Re-entry

So this morning I hauled about 20 pounds of cat up a flight of stairs and into the elevator. Maybe you think that sounds easy, but I am severely disabled since an inappropriate-to-mention-here incident broke the shit out of my back. Not to mention I have once carried both of my other cats in one carrier, which adds up to approximately 432 pounds of feline, total. But an inappropriately broken back complicates things a bit.

A play-by-play:

1. Set carrier down to strongarm my door closed (it's hard).
2. Pete greets me at the door, because he thinks it goes outside, even though despite his best efforts he has never gotten further than eight feet from the door, and I live on the fourth floor of an enclosed apartment building. No one said he was a smart cat. Pete's brain accounts for maybe .0009 ounces of his total weight.
3. Pete sniffs carrier.
4. Hear hissing from the vicinity of carrier.
5. Wonder where Stuart is.
6. Guestimate that Stuart is under bed.
7. Look under bed.
8. Stuart is indeed under bed.
9. Move carrier approximately 10 feet before I must set it down again because I might die of crippling pain.
10. Rest.
11. Move carrier into bathroom.
12. Shut door.
13. Cannot open door. Worry that I'm going to have to crawl through window between bathroom and kitchen (don't ask).
14. Pry door open.
15. Decide Luca can come into main room if she so chooses.
16. Luca so chooses.
17. Luca chooses to go back into bathroom, because under bed is only other place to hide, and Stuart has laid his claim.
18. Rest.
19. Check on G&L. Gracie is gone. Where could she be?
20. Ah yes, under the tub, curled up in the peeling linoleum, with old (probably lead) paint shavings chipping onto her fur.
21. Leave.

And now I am about to go home and assess the damage. I will report back tomorrow.

C.C.L. minus three hours

In three hours, I will officially be a crazy cat lady. I decided to start this blog because I think it is the only way I can deal with having four cats in a studio apartment that I am technically allowed to have only one cat in. This way it's funny and perhaps a bit ironical, or something, rather than sad and crazy. And catty.

Embo moved away to Costa Rica, leaving Gracie and Luca without a home. They stayed with my parents for a month, and finally found their comfort zones: Luca's was the four-inch gap at the top of the kitchen cabinets and Gracie's was anywhere with remnants of catnip. However, my mom and dad for some reason decided they couldn't keep Bessie the 80-pound Great Pyrenees, Trixie the tiny slutty cat, Westley the cat with fur in unusual places, Gracie the morbidly obese feline with a tiny head, and Luca the weird hermit who only eats dog food in their one-bedroom apartment in some old lady's attic. I know, ridic.

So G & L are on their way to Helena to become my maladjusted housecats once more. I have two cats already there -- huge, giant, enormous cats. Pete weighs 20 pounds and has a mustache, no joke (see photo -- told ya), and Stuart is pure white and has a genetic abnormality which placed his anal glands on the outside of his butt. I realize that's disgusting, but the vet said he was the only animal she's ever seen with that particular gluteal arrangement, so I feel it's worth mentioning. Anyhoo, I predict much hissing and scratching and threatening posture in the next week or so.

And there's nowhere to hide, because, as I mentioned before, I live in a studio apartment. So I'm leaving for a week, and I hope I don't come back to any dead cats, let alone four.