There are a lot of things that happen in our lives that either get bypassed, dropped, or otherwise forgotten about before I get the chance to chronicle them here, or there are times where I will mention something has happened but will gloss over it to get to the bigger picture or story I want to tell. Well, this short series of entries will be more about covering those little things as well as the bigger things.
I also wanted to note, before I begin, that I was wrong about something -- Daisy did not want a flame-point; she thought they were pretty but was always more of a blue-point or lynx-point girl. The only one she doesn't think is cute are the seal-point cats, which are my favorite (and I do slightly take offense to this). So, I must correct myself on something I said earlier -- she did not always want a flame-point cat.
Anyway, moving on.
Something I mentioned in passing was that we'd been cleaning and reorganizing the house because we had an inspection coming up from the humane society in order to get us legally approved to adopt a sixth cat were we to want to get one. This inspection had been postponed by a week because I'd had a nasty cold which Daisy got right after me, and it hit her much harder -- we'd postponed it so that the inspector would not have to be in the house with her/our germs, and also so that we could both recover and make the house look presentable.
Look, we don't have a clean house. I'm sure there are multiple folks reading this who know me or us in real life, and have been inside our home before. We're not crazy messy or anything like that but we are a very cluttered people in the House of Brandon and Daisy™ -- and it's not for lack of want to have a cleaner, more organized space...it's generally just a lack of time and energy to make it that way, with multiple factors contributing to the general messiness.
But, inspection. We do have the space and eventual possible want for a sixth cat. It's not something we are actively looking for at all, honestly. I have said many times that I do not want another cat until after Pete dies, and likely won't for some time even then -- Pete is the last of his generation, the first cat I ever had and could call mine, and is the cat Daisy and I have always been closest to. When he goes, it will be an emotional shotgun blast to the gut for both of us regardless of how or when it happens, and while I know it's coming, I don't know I will ever be ready for it. I'm pretty sure Daisy isn't and won't be.
So, because of the inspection, and because we didn't know what the inspector(s) would be looking for or what they would consider black marks on our record and deny us, we wanted the house to look as good as possible. To those ends, Daisy and I both took great pains to clean the kitchen up and to absolutely gut the dining room, cleaning off the table completely, cleaning out from under it, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, and trashing everything we did not want or need. This also included cleaning out the China cabinet's drawers and cupboards so that we could store our tools and at least five full cases of canned cat food.
I'll explain that last one quickly -- when Sadie was alive, she ate like a horse. She was the biggest eater in the house, and because of her hyperthyroidism had the fastest metabolism. We were going through five cans of wet food per day, three of which Sadie would devour by herself (roughly, I mean, piecing it all together). A few weeks before Sadie died, Daisy needed to order something from Chewy.com -- I believe it was some litter -- and if she spent a certain amount on certain products, she would get like $30 off or something like that. I don't remember the details, and they're mostly unimportant now. Anyway, she already had a case of the Friskies Chicken & Tuna Dinner pate wet cat food, which was the oldies' favorite for a long time -- especially Sadie -- but it was no longer available on Amazon and we could only get it in local stores. Chewy had it, though, and she asked me if we needed anything else so that she could hit the total she needed and to get the cashback amount. I told her at the time just to get another case or two of that food, since we couldn't find it anywhere anymore and if nothing else, Sadie would eat it and probably Pete and Mable too.
Well, by the time we got it delivered, Sadie was able to eat maybe 3-4 cans of the three cases of it we had ordered before she dropped dead, and Pete no longer seemed interested in it at all. It has now become one of Mable and Emmy's favorite foods, which is fine, but...we still have three cases of it and they don't eat anywhere near as much as Sadie did, so we had to make space for that (as well as all of the other canned cat food we had) in one of the deep drawers of the China cabinet.
Anyway.
The dining room was a grand undertaking. We have a giant, fifteen-foot-long dining room table (no, that is not an exaggeration and for the past six years it was our go-to-place to put shit that didn't have anywhere else to go. So, in that time, it became a giant eyesore of a junk pile, filled with anything and everything under the sun -- clothing, half-empty purses, multiple bags full of paperwork and stuff to be shredded, our toolboxes, mail, canned cat food and treats, Amazon orders for random things we'd gotten and had forgotten about, small souvenirs from trips, Christmas gifts to and from people that we'd considered lost, old holiday/birthday cards, empty prescription bottles, full and unopened bottles of vitamins, supplements, and essential oils, scissors, kitchen utensils, extension cords, boxes of nails and screws, spider traps, string lighting, outdoor lighting and light bulbs, Christmas decorations, fall decorations, empty cardboard boxes, filled cardboard boxes full of shit still packed in there from my house in Kansas, etc. You name it -- there was a possibility it was on or under that table.
The dining room took multiple hours, multiple nights, to clean out. Finally, in a six-hour-long push on the Friday night before the inspection would take place on the following Saturday morning, Daisy and I finished it. We also made a vow to keep it clean and to never let it get that bad again.
