morning cat

I don't like to chat in the morning. I find the question "how did you sleep" immeasurably offensive. I have a routine of meditation stretching and coffee drinking which I must follow before introducing myself slowly to the world. Not so, for my husband.
There was a time when I believed that intruders were in our home, or that my husband was cultivating some gam radio hobby only in the early hours of the morning. I later realized my husband's voice, in all it's conversational tones, was being addressed to our Cat, Deliah. To hear him properly may give one a migraine. At least at those times when he appears to be trying to reason with her. He'll even ask her what it is that he has done, pressing more times than is polite for someone with the understanding that she can and will not be answering back. Sometimes, I begin to feel a bit guilty about this. The pleading anthropomorphising seems to be really saying "Where is my proper consersation partner? Wher is she? Come here?"
This said I was astonished to hear that he had pushed our cat's nose into her urine when it lay outside the box. I was surprised because he normally seems so keen on talking it out with the poor cat (in the background I mock his ideas of feline dicipline). She'll be batting pens, notes and computers off of his computer or any surface that may support them and Ivo will say in a playful tone "Deliah! Mach das bitte nüüt." Seeming to plead with this animal, who I always thought must understand only English.
The real proböem with the nose-to-urine shove was the location. The cat had trotted into the shower (located conveniently next to her litter box) and, instead of drinking from the tap or puddles as per usual, took a piss. For my liking, an easily washable surface like a tub is much better than, say, a carpet or the corner of a closet. I mean, I get the message of "hey! don't pee outside the box" and all, but this was no such commentary. This was Deliah's favorite gossip-partner, the man who sings songs about breakfast time and explains in three paragraphs why we don't play with pens, grabbing the creature and directing her head.
Ivo seemed annoyed by my lack of outrage that the cat had "made" in the shower. Between bites of cereal I asked "had you just peed in the shower?"