Yesterday:
Hurray! This leaves Telstar, Aurora and Hubble still available for adoption. Fingers crossed that their people come along very soon.
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Really quick, before you go on to read the post I wrote and scheduled a couple of weeks ago, the most important bits of information (that are current) :
1. The cats are doing well – except for Maxi, they’re all behaving themselves (Maxi is Business As Usual hating all the other cats, hissing and smacking – but not so much that we’ve needed to put her out in the garage yet). They were boarded for two days at the vet, and Fred has suggested that they’re so relieved to be around people and things that smell familiar that they’re on their best behavior. To our surprise, the cat who has handled this the best was Kara. She didn’t hide, and has been strutting around the house, unfazed. For the first day and a half, they were confined to three rooms, then we opened the door to Fred’s office, and they’ve been busy checking that out. I’d like to wait until next weekend to give them the run of the rest of the house, but we’ll see how it goes. They have plenty of places to flop down and sleep (there are beds EVERYWHERE), so they’re not suffering. Archie and Kara are dying – DYING – to get outside, but that won’t happen for a few weeks.
2. The chickens and ducks were rehomed, and none of them went to freezer camp.
3. There actually exists a street named Shady Cove, I learned in the past couple of days, so chances are good that we’ll change what we call the house so as to minimize any confusion. I’ve suggested Squirrel’s End to Fred, but we’ll just have to see what we come up with after we’ve lived here for a little while.
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So yes, we have said goodbye to Crooked Acres.
It’s a fairly long story, so I’ve split it into several entries that will all post this week. This is part 1.
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*At the beginning of the year, we started looking at homes on Zillow. This is something we’ve done for the past few years, just to get a feel for what was available out there. On a Saturday in mid-May, we went to drive past a house we’d seen on Zillow, and found that they were having an open house. At my insistence we stopped and walked through the house. We liked it, but (more importantly) Fred started talking to the realtor, who we both liked quite a bit.
*We went home and started talking. Our original plan was to put Crooked Acres on the market in early 2018. But Fred waffled back and forth and annoyed me so much that I drowned him in the catfish pond and now I’m typing this at you from prison. (Or he called the real estate agent and made an appointment to come see the house and give us some idea of what it might sell for.) The realtors came out to talk to us a few days later, and we liked the number they gave us. They left, and we debated long and hard whether to put the house on the market or wait. I pressed VERY HARD to put the house up ASAP, and Fred finally agreed.
*At the end of May, after we both busted our butts trying to declutter and organize, the house was on the market. A few days after the house went on the market, I looked out the window to see a couple walking around in the driveway. I said something to Fred, and he went out to see what they wanted. They hadn’t realized we were home, and had just wanted to see the property. They were extremely interested in the house and were going to be transferred from West Virginia in the near future. Their house was under contract, and they had a million questions. A few hours later, our realtor called to let us know we had a showing a few days later, in the afternoon. I spent hours cleaning, then we left the house. That couple and their kids – four kids? five? – spent a couple of hours at the house. After they left, they had questions about the house, which we answered promptly.
*We did a happy dance, secure in the knowledge that we were going to receive an offer less than a week after the house had gone on the market.
*We did not receive an offer. As it turns out, the house they were selling had appraised for less than what they’d been offered, and it all fell apart. For the next month, their realtor assured our realtor that they were still interested and planned on making an offer when their house situation got worked out.
*We moved on. We had more open houses and more showings. And let me take a moment here to let y’all know: if you are one of those people who request a showing just so you can walk around and see someone’s house being a Nosy Nellie, may I respectfully request that you burn in Hell. Every time we had a showing, it took me at the very bare minimum two hours to get the house to what I consider acceptable. It is a huge pain in the butt and hey, look! Cameras all over the house. Right in front of your stupid Lookie-Loo face! NOT EVEN HIDDEN. So if you’re just looking at my house because you haven’t got anything better to do, it’s obvious. I SEE YOU. And we had MULTIPLE open houses, would it have killed you to WAIT?
*The summer came and went, kittens came and went, and let me tell you another thing: I don’t recommend fostering while you’re trying to sell your house. It was okay with Nola and her kittens, at least while the kittens were little, because Nola had no desire to try to escape the room. As the kittens got older and would run to the door, we started moving them all out the old blue coop during open houses and showings. We moved Belle and her kittens out to the blue coop during open houses and showings. We did the same with Mercury and her kittens. That whole moving-them-out-to-the-coop was a pain because the blue coop was where we’d moved all our excess STUFF (stuff we didn’t need right away, but would need eventually), and we had the playpen set up so that we wouldn’t lose kittens among all the boxes, and just having to move them all out there, make sure the litter boxes were set up, make sure they had food and water was a pain. AND THEN I’d go back into the house and basically clean it and stash all the toys/litter boxes/beds away and make the room look as little like it was usually occupied by a large number of poop machines as possible.
*I will say that 99% of the people who came into the house during the time there were kittens in that room were completely uninterested in looking at, touching, or snuggling any of them. There were a couple of women who squealed over them and took pictures and gently touched them (people after my own heart), but that was all. Most saw the note on the door asking them not to let the kittens out, stuck their heads in to see the room, and then shut the door. MONSTERS.
Random Nola & kittens pic.
*In August, we started coming to terms with the fact that we weren’t going to be selling our house this year. Our contract with the realtor was for 90 days – which took us to the end of August – and we decided that we’d extend it for another 30 days to the end of September, and then take it off the market until next April. Neither of us wanted to deal with the whole house-selling thing through the winter, and there were a bunch of small things we wanted to do to the house to make it look better.
*So we started to relax at the fact that the end was near, we had a few showings, we decided we’d have one more open house in mid-September, but we were 100% sure we’d be taking the house off the market at the beginning of October.
*BUT THEN.
*We got an offer on the house. And we went straight into a panic because WHERE WERE WE GOING TO LIVE?!
To be continued tomorrow.
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“This is a boring story. Tell the one about Alice Mo the Calico and how she loves her Daddy, yo.”
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Previously
2016: “Ooh, he’s dreamy!”
2015: Guess who no longer has an empty foster room?
2014: Throwback Thursday: Sookie
2013: “Hallo, lady, there is a SECOND treat this morning, perhaps?”
2012: Stripey believes he can flyyyyyyy.
2011: When Gracie wants to play, George has no choice.
2010: No entry.
2009: I! HAZ! A! COMPLAINT!
2008: Lem gets very excited at snack time.
2007: Some time later, I was awakened by the sound of an angry screaming wildcat.
2006: Catie and her kittens.
2005: No entry.