Cat update
Alex the cat now lives in the storeroom, and I've spent various parts of today getting the ruined couch and the residual smell out of the living room.
Being confined to one room actually doesn't seem to be affecting him that badly. Sure, he complains, but only a bit more than he usually complains about life, and he seems to use his litter box properly when it's staring him in the face.
It's good that this situation seems like it will be sustainable for a while. It means that the question of whether Alex is happy to be alive, or whether he's in pain that he's looking for an end to, can be separated from the question of what to do with a cat who's destroying the house, which as you can tell from the last post was a huge emotional conflict.
Being confined to one room actually doesn't seem to be affecting him that badly. Sure, he complains, but only a bit more than he usually complains about life, and he seems to use his litter box properly when it's staring him in the face.
It's good that this situation seems like it will be sustainable for a while. It means that the question of whether Alex is happy to be alive, or whether he's in pain that he's looking for an end to, can be separated from the question of what to do with a cat who's destroying the house, which as you can tell from the last post was a huge emotional conflict.