Petra and the Litterbox

    "Well, now I'm mad..." Jane Anastasia the wolf-like grey Maine Coon snarled through her teeth. It had been thirty entire minutes since they'd been herded into their room for the night (they had a history of unruliness once their owners had retired to bed). 
    Petra, a white American short-hair with splotches of tabby stripes all over her body, sighed tiredly. "What is it, Jane?" 
    "That girl STILL hasn't come in here to clean our box!" 
    "Oh...that," Petra yawned. "Maybe she's doing something more important. Maybe she's finally about to reach the final level of Zuma's Revenge. She had this really intent look on her face when I saw her playing it tonight." 
    "Do you want to know what I think?" Jane asked. Petra didn't particularly, but wouldn't say so. Jane went on without really waiting for a reply. "This is obviously a deliberate gesture towards me!--ahem, us. Now I say we both yowl as loud as we can until her mother drags her out of that computer chair and into our room!" 
    Unlike Jane, Petra didn't believe in causing disrespect to their owners unless it was an urgent situation, so when reasoning with Jane didn't work, she decided to just ignore her complaining and wait it out. I am sorry to say, though, that tonight Petra's mellow-natured methods did not work. 
    Finally, the young cat had had enough. It was clear their youngest owner wasn't going to show up, and that meant Jane wasn't going to let up any time soon. Petra reluctantly got up and began rummaging through the drawer of a desk that happened to be in their room, full of all kinds of odds and ends. If she tried cleaning their litterbox herself, maybe Jane would let her have some sleep, and perhaps the rest of the family as well. She honestly had never tried this, and couldn't say she liked the idea either, but it was worth a shot. 
    "I just know they had some plastic gloves in here," she said to herself. 
    "What in the name of all that is sane are you doing?!" Jane bellowed, finally noticing Petra tossing things out of the drawer after a stapler nearly made its mark on her forehead. 
    "Well Jane, maybe I can clean it tonight...I don't think she's coming." Finding what she needed near the back, she used her prim little mouth to pull the surgical gloves on to get to work. She hoped her idea wouldn't make Jane just scream louder. The gloves meant for human hands swam on her tiny paws, and she wasn't really sure where to start with this task. 
    "Good," Jane said simply, snootily swishing her tail. "Because I'm certainly not going to do it." 
    Petra sighed. What a night this had turned out to be. Now, what was it that their owner put this awful-smelling waste in? She looked around the room a couple of times, finally spotting a tissue box on the same desk she'd gotten her supplies out of. 
    Not noticing a nearby scooper and the pile of grocery bags, she tried to wedge the opening of the tissue box a little wider so she could dump the dirty sand and other unsavory contents into it. But when she tried to budge, much less lift the heavy litterbox, it only resulted in sand scattering on the floor, and she could tell Jane was rather entertained by all of this. 
    Meanwhile, the daughter's mom finally heard Jane's continuous whining and made her daughter go in there, realizing the litterbox probably hadn't been cleaned yet that night. 
    The daughter had hoped she could just do it tomorrow, and she had a way of tuning out Jane's whining and hollering these days. But she would have to do it tonight, since her cats pretty much let her mom know if she didn't.  
    As you probably know, the teenager learned a valuable lesson that night about cleaning her cats' litterbox on time, or else you'll walk into a room with a disjoined drawer, your cat (most likely the more submissive of the two) wearing surgical gloves, and litter sand all over the carpet.