Lexi - Chapter 7

By Mark Crocker

If you don’t know who I am my name is “she who must be obeyed” or if you are human I am called rather laughingly “Lexi May” or just “Lexi”. But if you are human and reading this just call me by my real name which is “she who must be obeyed”.

This time we are going to talk about cleanliness and I don’t mean keeping your human habitation clean which brings up a whole bunch of issues involving the nasty sucking monster and filling the air with things that smell odd and make us chosen ones sneeze. No, I am talking about chosen one’s cleanliness which involves a number of things such as a clean litter box, clean water bowls, clean water and clean and tidy fur.

I just mentioned the nasty sucking monster and that you use it for cleaning. Now I take issue with the nasty sucking monster. Once a week the sucking monster comes out from its hiding place and everything gets moved around and the monster starts its loud noise and its nasty sucking.

Now I have never been attacked by the sucking monster, so why do I not like it?
Well that is simple and goes back to something I have mentioned over and over again. And that is my hearing and how sensitive it is. Remember I can hear your heart beat. Now keeping this in mind think how loud the sucking monster sounds to us chosen ones. Ok you are having a bad time with that. Think of it this way:

Go stick your head next to one of those transports that flies. Listen to the sound it makes as it gets ready to leap into the sky. It hurts your hearing and makes a ringing sound in your ears. That’s what the sucking monster feels and sounds like to us chosen ones.

And that’s just the start of the issues I have with the sucking monster. Another issue is that it kicks up a fine dust that you humans can’t see but we chosen ones can see. I watched my human last week take the sucking monster apart and I was so hoping that he was going to kill it and throw it away. But instead he took the front out and there was a round bush thing that had my fur all over it. At first I thought it had sucked up another chosen one but when I sniffed it smelt of me so I guess that’s where my fur goes that I lose? Anyway I got a good look at how the sucking monster works and I understand it better now and I know how to defeat it.

But do I defeat it? My human seems to enjoy using the sucking monster and it does pick up and eat almost anything that is lying around on the floor.

But I now know what I can do to defeat it and I have a plan. My plan is to keep all my fur that I lose in one place hidden from my human until I have such a great pile of my fur that it will choke and clog the sucking monster and kill it. It may take me months or even a year or two but I will choke and clog that sucking monster with my fur so that it can’t make that awful noise that hurts me ears. I will have my revenge on it and I will kill it.

When I do have my revenge on the sucking monster I will have to find away for my human to keep the floor and carpet clean and free of things that fall to the ground. And I know what he can do. I’ve seen human sweep the floor before he washes it. Well if he had a brush that had heavier bush things he could sweep the carpet and that would mean that he would not have to get a new sucking monster which is what he would do when I kill the sucking monster.

The thing is there are other options my human has to cleaning the floor other than the sucking monster. But the sucking monster is not really what I want to talk about when I talk about cleanliness.

Now the cleanliness of my litter box.
The thing is that I have a far superior sense of smell to you humans. As I have mentioned I can smell the change in your breath or the sweat on your skin or the mere hint or thunder in the air. You see we chosen ones are superior to you humans in many different ways and I am not just talking about our sense of smell nor that our hearing is so beyond yours that we can hear the heartbeat of animals that are 20 or 30 feet away.

But our sense of smell brings up an important issue that I wish to bring to your attention.
The other night while my human was away I was reading my email and I received an email from a chosen one called She Who Sings. Her human calls her Tiger. She Who Sings said that her human treats her very well other than leaving her alone for a long time each day. She Who Sings said that her litter box was not as clean as she liked and it was starting to hurt her nose and sting a little when she uses her litter box. She Who Sings went onto say that she does not want to upset her human by peeing where she should not but its getting to the point that something needs to be done about it.

Now as I just said our sense of smell is far beyond yours as mere humans. But that’s not your fault. That’s just the way you are and you can’t help being mere humans. The problem for She Who Sings is that her human might not even notice let alone smell how bad the litter box smells to She Who Sings.

