If I Succeed....

When I was about 10, my father and I went to visit my paternal grandmother in Madera for some event, the details of which I have long forgotten about. What I do remember is that midway through the event I excused myself to go use her restroom. Only to find that the toilet was clogged. Though my initial reaction was to just walk away, there were two reasons that I could not do this, 1) I really needed to pee and, 2) everyone at the event would assume that I had clogged the toilet, since I was the last one to use the restroom. There was no plunger in sight, so I approached my grandmother and quietly announced that someone else had clogged the toilet. To which she responded:

"If you clogged the toilet, just say so. Don't blame it on someone else."
"No, no, no," I explained, "it was like that when I got there."

At this point one of my three aunt's asked what the problem was.
"Your niece has clogged the toilet and is trying to blame it on someone else."
"Nonono, it was not me."
"Honey, don't be ashamed of it," my favorite aunt said.
"It's much worse to lie about it," another aunt chimed in.
"We don't like liars in this family," my grandma stated.
My youngest aunt had been sitting quietly through the conversation, glass of wine in hand. Suddenly she chimed in: "You need to flush twice if it's that big."

At this point I was nearly in tears. To be perfectly honest, if I had clogged the toilet, I would probably lie about it. But I hadn't. It was not my fault. It was one of the people in this room, one of the many people looking at me with judgment in their eyes.
"Ididn'tclogthetoiletandyou'reallreallymean. And I have to pee!!!"

Finally at this point my father stepped in and I was rescued.

The point of this story? Assuming I succeed in training the cats to use the toilet, I will spend the rest of their lives having to explain to my friends that it's Bear and Toby's fault. The toilet is not clogged, and I did not forget to flush. It was the cats.