Sunday, June 14, 2026

[chochiyo_sama]

I dreamed last night that I was in a car with my mother and my sister Kim.  Mom was driving, and I was in the passenger seat.  Kim was in the back seat.  We were going from the farm on the Steele/Freeborn county line heading south, toward Geneva.  Suddenly, I saw a dead cat on the road, all stretched out, laying on her side.  It was a black and white cat—either Tater or her off-spring, Tot.  First I screamed, “Oh, no!”  Then I started to sob.  Neither Tater nor Tot has ever been anywhere near that farm.  They were both born right here, near my house in Ellendale.  Tater was born two springs ago, and Tot was born last spring.  Tot was Tater’s mini-me.  They were always together.  I haven’t seen Tater in a long time, but Tot had her first litter this spring.  The outside cats are not really mine, but I have been feeding and providing shelter for most of them for going on five years.  I care about all of them, and I love a few of them. 

I was worried that maybe the dream was prophetic and I would wake up today to see one of them dead on the street, but nope.  Tot came to breakfast along with Little Stripe aka “Cujo” since he/she bit Jack and Calico Momma.  I’ve been worried about little Chicken Nugget who was a last spring kitten.  He/she has always stuck close to the deck and the food source.  He had a blast attacking the llama cat tree when I had it removed to the deck.  Now I haven’t seen the little monkey in weeks.  I hope he/she isn’t dead.  (I never got close enough to inspect the goods, so I don’t know if he/she is a boy or a girl.)

DeAnn texted me around 5 am; I just happened to be up to pee.  She had something going on today, so we did not zoom.  That was okay with me.  I have plenty to do.  I wanted to sleep very late, but Sawyer wouldn’t leave me alone, so I was up and dressed before 10 am.  I’ve decided to try to keep the cat mats perpetually clean.  I have had Ella clean them on Thursdays, but she does a very lack-luster job.  She also seldom moves things over to clean under them, so today, I cleaned all the mats, moved the food bins and everything else where I store the cat food, and cleaned it all up.  I even pushed things out of the way under the TV and cupboard on the west wall, swept everything very thoroughly, and sprayed down the floor by the cupboard where wet cat food has been dropped and never wiped up by Domingo and sometimes me, and never thoroughly scrubbed by Ella who just scrubs AROUND things instead of moving them out and scrubbing the whole floor.  I find that very annoying. 

So, I let that soak a while because the stuff hardens to a concrete like substance and needs to be softened up to get it off—unless you want to scrape it off the floor with your fingernail or a putty knife.  I had three six packs of Diet Coke sitting by the cupboard, so I pulled the recliner out, swept that area,  then put those 18 bottles of Diet Coke into the mini fridge next to my recliner.  Then I took some paper towel and scrubbed up all that dried on crack near the cupboard.

It looks so much better in here  

I have also decided to start cleaning the cat dishes for the outside cats every day when I bring them in off the deck.  I think they have been drawing bugs, and I don’t appreciate having all these freaking bugs in my house.  I scrubbed all of them, first by squirting them down with one of my spray bottles of water to loosen up the dried-on gook, letting them set a while, then wiping them down with a paper towel to get all the loosened gook off then scrubbing them hard with a bleach wipe.  I even scrub out the plastic dish pan that I store all those dishes in.  I feel better every time I glance in that direction and see a pan full of clean cat dishes rather than a crusty mess. 

I did not clean the cat litter boxes today because I am counting on Domingo to come.  He does a fairly shitty job of it, but I intend to take over the job completely this week.  Probably tomorrow, since I plan to pull the litterboxes out into the middle of the floor and thoroughly sweep and scrub the area where they have been sitting.  My next major project will be to dump the litter out of the boxes and give each box a good, thorough scrubbing with bleach water.  They have not been cleaned like that in over a year.  I need to be doing that, probably once a month.  I am trying to build new and more persnickety habits.  I feel like I am getting somewhere.  It has become solid habits to make my bed every day and to wash the dishes after every time I eat or cook. 

Hailey and her friend Ella stopped last night wanting to do chores, but I had nothing for them to do.  I did offer them the job of cleaning up all the dried on cat poop in the basement and scrubbing the floor.  I told them if ONE girl did it, I’d give the ONE girl $100 because it is an awful mess, but if TWO girls did it, I’d give them $50 each.  The whole basement floor is nasty—where there isn’t cat shit, there is dirt and goodness only knows what else.  It needs to be thoroughly decontaminated down there.  And I won’t pay a nickel until the job is done and inspected.  I will probably ask my sister-in-law to do the inspection as she is the most thorough cleaner I know.  She would give an honest and good report.  She might even be willing to take the girls down and point out where things have to be done better.

In other news, I CAUGHT Peaches peeing on the bathroom rug today.  There are FOUR litterboxes in this house.  WHY is she peeing on the bathroom rug?

Well, Domingo did not show up  tonight.  He did not text, and he did not respond to the text I sent him asking if he was going to come.  I guess the answer is to just cut him off.  I feel taken advantage of.  I’m sick of it.