The House, Disturbing Pet Stories and The Irish Kitty

We are now counting down the days until the big move! Four separate showings on the house this weekend with one couple extremely interested who already live in the neighborhood, but need a larger home to house them, their grown daughter and grandkids and an elderly mom. They also already have somebody interested in purchasing their house.

If we don't have an actual offer in a few weeks, we'll list with a realtor. The house is cleaner than ever and looking great. The Murph is starting to feel a little nostalgic about this house that he's been living in for 20 years. I warned him this would happen and he didn't believe me until now. I went through the same thing when I sold the house I had been living in for 18 years in December 2011 to move here.

Really he's doing much better than I did so far since I had minor anxiety attacks and was literally shaking at closing. I was freezing cold that day too so that may have been what caused the shivers. Even though he's ready for a change and has been for a while, it is still difficult. The Boy called today and asked when are we moving down there. He's ready for me to be closer even though he's doing much better than I expected. He's doing great actually!

The house looks great though! The lawn guys came this morning and got all the leaves and the handy man/remodeler guy came and repaired some doors, installed a new toilet and did some caulking. Oh and repaired the shower doors of course. No more getting stuck in the shower from hell!

Ed's "room" minus the couch he use to hide under
note - no hairballs!

Notice no kitty throw up stains on carpet now!

Phantom is doing better, but I'm taking him to a kitty cardiologist to get an echo cardiogram to find out what's going on with his heart. Then we'll know what steps, if any, to take with him before we move. He's on a diuretic and special easy-to-digest food with probiotics sprinkled on to help keep him from throwing up, which would be really bad since the carpets are all cleaned!

Phantom's "room"

With everything that's going on around here with

the cats and the move, doing a spring marathon is 

out of the question. I can't even focus long enough to train for one! I didn't even do a long run this weekend and last weekend I struggled through 11 miles. I was doing good a couple of weeks ago, but now I just can't focus. I am going to pick it back up once we move and just try to hang in there with the basic minimum for now.

When I first got Cadence from the humane society, they had already micro chipped him just in case he ever got lost. Both my cats are microchipped, which the Murph totally doesn't understand because if they ever got "lost" why in the world would you want them back, he says. Neither of his cat's were micro chipped or updated on shots or anything. They are "just cats," he says. Now he's down to one since Boo died at age 12 last year of natural causes. I'm still trying to figure out how to sneak Ed to the vet for a thorough check up when the Murph's not around.

Speaking of "just cats", we went out with some friends S and C Saturday night and suddenly I'm seeing them in a new light. Just when you think you know people! C told a tale of having a sick old cat who had diabetes and his ex was spending thousands of dollars on the cat who C felt should be put out of his misery. One day he took the cat to a different vet far, far away from his regular one and had the cat put down while his ex was at work. If this wasn't enough, he then took the dead cat and put it in the garage. When the ex came home she was upset of course and he came in and acted surprised and upset too. But the ex was sure the cat wasn't dead so she made C take him to their local vet to check him out.

Of course, C was afraid to do this because he knew the cat was dead and didn't want his ex to know what really happened. The vet would be able to tell what had happened and C would be busted. The ex insisted so C reluctantly wrapped the cat in a towel and took him to the vet, but once there he refused to hand the cat over to the vet.

C acted incredibly upset and told the vet, "No, no, you can't have him. Nooooo...."and refused to hand him over or unwrap the dead cat. I guess the vet just listened for a heart beat through the towel and determined that the cat was indeed dead and the ex never knew any better.

Upon hearing this story, The Murph was all "YES! When it's time for them to go it's time for them to GO! No spending tons of money on treatments! They are "JUST CATS!" Upon which I give the Murph the stink eye and warn him to keep his paws off my cats and if something "mysterious" happens to one of them, I would be on to him and get an autopsy. Also, no matter what happens with Phantom's heart murmur, he's getting treatment until and ONLY until his quality of life is so bad it's no longer feasible to keep him alive and that would be for ME to decide and nobody else.

Image from remodelista.com

And then upon finding out that I had looked into getting baby chicks last year so we would have fresh, organic eggs and putting them in a fancy Martha Stewart chicken coop in the back yard where the play area use to be, S tells her disturbing baby chick story. When she was a little girl living on a chicken farm (the kind of chickens you eat, not the egg laying farms), her job was to feed the chickens and clean out the coop. She also had to weed out the little baby runt chicks that didn't look like they would make it so they wouldn't eat all the food that was for the healthy chicks. She did this by picking them up by the their little legs and "pinging" their little heads against the side of the coop. This killed them instantly and then she dropped them in a bucket and fed them to the hogs.

The perfect spot for the chicken coop except for the neighborhood covenants

I know!

I'll never look at "sweet" S the same way ever again! I now have nightmares of poor baby chicks getting pinged on the head and dead cats wrapped in towels in the middle of the garage.

Anyway back to micro chipping! Cadence's information is stored at Homeagain.com. I was going through all his papers from the humane society as I was attempting to update his information on the Homeagain website and discovered for the first time that his birthday is March 17. A St. Patrick's Day kitty! And we missed the opportunity to give him a serious St. Paddy birthday bash! He's 7 years old, which makes him 40 something in human years. How could I not have noticed that birth date all these years!

Image from zazzle.com

Happy Belated Birthday to Cadence, my little Irish kitty!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This has been a perfect St. Patrick's Day!  I'm loving the warm weather. It finally feels like Spring is here. In honor of St. Patrick's Day we are eating some Irish inspired foods.  Corned Beef and Cabbage last night and today we had Irish soda bread, shamrock shaped shortbread cookies and I made a green tea pound cake. Green tea is not necessarily Irish, it's more Japanese, but I was going for the green color for St. Paddy's Day.

Image from Neatorama.com

Corn Beef and Cabbage

Irish Soda Bread

Green Tea Pound Cake

The Boy headed back to school. His dad bailed out on him last night so we still have the Boy's car sitting in the driveway even though the Boy washed it and charged the battery so his dad could drive it to his house and store it in his garage for the Boy. And try to sell it. Ha!

His dad was also supposed to take him back to school, but bailed on that as well. Luckily, the Boy's room mate hadn't left to go back to school yet so the Boy was able to hitch a ride. He left before I got back from the gym and forgot his meds and his comforter so I'll have to mail them to him.

I really have no words to express the way I feel about the Boy's dad. Even if the Boy is a horrible, complete butt about something to me, if he is depending on me to do something like take him back to school or store his car for him, I would do it if I told him I would. I really don't know what happened on the phone between the Boy and his dad to cause his dad to bail on him. All I know is his dad started yelling at the Boy and saying he was disrespectful and that he wasn't going to drive the car without insurance yet he refuses to get insurance on the car for the Boy or spend the money to tow it. The Boy thought his dad was going to get it to his house if the Boy washed it and charged the battery. Ha!

The Boy then called his grandmother, his dad's mom and told her what had happened and according to the Boy, his grandmother agreed with him and thought his dad was in the wrong. She also offered the Boy money for his rent since his dad decided not to give him any for the month. I pulled some money out of savings and gave the Boy what I could, but it's only enough for one month of rent and he needs two or three more months.

It makes me wonder is there some law somewhere that says both parents are responsible for a child that is on the autism spectrum instead of it all being on one parent financially. What if the Boy was on the severe end of the spectrum instead of high functioning?  Once child support ends when he gets out of high school then that's it? His dad seems to think so.