The Green Water Spritzer

Certainly the prize for the most highly utilized Christmas gift this year must either be the blue hoodie from my brother-in-law, which I’ve worn every day now to the gym or . . . the green water spritzer.  I have no plants.  I don’t use it for cleaning.  Rather, it is cat repellent. 

The cat comes in.  I’m allergic to cats.  I’d rather this room be cat free.  I could close my door so that she never came in but then the message to the humans in the house would be that I’m walled off from everything and everyone.  So when the cat enters I could hiss, chase her, or play with her and endure. 

The water bottle is a game changer.  With the green trigger, I am armed.  And I regret to say the whole thing is a bit like a shooting range or a video game.  She comes in, I spritz her.  She leaves, in a hurry.  She heads off and seemingly forgets entirely about the episode and bounces back in about forty seconds later.  I spritz her again.  She leaves, frustrated and returns and is spritzed again, ten times, twenty times.  Now she is doused, I’ve exhausted the bottle's contents. It is deflating to see so little ability to learn, on both our parts. 

I caught a picture on the web today.  Some horrible person had duct taped a dogs mouth shut, so it couldn’t bark, or eat.  It looked painful and cruel.  The caption suggested that the person who did it had been sentenced to five years in jail.  I’m sure they deeply regret having decided to “teach" this dog a lesson. 

I’d like to be firm in my belief that spritzing a cat doesn't properly count as ‘cruelty’ to animals.  In the cat’s mind, water is clearly something to avoid, for a moment at least, but its hardly more than annoyance.  It would appear that, even though it's nearly April and regardless of the fact that she lives in a heated home, she is hot-wired to think that getting wet is dangerous.  Cats must worry about freezing in the cold.  She dries herself off, and then appears to forget and marches right back in again.  It has gotten to the point where simply lifting the spritzer is enough to get her attention.  So she is capable of processing the spritzer in real time but seems to have no recall.              

From her vantage, this must surely be the strangest room in the house. 

Monday, 3/27/17