So what can you as a human do to stop our litter boxes becoming smelly to us chosen ones? Well there are a number of things you can do. One is empty it as soon as we have used it. This stops the dried pee from smelling and the poop from smelling. Next you can clean all the litter out once a week and when it’s sunny you can spread it out on some plastic and let it sit in the sun. The reason for this helps is that the ultraviolet rays sterilizes any microbes that might be living in the litter and it’s the microbes that make it smell. You can do the same with the litter box.

However there is an issue here as if you have our litter out in the sun we can’t use our litter box. While writing the above I had a sudden idea. If you have two or three litter boxes you could always have one that is clean, one that is nearly clean and one outside in the sun being sterilized by the ultraviolet rays. And that way the smelly litter box issues would be fixed.

I need suggestions for She Who Sings what she can do to get her human to understand what is wrong with her litter box and how to fix the issue. Please feel free to let me know what can be done to help She Who Sings.

You humans need to understand how important a clean litter box is to us chosen ones. After all the last thing you want is us pooping or peeing where we should not. That would start a whole load of issues that you and we chosen ones really don’t want to go too. The thing is that if you keep our litter boxes clean we won’t have a problem and therefore you won’t have a problem and we can all get along without a litter box issue. Ok so keeping a litter box clean does go into the area of cleanliness but it’s not the main topic I wish to talk about.

Ok let’s talk about water dish and food bowl cleanliness. Why is keeping our water clean and our food dish clean so important? While we have a far strong digestive system than you humans do there are things that unsettle our stomachs. But I’m not going to go into that. Well not yet anyway. Keeping our water dish and food bowl is clean is so important. Water most of all should be fresh and clean. In a perfect world I would have a water dish that changed itself hourly and that the dish was always clean.

But this is not a perfect world. It’s not run by us and that’s why it’s not perfect. Not that we want to run the world. A clean water dish is important and clean water even more important. From what I have been told and from what I have seen using the computer, water if not clean, can make us chosen ones sick, much as dirty water can make you sick. A clean water dish stops things from living in the water and that keeps us healthy.

I will admit that in the heat of summer I do like ice in my water. You see I don’t like warm water as warm water is the ideal breeding ground for things in water that can me us chosen ones sick. So keeping our water dishes clean and full of fresh water is important.

The same can be said about our food bowls. While it’s true that we chosen ones can eat things that would make you humans sick we can get sick from a food bowl that is not kept clean. Upset stomachs from eating bad food can lead to all kinds of issues such as not making it to our litter box or making our litter box so smelly that we don’t want to use it.

You might think the smell of a dirty litter box turns your stomach now think what it does to us with our sense of smell. Oh we are back to keeping our litter box clean and fresh smelling. While we are back on the topic of clean litter boxes I want to bring up something and it’s not a fur ball. Let’s say you clean our litter box daily or better yet you clean it after every time we use it.

Pee has an odor. I don’t care if its human or chosen ones pee it still has an odor. Now if the odor of the pee changes or the color changes you might want to think about getting us check by your vet. The reason is that there is a healthy odor and an unhealthy odor. There is also a healthy color and an unhealthy color. Normally a weak odor means we are healthy. But if the odor becomes stronger it means one of two things. Either you need to clean our litter box or we are not well.

The same applies to color. A light color means we are fine. But if the color becomes darker or even has blood in it then that means we are not well and you should take us to the vet. The darker the color the worse things are.

However sometimes what we drink can effect the color and smell of our pee much as it can with you humans. The main thing is that if you keep our water dish and food bowl clean you won’t have too much of an issue with a smelly litter box as a clean water dish or food bowl means we won’t get an upset stomach. And if we don’t get an upset stomach we won’t get a smelly litter box. Well, as long as you humans keep our litter box clean.

