Part two of getting to know my Lokii-monster. I still love the wee sleekit beastie, no fear – but he does do some difficult-to-bear things.

He eats things that bear no resemblance to food. The prime treats for him are our fuzzy elastic hair ties. We protect these, but he still manages to find them. He’s even taken the lid off of a heavy ceramic bowl to get to them. When he does find one, he thinks it is the best toy ever- until he swallows it whole. I always see them again, from one end or the other.

The other things we have to keep a constant eye on are plush fibre-filled toys. He chews holes in them, then swallows the filling. He even attacked a four-foot long stuffed alligator of mine. I was not amused. He’s done more damage to the dog’s toys than the dog ever has.

He’s also attracted to anything with ball-shaped filling. We had – had! two neck-pillows that we bought for travel. They were soft and scrunchy. I put them in the empty suitcases under the bed in the spare room, a logical place, yes? Where my logic failed me was that I should zip up the empty cases. I woke up to this one morning:

That’s the smallest part of iDJ’s shoe collection, all filled with Lokii-balls (K-9 is mine). This was the scene of the crime, but he didn’t restrict himself to the spare room.

That’s about halfway down the stairs. The little weenie dragged the leaking pillow downstairs to play with it.

There were tiny tiny styrofoam balls everywhere. They were charged with static electricity and they clung to everything, including the outside of my Dyson vac when I was trying to clean the tremendous mess up. I’ve never had to vacuum my vacuum before.

I shit you not, this was two years later after he disemboweled a toy filled with black plastic beads. Do you see that there are STILL little white Lokii-balls in the vacuum?

We quickly hid the remaining neck pillow in a wardrobe with my giant alligator. And we are very, very careful that the door is closed at all times.

He eats cotton buds, stick and all. He eats the plastic ring from a jug of milk or cream. I think that’s sad, because Spot loved to play with them. Nope, they go straight into the bin these days.

The worst things that he eats, though, are our blankets. Evidence:

I cut off the ragged edges, it seems to make them less attractive to him. Sometimes.

I’m really sickened about the crocheted one: Socks made it for me as a ready-available hug from her when I was terribly sad, and it helped so much. But I have it hidden away until I find someone who can fix it for me.

Poor Lokii. With all that man-made fibre and plastic and whatnot in his gut, his poop is a bit colourful and dry, and he gets constipated.

Unfortunately, he’s constipated even if he hasn’t swallowed anything but cat food.

He poops little rocks.

Sometimes, he just tries to poop little rocks.

Sometimes, they don’t come out fast enough and he panics. He comes blasting out of the litter box full speed, the door flap banging back and forth like a batwing saloon door in an old western during a firefight, and proceeds to scrape his arse all along the floor until the offending poop-nugget breaks free.

Sometimes, the turd really doesn’t want to leave him (his?) behind. He has to drag himself for several feet – sometimes several rooms – to be free of the offending dingleberry.

(Yet another reason I am grateful that we don’t have carpeting anywhere in the house.)

However, this means he gets to express his creative side! In the morning after one of his bad nights, I am greeted with artistically rendered swirls and skirls of light brown on my kitchen floor. Lokii has his own built-in palette, in sepia shades.

‘Ah!’ I say, when I find the brown gold at the end of the brown rainbow, ‘A kitty-crayon!’

Its become the thing that is said upon seeing the crayon itself or evidence of artwork. There’s the term, and its associated rule: whosoever finds the kitty-crayon, cleans up the kitty-crayon.* The art, like some modern art is meant to be, is temporary: we clean up all traces of creativity backward from turd to litterbox, and eliminate all traces of elimination. We go through a good amount of anti-bacterial spray and paper towels, as you can imagine. *This holds true for any accident that our kids have. You find it/step in it, you clean it.

About the only good part of all this is that his desiccated poo has hardly any smell.

Yes, I know I should take him to the vet. I’m broke as all nine circles of hell, and I thought I’d do some research myself first and see if there was anything I could do at home. But I’m a bad cat-mom and kept forgetting to do it. I asked Dianda at Cats & Co to look up kitty constipation for me, and she did – thank you! Her good work only confirmed that I should take him to the vet, though. Ugh. I was motivated to try a few things, though, while I wait for anything resembling money or credit to accumulate.

Dairy was suggested, as it makes most cats get the squitters. No, he will only take a couple laps of milk. Ditto, cream. He wanted nothing to do with yoghurt. I had one last home remedy left – olive oil. Two cc’s per day, I was told. I even had an unused, needle-less syringe I could use to measure with! No problem, I thought, I’ll try that.

We-l-l-l-l… it seems Lokii is immune to that most basic of cat-restraining measures: the scruff-of-the-neck hold. It didn’t stop him from struggling at all. There was no way we were getting that syringe in his mouth short of wrapping him up in several towels and getting a third person in to help hold him. This clearly would not do. I don’t want to upset the little guy, and I don’t have a third person handy.

My next idea was to put the oil onto something he would eat. That would have to be either raw minced beef or wet cat food. I opted for cat food as it costs less, even though I’d rather not feed them cheap smelly crud. Oh yes, ‘them’ – because there is no way I can give a treat to just one cat. The ruckus is unbearable, and I’m sure they would find a clever way of getting revenge. Sigh. So, I started them on one-half of a small tin of food a day, split again between the boys, with oil on Lokii’s portion. Easy-peasy, says I, Spot will only have a little taste in any case.

Oh no, of course not! The cat that will eat fabric doesn’t want the food with the oil on it, he wants the plain version. Spottie, the pickiest eater ever, wants the oily bowl …aaaaaa… Rethink. Give them one bowl, with the oil, and let ’em fight it out. Fine, okay; Spot still only has a nibble and wanders away, and I don’t have Lokii screaming his head off because he wants what he has not got. Whew.

Now the big question. Does it work? After fourteen days, we have had only two crayon incidents. Yay! And judging from the red, yellow and blue coloration inside of the first crayon, it was entirely due to him eating a blanket. His box still has very dry poop in it, and Spot’s has some of the nastiest smelling little brown gifties ever, but I think I can keep this up until our financial deficit will allow me some wiggle room to take Lokii-mon to the doctor.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t take you a picture of his ‘art?’