Day 8 - In Which Gromit Solidifies His Status As Evil Fiend

Last night my friend Linda came over to bring me a yummy dinner and hang out for a while.  She left six or seven-ish, and then I finished "Don't Tell Anyone" (a nice thriller, but interestingly enough, the film adaptation is much, much better) while HGTV played in the background.   Went to bed ten-ish.  At 1:30, I was awakened by, yes, Gromit howling.  He's always been a nighttime noisemaker, but in the past few months he's become much louder and more ear-piercing.  This was really loud.  I got up and tried to placate him with food, but he wasn't interested.  He continued howling and howling and howling. Unless you've owned a (bad) cat, it's hard to understand how nightmarish this is.  It's sort of like being next door to someone having a really loud party, except you can't call the police or hire a lawyer to file an injunction.  Instead, you have to get up in the morning and feed them breakfast and clean their bathroom.  

Anyway, I get the impression Gromit doesn't quite understand that he's in a completely different place.  It's like he thinks he's in some new adjunct of our house, and all I have to do is open the door and he'll be back home.  So he doesn't understand why I'm depriving him of this by keeping the door shut.  And, as he's spent his life getting what he wants by engaging in obnoxiousness, he assumes this behavior will continue to work.  By 3:00, he was still yowling, but had gotten wound up enough to decide to take his frustration out on Fidget.  I'd managed to doze off, but was awakened by Fidget screeching.  Her reaction to his jumping on her is to emit deafening screeches.  I guess if I weighed seven pounds and a fifteen pound hulk jumped on me, I'd screech, too.  I kept separating them, but Gromit kept going after her, so I finally threw some water at him.  This managed to short circuit the attack brainset, but not the spoiled rotten acting out brainset, so he returned to moaning and howling.  I threw a pillow at him, which accomplished nothing.  I turned on the AC fan to try and drown him out, but his voice cuts through most machine noise.  The aptly-named caterwauling continued until 4:30, when his voice gave out.  I got a couple hours sleep and awakened to him happily curled up on the bed, oblivious to the fact that he came very close to becoming one of those sad abused cats one sees on ASPCA commercials.

The good news was that I saw the floors this morning, and they are spectacular (to reference Seinfeld).  Perfectly done.   Assuming my ongoing lack of sleep doesn't trigger some sort of stroke or coronary episode, the job is well worth the inconvenience/irritation/suffering.

Day 7 - In Which Gromit Realizes He Is In Heaven

No new floor pics--today's the day they get stain and the first coat of finish, so I should be able to take pictures tomorrow morning.  Instead, I took some of the hotel and the very relaxed cats.  Gromit, aside from his usual nighttime brattiness, is completely content.  It occurred to me last night why he's so happy--he has me ministering to him 24/7 (nearly) and there's none of  that nuisance called employment to take up my time and attention.  I suspect he will be sullen when we return to the house and life returns to its normal patterns, which includes me working all day in order to pay for his expensive cat food and other necessities.  

He's been pretty good at night -- started yowling around three-ish.  I don't think the walls here are that thin--hopefully my neighbors are not hearing me hiss/yell, "Stop it!", or his wailing, which sounds like he's being tortured.  He's also developed a very irritating trick of pulling open one of the bathroom cabinet doors just enough so that it swings shut with a very loud THWAP.  He can get off maybe six THWAPS in a minute.  I'm not sure if he wants to get into the cupboard, or whether, as with many of his other aggravating behaviors, he's realized this annoys me to the point of making me get out of bed, so his mission is accomplished.

And Fidget has curtailed her bizarre rusty hinge moaning, which she does when she wants food, water, a toy, sees a bird, walks down the hall, isn't sure what room to go into, has a dream or finds herself alone in a room.  

All in all, a happy vacation for kitties.

End of Day 6 - In Which Cats Seem Better Off Than At Home

We've only been in the hotel two days, and I'm seeing a marked improvement in Fidget's health. As most of you know, not only is she hyperthyroid, but she has major "upper respiratory" problems, which translates into seriously inflamed sinuses and post-nasal drip.   It sounds minor, but what it means is that she spews snot over our walls on a regular basis,  she's so congested she has trouble smelling her food, and she has trouble eating it without all the phlegm running forward when she lowers her head.  Getting her to eat even one-third of what a normal cat eats has become a major endeavor.   I've never quite pinpointed whether her reduced eating is from the sinus problem or the hyperthyroidism, but it's particularly troublesome combined with the hyperthyroidism, because she burns up calories at five or six times the rate of a normal cat. (Her doctor has been baffled by her lack of appetite).   Another hyperthyroidism symptom is excessive water drinking, which she's done for the past year.  Within a few hours of being in the hotel, we could tell she was less congested, and within ten hours, she had begun eating on a more regular basis.  She's drinking less water.  By this point, maybe 36 hours later, she's eating the same amounts she did when I first got her.  I'm not sure what this means.  There's something in our house (or growing outside) which must be causing this problem.   Gromit has been much less vomity than he has been for many months.  He's eating less, yet not having tummy problems as a result.  (Normally, if he doesn't eat every three to four hours, he vomits up bile).  

I don't know what all this means, but I'm going to have to figure it out.

Day 6 - In Which I Am Finally Caught Up, Day-Wise

So I'm posting on Tuesday about Tuesday.  Joe left for New York this morning.  This was something I actively encouraged, given the long list of cat-oriented unpleasantnesses that were going to occur during the week--Gromit waking us up multiple times during the night, litter box within a few feet of bed, cat food within a few more feet of bed, endless Gromit yowling and moaning....

