Not Such a Good Idea

What, pray tell, is that?

Dear reader, you well may ask.

Is it a blanket for a late-season picnic? A quick and easy way to kill the grass for a new garden bed? An insidious pattern fungus growing in my back yard?

No, it's the wet memory foam mattress topper from my own little bed. And it's the sign and evidence of an experiment gone wrong, of an idea Whose Time Had Not Yet Come.

Yesterday I did the wash. Rhadwen and her predecessor Didon always derived great amusement from "helping" me fold the laundry. Let's see if the kittens will like it, too!

So I brought them individually into the front bedroom, where I was working. Gwenith and Huw liked that. But I noticed they were more interested in the room than in diving under the sheets and towels and T-shirts.

Hey . . . Why not let both of them sleep in my room? It'd expand their territory and get them more familiar to this part of the house. True, that meant closing the door to keep out the dog and Rhadwen the big cat, but if they needed to pee or poo, they'd let me know, right?

Gwenith and Huw had a field day-- or night. Wonderful places to jump and climb and tunnel through! Unlimited fun with mirrors, windows, curtains, and bed rails! The frolic went on far past lights out.

But eventually all subsided into silence and sleep . . .

. . . . Until the dawn's early light, when I was roused by the sound of kitty claws going scritch, scritch, scritch in the sheet next to my shoulder. Simultaneously, I became aware of a strange wetness on the sheet, on my nightclothes, on me! The air was filled with the delicate odor of kitten pee, and my now wide-open eyes beheld no kittens on the bed, but a rapidly-spreading wet spot right next to me on what had been the clean white sheets.

Oh, p----! I guess they are too young to let me know when they need to go!

Instantaneous leap to action! Get the kittens back to their own room and their own litter box! Get out of the wet nightclothes! Strip the bed! Rinse out the mattress topper in the bathtub! Take a shower! Put the soaked bedding in the washer! Hurry, hurry, hurry!

So that's why the foam topper is out in the backyard killing the grass and theoretically getting dry. It'll be awhile, so I'll be bunking in the Kitten Room until future notice.