Hope springs eternal...

Sassy has only had two accidents since May 5th.  She's exclusively using the boxes with the puppy pads in them.  I just ordered 200 more puppy pads and I'm perfectly happy to continue using them for the rest of her life.  I've noticed that she tries to cover up her business even though there isn't any litter in the box, she didn't do that in the boxes with litter, she would just poop and leave.  Perhaps it was all about the scratching and being declawed.  It's really too soon to declare victory but she seems to be happier, running around the house like a whirling dervish.  And we're happy we don't have to keep locking her up because clearly that wasn't working.

This is the newest addition to our house, an enclosure the cats can use to go outside, it's accessed from a window in our family room.

 It has an acrylic roof to let in the light, a door we can use to clean it, and a lock so it doesn't accidentally get opened.

 It has plenty of perches to separate each cat.

It occupies a portion of our courtyard (which is much cleaner now).  This area was just dirt when we moved in.  Carl put landscaping tiles down, he put some timbers on the left to hold mulch, we installed pots in that area for our vegetable garden, he bought fencing to keep the deer out and this year on the right side I planted a new fragrant viburnum this year.  Our bedroom window is above this courtyard so we will benefit from the fragrance.

Sadie is clearly happy with it.

Even though the pet door isn't installed yet, she spends a great deal of time out here - we just open the window and tolerate the bugs.

This is their view from the top perches.  They can see the pond and the birds.  We plan to install a small feeder in the courtyard to attract birds for them to watch, too.