We solved the problem of Lulu and the water bowl.

Lulu, you may recall, is the Laurel Street damncat who could not let rest the water bowl on our kitchen floor. For whatever reason, she liked to jostle the bowl sharply with her paw to make the water slosh out onto the floor. Once the water had splashed out, it slowly rolled across our kitchen floor to the other side next to the sink.

That water on the floor totally fascinated Lulu. She pawed at it, lapped at it with her tongue and followed its slow downhill roll to the other side of the kitchen.

Lulu, along with Oscar, came to us with issues. The two damncats along with a cockatoo and a dog had arrived at the house next door in the upheaval that followed Katrina. They belonged to the daughter of the lady who had always lived there. The lady evacuated for Katrina and is yet to return. Meanwhile her daughter with pets and family had been forced from their home by the storm and brought the animals to the house next door while they searched for a new place.

The upheaval of Katrina took an emotional toll on its displaced victims, human and otherwise. As nights during the fall of 2006 grew gradually cooler, we became increasingly concerned that the tropical bird which had been left in a cage on the back screened porch next door was threatened by the exposure. It eventually led to a call to the humane society whose official arrived there to investigate at the same time the bird’s owner arrived for one of her infrequent visits.

Needless to say, the bird’s owner was not happy with the attention that we had created for her. She left that day carrying the poor bird in a cage and spouting, in her thick New Orleans brogue, comments about Mississippians’ propensity for incestuous sibling relationships and for eating cornbread. Those were not her exact words, but we’ve since referred her as the Cornbread Lady.

And as she drove away that day almost four years ago, she vowed revenge to my wife and daughter who stood there, having witnessed and heard most of what had transpired, mouths slightly agape.

Revenge, as it turned out, was Lulu and Oscar.

At first they stayed in the backyard next door. Yeah, right. I failed to note how long it was before Lulu had claimed a spot at the foot of our bed, a position to which she apparently felt entitled by virtue of having held it in her former life, we surmised.

Oscar, on the other hand, could not get over what my wife called “abandonment issues.” He loves people, but he feels that every other household damncat is a threat to his status. When he couldn’t adjust, Oscar became an outside damncat. Besides that, old Cookout Kitty, the head damncat of both the household and yard, hates Oscar’s guts and starts a threatening, gutteral meowing whenever Oscar gets too close. My wife still bears guilt over having had to demote Oscar.

Lulu adjusted well except for that water bowl which she could not leave alone. Finally, after tiring of walking through the kitchen each morning to step in the puddle of water she had sloshed out during the night, I bought a Drinkwell Pet Fountain. A tiny electric pump recirculates water from a lower reservoir through an upper outflow to create a continuous small channel of water flowing back down into the bowl.

Lulu loves it. Since the flowing fountain replaced the bowl, she’s never once tried to splash water onto the floor. Every other damncat loves it, too.

And that’s how was solved the problem of Lulu, the water-sloshing damncat in Uptown New Orleans, where the damncats are far less depressing to report on than the awful calamity which has poisoned the Gulf with no end yet in sight.