Kittens With Mittens

I really wish I could have run this morning. There's this strange white stuff in patches on the ground and the roofs of houses. Very odd. Like someone spilled soap flakes. It's been raining too. Maybe the Laundry Fairy had a spat with the Maytag repairman.

Anyway, my pulled calf muscle is going to keep me off the streets for at least a couple of days. So instead of running this morning, I awoke to a story about cities racing to pass laws prohibiting declawing. It seems that those horrible state lawmakers snuck a law on the books that prohibits prohibiting cat declawing. The law takes effect Jan. 1. By prohibiting cat declawing before prohibiting cat declawing is prohibited the cities get to prohibit cat declawing.

I have a La-Z-Boy recliner couch that has been shredded by cats. The Wife bought a slipcover to throw over the couch when we have company. Or at least when we have company we don't want to be reclining in the sofa.

We have three cats. All have their claws. The dog, however, doesn't have her front claws. A previous owner had gone to the expense of having the dog's claws removed. The dog doesn't scratch furniture and she doesn't prevent the cats from scratching the furniture. "Not my job," she says with those baleful eyes as she stares at me from her bed in front of the cat-shredded coach.

So I was particularly interested in the topic of cats and claws, especially since The Wife recently purchased a new couch and matching chair to go with the new living room floor that went with the new floor that came with the remodel of the kitchen. (The remodel is finished, but the blog about it still needs to be finished.)

At each corner of the couch and the chair are salad-size paper plates containing chemical soaked paper towels. The chemicals are supposed to keep the cats away from the furniture. This makes the paper plates more useful than the dog. On the down side, however, the plates make it appear as if someone had a picnic in the living room and didn't clean up the debris.

You can listen to Capital Public Radio's report here.

I laughed out loud when the report got to the line: "Opponents of cat declawing say there are alternatives, like giving a cat a scratching post, trimming its nails or making the animal wear mittens."

We have more scratching posts than furniture. And the idea of mittens? Well, that's just a laugh.

The Wife, of course, disagrees. People can put mittens on cats, she insisted.

So I went looking for a website that sells mittens for kittens.

I found mittens for very large kittens.
I don't think The Wife will let me have this kitten.

Anyway, when the first five pages of Google results produced no websites that sell mittens for kittens, I began to suspect mittens for kittens is an urban myth. Then I discovered this television ad.