Margaret, I can't believe you've got 8 cats now!!!!!!! Holy moly! Mine have enough "outpout" for a whole herd, so I can only imagine the scooping you're doing.

I'm glad that Snookums and Clementine are with you and Jim though. I don't understand how one can seemingly turn off all the feelings you had for a kitty for five years, but maybe he does indeed have some kind of health problems. That's what I'd rather believe anyway.

They're both adorable. I'm glad that one of them is integrated and doing well with the other cats. Poor little Snookums - I hope she gets over her fear soon.

I think the garbage men are going to call my house the "poop pickup"!

Clementine has just fit in so well, and so soon with all the cats (except Snookums), it is amazing! Clemmie is the fastest and easiest ingregration we ever had.

Here she is again.

She's pretty! I love the little white spot on her chin and her tan eyebrow.

It's amazing when integrations go well and fast. It's just a shame they don't all go that way

Awww......such a pretty girl!!!! She's lucky to have you and Jim, Margaret.

Margaret,

I'm so glad things are going well, although it would be good if Snookums would be a bit less afraid of everyone else. Maybe with time she will learn to make a friend or two. I hope so.

Wow! those litterboxes must take forever to clean. Sometimes my two just wait for me to clean the boxes so they can go again. Jeremy tries to make sure he is the first one in every clean box. When he does that sometimes Molly comes looking for me meowing until she can go in a totally clean box. I don't know how you do it with all those different personalities.

Maria

Maria, it doesn't actually take too long to do the general scooping, though some days it seems like it does. Sometimes I feel like I had just scooped them all, then it's time to do it again, but other times, it doesn't seem like a chore.

The emptying out and washing all of them is the part that does seem time consuming and a pain in the neck. I don't wash all of them every week like I used to when we had many less cats. Not to mention that it is expensive for us to replace the litter for 8 boxes in one week, when it would cost around maybe $50 to do that. But, that new Tidy Cats for Small Spaces really clumps so well and has good odor control, that it is fine to let a box go two weeks without being dumped, since the output of the cats is spread out among 8 boxes.

Minerva got over any concern she had about the "monster under the bed" and is back to scratching to get into the bedroom. She has a favorite sleeping spot in the one bedroom. So I let her in, and then have opened the door between the two bedrooms.

If Minerva is sleeping, Snookums will cautiously come in and then go out onto the front cat porch. You can't hardly even see Minerva when she is curled up in her spot, so maybe sometimes Snookums doesn't even know Minerva is in there. If Snookums knows it is just Minerva or maybe a sleeping Sumner in the one room, she will hang out to rest on the bed in the other bedroom, instead of hiding, even when the doors between the bedrooms are opened. That is progress.

Oh, it DOES sound like snookums is making some progress!! Oh that's wonderful!! I do hope she gets over her fears very soon. She's such a nice kitty........

Margaret:

It souinds as if you are making progress. This is good.

Mark