Update

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Well, the house is dried out. The carpenter is coming tomorrow at 8AM (Dog help me) to repair the vanity where it was water damaged. Then starts a royal fight with the insurance company over who pays for this, as the insurance company wants me to pay and claim the difference between that amount and what they already paid out on the claim.

The house is listed for sale. The sign went up today. The ad went out on Craigslist today.

I had my 3 mos doctor's appointment for follow up bloodwork and to discuss some problems I've been having with my neck and back.

The A1C (diabetes bloodwork) was excellent. That now shows me to be "pre-diabetic" which shows what diet and medication-compliance can do. I am waiting to meet with a diabetic dietician to see what we can do about my diet to prevent blood sugar crashes. I don't have problems with my sugar going too high with the regimen I follow, but I'm getting attacks of hypoglycaemia and having to hit the glucose tablets as an emergency treatment, which isn't good.

My thyroid is even more whacked out and my synthroid had to be increased. That came as no surprise as I'd begun having symptoms of hypothyroid at the lower dosage of synthroid. I have to go back in a month to have that tested again.

All other chemistries, enzymes, liver, pancreas, cholesterol, all that good stuff, were normal. Blood pressure was normal. Slightly anemic. Need to eat red meat a couple of times a week as the beans and stuff aren't doing it.

Other than that. Thomas' special diet is starting to work and his innards seem to be a bit happier. He has turned into the official greeter when people come in the house. It's a pity so many of them are afraid of him because of his size. He's a large cat to start with (18lbs) and with all that fur, looks even larger.

It doesn't help that his method of introducing himself is to get right up in the visitors face and rub noses with them.

I had a husband and wife team of waste haulers in today to give me a quote on hauling a broken futon sofa out of here and to the dump, they walked past the washing machine where Thomas was holding court. He reached out and grabbed the man by the arm with one big paw (he's declawed, poor boy) and wouldn't let go of him until the man paid "the toll" by scratching his ears.

Meanwhile Squeaky is bouncing around their ankles squeaking and squealing and barely avoiding getting squished.

I am NOT looking forward to my mother meeting these two for the first time. She is NOT an animal lover though is an animal rights activist. To top it off, she is especially not fond of cats. I am envisioning Thomas taking a flying leap into mum's lap and giving her a big, sloppy kiss, right on the lips.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
Glad things are progressing along for you. That's too bad about the insurance, of course it sounds like what they do, you pay your premiums but when you have a claim it's hard to get them to pay.

I hope you have good luck with the house being listed and that you get a good offer.

I would so love to meet Thomas, he sounds amazing!!

Keeping good thoughts for you.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Well,the cleaners called me back to tell me they couldn't take the job as something better came along: a 3 week contract gutting a mansion on Boom Lake, which will pay considerably more than the one day or so I needed them for.

They gave met he name of another service which I called. They are coming out tomorrow at noon to look the place over and give me an estimate. This is a two phase job.

Phase one is getting the place presentable to show. Phase two is getting it "broom clean" once it's sold and closed upon and I'm out of it.

Which is going to require a bit of schlepping back and forth from Milwaukee to Rhinelander, a 325 mile drive as I'll be stayng with friends once this place sells.

Yes. Thomas is an incredible beast. Annoying sometimes, but incredible nonetheless. Squeaky is also a neat critter.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
GN, you go, girl Making lots of progress. And, if you can spare one, can you give Thomas a few scratches behind the ears from me today? You have done so well with this precious furbaby!!!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
SOT, that "precious furbaby" nearly killed me this AM. I am up at this unholy hour of the AM waiting for the waste hauler to show up for the estimate.



Thomas is thrilled with me being up at the crack of dawn. So thrilled that when I walked into the living room, he got up from where he had been ensconced on the back of the sofa in a sunbeam, jumped to the floor,came trotting over, and LAUNCHED HIMSELF INTO MY ARMS!

I caught him. I also landed flat on my arse on the floor...

I've already fractured my tailbone once. This time, luckily, it held up. However, with my knees, getting to my feet was a less than dignified operation.

Thomas doesn't understand why he didn't get an enthusiastic greeting in response.

The day got off to a wonderful start at 6:30 when I staggered into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea and noticed that the microwave door was open. Went to close it and noticed that there was a decapitated MOUSE in it!

Eccccch!

