October 11 through 15

Monday, October 11

My day started with a lovely, refreshing shower.  I prefer a long soak in a hot tub, but a shower is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

I cleaned the litterboxes this morning then spent some time moving my baking nuts, chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, and such stuff to the now nearly empty freezer in the breezeway.  I cleaned all the old crap out of the refrigerator and then dragged the garbage can into the breezeway.

After I had cleaned a lot, I settled into the recliner to rest and watch my new squirrel friend come and collect the peanuts I had laid out on the railing of the deck.  He is a fine specimen, all sleek, fat, and fuzzy with an amazingly bushy tail. 

Later in the afternoon, Tammy arrived with my mother to deliver my new “foster” cats.  Ollie is a two year old orange boy with a bushy tail (not as bushy as the squirrel’s tail) and a loud, insistent yowl.  He immediately began exploring the entire house, crawling under and on top of everything, and eating from the bowl of food in the kitchen.  Peaches first sniffed him then hissed and growled at him.  He hissed and growled too but ran away from her.  He loved sitting on top of the table by the window and staring out the window.

LeeLee is a senior cat of 15 years old.  She is a gray tabby with darker gray stripes.  She has a white splotch on her muzzle and is painfully thin. She is shy and terrified.  She immediately slunk under the couch in the living room and did not emerge again.    

Tammy helped me open up some space in the breezeway for the third litterbox and carried a rolling chair and the garage sale 1:12 scale doll house to the basement.  The space where those things were had not been swept and scrubbed during the freezer disaster as they were not affected by the melted gunk.  They were, however, covered with fly corpses which Tammy swept up for me.  I think all the dead flies have now been cleaned up.  She took the two bags of garbage out to the garbage bin and slid it back into its parking space next to the door so I can get at it easily from the breezeway door again.  Mom rolled the recycling bin to the curb as it was very full and needed to be emptied.  Recycling goes tomorrow.  Garbage went today, but there was not that much in the garbage can.

Mom, Tammy, and I sat and talked a while and watched Ollie explore the house and entertain himself. He was very happy to give everyone his love and affection.  They left after an hour or so, and I was left with a very demonstratively affectionate Ollie who snuggled with me till I went to bed. 

Peaches hates him.  I hope they will chill out and get along eventually.  It could be worse, I suppose.  It has not gone much beyond hissing and growling, though there were a few banshee shrieks when one or the other felt boxed in.  Peaches has spent a lot of time hiding out in the bedroom, but Ollie feels free to wander the entire house.  LeeLee has kept hidden.  As far as I know she stayed under the couch all day and night.  I am a little worried about her using the litter boxes.  I don’t want any random peeing in the house.

 

Tuesday, October 12

Still no visual sightings of LeeLee. 

I folded my last load of laundry and put it in the bedroom.  Then I worked on the pile of clutter next to my recliner in the living room.  Lily stopped by and asked me to help her get on the Mayo Clinic portal to see her test results on the website, but she couldn’t remember her user name and password.  We tried for about half an hour but to no avail.  She and Mom and their friend Nola have plans to go to a civic music performance in Albert Lea tonight.  It is her turn to drive, and she is so tired that she is worried about it.  She has a tendency to fall asleep at the wheel.  Before she left, she collected and bought me my mail and rolled my now empty recycling bin back to the house. 

I had not eaten anything all day and I was absolutely ravenous.  I decided I would drive to Owatonna and pick up a bucket of KFC so I’d have food for a few days.  I got that first, then went to the Dairy Queen where I got a chocolate malt.  It is impossible to eat friend chicken in the car without creating an ungodly mess, so I went on to McDonalds and got a Big Mac.  I haven’t had a Big Mac in eons, and Tammy had been talking about eating one on her way down from the Cities yesterday, so I got it in my head to have one.  It was a mess. My hands, clothes, and car were covered with shredded lettuce and “special sauce.” 

