Down in the Dumps

Possibly because of the overcast weather, at least in part. Also not enough sleep last night. Today the tree guy came back to pick up the debris left from the work yesterday. In the afternoon, I went to pick up a couple of my father’s death certificates that the attorney had left over, to drop off the lockbox at our realtor’s office, to deposit a check at my credit union here, and to Whole Foods to get some olive oil.

I am using the garage as a “cat lock,” which was my sister’s excellent idea: I go out the door from what was our parents’ TV room into the garage; that door uses the same key as the front door, which is handy. I close the door and then open the garage door to exit. When I come back, I wait for the garage door to close before I open the door into the house.

I am in the process of having a screen porch installed outside the front door, having a door installed between the front hall and the TV room, having a door to the laundry room installed so Marvin doesn’t go into the room with the boiler and the water heater, replacing two storm doors, and having the door to the interior hallway replaced with one with glass panes so I can see what’s going on in there when a cat is detained there. (Every bit of this is necessitated by having cats except for replacing the storm doors.)

There were a number of smaller things I was going to have the contractor do as long as they were here, but the process of picking doors and hardware and agreeing on the details regarding the screen porch has been so laborious and frustrating that I have taken all those lesser items off the list. Last night I was ready to dispense with the door to the TV room and just go in and out via the garage forever, but hopefully things are going to fall into place.

I have said at every meeting that I want doors that are made out of wood, not composite, and that I don’t want any formaldehyde and such, so I was surprised and disheartened when just a day or two I got a list of possible doors that included composite ones, but that seems to have been a miscommunication. I think we’re on the right track now.

One of the contractors recommended wrapping the soffits in aluminum coil, which requires much less maintenance than just scraping and painting them periodically. It also requires $13,000, so that will not be happening. After all, the soffits have been painted only once in the past 20 years if that—probably not that—and since my parents both died at age 85 and I am 64, I reckon I will be painting those soffits just once.

Today Marvin broke into the utility closet and easily plucked aside a board that was covering a hole within which was some grubby plumbing-related equipment. Annoying. This evening, as I was cleaning the two litter box areas, I was reflecting that it was much more pleasant to live here without cats. I could have all the interior doors open, and there weren’t litter boxes to clean, and there weren’t cats in the utility closet, cats repeatedly knocking the same shelf down, cats hurling my favorite lamp to the floor, cats (or a certain cat) tearing the endpiece off the baseboard heater, cats (or a certain cat) plucking a ceramic piece off the base of my father’s toilet, cats hopping on the kitchen counter … .

The living room has become the cat room. I almost never go in there, because I know that sitting on the couch will require first removing cat hair, and it just seems like too much work.

Further, I am not sure that even now I could say I actually love these cats. They infuriated me so often when they were kittens that it would be most correct to say that I hated them, or at least Marvin. Things slowly and eventually became easier, and I assumed I would come to genuinely love them, but I don’t think I ever have. Even now, Marvin pisses me off every single day, and so does Duckworth, pretty much. Is it out of the question to rehome them at this late date?

Little fantasy of this evening: I rehome the cats, they end up with people who truly love them, and I sell the house and return to civilization. I could not see moving the cats back to San Francisco, but I could very much see moving myself back there without them.

I am annoyed with these cats often, and I also take absolutely excellent care of them, but that is because it’s my responsibility to do that.