This means that Squeaky has figured out how to open the microwave. It also means I have lost the last safe place to stash the butter dish.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
I'm glad you are ok!!

Super Kitty will fly threw the air and land in your arms in a single bound.

As for the mouse in the microwave, funny and gross all at the same time. Oh if you only had a video of that!!
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Isn't it something, how complex everything always does seem to get? How simple would it have been, once you finally made that commitment to change in your heart, just to list the freaking house, sell it, and walk into the challenges of the new life?

Here you are, still standing.

It sounds like Thomas is back to calm and steady state? No more tranqs?

Possible to post a picture of Squeaky? Or a description? In my mind's eye, he is white and grey. Longish hair.

Green eyes.

Cats are so cool.

Cedar
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Thomas was off of Valium as soon as the drying equipment was removed from the house. It was the noise that was freaking him out as due to his hearing loss, he could hear nothing with the additional noise.

OK. Squeaky is a brown Mackerel (tiger striped) tabby cat. SHE weighs seven lbs, just a tiny little thing. She has short hair, and is missing her left eye and and her right upper canine tooth. Her remaining eye is a gorgeous gooseberry green.

She was born with a birth defect in left eye called micropthalmia where the eye didn't form properly. The defect was caused by her mother carrying feline Herpes Virus and infecting her kittens in utero. Squeaky was born blind in that eye, and as happens quite often with micropthalmia, the eye was constant source of infection and pain to her.

I had my vet remove it shortly after I adopted her.

She's a pretty little thing and seeing her boss Thomas around is hilarious if only due to the difference in size.

She is extremely intelligent, very affectionate, and HYPER! (also an excellent mouser, LOL!)
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
Oh I just have to send you a BIG HUG!!! I so love that you adopted these sweet furbabies. It truly warms my heart that you adopted Squeaky despite her birth defect. So many people would not as they want a "perfect" pet. What a blessing you are to Squeaky and Thomas.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Tanya, Squeaky grew up in a hoarder's basement. SHe was rescued at approximately 4 years of age with a litter of kittens at her side. She then languished at the shelter for 7 months until SHE chose ME to come home with.

You are correct that no one wanted her because first of all she's a plain vanilla tabby cat, and second of all, because of the defective, weeping eye.

It took another 7 months or so to get her to the point of being civilized in the house. She used the litter pan from the get-go, but was a wild child, clawing the walls, climbing on anything and everything, and never being still.

She's still hyper, but has been with me for 3.5 years now, and has blossomed into a real sweetheart. Despite her rough start in life, other than a chronic URI that periodically causes her bouts of sniffling and sneezing, she is wonderfully healthy.

She is a food and pen thief, climbs me like a tree when feeling affectionate, bosses Thomas around mercilessly, and I just adore her.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
My little Sissy cat was not rescued from a shelter, more from my back yard. She was a ferral cat that my old neighbor used to put food out for but then the neighbor's husband passed away and she decided to move to be closer to her daughter so I started putting food out for the kitty.

I would put food out for her every morning on the back patio. It took about 3 months before she would let me pet her, I was so excited. In Sept. of that first year we fed her, my husband was concerned about the upcoming winter so he built a little house for her, it had a heater and I lined it with sheep skin. We weren't sure if she would go in it. The next morning I opened the patio door to put her bowl of food out and she crawled out of her little house. She was quite cozy in that little house. It took a little over a year before I could get her to come into our house and when she would she would stay right by the door but she would let me love on her.

A couple of years ago we were concerned about her having to spend another winter outside even though she had her cozy warm house so in early fall we started having her stay in our house for longer periods of time. I put a blanket on one end of couch and would put her on it and just pet her and before too long when she would come in the house she would go right to her blanket. Then came litter box training, that was tricky. I would drop her in the litter box and she would bolt!! Thank God for Google. I found info on how to litter box train a ferral cat, you start with dirt then slowly add in kitty litter. It took about a month to make the full transition to kitty litter.

Sissy has been "domesticated" going on three years now. She is the sweetest little thing. She sleeps on her blanket on the couch and has never clawed at the furniture. It has been a pure joy to have her.

