Monday, November 5, 2012

The worst thing to ever come out of the former Soviet Union

January 16, 2008

Sure, many negative things emerged from the Soviet Union: abysmal customer service, frightening post offices, hideous architecture from the 1960s onwards... but I remain convinced that the worst holdover from the Soviet Union is the cat pee box. While in the West we developed litter boxes filled with a variety of clumping, odor controlling cat litter, covered litter boxes and even self-flushing litter boxes, the former Soviet Union gives you this horrid contraption:

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Pleasant, huh? And I bet you can guess how wonderful this contraption is at odor control. Now there *is* kitty litter to be found here; however, thus far I have only located it in one store at an outrageous price – something like $21 for a mere couple of pounds! I have three cats; at that price, I’d be spending my entire salary on litter. Instead I’ve opted for the following method of odor control:

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Ok, so perhaps this isn’t the best solution, but it improves the air quality of my apartment a little. You know, as opposed to raw, uncovered cat pee. Then of course, there is the problem that the cats don’t like to use the box if it has recently been used. They prefer to go outdoors, but I'm not exactly skilled at waking up to let them out in the middle of the night. After several mornings of awakening to a puddle near my front door, I have resorted to this as well:

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I really must find some affordable kitty litter, if at all possible. Of course, it it’s anything like the litter I found in Russia, it might very well mix with cat pee to form a cement so solid that it cannot be cleaned out of the box. (Obviously, I have given up on the idea of pretending I don't have cats by keeping the litter box outside.) 

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