My neighbor, Doug, called me over the other day to show me something. He enticed me into his basement with a beer. (I hate to go there because I end up whacking my head against his low-beamed ceiling, but the beer helps.)
"Look at this," Doug said. "Kitty litter sculptures." Arranged on a shelf were several busts of American presidents. They were nicely executed, I thought, though I have to confess I'm no art expert. "Kitty litter?" I asked.
"Used clumpable kitty litter. It's the greatest." He'd taken the contributions of Samantha — his 18-year-old tabby — clods about the size and shape of George Foreman's ears, and shaped them into likenesses of the U.S. presidents. He'd already gotten up to Millard Fillmore. "Tidy Scoop is best," he said, although he'd clearly tried others, including Fresh Step and Boomer's Best, as I could tell from empty plastic containers all over the basement. "Tidy Scoop is consistent and odor free and malleable. I just do the sculpture work, dry them out over there by the furnace, and give them a quick varnish."
"It's also a boon to recycling," he said. Doug's enthusiasm for the ecology knows no bounds. Before our town started its own recycling program, he took his newspapers and plastic milk jugs into his Hartford job for proper disposal.
He wanted to know if I thought these little sculptures would sell well at a fair or flea market, but I hate to pass judgment on something like that. What if I said yes, and they turned out to be a drag on the market? "What happens when Samantha passes on?" I wanted to know. The cat lay in a corner of the basement, looking more peaked and drained than usual, it seemed to me. Sam is getting on and the thought of this pet becoming a mere vehicle in the creation of yet another art medium, her bladder a martyr for art, disturbed me.
"I've thought of that," Doug said, "and I'm thinking of branching out, asking old Mrs. Peters down the road if I could enlist her cats, if I provided the Tidy Scoop."
Old Mrs. Peters, the local "cat lady," hosts at least twenty felines, maybe more. Nobody'd gotten close enough to her house in recent years to count, because of the bouquet, to put a nice turn on it. That would count as a civic service, I added.