...oooh, and I can add "earthquake" to this!  Felt the 5.8 about a half hour ago.  My main thought was, "I hope I'm not going to be in a collapsing hotel with two cats."  My next thought was, "I hope the ten foot tall pile of stacked stuff in the breakfast nook didn't fall over."  Cats handled the temblor well.  Fidget walked around curiously; Gromit didn't move from his new sleeping place (to be posted).

Also got pics of the sanded floors this morning.  Wow.  Will post some of those as well.

Day 5 - In Which I Allude To Day 4 and Move Into The Hotel

So Sunday was the fourth day of packing and by far the most tedious, as the majority of our time was spent gathering up all those things that fall into the category of Don't Know What To Do With, which have been shoved into random drawers, at the back of shelves, under tables, etc.  One would think there wouldn't be too much of that stuff, but I think we filled ten boxes or so with it.  I don't know if that's a commentary on our level of thing-ownership or our inability to throw said things out.  

The floor team was coming around 8:00 or 8:30, so on Day 5, Monday, we got up at 4:30 AM, crammed our bed into the garage and our dresser into the kitchen, cleaned up random items and locked the cats in my office.  You may think, "And then what did you do for the next two hours?"  This took us until 8:00.    

The floor team came at 8:30, we went over a few things and then I pushed cats into their carriers.  My car was absolutely packed with computer equipment, cat toys, suitcases, a box of books (yes, I bought more books) and more stuff.  Joe had to take the kitty scratching post in his car, along with the litter box, which thrilled him to no end.  When we arrived at the hotel, I took the cats and he had to carry the litter box and litter, which labeled him as a "cat person" to other guests.  

I'd already picked out the room on Sunday (one with the best view & most sun for cats), so I knew how nice it was.  The cats were happy to prowl about and smell things.  I left the room for about five minutes to look for a trash chute (with the cats being in the room, I've declined housekeeping, so I'll be on my own for trash tossing).  Joe said Gromit looked around for about a minute, then started wailing (he often does this when I leave the house).  He then hid behind the bed and stayed there for several hours.  But he came out a couple hours later and was quite content.  As I predicted, Fidget, who has limited brain processing abilities, took everything in stride, went to her sleeping doughnut and zonked out for the rest of the afternoon.

Day 3 - In Which I Flash Back to The Furniture Move

Continuing with this pretense that I've written individual entries for each day of the move, I will now discuss Saturday, where Joe, I and three very obliging friends (do people like to be identified in blogs?  Should I keep them anonymous?  Make up names?  Do you want your name to come up in possible search results from Googling "refinishing floors" and "cats"?)  took the furniture out of the house and put it in our garage and the garages of our obliging neighbors.  My impression of our furniture is that it is light and easy to carry, because I purchased it at a flea market or antique mall and brought it home myself.  That is true, except for the one-third of it that weighs a ton, and is too tall or too wide to fit through our doorways.  I can't quite figure out how those pieces got in our house.  

This was one of the unhappier days for cats, because they were locked in my office to keep them from running out the door while we were struggling with the too wide/too tall cabinets, or getting underfoot and ending up pancaked beneath a television armoire.  For Gromit, such incarceration is torturous on multiple levels.  He has no freedom to do whatever he wants (something he only experiences once every five years), he's stuck in a room with Fidget (whose sneezing upsets him greatly), and he only gets two food servings in a four-hour period, instead of his normal ten to fifteen.  Oddly enough, when I let them out, they both very happily eat their dinner, with no turning up their noses or waiting for me to open multiple cans.  One might assume this means that they shouldn't be getting ten to fifteen meals per day, but of course one assumes many things about cats--that they are the "low maintenance pets", that they can not eat for three or four hours and refrain from spewing out phlegmy bile, that when they rub against you, you can pet them safely without feeling sharp teeth in your hand.  Yes, one can assume.

Day 2, 3 and 4 - In Which I Realize I Don't Have A Lot Of Time To Blog

Well, my goal had been to do an entry every day with accompanying photos.  However, I found that I had no time to do this (story of my life).  So here I am, in the hotel with Gromit glommed onto my side, and I'm only on my second post.  I also can't quite figure out the whole posting pictures thing and where they'll end up, so I'll try a short post here and see where the pic of Phase 2 ends up.

Friday was more packing.  The unwieldy books were gone, so it was onto more complicated categories like Stuff In Drawers and Things I'd Pushed Under The Bed.  Packing up most of my office went quickly, because everything was already in boxes or containers of some sort.  I find cleaning and organizing relaxing and I use it to distract myself when I'm stuck working on movies like the remake of Death Race 2000 or Alvin and the Chipmunks or Jumper or Because I Said So. (I think I rearranged my file cabinet twice during Because I Said So.  What a wretched movie).  Joe does not find cleaning and organizing relaxing, so packing up his office was a Major Endeavor.  

Day 1 - In Which I Realize Literacy Is Not Necessarily A Good Thing

Since this is the first entry, there's a certain obligation to start with a snappy and clever intro.  I wrote one detailing the story of our grotty floors and the tragic suffering I've endured, but decided to delete it.  Most likely, everyone is expecting stories about the cats, so better I plunge right in.  We have started packing (it's Thursday), which I anticipate will take three to four days. We'll see.    This brings me to packing books.  We have a lot of books.  I have four large bookshelves that are completely full--I must have three hundred or so.  I like having books.  I can't say I like dusting books, and I've realized I don't at all like packing books.  They weigh a ton.  I'm starting to think of all the extra space I'd have in my office if I didn't have the two large bookshelves.  Think how much more of the soon-to-be shiny floor would be visible!  And, really, am I ever going to read "The House of Barrymore" again?  Or "Scoop"?  Interestingly, I don't have any books about cats.  And that's about all you'll hear about cats in this post.