Cat Pee = New Circular Saw

From Slate:

"Inappropriate elimination" is the No. 1 cat behavior problem.

As in peeing, not finding your cat with a live mouse stuck in its mouth all the way up to the squirming tail, about to inappropriately eliminate said rodent.

... of the almost 5,000 calls she gets a year, nearly 90 percent are related to out-of-the-box soiling. It is the most common reason cats are turned in to shelters .... At least my situation was not as dire as that of the man who called the hotline to complain that his cat would urinate only on the stove. Whenever he cooked he turned on the burners and ran from his home until the urine burned off.

If my cat ever did that to my 15,000-BTU power burner ...

As I read through the litter literature, I realized the deductive skills needed to analyze the causes of elimination problems could provide CBS with a new spinoff: CSI: Cat Pee. Anything from the purchase of a new piece of furniture, to the owner having a change in work schedule could cause a cat to soil in protest.

I don't have enough time to watch CSI: Miami!

The vet gave me a tip sheet for eliminating the elimination problem. Following all the vet's tips, and combining them with the other advice I read, would lead to a litter-box care program that was only slightly less consuming than embarking on a career as a professional gymnast. ... I should put litter boxes in each place where the cats soiled, to try to retrain them to use the box. This would mean stepping into a litter box upon getting out of a shower, and wearing a couple of litter boxes, like a pair of mukluks, as I stomped around the kitchen preparing dinner. I needed a litter box on every floor because the cats might resent having to take the stairs in order to relieve themselves.

Hey, you know what I got out of my cats' "elimination problem"? A brand-spankin'-new circular saw, with which I cut a hole in a perfectly good steel door for a pet flap. Now they're roaming, and tinkling, on the town.