Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Gripes

I guess I'm overly tired. I'm upset about the cat who died today, too. I guess I'm tired of being alone constantly. I'm tired of having no easy place to go get affordable groceries and cat food. I have to drive to Winco in Salem or Corvallis to get anything now. I guess I'm just plain tired.

I'm torn over KATA's offer to take a couple of kittens. They only want healthy ones ready for adoption. That means Aces, and Aces alone. The five in my bedroom will have to go back to their respective colonies, the Corvallis colony, which is just a collectors hovel, cat shit everywhere, trash everywhere, and the HTN colony, where an old man is overloaded with cats from his neighborhood, because the neighbors on that street don't fix their pets and won't get involved in helping solve the problem.

So I'm torn over that. I guess KATA even adopts out cats at Petco in Vancouver. I'm very torn over sending Aces to live in a cage in a store in Vancouver. I'm not as bonded to the two HTN boys, but one of them is not that tame, and I don't have the time to socialize him completely. Nor the set up. If he has to go back to HTN, his brother should go with him.

I"ve never really settled here in Albany. I've never had the ability yet to set this house up for cats. I've got a HUD inspection coming the day after Christmas. I am worried about it. My brother had said he would get some things fixed, like the water under the house problem and the roof leak problem and a couple other things, that are smaller. But he never had time last summer. The HUD man let it go, when he inspected last February, when I moved in, on the promise the problems would be repaired last summer. So I'm worried, because they weren't.

My brother says to tell the HUD inspector these things will be done after the first of the year or next summer. They're not going to buy that, I don't think. That's not the way HUD works. So I'm worried. Also, I need to get the tree problem, with the hanging limb, taken care of before the HUD inspection, because that might be an issue.

I"ve got some roof glop and I might fix that small leak where the TV antenna comes into the attic, myself. I don't think it will be hard at all. I do need I think 24 hours without rain, but maybe I don't.

There's the plumbing issue, too. Water backs up inside the dishwasher, then, if I don't notice it in time, it starts spilling across the kitchen floor. This was a problem when the house was bought, only my brother didn't know it, because, well, nobody had lived here for awhile and the water in the sink and dishwasher hadn't been run for months.

There was no disclosure on this problem, which sucks. I doubt the realitor knew. The owner might have known, but might not have, since the house was used as an investment rental since it was built.

I don't use the dishwasher because its' grotesque inside, from having standing water in it, and because some renter here ran something with wet paint through it. That's a man thing. My father used to run car parts through the dishwasher. The paint splattered, if it was paint, on the sides and bottom. I'm not sure it was paint, but the back, sides and bottom have these tan spots and splotches. Not sure what that is.

The dishwasher needs removed, is the bottom line, as does the garbage disposal, which seems linked to the dishwasher issue. I don't use either of these appliances. I run the dishwasher once a week or more, to get the water out of it.

I have been studying up on do it yourself plumbing and I think I can take care of the issue myself, with the right tools, but I won't tackle it until I have everything I need, and all the knowledge I need also.

My brother attempted to get a cat yard built, by hiring a friend of his, who put up a fenced area and built a small room in one side of the garage, so the cats could, if we ever build an overhead run, get to the garage room, through, theoretically, a run from a cat door put somewhere from the side of the house that joins with the side of the garage, to the room in the garage, then out another cat door to the cat yard. Complicated? Yes. But the house and garage layout, with the yard behind the garage, leaves no other possiblities.

The cat yard was never finished. No cat doors from house to some sort of run, which is not built either, that would take them to the garage room. No cat door from there yet either, in to the contained yard, which isn't contained yet. I have some wire, but I am physically incapable with my neck issues of putting up that wire without some weeks of severe pain. I'm almost ready to sacrifice those weeks, however, to get it done. Now the broken tree issue is holding up doing that.

There has been some sinkage of the garage concrete floor, which has some cracks, and now the garage room door won't close, due to the shifting. That room now is unusable for cats because the door won't close, and has taken almost all the space in the garage, outside of where I park my car. So anyhow, complications.

I have some ideas, to deal with the door and the sinkage issues, that the neighbor says resulted after the earthquake of 15 years or so ago, that cracked his garage concrete floor also. I figure if you cut the door a bit too short and too narrow, and hinge it on that way, and take care of the resultant spacing cracks by attaching pieces to the exterior of the door, that would close over the frame, not inside it, then that would allow for sinkage shifting and not affect door closure.

That's my big idea to solve that problem. I just need to implement but I don't have the proper tools to implement. So next time my brother comes up, I'll tell him this idea, which I think he'll like, and he has the proper tools to implement.

I have no way to get the cats from the house to the room in the garage, unless they are in carriers or traps, so I currently only use the room to house ferals in traps before and after surgery. But it's difficult to manuever them into it, due to the placement of the door and the lack of space now, in the garage, if my car is inside it.

So this house has never been set up for cats and may never be. I still dream of living on the edge of Corvallis again, with parks to hike and more greenery. The drudgery here of the car and concrete culture is getting to me.

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