Automatic Cat Wash

We have an indoor/outdoor basement in our new home.  Built in the mid-to-late 1800s, the cellar sports a gravel and dirt floor, parts of which are in various states of damp depending on how quickly the snow is melting.

The cats are… ecstatic.  As indoor cats, their new proximity to ‘outdoors’ has them doing their own version of Parkour through the basement.  We hear them bouncing around and letting out heroic “You can’t catch me!” yowls through the kitchen’s pine floor boards.  Our diminutive, and usually dainty, Lola frequently comes upstairs looking like a victim of Shelob.

“Dude!  Are you aiming for the cobwebs?!”

“Prrrrrrrowl?” she says, before licking her paw and nearly choking on what’s she’s stepped in.

Litter boxes are in the basement.  Amidst the gravel and dirt.  We’ve put a tarp down, but they still manage to come up, paws and fur covered in various forms of detritus. Our house will have cat paw prints and cobwebs forever.

My friend Margo came up with the brilliant and cunning plan.  The cat door to the basement can have little brushes on the sides and top so that when the cats come through, they are automagically cleaned.  BEST PLAN EVER!

Except that we have two different sizes of cats.  We have normal to small sized cats and we have Minuit, whose circumference is a tad more rotund.  I just know that Steve and Lola would find a way to avoid the brushy parts.

“Beaded curtains!” yells David.  He’s been wanting beaded curtains for the longest time.  He says it to see the whites of my eyes.  “We add  beaded curtains to the cat door so that they are cleaned WHILE entering or exiting!”

I had to agree that it might work.  “Or… or…. you have those things… those cleany-skinny things…”
Everyone is now looking at me like I’m mad.  Damn my post-partum aphasia – 13 years on and I still can’t find words.   “You know – they have wires in them?  They can be chenille…?”

“PIPE CLEANERS!”

“YES!  Wait!  Wait!  We get the metallic ones!  Drill holes in the frame of the cat door and then insert them.  THEN we can change their colour according to seasons or special events…”

“Like black and orange for Halloween!” Margo chimes in.  We’re so sympatico.

 We shall patent this.   This is how we will make our millions.