The kids are delighted; suddenly, all of them can get up on the table again. Mable and Emmy especially love just sitting on the bare table and watching us, as it gives them a different vantage point than anywhere else in the house. Pete likes to sit up there as well. I don't know that I've seen Hank or Charlie on the table yet, though I'm sure they've been up there. There's nothing on it anyway but an air purifier at the far end (right above where the litter pans are, to de-stink them) and a big bowl full of their toys in the middle of the table. We left that there on purpose so they can grab toys out of it for playtime, and it seems to have worked.
The inspection was the next morning, between 8am and 12pm. To set the stage here, this was a Saturday -- one week to the day after we'd gotten Charlie and a few days after we'd let him out to explore. We'd just been told the night before that he had parasites and all of the cats had gotten their first doses of their anti-parasite pills. We also did not know when they would show up that morning, so when I woke up after a night of exhausted and fitful sleep and it was already after 8, I leapt up and started getting dressed and ready.
Shortly after 9, they arrived -- just as Daisy was getting up for the day. And it was not who I expected to show up. I expected it to be a volunteer, likely a younger girl, in street clothes with a clipboard. Instead, it was two fully-uniformed Animal Control officers, complete with badges and cuffs and nightsticks and maybe even sidearms (I was so surprised I didn't even pay attention, honestly) -- one female and one male, both around 30 or so.
We warmly invited them in, and we explained why they were there (they did not really seem to know, aside from it being an "inspection"), and when they found out that it was just so we could get the legal approval for a sixth cat, their demeanors greatly softened. The girl did the talking, asked us a few questions, and got to see Pete, Mable, and Charlie -- none of whom seemed to give a single shit that there were new people in the house. Hank and Emmy had already hid behind the couch.
They walked through the living room, dining room, and glanced at the kitchen -- seeing that we had three very visible litter pans, multiple food bowls and plates, four accessible water bowls, and a giant cat tree in the corner, and didn't even need to see the upstairs -- we were approved on the spot as our house was "a cat's paradise." I quipped that it's a cat habitat and we just live here. They thanked us for making the effort to keep everything legal and on the books with the city, which I was sort of surprised by, and then made their exit. The entire inspection experience was less than five minutes -- in and out. I was stunned.
So yeah, if we ever want another one, or if Pete dies and we want to adopt a bonded pair of kittens, we can now legally do so -- it's all in our records. The sixth-cat-permit is a yearly thing and has to be renewed every year when we renew the cats' licenses, but no further inspections are required. I can't remember whether they said there's a fee to renew it or not, but I'm guessing there is.
Again, we are not looking for a sixth cat. The five we have now, especially with the white goblin being the white goblin he is, are more than enough. It would have to be my dream cat, a kitten I could not live without, before I'd even come anywhere close to considering filling that sixth spot. Hell, I was fine with the four, though I have to say I really love little Charlie.
A few days after we were approved, as we entered the week, Daisy began getting sick again. She'd been fine for most of the week prior, but suddenly started getting bad headaches, incredible body aches, and a pretty consistent fever that would be low-grade in the daytime hours (99-100) but would spike almost to 102 every night in the overnight while I was working and while she was trying to sleep. This stopped her from being able to get any real rest as she would have to get up in the night, drink a 32-oz jar of ice water, and take ibuprofen to make the fever go down -- by which point she was fully awake and just miserable/unable to sleep. She thought it was the flu or another round of Covid, but tests for both came back negative and she had zero congestion or respiratory issues whatsoever. She thought it could just be a POTS flareup, but wasn't sure. She did a telehealth appointment where the doctor she spoke to told her to just wait it out and wasn't very helpful at all.
Finally, on Thursday she was miserable enough to where she wanted to go to the doctor, which we did that evening before I started work.
Want to guess what the doctors suspected she had?
"Cat scratch fever," they said. "It's not just a song."
Look, we don't know that's what it is, and neither do the doctors. But, Charles is a kitten with sharp claws and he has torn us both up while being rambunctious and playing, and Hank (while playing with Charles and being hyper himself) ran up Daisy's body the other night leaving deep gashes on her arm with his claws -- accidentally, of course. And she fit all of the descriptors for cat scratch fever, with the exception of visibly-infected scratches or a rash (the scratches had all pretty much healed up by this point, though they were still visible). So, they prescribed her two weeks' worth of antibiotics and sent her on her way, and said to call them if anything else happened.
She is feeling somewhat better, but is nowhere near back to normal yet.
As for little Charlie, well...he's fitting in just fine:
He is now fully accustomed to this House of Cats™ and when he's not playing with us or with toys, he's cuddling and snoozing with either Daisy or the other children. Pete is his primary cuddle buddy but he does love to cuddle up with the others. It's very sweet how quickly and totally he's been accepted into the household. He's a good little boy.
There is, of course, a lot more to cover, so stay tuned...
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