Oh dear god. Zanzibar is going through puberty.

Last night he kept squatting near me and peeing. After the first time (when he peed on a towel while I was sorting laundry on the bed) I chucked him in his litter box. He came right back and peed on my feather comforter; it soaked right through the cover and into the feathers.

I was so sad about my feather comforter until Richard told me today that Martha says you can wash AND dry them in machines. YAY!

So, after the second time he peed I cleaned their litter box, so he had no excuse.

Anyway, then he crawled behind me on the couch and peed on a sheet (that I was using to cover myself while I petted them after their last sulphuring) while we were watching TV.

ARGH!

After locking them in the bathroom, much cleaning and web searching, I've decided it's probably puberty. Zanzi just turned six months, and we haven't been able to fix them yet because of illness. It's completely normal for intact male cats to start marking their territory around this time.

Me, I'd rather he just get acne and sulk.

We're going out of town this weekend, so I can't take him into the vet to make sure it's not a medical condition. I made another littler box and put one in the living room, so if it's just that they're getting territorial over the single litter box that would hopefully help. We're also making the bedroom off-limits until they're fixed and we're convinced they can control the urge to pee on stuff.

I'm going to call the vet and see if I can't sweet talk them into snipping these boys for me. The only thing that I can see standing in the way at this point is that they can't get wet for 10 days after they're neutered and we still have to sulphur them every 7 days for the next three weeks. Hopefully I can get them snipped on a Wednesday and not sulphur them until ten days later, but we'll see. I'm just horribly worried, because once they start peeing it's really hard to get them to stop . . .

and Marzi turns six months next month.