7-26-21 Monday

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This is the post about the move – it’s a long one, but if you’d rather skip it there are kitten pics at the bottom, so just scroll on down.

This is what the garage at the old house looked like a month ago.

The house was completely packed except for the things we were using on a daily basis, and we were both more than ready to get moved.

We closed on the new house on June 30th and the movers came July 8th to load us up. In the week between the closing and the move, we loaded up the car with boxes every day (sometimes twice a day) and brought them to the new house. There were things we wanted to move ourselves, and we also figured that the more stuff we moved ourselves, the less time we’d have to pay the movers. I spent all day at the house one of those days unpacking the kitchen. By the time we moved, the kitchen was 99% set up and ready to go.

I found that the little attic access door, located off of Fred’s room, led to this:

Well hello, storage.

The Saturday after the closing (6 days before the move was scheduled), the guys came to deliver the flooring for the upstairs. The entire upstairs was carpeted, and we are no fans of carpeting. Area rugs? Yes. Carpet that the cats can barf on, drag their butts over and walk their grimy feet all over? No. (And when one is fostering kittens that often have giardia and coccidia as well as other fun stuff, carpeting is to be avoided.) One of the guys delivering the flooring took it upon himself to tell us horror stories about how people had had the flooring delivered, only to find out when the installers came that for some reason the flooring could not be installed.

“Ha ha,” Fred and I said. “That sucks, but that won’t happen to us!”

On Monday – the 4th of July – the installers showed up and guess what? The floors upstairs are too out of level for the flooring we’d chosen. They recommended vinyl flooring, and Fred and I went to Lowe’s, chose vinyl flooring that they had in stock, and we scheduled the delivery for Tuesday. I was pretty sure that we were going to have to schedule the installation after we’d moved, but Fred threw himself on the mercy of the people at the installation place and they were able to schedule it for Wednesday.

I was skeptical that it was going to happen, but it did – and the floor upstairs looks amazing. I am beyond happy with it – and as it turns out it’s truly waterproof and scratch resistant (the flooring we initially chose was “water resistant”), so I think it turned out to be a better choice for us.

Wednesday evening we brought all the cats except Newt and Archie to the new house and set them up in the master bathroom (which was plenty large enough to contain 5 cats.) Thursday morning before I was awake, Fred brought Newt and Archie to the new house and set them up in another bathroom. (The reason we kept Newt and Archie at the old house with us overnight is because Newt gets medication every morning… and Archie is Archie. He gets along with Newt, but probably wouldn’t have handled sharing a bathroom with 5 other cats very well.)

On Thursday the movers showed up (two hours late) and while they loaded the truck I went behind them and cleaned. It took them about 4 hours to load the truck and after they left I did a quick vacuum and cleaned a few rooms before the photographer showed up to take pictures of the house so that we could get it listed as quickly as possible. (Side note: the house went on the market at noon Friday and we accepted an offer about 36 hours later.)

The move into the house went fairly quickly – three hours or thereabouts – and I mostly tried to stay out of the way. My main concern was that the couch going into the kitten room is REALLY heavy and I was SO SURE that there’d be an incident that took out the staircase, but it turned out just fine.

There were a few hiccups, the biggest one being that the laundry room doorway was too small for our standard-sized dryer. Fred ended up having to take the molding off from around the door before the doorway was big enough to move the washer and dryer inside.

Soon enough, the movers were gone, our beds were put together, and we let the cats out to explore.

It took a few days for them to settle down, but at this point I think the cats have completely settled in. I didn’t sleep much the first night because Khal kept coming to the doorway of my bedroom and meowing until I called to him, whereupon he’d jump onto the bed with me and insist that I pet him. Which I was HAPPY to do, but it’s hard to pet and sleep at the same time. He did it less frequently the next night and even less frequently the next. Now, two and a half weeks later, he does it every so often, but most nights he doesn’t.

This is my bedroom – Archie on the bed, Charlie on the floor. Yes, you see carpet in this room. There’s also carpet in the computer room – as soon as we close on the other house, we’ll be buying/scheduling flooring for those two rooms (which are located downstairs).

I swear Newt has checked out/slept in every inch of this house.

If I were to do anything different, I would have shut the door to the foster room and never let the permanent residents hang out in there. They, of course, LOVED the foster room and were some kind of ticked off when I shut the door and locked them out the day before I brought the new fosters home.

You see no Khal.

Charlie in the little cat tree in the foster room.

Newt and Jake.

Khal and Jake in Fred’s bedroom.

Jake in the computer room.

Archie has a grumpy.

The cats have been allowed onto the back (screened) porch, but we don’t have a door with a cat door in it yet (it’s on order) and they don’t like being let in and out, so it’s been limited time out there. Fred did get the cat fence put up in the back yard but he’s waiting on some more fencing so he can block the cats from going up the trees, so they’ve had only limited supervised time in the back yard yet.

At this point, the house is 95% unpacked/organized. I really like it here (so does Fred) and I think once the cats are able to get into the back yard they’ll be perfectly happy (they’re pretty much perfectly happy now, actually.) We have a lot of projects to get done in the near future (and in the extended future as well.) I do plan to do a photographic house tour in the near future (hopefully early next week), mostly because I want to repaint most of the inside of the house, and I want to be able to see/post my progress.

So that’s the story of the move. Got questions? Leave a comment and I’ll answer questions in Friday’s post.

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Molly’s keeping an eye on things (while Tia and Sofia eat.)

Theo Pesto loves to hang out in the bottom of that ham-mick (getting a little attitude here from Franco Fondue.)

Tia Teriyaki is skeptical of my intentions.

Molly is JUST. SO. PRETTY.

Don’t get used to those mirrors – I took them down and replaced them already!

Theo needs a squoosh.

Franco Fondue feelin’ floofy.

Theo’s keeping an eye on Sofia.

I nearly forgot to mention – thank you all so much for the great suggestions on what to call the litter. There were too many good suggestions for me to decide, so I made Fred do it. He proclaimed that FONDUE IS NOT A SAUCE and so from here on out they’ll be known as The Dippers.

(Yes, Fred knows that alfredo isn’t a dipping sauce; he doesn’t care.)

Also also, I didn’t say this last week when I introduced these fosters and should have: I did not name them! Brittany came up with those awesome names, and I approve 100%. (I believe in giving credit where it’s due!)

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Previously
2020: You might be surprised to hear that d’Artagnan has an opinion and isn’t afraid to share it.
2019: DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, MARGEAUX.
2018: She cracks me up – she’s like a puppy in kitten clothing.
2017: More about Belle and her beasts.
2016: Here’s the story of Hemlock.
2015: No entry.
2014: “And she put this HARNESS thing on me, and then she threw me in a CARRIER, and I was in there FOREVERRRRR…”
2013: “WHAT DOON, LADY?”
2012: “Go ‘way, lady. We’re wallowing.”
2011: Random foster pics.
2010: Meet Martin’s new “sisters.”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: “I am former Senator Stanley J. Boogerton, and I approve this bed.”
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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