraps with it sometimes.
Yeah, there was definitely litter available in SpB in 2000 - even though it was horrible. I rather suspect that there's decent litter available there now. But damn, this Bishkek litter... so pricey! I just can't bring myself to shell out for it. Luckily, air freshener is affordable!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that even in Russia there is dirt outside on the ground. Granted that much of the year it's frozen solid, but you have summers...right? Dig up a few large boxes of the loosest soil you can and keep it stored during other months for use by your cat(s) when the dirt outside is plain frozen solid. Even the dumbest cat on the planet will figure out what dirt is good for and the good part...you can just toss it back outside to be recycled by nature back into more, uhmmm...dirt. ;)
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