It was full dark by the time I got back home. I was still hungry, so I ate a chicken leg and some coleslaw and mashed potatoes.  Ollie was pestering me, yowling and howling until I gave him more than half of my chicken.  I took my plate into the living room to eat in peace, but then a woman with three children came walking up on my deck.  I had no idea who it was until I answered the door.  It was Sarah Degan whose family lived in the farm I grew up on from birth until 3^rd grade.  Her kids were selling stuff for a fund raiser, so I ended up buying two boxes of candy and something else that I don’t remember.  The littlest girl had a million questions.  She looked like she was four or five years old.  I had two Precious Moments dolls that came as a group when I bought two Native American Precious Moments dolls, so I gave them to the two little girls.  I didn’t really want to part with my Baby Groot, but I felt guilty not giving the boy anything, so I gave him Baby Groot.  I don’t feel much regret for giving Groot away, so I guess it was the right choice.

I also had a whole tote full of foil fruit punch packets left over from Lunchables.  I am not a huge fan of those foil punch packets, so I gave them to the kids.  The littlest girl had seen my bottle of Diet Coke and proclaimed she was thirsty. That’s what gave me the idea to give them the fruit punch. So, I got rid of three dolls and a big shoe box sized tote of fruit punch!  Downsizing!  It is a good thing.

 

Wednesday, October 13

Today was a quiet day.  I put away my clean laundry, cleaned up a puddle of cat puke, and looked without success for the second puddle as I could hear Peaches retching in the other room.  Then I sat down and worked on my grocery list.  After that, I went on Chewy.com to look for options to help these cats mellow out.  I know they are working things out, but the hissing, growling, and yowling are too much for me.  I ended up buying two diffusers that are supposed to spray calming pheromones, three “calming collars,” some oil from Jackson Galaxy that you are supposed to drop on the cat’s fur which is supposed to calm them too, and some Temptations treats as Ollie is gobbling those treats up like they are going out of style. 

I had bought an apple fritter at McDonald’s when I bought the Big Mac, so I ate that for breakfast.  I had KFC leftovers for supper.  It rained some in the morning.  Not a ton, but some.  It at least settled the dust.  Again, I had to share my chicken with Ollie.  I have been calling him Oliver instead of Ollie because it seems to suit him better.  I’ve been calling LeeLee Leah instead.  It seems to suit her better too.

 

Thursday, October 14

Today, I cleaned my litterboxes.  They were pretty full of pee and poop, so it is clear everyone is using the litterboxes.  Hurray.  I worked on the clutter in my living room some more.  I have a good sized bag of recycling again.  I like to recycle as much as I can. 

I had the rest of the left over KFC mashed potatoes with a chicken leg and thigh for lunch.  There is one thigh left for another meal.  Oliver ate the other leg and part of my chicken leg.  I had finished the coleslaw yesterday.  It got late, and I didn’t feel like cooking anything for supper, so I just ate the pint of Schwan’s Raspberry Truffle ice cream for supper. 

I called in my grocery order to Lerbergs—I am getting a beef roast and a small cabbage which will feed me most of the week.  I make it with cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and onions in a roaster.  I also got other things, including three cans of Chef Boy Ardee Beef Ravioli, a box of envelopes of instant oatmeal, some mushrooms, hamburger, cucumbers, onions, and other stuff.  I also did an on-line order from Schwans.  I got some of those breakfast sandwiches that you just warm up in the microwave, two beef teriyaki bowls, and a couple other things.  So I have plenty of quick and easy food to make this week. 

