YOU are PAWSOME! 75 Reasons Why Your Cats Love You, and Why Loving Them Back Makes You a Better Human (PAWSOME! Book #2)

Sample Chapter

#1 YOU CLEAN THE LITTER BOX

There’s no end to how feline-besotted the genuine cat lover is. So besotted that a bona fide devotee can find the positive spin on even the most negative aspects of cat care—the extra expense of a home-visiting pet-sitter when you travel (“Totally worth it!”); the always-dicey experience of pilling a cat (“Muffy looks so cute wrapped in a ‘kitty burrito!’”); and even cleaning up hairballs (“Bootsie and I both love the smell of Nature’s Miracle!”).

But the one un-spinnable task associated with responsible feline caretaking is cleaning the litter box. Probably the best that can be said is that, under certain ideal circumstances—including use of a high-quality litter, and making sure not too much time has passed since the last cleaning—it’s relatively painless.

Then there are those other times. You know what I’m talking about. Those times when the store was out of your favorite litter, so you had to make do with some cheap substitute that doesn’t even pretend to cover up the odor, which probably explains why you waited a couple of days longer than you should have to clean it out…

And now here it is, the middle of summer, 95 degrees outside and even hotter than that inside, the sweltering heat and cheap litter apparently having caused the odor coming from the litter box to mutate into some hideous, nearly tangible, practically paranormal entity that surely no cat—certainly not your cat, who’s so cute and so tiny!—could possibly be responsible for, and that no human could be expected to withstand for long. Suddenly you’re Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now as a suffocating dread rises in your chest and you find yourself frozen in place, helplessly repeating the only semi-coherent thought your mind is capable of forming:

The horror! The horror!

In the end, though, you roll up your sleeves, clothespin your nose, grab the scooper and a plastic bag, and head in there to do what you have to do like the brave, never-say-die soldier you are.

And that’s because when the going gets tough, the tough get

PAWSOME!