Angela Mollard: I can’t stop my cat from peeing on my couch

HAVE you noticed how everyone is going gaga over cats? This is all very lovely if you like cats, which I do. Trouble is, I don’t like MY cat.

HAVE you noticed how everyone is going gaga over cats? For 4000 years this most prosaic of pets has loitered on the edge of humanity, a benign Darwinian afterthought that ambled through natural selection presumably because the bigger, bolder animals thought: “Nah, won’t bother, looks a bit stupid.”

Yet suddenly they’re the stars of the internet. You can’t flick through Instagram without seeing some humping great moggy doing yoga or skateboarding or showcasing its particular version of disdain. Grumpy Cat has 730,000 followers, a sponsorship deal, merchandising and a book called The Grumpy Cat Guide to Life which presumably teaches how to finesse your hauteur to make a fortune.

It’s not just teen girls in a feline stupor. Any male celebrity with half a bicep is posing on Insta with a ball of fluff — looking at you Liam Hemsworth, and you Ed Sheeran — prompting kitten smitten BuzzFeed to pump out posts such as “28 Ridiculously Hot Celebrities With Incredibly Cute Cats” and “82 Astounding Facts About Cats” (they sweat only through their foot pads apparently).

This is all very lovely if you like cats, which I do. Trouble is, I don’t like MY cat. I’d go so far as to say I hate my cat but then you’ll all bombard me with horrible emails and report me to the RSPCA.

In my defence, she started it — “she” being Billie, a petite tortoiseshell who came to live with us a year ago. Previously, I’ve had an exemplary track record with cats. Fluffy produced kittens on my fourth birthday, slept every night on my bed and died loyally under the camellia bush outside my bedroom window. Smoky (yes, we’re original) replaced her and remembered me long after I decamped to London for a decade. When my own kids came along we took in Toffee, a gallumping great ginger moggy who takes a private approach to personal hygiene. I’m sure he’s gay, in an Elton John kind of way, though he can’t play the piano which is a shame because, well, see above. Incidentally, how much do you reckon I could earn off a cat who could tap out Candle in the Wind?

It’s pretty hard not to love cats on the internet.

And so to Billie who, like Toffee, came to us via the Cat Protection Society. “Choose one that seems to like you and has an activity level you think would fit with your family,” said the assistant. The kids went immediately for some insane fluff ball catapulting off the scratching posts. I steered them towards a kitten curled up on a bench. She seemed friendly but it was a ruse. “If I pretend I’m normal and not too needy, they’ll go for me,” she thought, proof, as BuzzFeed will inform you, that a cat’s brain is “90 per cent similar to a human’s”.

We took her home, gloriously unaware that we’d dropped $180 on a bundle of neuroticism and bladder problems. After feeding her the prescribed $5 sachet of caviar-laced cat food we followed instructions and slowly introduced her to Toffee, a mistake since Billie could’ve done with an early immersion into his Eltonesque grooming habits.

Still, she was cute and affectionate. Like a kitten from central casting she played with the kids and balloons, outshining Toffee whose single amusing act was to curl up in the box lid while we were playing The Game of Life.

Then it all went wrong. Turns out Billie is a lush prone to dipping a paw into glasses of wine and knocking them over. Her meow sounds like she’s being put through a mincer. She has a radar for puddles solely so she can leave a trail of muddy paw prints across my white doona. If she could spell — BuzzFeed has yet to prove this — I’m sure she’d pace out a message reading “Ha, ha, ha”.

Cats. They’re kind of awesome.

But it’s her urinary habits that are driving me spare. She thinks two oversized cream armchairs are her litter trays. Before you ask I’ve taken her to the vet three times ($400) and there’s nothing wrong with her urinary tract. We’ve added an extra litter tray and covered the chairs in aluminium foil, rendering them useless for tea sipping and book reading. I’ve gone through two bottles of Urine Off ($70) and sprayed citrus oil everywhere. Last week when she peed within 24 hours of me washing all the removable covers I told the kids we were getting rid of her. A text came from one of their friend’s mums: “Have your tried menthol-scented Tiger Balm. They hate it.”

So now the living room smells like a rugby changing room yet without the distraction of Dan Carter or Quade Cooper. Last week, demented by frustration and fumes, I mistakenly filled the litter tray with cat biscuits.

So tell me cat lovers, if cats can survive falls from 32 stories and have 1000 times more data storage than an iPad (thank you BF), why can’t they pee where they’re supposed to? Honestly, I’d happily do her in if I didn’t know she’d haunt me with her other eight lives.

Angela Mollard finds her cat to be a challenge to live with.