Ok now cleanliness.
What you might think of cleanliness is different from what we chosen ones think of cleanliness. I think you what you call grooming we chosen ones call cleanliness. Now cleanliness is important to us chosen ones. It’s not only about making our fur shine but it’s about removing dirt and fur when we are shading. But cleanliness is more than just licking our fur to keep it clean and shiny.

Cleanliness is about the whole body, my ears my tail other parts of me and my claws. Clean claws are just as important as clean other parts. We chosen ones use our claws for many different things. Not just for ripping into flesh or couches. We use our claws for protection, for grabbing things, for cleaning ourselves, for testing to see if something is hot or cold. We use our claws to hold things, for catching things or throwing things back when we play. So clean claws are as important as clean fur.

Now clean ears. If you have ever watched us when we are having a tongue bath we lick one of our front paws and then slide it up and down the area we are cleaning. We might not work our paw into our ears but we clean around our ears and when we push our ears back so the look like they are inside out we clean the inside of the outer ear. By using our front paws we can clean our whole face in the manner and thus keep our face nice and clean. This includes keeping our nose clean as having a dirty nose means it can get clogged easily with dirt and dust. And having a dirty nose means we sneeze and that means we can’t smell things. And not being able to smell things is not good. So when we are cleaning ourselves it is important remember that we are doing it not only for ourselves but for you too.

After all you don’t want us to be smelly and dirty.

Oh let me explain about cleaning.
If you have watched us you will have seen that we follow the same pattern when we clean. Let’s start of with me cleaning my head. Now let’s say I am going to clean the left side of my head first. First I lick my left paw until it’s nice and damp. I don’t want to get my paw too wet as that would make my fur wet and wet fur attaches dirt and dust. So once my left paw is nice and damp but not too damp I would bring it up to just below my left ear and move it backward over my ear. Doing this cleans my ear as I move my paw over my ear I clean the inside of my ear. Once over the top of my ear I would bring my paw back over the ear cleaning the backside of my ear. I would do this as often as I feel my ear needs it.

Next I would lick my paw again making sure its damp but not to damp. Then I would slide my paw down the left side of my face so that I pass down towards my nose. I pay special attention to my whiskers as my whiskers are very important. You see whickers are not just about balance or being able to tell how wide something is. Whiskers are very important to us chosen ones. In many ways whiskers are as important as sight, hearing and a sense of smell. But I will go into those at another time as they don’t have anything to do with cleanliness.

Yes I know going off topic is something I normally do.
Ok back to cleaning my head. Having cleaned my ears, whiskers and nose on my left side I would then move to my right paw and the right side of my head and repeat the whole process of cleaning my ears, whiskers and nose.

Have you noticed that I have missed something on my head?
Ok now to clean my eyes. Again licking my left paw I would pass my paw over my eyes and my eye whiskers. Now having cleaned my whole head I would start on my legs starting with my front paws. This is always done by licking in the same directions as the fur grows. True you will see us pulling on our fur from time to time and this is normally because there is dirt deep down and by pulling on our fur it helps to shake the dirt off our fur.

Now having cleaned my head, legs and body I would move to my tail. This is pretty much the same as cleaning our bodies but the only differences being that we can lick and clean both sides without having to move from side to side. Again our tails are important to us. Ok so not as important as our eyes ears nose and whickers but important none the less.

Now am I done on cleaning?
No I am not. Lastly my claws. Claws are tricky to clean as they are sharp and sometimes have rough edges. I have to spread my toes wide when cleaning and you would be surprised at how much dust and dirt gets between my toes. But the claws now they are tricky as I have just said. You might have seen your chosen one biting and tugging on their claws. And claws are tricky to clean. The problem is that we have over claws and under claws. True they are all the same claw but they come in layers. The trick is when removing the over claw is to pull hard enough to remover the over claw but not so hard that you remover the under claw.

Ok now I have covered cleanliness.
Just a quick question for you humans.
Did you notice that when I started to explain cleaning I started at my head? The question is why did I start with my head and work my way down my body?