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Get It Done derailed

Last week I wrote of how I would be reporting in on my progress on the journey of bringing DF2 into existence here.

It is still my intention to do so however, unfortunately (very unfortunately) I am undergoing some personal tragedy right now.

In my last post I spoke of how I love cats.  As of July 9th I and my life partner (female) owned seven cats – or perhaps it is more accurate to say that seven cats owned us.  We’ve been having some escalating issues with cat’s spraying and peeing – Tucker had been doing some marking, as had Digger (Diggory), and another cat Smudger was flat out urinating (not marking) outside of the box in different places.  While I am blessed with a nose that can barely smell the most obvious of odors, my partner has the nose of a bloodhound, and this peeing issue, which had been going on for the better part of a year and ramping up as it went, was utterly overwhelming and traumatizing her.

I should also probably say at this point that she and I have opposite views on the subject of cats and whether or not they get to go outside.  I live in a small town that’s the suburb of a small city – so we do not have very much wilderness.  We do have a large front lawn (2 acres?) and there is small wooded area behind our house, as well as a large public field.  Apart from that it’s houses, streets, and cars.

But it wouldn’t matter where we live, I am not at all happy with cats going outside.  Either they can be killed by wild animals or run over by cars, depending if one lives in the country or in a more urban area, not to mention a host of other potential threats, some I can imagine and some I guess would surprise me.  My partner feels that there isn’t that much risk in having the cats go out, and keeps telling me how much the cats want to go out, as if that had bearing.  However, she holds the keys to my happiness – or, to be more honest, the keys to my unhappiness if necessary, so in this game of mutually assured destruction we have forged an unhappy compromise.

Two of our cats – Smudger and Face – have been going out during the day on their own recognizance for years.  Four others – Digger, Tucker, Harper, and Figment – have been going out on hour long supervised “outings” with Jenn, once or twice a day.  We started out with all four being taken on harnesses, but graduated (with much debate and arguing) to having only Tucker on a harness, as he is of all of them the one I simply and absolutely have given every piece of my heart to.

About a month ago, we started letting Digger go out unsupervised, whenever he wanted, to try to curb the in-house marking and peeing.  It was a risk, but between the fact that Digger had always been a cowardly cat that stuck close to home when out, and my partners growing desperation due to the peeing, we had to try something – and both of us refuse to consider putting cats to sleep – er, I mean killing them.

Two weeks when Digger went out, we forgot to invite him back in at the end of the night.  In the morning he wasn’t there.  And he has been gone since.

That was bad enough – that we lost Digger (although we put up lost cat posters *everywhere* to no avail, sadly) – but then two days ago, I heard a horrible cat fight upstairs, and ran up to find Smudger trying to kill Tucker.  I grabbed Smudger, yelled at him, and slapped him a few times – no one, but no one messes with my Tucker.  For my trouble I got some nice gashes sliced into my arm.  Worse than that is the new worry about leaving the two of them in the house alone together.

That night (two days ago) Face did not come back at the end of the day – and we were starting to think that she too had disappeared, just like Digger – until she showed up at 10pm.  We brought her in and she seemed absolutely fine.

We let her back out the next day (for one thing, when she can’t go out she just wails and wails – she’s used to going out for the last ten years.) and again she did not come back at the end of the say – but this time, she also wasn’t there when we went to bed.  Nor was she there when we checked for her in the middle of the night.

It is now morning and she still hasn’t shown up.  So to recap:

  • We lost Digger
  • One of my cats want’s to kill my favorite cat, Tucker.  Tucker, the one I love more than any other being ever.
  • And now Face has disappeared.
  • And to top it all off, I feel like if I had just told my partner to shove it, perhaps Digger and Face would be here right now.

Long story short, I’m in no mood to work on DF2 or report on working on it.  I have wasted much time not working on DF2 over the last six weeks, that has zero to do with whether or not I am taking some time off to deal with this stuff.  I can tell you that I hope to only take a week off from working on DF2, or less, unless the world keeps killing my cats.

Wish for me the best, and hopefully next week I will have a Get It Done report – as well as something to report.

Update: Face is back, she appeared just a few minutes ago.  She’s not going out again soon – if ever.  The problem remains of how do deal with her new tendencies.