Life has been crazy, part 1: The cat
Oh my gosh. My life has been insane since June. I have felt like life has been crazy, but I haven't been able to sort out HOW crazy life has been. And then I was talking to Mark's mom yesterday and I realized ... holy &@*&! my life has been crazy, I don't even know where to begin. Every single one of Mark's siblings has had something horrible happen in the past year. Except for James. He and Shauri have a baby and nothing terrible should happen to them. They're going to Georgia (the country) soon. They moved to Baghdad right after they got married and got bombed all the time. That should count for something. Both of Mark's sisters got divorced and Mark's brother sank into a really bad depression dropped out of school. Right before we closed on the new house, Mark and I were feeling very thankful our lives were pretty tame and normal ... except for the fact that Ravis the cat kept peeing on the couch.
Now I am going to tell a million stories.
THE STORY OF RAVIS THE CAT:
May 2009 - Carmen born.
May 2010 - get Tiber and Ravis, 6 weeks old.
July 2011 - move to Austin. Cats don't like moving, shed a lot.
April 2012 - Mace born
September 2012 - move to Peabody house
October 2012 - Attempt to start transitioning the fat cats to a lower calorie cat food. (mix it a little at a time). Chris kills self. Nobody gets out of bed for a week. Cats pee on couch, thought it was because we didn't clean the litter. When you don't get out of bed you don't clean the litter box and cats react to stress.
November 2012 - Cats pee on couch again. Decide to scratch the switching-foods plan.
December 2012 - ...... um, I think something is wrong?
February 2013 - Suspect it's probably one cat that's doing the peeing, not both cats. Conclude it is Ravis, not Tiber. Cover the inside of the cushions in plastic so we only have to wash out the cover when the couch gets peed on. Cat is peeing on the bare couch while we watch the cushions. Frustrating. Kamis starts waking up every morning and sniffing the couch to see if it's been peed on. We go to Disneyland and I cover the whole couch in plastic to protect it if the cats pee on it. Come home from vacation - yes, the couch has been peed on.
April/May 2013 - Return from wedding. Cats have peed on the couch again. I mean, Ravis has peed on the couch again. We decide to take him to the vet.
May 2013 - Take cat to vet, vet suspects allergies and Ravis gets a shot in the butt. Ravis had been peeing on the couch once a week, but now he's stopped. Kamis no longer checks the couches for pee. Yay! Kamis also buys a new litter box to place next to the couch. It looks like it gets used a few times. YAAAAAAY!!!!!!
June 2013 - Cat pees on couch again, just in time for the allergy shot to wear off. Kamis takes Ravis back to the vet for another allergy shot. Gets allergy pills to give the cat for July. Feeling happy.
the next week - Instead of getting better, the cat pees on the cat carrier twice. Understandable, he hates the cat carrier. Then he pees on the couch TWICE in one week, instead of once a month/once every other week like had been happening before. Then he pees on the cushionless couch while the cushions are being washed. Kamis is getting stressed out.
- take cat back to the vet to x-ray him for kidney stones or something. Medical issues ruled out.
July 2013 - The cat pees all over a pile of magazines left on the couch. Cat pees on couch every week. Usually right before the Jehovah's Witnesses come over, so I spend all of Wednesday mornings cleaning the couch instead of going to the gym. A lot of Kamis's mornings start to look like this.
August 2013 - move into new house, get rid of couch because it reeks so bad it makes your eyes water. Cat doesn't pee on anything for a week.
August 2013 - cat pees on guest bed. Kamis cleans guest bed and starts shutting the door to the room. Also buys Feliway, a cat pheromone diffuser that is supposed to relieve cat stress. Kamis buys new furniture - a kitchen table and a red chair for the dining room. Red chair looks a lot like old red couch. Better be safe by putting a cover on it.
Days later - cat pees on main level bathroom floor. Does this 3 or 4 more times over the next week or two. Kamis decides the cat might be stressed out about moving and puts him in the master bathroom with food and litter so he can have his own space.
