I live with a flatmate and my flatmate has a cat. So I live with a flatmate and a cat. As we are fair people (my flatmate and I, the cat is no people), we keep a peer relationship. When he cleans the bathroom I vacuum the living room. Yeah, I live with a flatmate and a cat and we have a living room and a bathroom. We also have other rooms.
The cat has changed our hierarchy. Before we were on the same level. Now we are still (theoretically) on the same level, but the cat does jump on my flatmate's lap when he's having dinner and tries to steal him food (or anything that's on the table). The cat never jumps on my lap while I'm eating (after all I grew up with dogs) so I guess the current hierarchy is first the cat, then myself, then my flatmate. I'd like to think we are above the cat but the jumping-on-the-lap-while-having-dinner is a clear sign of power. I don't put myself above the cat since sometimes it plays noisily at night and I have to get up to take the noisy toy away (that can be a plastic bag or a coin or a bottle cap or something else). I also don't want to sound too bossy with respect to my flatmate. I am a fair person and I like to keep peer relationships.
My flatmate cleans the cat's litter box about once every five days. He empties it in the garbage and then washes it in the tub. He uses antiseptic detergent and one or several sponges. When he's on vacation or visiting his family and five days since the last cleaning have passed, I take care of the litter box.
I've mentioned one or several sponges because I've never watched my flatmate cleaning the litter box. When I clean it, I use only one sponge. The sponge is kept in the bathroom on the tub's border. Next to it there are four more sponges (there used to be three but last week another one ended up there). Two sponges are blue, two are green and one is yellow. I use the yellow one for the cat's litter box. I guess one or more sponges might be used by my flatmate to clean the bathroom and one or more might be used to clean the cat's litter box. When I need a sponge to clean the bathroom (sometimes I'm alone and I like to keep relationships on a peer level) I don't take the one that I use to clean the cat's litter box. I use one of the green ones (it's always the same one because it's visibly older than the other green one). I'm no princess but I prefer to keep things tidy if I can. I would not mind if the same sponge were used for the litter box and the bathroom, but I prefer not to mix. I would worry if the same sponge were used to clean both the bathroom and the dishes, or the litter box and the dishes, or the three of them. But the dish sponge is safely stored in the kitchen, so there is no risk of that. Nonetheless, I don't know for sure if the same sponge is being used on both the cat's litter box and the bathroom fixture.
Statistically, by using different sponges for the bathroom and the litter box I am decreasing the possibilities that the same sponge will ever be used on both washable items, but I am also increasing the possibilities that both sponges are used on both items. That actually depends on what my flatmate does with the sponges.
If he uses the sponges randomly, then after some time all of them will eventually have been used on both the cat's litter box and the bathroom fixture; my action will just decrease the frequency of bathroom cleanings the yellow sponge does and increase the frequency of litter box cleanings the green sponge does. But if my flatmate is consistent and always uses the same sponges or group of sponges for the litter box and another sponge or other sponges for the bathroom, then my action is either perfect (if he doesn't use my sponges or he uses it the same way I do), or tragic (if he uses one or both my sponges on the opposite object that I do).
Statistics can be tough.
Anyway my flatmate told me he won't be away before April.