Amminadab, the banished kitty

One of my favorite children's authors is Nick Bruel. I ran across a few of his books at the library over a year ago, and they're great! One of them is called Bad Kitty.....it goes through the ABCs, where each letter stands for something bad that the kitty does (very creative!!). I feel like I could write a book like this about our male cat Amminadab. He loves people and he loves to be petted, but he's had some major issues lately.

Ever since we first got him (and our more well-behaved female cat, Scooter) three years ago, he has scratched furniture. His favorite targets were our couches. This drove me crazy, and I got more and more mad every time he did it. Finally, this February, we had him declawed. He had a hard time with it for a few days, but within about a week he seemed back to normal. For a few weeks before we had him declawed, he and Scooter both had escaped into our backyard here and there a few times. Amminadab especially loved going outside, but we figured we'd have to keep him inside after having the procedure done.

Well, I guess just from having some outdoor experiences, he knew that there were other neighborhood cats around. Soon after having him declawed, we noticed some yellow patches along the wall and on the floor in our living room. Sure enough, they smelled strongly of cat pee. We've tried a few different things to get him to stop spraying, but he still does it. According to statistics I've seen, only 10% of neutered male cats feel the need to spray. We are the lucky owners of one of them!

And lately, when he decides that he wants attention or wants to go outside in the morning, he'll start meowing very loudly, sometimes as early as 4:30 or 5am. It's woken Grant up early a few times, which makes me VERY angry! I need all the sleep I can get these days! We try to confine him to our closet when he starts meowing, but lately he'll run down the stairs as you're coming towards him, and wait just long enough for you to get back in bed before coming back up and meowing again. AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

And....best of all.....sometimes after being outside in the morning, I'll let him come in to eat. He eats a ton of food and then throws up EVERYWHERE.....the other day I found it in five different places around the house after Grant and I got home from doing errands. That was fun to clean up! And he almost always seems to throw up on the carpet, not the tile (which covers 80% of the downstairs)!

So Amminadab is becoming an outside kitty, at least during the day. So far we've only left him out one night.....even though he makes me so mad, he does look quite pitiful when he's standing outside the door meowing at night, wanting to come in. We bought a tag for him with his name and our phone number, in case he roams too far (which I can't see him doing.....he seems very content in the confines of our backyard). Poor Scooter....she is so sweet but now she hardly has a playmate anymore!