Smokin' Clean

Way back when, I had a middle-aged student called Mr. Uehara. One day when we were talking about likes and dislikes, I said that I hated the smell of cigarette smoke and Mr. Uehara nodded. "So do I," he said.

I was surprised by this because I'd seen Mr. Uehara smoking in the lobby during the breaks. "Have you quit smoking?" I asked. Mr. Uehara shook his head. "I like smoking clean," he informed me.

I blinked. "What in the world does that mean?"

He spread his hands. "I find clean place, I smoke there. Then, smoking clean."

I found this so mind-boggling I had to sit down. "Smoking clean means smoking in a clean place?"

He smiled and nodded.

"Mr. Uehara, you can't smoke clean. Once you're smoking, the air is not clean."

He shook his head. "Other people smoke, air is dirty. I go to clean place. Smoking clean."

After a few minutes of this, I gave up. Mr. Uehara amazed me. He wholly rejected my idea that smokers should go to special smoking rooms to smoke, that on long-distance trains like the shinkansen, they should not seek out the non-smoking car to light up. He strongly felt that he was a superior smoker because he liked to smoke in clean places. I thought to myself that if I ever caught him pulling out his smokes in the non-smoking car of the shinkansen because the air was purer there, I would not spare him any more than I did the other smokers I told off there on a regular basis.

I mention this because I now have acquired two wonderful cats, Mitzi and Maverick. Their former caretaker (I never use 'owner' when I'm talking about cats) is now in Australia and due to be there for up to two years, so Mitzi and Maverick need a home and we need cats that we know will be claimed in a few years' time when we're ready to go abroad again. They are great cats, but Maverick has a little problem. When he's nervous, he uses the bathtub as a litter box.

Maverick, I should mention, is a very nervous cat.

When they arrived, Mitzi and Maverick came kitted out with more paraphernalia than I have ever seen two cats possess, including their own toys, a month's supply of food and treats, medicines, collars, a scratching post, their own individual cat carriers and beds, and a state-of-the-art covered litter box with a huge bag of environmentally friendly cat litter. I'd been warned about Maverick's little habit, but given this superior litter box and an entire household tiptoeing around with lowered voices, I hoped that he would not need to avail himself of our bathtub after he'd gotten used to us.

This was sadly not the case.

The first morning after they arrived, I found the inevitable in our bathtub. I was both irritated and impressed. I've had cats use the carpet before, but this was my first bathtub experience. I cleaned it up and warned everybody to shut the bathroom door overnight. Unfortunately, our bathroom door doesn't quite close and is easy for a determined feline to push open. The next morning, I had a repeat performance, and this went on all week until my husband fixed the bathroom door.

The next morning, my husband reported that when he'd gone for a shower, he'd found four cat turds in the drain. He fixed the shower room door. I cleaned out the litter box for the umpteenth time, brought Maverick out to the veranda to remind him how it worked, and crossed my fingers.

The next morning, someone left the bathroom door open during the night. I cleaned out the bathtub and filled it with two inches of lavender-scented water. I drizzled a bit of lavender bath oil on the side too, where he has managed to do his business when the bathtub was too wet for his liking.

I shut the shower stall, smeared a little lavender oil in the shower room sink, then went to bed confident that I had finally sealed off Maverick's forbidden toilets.

Maverick got the message. This morning, he'd gone in the corner of the lounge, behind a cabinet. On the nice, clean carpet.

Sigh...

Just as Mr. Uehara liked smoking clean, Maverick likes crapping clean.