My order from Amazon arrived today.  There were three boxes.  The first had a box of Sheba moist pate cat food and two tubs of Temptations treats.  These were in perfect shape, packed in a cardboard box with air filled plastic pillows to protect them.  I opened the box of Sheba and put all the little plastic tubs in a bag to carry into the bedroom which is where I feed soft food to Peaches.  I broke down the shipping box and the Sheba box to recycle.  Then the second box was just a Sheba box with an address label wrapped around it.  I smelled a bad odor that smelled a lot like human diarrhea—a sickly, nasty smell.  When I opened the box with my box cutter, the smell was worse, but I didn’t see anything.  I unloaded the top half of the box and a cloud of little flying bugs rose out of the bottom.  Under the first layer was a plastic divider which looked as if someone had lifted it up then shat in the box on top of the pods.  The stink!  It was horrific.  It looked like partially dried up runny diarrhea.  It was all over the pods below.  I threw all the other pods back into the box, shoved the box in a plastic grocery bag and tied it shut, then threw it in my large living room waste basket and tied the white garbage bag shut.  The entire house was polluted with that smell which lingered in the air like a deadly miasma.  I took that nasty shit out to my garbage can outside and threw it in.  NO WAY would I even consider sending something that disgusting back to Amazon in the mail.  DISGUSTING. 

In retrospect, I wish I had taken pictures to send to them.  It is likely that one of the pods got ruptured somehow and that the contents has been quietly rotting in the box for God knows how long.  It sure looked and smelled like nasty diarrhea though.

The final box contained the super duper cat hair remover thing that I saw advertised on TV and then bought off Amazon.  I also bought a long handled squeegee so I can wash my windows.  I broke that cardboard box down too. 

In the evening, I was holding Oliver when I heard some growling to my left, from the direction of the bedroom.  I glanced over, expecting to see Peaches growling because I was holding Oliver.  No.  She was growling at Leah who was sitting just outside the laundry room door.  This is the first time I have seen her since she arrived.  I was happy to see she had been able to leave the area under the couch.  As soon as she realized I was looking at her, she whirled around and ran back into the laundry room.  I am hoping she will gather her courage to join us soon.  She is a very pretty kitty.

 

Friday, October 15

The prescription I ordered last Sunday still has not been delivered, so I called Walmart Pharmacy to see if it had been sent.  They told me it was marked as “enroute for delivery” so that it should arrive today.  And it did.  My Schwan’s order arrived around noon.  Larry, my Schwan’s man is such a nice guy.  He even put my order in the freezer for me.  Ross, the guy who owns Lerberg’s, delivered my groceries at about 2 pm.  I got them all wiped down and put away. 

I had one of the Schwan’s teriyaki beef bowls for lunch and a can of the Beef Ravioli for supper.  The ravioli was nothing special; I doubt I will ever buy it again.  The teriyaki beef bowl was better, but the beef was full of gristle which was not appealing.  I was still hungry, so I ate one of the two cherry turnovers I got from Lerbergs.

I talked briefly to Jack to see how Cora was doing and check whether she got the Lindor chocolate balls I had sent her from Amazon.  Apparently she went back to school on Wednesday, so I guess she is over the covid.  The chocolate balls had not been delivered yet.  Maybe they will come tomorrow. 

It was so cold when I got up  this morning that I turned the furnace on.  It warmed up right away and felt so nice.  I am so glad I had the Jim and Dude’s guy come and winterize it, put in a fresh filter, and replace the battery in the thermostat.  Now I do not have to worry about it at all.

Kim is supposed to come down to visit Mom tomorrow and to work on her hoard in the porch and storage bin.  Rhonda, Loren, Rachelle, and her family are all supposed to come to Lily’s this weekend, so I will have some nice quiet time with no calls from either of them.  It will be good for both of them to spend some time with other people.  Even though Mom will just have more ammunition to whine about “Poor Kim” for the next several weeks—and of course “poor Kim” is suffering so terribly because *I* have been so horrible to her and her precious spawn.  Barf.

At about 10 pm, I sent my sister Tammy a picture of Oliver sprawled across my chest, snoring, and wrote a text telling her how thankful I was that she had brought this sweet, affectionate, adorable little asshole into my life.  He is a little asshole.  He climbs all over everything—gets up on the counters—has licked my butter and stuck his snout into my food—has knocked everything off the side table by my chair and the dolls off their shelves.  Yet.  He is so sweet and so snuggly.  He is a gift of love.

