In the land of the cats, it's always best for the two-footed beasts of burden to remember that everything, in the end, is always about the cats. Any two-footed beast of burden that believes themselves the sole owner and proprietor of their place of residence has never run out of cat food on a weekend.

Today, spouse and I attempted to reassert eminent domain upon this building we live in.

In other words, we tried to give the cats a new litterbox.

Since Jeff and I both have quite an active dislike of cleaning litterboxes, (tempered only by our equally-active dislike of the smell of an uncleaned litterbox) I've been saving up to purchase an automatic litterbox for quite some time. I told Jeff a week ago that I had the money to buy the automatic litterbox, and ventured out this morning to make the purchase.

I am skilled in the ways of bringing new equipment into the house. Treat the new items like captured cat-trophies: drag them into the living room and leave them there, in the middle of the floor, for the cats to 'discover' and 'claim.'

Tenzing, of course, claimed the box, and Edmund felt the need to delicately sniff every part of the box and its contents. After a few minutes of kitty sniffing and a bit of quick assembly by Jeff, the litterbox was ready to go.

We took the litterbox into the bathroom (cats supervising the entire way, of course) and set it in the "place for the litterbox." We hid the old litterbox in a closet, filled the new one with litter, and stepped back to let the cats investigate.

Nothing happened. Nobody moved.

Jeff, curiosity getting the better of him, turned on the litterbox and let it run through a cleaning cycle. Halfway through it, Jeff and I both looked at each other with a look of alarm. "Was that --"

*rowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!*

"—Edmund?" Jeff asked.

The litterbox cycled again, and there it was, underneath the hum of the little motor: the sound of impending kitty kung-fu. The special, low *rowwwwwwwwwwwwwr!* that our normally placid (albeit skittish) Edmund saves for vets and rabies shots.

Edmund wanted the world the be aware of his displeasure at this…this…thing that had taken over his litterbox.

Since then, we've taken turns occasionally popping into the bathroom and just sitting there for a few minutes. The cats naturally follow us around the house, and will eventually wander into the bathroom to see what we're up to. They've sniffed the new litterbox, but neither have actually hopped into it yet. We've turned the little automatic motor off for the time being, in the hopes that Edmund will forget about its existence and relax in the assumption that this is a non-sentient litterbox.

They'll eventually have to give up and try the litterbox out. In the meantime, this could get interesting.