The Mad Pooper

You may recall that Val has been having POOP trouble. A mad pooper, loose in her garage. Giant poops! A mystery pooper who comes and goes. I've been under the assumption that it must be a raccoon,  or a possum, getting into the garage through the pet flap. Hick has gone so far as to accuse Jack! Not surprising, since he's also accused him, a low-to-the-ground, half dachshund/half red heeler little fellow, of jumping up on the back of his 1980 Olds Toronado to take a poop. Not barkin' likely, is what I had to say!

Hick has cleaned out the garage with bleach, which stopped the Mad Pooper for a while. Then, the Mad Pooper most likely being mad, switched from pooping under A-Cad to pooping under T-Hoe. Hick scoops out the poop with a curved blue snow shovel if he's in the house when I go to town. Otherwise, I do it myself.

Over Christmas, I was tired of the Mad Pooper pooping with alacrity, it seemed, almost every day. I usually found it when I came out to the garage to go after my 44 oz Diet Coke. So I told Hick that he needed to get his game camera and do some spying. Since Hick knows what's good for him, he did. He and The Pony set it up, to look down the wall alongside A-Cad, focused on the swinging pet door. They left it for a full day, and then The Pony brought it in and hooked it up to his laptop. He and Hick fast-forwarded through 1000 pictures.

The game camera takes a picture when there's movement. Yet in those 1000 photos, they only saw our cats going in and out. Hick thought maybe an animal has come in and climbed up in the rafters, like the cats do. So Hick set the camera in front of T-Hoe. I'm pretty sure he captured me walking in and out every day. But I'm certain that he did not catch me pooping on camera!

Anyhoo...The Pony and I returned from town on Friday, December 22. The stench hit us immediately. I stepped out of T-Hoe's driver's door, and right into Lake Pee! The Pony got out on the passenger side (How our Little Pony is growing up! He rides in the front seat now!) and leaned over to look underneath. "THAT'S a big pile of poop! WHAT is doing that?" It hadn't been there when we left. I rushed inside and told Hick that they needed to review the evidence. As before, Hick went down to the basement and sat beside The Pony on the couch.

It wasn't a couple minutes before I heard them shouting. "YEEESSSS! We've got it, Mom! We've got the pooper in the act!"

The Pony sent me the four most incrimination pictures. They had captured a couple of phots of Jack, when he ran in under the garage door as I raised it. I KNEW he couldn't fit through the pet door. I also knew that he runs in to look for the cat that hates him, just because. Besides, Jack comes right out with me as I leave, because he wants cat kibble. He doesn't have time to poop in there. Here are the photos, in order. Some of them are not very clear, because they are, after all, surveillance photos!

The Mad Pooper inspects some dead leaves that have blown in when the door is opened.

The Mad Pooper gives a look over his shoulder to A-Cad, his previously-favored toilet.

No claiming mis-identity here! I guess the sun came out, or the game camera has a flash.

Look away! It's hideous! The Mad Pooper, caught in the act of madly pooping !

Yeah. I stand corrected. Those gigantic poops came out of this gigantic cat! Stockings. He's the most anti-social of our felines. Never wants to be petted. Scurries away if you come near him. He only uses us for mass quantities of food. And a place to "deposit" it, apparently.

Stockings is a really big cat. He's as big as Jack. In fact, he and Jack are...how you say...HUMP BUDDIES! Though I think it's pretty one-sided.

Now we know who's pooping up the garage! I gave Hick strict instructions to lock that pet door, after a particularly gruesome repeat our our poop woes.

He did, yet I found ANOTHER pile of poop inside two days later!

Hick said that he indeed locked the pet door. But that the next day, he heard Stockings meowing, and tried to get him out of the garage, but couldn't. So he UNLOCKED the pet door again.

NOOOOO!

Here's my reasoning. The cat poops in there whether he can get out or not. So it's not going to hurt to have him locked in. When he gets hungry enough, he'll come out, and then he will be truly locked out of the garage. No more pooping inside! Stockings has enough fat to live off his blubber for a month. Hick is worried about water. I told him that cats were originally desert animals. And that he can lick up the melted ice and rain that drips from T-Hoe's bumpers and running boards. AND he can run out when he's thirsty enough. I open up that garage every day. Twice.

Sooo...here's what had happened for me to find the new poop that I had to shovel out. Hick let the cat out of the garage by unlocking the pet door. Stockings apparently went to gorge himself at the roaster pan full of cat kibble. Then went BACK INSIDE THE GARAGE TO TAKE A GIANT POOP UNDER T-HOE!

Our cats have always been outside cats, ever since we rescued them as kittens dumped down by the mailboxes, got them their very special operations, and medicines, and all the field mice they want to catch and leave the livers of on our porch. It's only the last year or so that we've found occasional poop in the garage. Not sure it was always Stockings, or if some other animal got him started on the habit. But it's him now, and it's becoming regular. He's NOT going to be an inside-garage cat. No litter box for him. He can move outside since he can't stop pooping inside. We have two cat houses (heh, heh) with small entrances, made by Hick over the years, and one given to us by my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel. Stockings won't be without shelter or safety from marauding dogs. He will, however, be without an indoor toilet.

I'm not sure who is going to be harder to break of bad habits, Stockings the Mad Pooper, or Hick the not-listener.