- cat pees on master bathroom floor mats. cat pees on couch cover.
- cat pees on guest bed again because the door accidentally got left open.
- cat intermittently pees on things every other day. We were good for about 3 days because we shut the door to the downstairs bathroom and the guest bedroom and he didn't pee on the chair again.
- suddenly cat starts peeing on the chair again.
- Last Friday (10 days ago I think?)- cat pees on the guest bed again while Carmen's cousins are over. I was showing family around the house and accidentally left the door open. Cat peed on bed some time between 4 and 7 pm. THAT WAS FAST. Decide I don't really like this cat any more.
- Sunday (8 days ago) - cat pees on bed again right before we go to church. and the chair. Late to church because we had to clean up.
-Can't really recall the order of what the cat has peed on in the past week, but I think the grand totals go something like this
we moved into the house August 11. Since then, the cat has peed in the downstairs bathroom 4 times (last time was Sunday ... which I guess was yesterday), has peed on the guest bed 3 times ... maybe 4, but I think it's 3 ... peed on the chair with the cover on it once, peed on the chair without the cover twice (dammit, now we have to completely wash it out again.) ... and peed all over the master bathroom floor once.
Since August 11.
We have toyed with the idea of making Ravis an outdoor cat, but I don't want an outdoor cat. I want the cats to be able to go inside and outside as they please. We tried having Ravis outside on Saturday, then we let him in for a few hours on Sunday and he immediately peed on the chair AND on the bed. Kamis is trying not to kill the cat. Kamis is having panic attacks just remembering how stressed out she is about the cat. Kamis is so stressed out about the cat that she has screamed and actually hit her husband (I'm horrible, he should divorce me. honestly.) because she didn't feel like he was taking her stress seriously. She has also ended up downstairs in the kitchen with a kitchen knife, trying to figure out where and how to cut herself so she could get a break by being hospitalized for a few days. Also considered overdosing on sleeping pills because that's not completely lethal, either. After all, after what happened with Chris .... yeah. Kamis knows the world is never better of without you. It would be a bitch thing for me to commit suicide. Apparently I do not want to settle on writing in any particular tense.
Today the animal shelter was finally open so I called to schedule a surrender. I hate this, because Ravis really was my favorite cat. But now whenever we are in the same room and see each other, his tail twitches and he backs up and I start having a panic attack (shaking, racing heart, wanting to cry, etc.) I pet him gently and we both try to calm down a little bit. But I hate him. So much. I fantasize about killing him and hiding him with the kitchen trash and it scares me that I'm almost serious about it. Glad he's outside. He's not threatening when he's outside because he can't pee on the bed inside when he's outside. (right now, picture me rocking back and forth in a little white padded room muttering to myself.)
I can't surrender him until Sunday because they have to prepare a room for him. They're booked for this Wednesday. I guess I'm writing this so I can print out the timeline and give it to the people at the shelter when I surrender Ravis.
At one point last week as I was telling Mark about how I can't live with Ravis any more, he asked if I could handle having more kids. Of course I can handle more KIDS. Cats aren't kids, can't be raised like kids, and aren't ... no. They're nothing like kids. When we got Ravis, we didn't know how we'd feel about him or if Mark would be allergic to him or what. When you marry someone, you date them first. You choose them. You know your one-night stands better than you know your cat when you're forced to take them home with you. A kitty test-drive is inferior to a car test-drive. So no. My commitment to a cat is significantly different from my commitment to my family. A cat is more like a friend, or even an OBJECT, than family. But you are more committed to them than you are committed to a toy, because if something is wrong, you try to fix it instead of throwing it out immediately. We tried with Ravis. It got exponentially worse after June. We told the kids not to touch him because the cat might not like the kids' attention but doesn't retaliate. Nothing. Worked. It. Just. Got. Worse.
He is locked out of the house until Sunday. He will probably be a nervous wreck by then, but ... my sanity is more important than his. He's got food and water and the kids go outside and we play with him sometimes, but he's not allowed in the house. Nope.