We have a large field behind our house and she loves to hunt for mice and chipmunks which she will proudly drop on the patio with that look of "see what I brought you"

(My old neighbor had "trapped" her in her garage so she could have a safe place to have her kittens, she found homes for the kittens then had Sissy fixed)

Love that little cat!!!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
You are lucky you got your little feral girl using a litter pan. My Jakey was a street tom that I fostered for 4 months (deathly ill with herpes) and failed the foster' meaning, I kept him.

Best I could do with him was get him "house broken'. He went to the door and asked to be let out when he had to relieve himself.

He was a good boy, and a real lover, but retained the wild streak that kept him alive in the Northwoods of WI for several years before he was live-trapped.

He died a year ago July of renal failure. I made the decision to put him down when it got to the point that he would've required daily fluids and medications to buy him a few more months. Jakey was a sweetheart, but he didn't take a lot of "fooling with."
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Lol GN. I'm sorry if I'm enabling you cat, but I get such a kick out of the two of you.. I'm so glad you have. One another. Better than a human man , isn't he? Only kidding jabber and my own husband
 
Last edited:

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Well, I got the bill from the mitigation company. Almost 4 grand. I am sitting on a check from the ins company for 450 dollars, which with my 500 dollar deductible adds up the 950 dollars the ins company thought the whole cleanup and repairs should cost.

I am NOT looking forward to THAT phone call to the adjuster tomorrow!

The vanity is fixed and the carpenter did a good job, though left the bathroom a complete mess that I had to clean up.

I am having a heck of a time finding someone to haul trash and old furniture to the dump, though did manage to find a "maid" to do a deep clean on the place and to come out to clean weekly to keep the place ready to show. She will be coming Wednesday to do the deep clean.

Thomas and Squeaky are doing well. I finally got Thomas groomed properly, which took nearly an hour. Luckily, he LIKES being groomed, and after I got done went to sit in the bay window so passers-by could admire his leonine and regal looks. (for at least as long as it took for the usual after-effects of a good grooming to catch up to him and he passed out in a sprawled heap)

I have had two "nibbles" on the place from the Craigslist ad; one who wanted pictures, so went out and took pics yesterday and emailed them to her. Haven't heard any more back from either of them.

I plan on calling our free shopper paper tomorrow and placing an ad in that as well.

I'm going to call ServiceMaster and see if the futon sofa can be salvaged and to have the regular sofa cleaned.

I am trying to avoid winding up paying both rent on a an apartment and the costs on this place if at all possible. It would be do-able, but very, very tight, especially as it would require using a realtor, which would cost me a fortune in fees, etc..
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Going North: I really admire how you keep plugging along, working towards your goals, taking care of your responsibilities, and most difficult for me taking care of yourself.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Well, due to bipolar insanity (not to imply that all bipolar people are insane), stress,etc., I got to bed yesterday at 4AM, woke up at 8AM and couldn't get back to sleep.

That and foul weather which had me hurting all over, and a double toothache which had me anticipating a particularly unpleasant dental apt later in the day, had me loaded for bear by the time I phoned the insurance adjuster at 8:30.

HE wasn't expecting to deal with someone with 20+ years of dealing with often upset people on the phone. The upshot was that I got what I wanted. The mitigation and repairs will be covered for the cost of my deductible, no more.

The insurance adjuster is probably still trying to figure out what hit him, and all handled without me so much as raising my voice, let alone any profanity or the like.

Then, off to the dentist, where I found out that A) the two teeth are indeed shot, one is a simple extraction, the other requires a surgical extraction, which is a fancy term for being cut out in pieces, and neither are coming out yesterday due to both still being too infected to get adequate anesthesia.

Lovely! So, stronger antibiotic (which is making me queasy and woozy) and back Thursday at half past ungodly in the AM to get them yanked.

I was also informed that the rest of my bottom teeth, into which I have sunk enough money over the years to have a nice downpayment on a house , are beyond further work.

He recommends an implant stabilized denture because regular lower dentures basically "hoover". Coming from a dentist, and knowing that my relatives with dentures never wore their lowers, I can believe this. The issue is raising the cash for the implant stabilized lower while hoping that nothing else on the bottom blows out before that.

Oh joy.

Other than that, lousy weather for the rest of the week. The spring like weather of last week was apparently a teaser for us in the Northwoods, Thomas is sleeping, as is Squeaky, and there have been more dead animals in the microwave that were not placed there by me, the owner of said microwave, to either cook, or thaw for cooking.

All in all, it was a Monday.
 
Top