States of Things
Y this morning: half-hour of stationary bike, plus selected weights.
The cats have gone out and in and out and in and out and in and out today. It's been a rough winter; I am out of practice, and far more anxious about them being out of my sight than I ought to be. They are sensible creatures, and have demonstrated that they can handle themselves outside just fine.
Ah, that's better, all three are in now. I'm glad that it's finally warm enough for them to go out and get some exercise, but the neighbor doing target practice and the crashing ice shelves are hard on my nerves.
My little arbor vitae that I put in last year have had a rough winter too. They're still hanging on, but the windward sides are looking pretty sad, stripped and bald. I'll have to get them some fertilizer in the spring.
All the "wild" is squashed flat from snow and wind and floods, and the property feels orders of magnitude more roomy. I'm resisting the temptation to go out and rake up all the wrack; not only is it not really that warm outside, but I don't have anywhere to put the results. I am going to try to get after the cat-tail remains before spring kicks into high gear and things start nesting in them, though. Hopefully they'll be easier to remove now that winter's softened them up a bit.
The other thing I did Monday was to remove the Litterbox of Contention. The cats have been having competitive peeing contests in the box in the cage downstairs; I've seen them go through as many as five back-to-back exchanges between the three of them, to see who could be the last one to use it. Of course, it is both the smallest and the hardest to get at to clean. We tried not cleaning it for a while, in hopes of getting them to use it less; the only result was that LittleGirl finally perched in it in such a way that all her feet were in the box, but her aim went right over the side. *sigh* So it's gone now, and I gave the cage bottom a good scrubbing. The cage itself will be going away shortly, since Cat3 is no longer using it (voluntarily or otherwise), but I'm going to wait until the housemate gets back from her week-plus trip, so as not to disrupt the cats' environment too much at once.
They will probably just transfer the my-box-no-my-box game to another litterbox, but at least the others are easier to clean.