This week in “I Have Too Many Pets”

I’m about to boot all the studio cats out, fixed or not. Let me show you something absolutely disgusting. See, we are arguing, the studio cats and I, about what a cat litter box is and when it should be used. We are fighting battle after battle, and y’all, I AM LOSING.

Five cats, over two days. I’m about ready to glue all their buttholes shut.

Granted, this is a little worse than usual, because when I went to clean it yesterday – I clean and mop in there every fucking day – I just looked at it and started crying, and went to go sit down for a while. I’d forgotten that I’d put some paper towels down, soaked in cleaner, to try to break up some of the, uh, crustier bits. Someone has some extremely runny poos, and if they let one go right after I leave the studio in the evening, it’s dry and kind of… sealed to the floor, by morning. Today, in addition to everything else I was trying to get done, I took a flat shovel to this and tried to scrape up as much as possible, and then I swept, and mopped. And mopped again. And soaked the crusty bits again. And mopped a third time. Any bets on how much poo I have to clean up tomorrow morning when I go over there? I spent more time cleaning this bathroom today than I did actually working. I’ve gotten more work done on the computer since I closed up over there and came here to the house, than I did the whole rest of the morning and afternoon.

Something has got to change, y’all.

Little Mama gets fixed Wednesday, and I am sorely, SORELY tempted to toss everyone out when her stitches are healed, whether they’re fixed or not. Maybe they’ll have kittens, but maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll just be eaten by coyotes.

Sigh. I say that, but… maybe I can get away with just booting Big and Little Mama out, and keep the two teenagers in (they’re four months old) until I can get them fixed in September. The low cost place I go will only take two from the same house per month, otherwise I would have gotten them done this week with Little Mama. I don’t want to take any of the Feral Shittens to my regular vet, because they will only do spays if they are PET pets, destined to be taken care of to the tune of at least $500/year in vaccinations, flea and heartworm prevention, etc. I just don’t have that in me, y’all, for five cats I didn’t want in the first place. I only took them in so I could get them spayed and neutered, so they’d stop contributing to the population.

Also, I miss having my dogs in the studio. I can’t bring them over, not with so many cats to chase in the studio. I could make it easier on myself and just knock all my shelves over and break everything myself, rather than let the cats flip out and run from the dogs, and knock things over running from the dogs, and then the dogs knocking over anything that’s left, in the excitement of the chase.

And I can’t bring the studio cats to the house for pretty much the same reason – that and I already have three cats over here freaking out about the dogs. Well, Moya is pretty chill. But Moya is also old as dirt and doesn’t give a fuck.

I wish Moya could convince Tulip and Newt that the dogs are rambunctious but not deadly. I mean, when was the last time I even had a picture of Tulip or Newt to share?!

I’m thinking about moving Tim’s green chair out of the front room and into the cat room. I could sit there and read or play on my phone for half an hour a day, where the dogs can’t get to me, but Newt and Tulip and Moya can. Then I could spend time with the cats that I actually WANTED to adopt!

The only cats I ever see these days are these ungrateful fucks, and they’re just messing with everything. Mostly my patience. Imagine half of that bathroom mess I posted up there, every day. Every day I clean it up. Today was bad because I just couldn’t bring myself to work on it yesterday…. so yeah, today took about three hours, spread out over the day as I let things sit or dry. I’ve generally got cleaning the bathroom down to about an hour every day. Granted, that’s an hour I could be doing LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, like sleeping, or eating, or taking a shower, or working….

I’m so tired, y’all.

(And I am not looking for cleaning advice, ok? Please and thank you. I’m just venting. I’m not looking for any “have you tried” conversations.)