Living with Cats (or 25 of them, to be exact)

There isn't much that upsets me, but I do think it's unfortunate that "Cat Lady" has a pejorative connotation to it. Since when did taking care of animals that would otherwise be euthanized become a bad thing? Sure, we do see stories on the news all the time about how the police sometimes discover a feces-ridden house where some little, old lady with dementia has lived for years with her animals, but I think that's just the media sensationalizing the story for their own purposes. Cat poop just isn't that bad if it's covered up by a lot of littler. Think about it, people raise their own children and spend two to three years changing diapers. You don't even have to touch cat poop. It's way easier.

I have a favorite saying: "Cats are people too." Now, that being said, you probably would not live in a 1500 square foot condo with twenty-five other people, which is why cats are so great. They don't take up a lot of space. They sleep most of the time. They devote themselves to giving you love and attention, unless they're rabid.

Now, living with 25 cats can be a challenge sometimes, but it is possible, so I'm providing a list of things you'll need to do to live with 25 cats and keep them happy.

1. Devote one room of the house to waste by filling it entirely with sand/litter or teach your cats how to flush the toilet. One of the challenges of living with twenty-five cats is that they pee and poop a lot, so you either need to devote one room of the house to litter or teach the cats how to pee in and flush the toilet. I've included a video of a cat flushing a toilet. The type of toilet featured is very useful for teaching the cat to flush. There are also several kits available to teach the cat to actually go in the toilet. This takes a little effort, but is well worth it. However, this means you should probably come by your cats one at a time rather than getting twenty-five at the same time. The other option is to fill an entire room with sand or litter, preferably in the basement where you can dig down below door level. That way the cats' stuff is all contained in one room and you can just go in there and shovel everything out or have a service come and take care of it or buy a giant, mechanical rake that rakes back and forth. I should also suggest teaching all the cats to go outdoors and there are some nifty links below for that. However, the problem letting all twenty-five cats outside is that it draws attention to them, which you may not want.
2. Be Like George Foreman. George Foreman is a famous boxer who also sells grills. While most people know him for his boxing, I know him for his simplification of the child-naming process. Instead of bothering with the task of thinking up different names for his kids, he just named them all George. If you're going to live with 25 cats, it's too difficult to find appropriate names for all of them even though it humanizes them and creates a nice bond. Really, the cats don't care. So I recommend either calling them all kitty or thinking up another nice name and then attaching a number to each one, so like George 1, George 2, and so on. The other option is to buy each a collar and have their name printed on the collar so that you can get their name right when you forget, but as you probably already know, grabbing a cat by the collar can be challenging and if you're bed-ridden or something, nearly impossible.
3. Get Your Cats Fixed. This can be expensive if you're taking in strays that are not fixed, but one way around this is to take in the unfixed cat, drop it off at the Humane Society, let them fix it, and then go back and offer to take it back. While this might seem like taking advantage of the system, you are doing society a favor by not populating the world with more cats. And if the Humane Society won't let you adopt the cat because you're adopting too many, just have a friend do it, or give a homeless person a sandwich and take them with you and have them adopt the cat for you.
4. If You Can, Have Neighbors Who have Dogs. The reason for this is pretty simple. If you're going to have a lot of cats, people who don't understand are likely to complain, especially people who don't own pets. However, if you move next to people with dogs, and the more the merrier, they're not going to complain about your cats because they know you have every right to complain about their dogs because dogs often bark and they poop in the yard and dig holes and, well, they're easy to complain about if you're a cat person. Also, you're helping prove that cat people and dog people can indeed live in harmony. So when dog people hear the meowing of twenty-five cats, they might wonder what is going on, but ultimately they're going to let it go.
5. Get a PO Box. Again, this relates to not drawing attention to yourself and mail delivery people can sometimes be a little nosy, bless their hearts. I'm sure they have the best intentions because if you're delivering mail and you smell what you think are human remains or a urine smell that could fell an elephant, you're probably going to contact the authorities. But if you're not delivering any mail in the first place, you never have the opportunity to be nosy.
6. Make Sure the Neighbors See You. The last thing you want to do is stay inside all day even though the temptation with twenty-five cats is to just lay down, smear cat nip all over your naked body, and have them form a giant cat blanket on you. However, if you never come out of the house, people tend to think you're really weird, so you need to come out, talk to the neighbors (preferably not about cats), and have normal conversations that people without twenty-five cats would have.