Not ten minutes later, Tammy called me and said she had some really bad news and that she did not even know how to tell me.  I thought someone was hurt or dead and got really scared.  But no.  She called to tell me that one of the women at the barn where these cats were dumped told the owner that Tammy had “stolen” the cats and gave them away.  The owner called Tammy and demanded that she bring the cats back immediately.  The original owner of these cats was the owner’s 22 year old niece.  She lived with her parents who were getting a divorce and apparently neither of the parents were able to find a place to live where they could have the cats.  I say that is most likely bullshit because they live in a rural area.  Also, they owned a large acreage, which they sold during the process of divorcing, so they had plenty of money.  They decided to dump the cats at the horse barn so that they could “visit the cats sometimes.” 

Well, these are cats who have been in a house their entire lives.  They don’t know how to live in a barn where there are rough and tumble barn cats protecting their turf as well as feral cats who roll in to eat the cat food in the barn and beat the hell out of the barn cats.  Also, it is a HORSE barn.  The regular barn cats occasionally get stomped and injured by horses, and they are used to sharing spaces with the huge horses.  Ollie and LeeLee don’t stand a chance.  Also, the cats can come and go from the barn to the outdoors whenever they want.  With the barn cats and feral cats attacking and chasing them, Ollie and LeeLee would probably run outside in fear to hide.  There are many coyotes in that area.  If they ran out into the night, chances are very high that they would be killed and eaten by coyotes. 

These people must not have any real concern for these cats if they are willing to put them into a situation like this.  Also, Ollie is a very affectionate little boy.  He needs lots of human interaction every day.  The humans at the barn might pause to give him a pet or two during the day, but no one is going to sit and hold and pet him for hours each day like I have since he moved in with me.

I am willing to bet that LeeLee is also a cat that is affectionate and requires human interaction, but she is more withdrawn than Ollie.  Ollie is a cuddle slut.  LeeLee is probably more discretionary with her affection.  It probably takes her longer to feel safe and willing to be vulnerable to a human she doesn’t know. 

Tammy feels terrible about it.  The aunt is the woman who owns/runs the barn, and Tammy is afraid she will throw her and her horse out of the barn if she doesn’t bring the cats back.

Obviously, I have already fallen in love with them, and Ollie and I have already bonded.  My heart is breaking at the thought of them returning to an unsafe, lonely, miserable existence in that barn.

I had already said that I would be willing to return the cats to their original owner if she got into a place where she could actually live with them.  But I AM NOT willing to put them at risk.  What could they really do about it if I refused to return them?  Send the cops after me? 

I cannot believe that someone who claims to love these cats would be so selfish and cruel as to put them in a situation like this when a loving foster home is available.  Then, she is only 22 and there are a lot of people that age who cannot see past the end of their own noses.  Dumb asses.

So, I have been holding Ollie as much as possible since then and crying.

In the midst of talking to my sister about all this, Miss LeeLee came strolling into the living room, bold as brass, and started sharpening her claws on my chair!  Then she looked at me like “What are you going to do about it, human?”

So I hollered at her, “NO!  We don’t scratch the furniture.”  So she stopped and sat down and stared at me.  But she did stop scratching.  Then she meandered off to get a bite to eat or maybe to use the litter box.  But the thing is, she is feeling comfortable enough to openly stroll through the house and not freak out with me sitting right here and talking to her.

I am feeling very sad about this situation.  I want to keep them until they can go somewhere safe.  I would miss them, but I would be okay with it, knowing that they are going to be loved and protected.

I also just spent $178 on calming items and food for them.  They would be taken care of like royalty.  Why is this stupid girl too much of an idiot to see how lucky she and they are.