Managing the Purr-fectly Busy Household: Life with 11 Cats

When I decided I wanted to start a blog, one of the reasons was to write about what it's truly like living with a horde of cats and a husband who is mostly not okay with the number of cats we have, but secretly loves them.

Gene works full-time from home. I work three jobs and have a busy social life that keeps me out of the house 80% of the time. It has always been that I am responsible for the cats, with the exception of medications. There's a lot that falls to me for their care, which is no big deal. At some point, I realized to be halfway successful in keeping everything in an almost happy harmony, I needed to have an agenda for my own house chores. Read on for a typical workday in my life!

One of my jobs—house sitting—keeps me away from home the most. When I'm scheduled for house sitting, I still go to my other two jobs; my home base is just a different place. I move in (quite literally—with everything I need from food, clothes, snacks, books, and crafting supplies). This means I need to balance my house full of cats.

I'll start my day caring for my house-sitting pets, which is usually a lot easier than my own cats. Then, I head to my job at the chiropractor's office for a few hours in the morning. Once my morning ends, I head straight to my weekly dog drop-in. I'll spend a bit of time with Cricket, letting her out, getting love, and giving her a treat. Then I start on my personal household/life chores. (Hello, checklist in my head!)

Arriving at my house, the first few things are always the same. Bathroom, snack, drink, then focus on my list (and really try to stay focused!). First up is a combination of litter box duties and starting a load of laundry. I need to wash puppy pads at least once a day, so I gather them up from the dining room, try my best to avoid eye contact with Smokey, and start a load. I'll head to the laundry room litter box row. Scoop, scoop, scoop, chat with supervisor Dobby, scoop more, tell Dobby to stop throwing litter out of the box, and lastly sweep or vacuum the floor. Only for Dobby to immediately throw litter around like confetti...why did I even sweep the floor?!?

Back to the dining room - I deal with the floor - sweep/vacuum and on a really busy day, Swiffer. Sometimes I get distracted (hello Smokey) and forget to put the puppy pads back down for Clara. I usually realize this as I'm ready to leave and end up going back to mop the floor - with the real mop and a hot soapy/vinegar water mix. By far, that is usually the quickest part of my home routine.

I'll switch over to the living room—which I do a little more. Pick up cat toys—seriously, they like to take all their toys out even if they don't play with them. Straighten the chairs and couch. Top off the food and water bowls. We got rid of the automatic water bowls—so that's a time saver, no more intense cleaning of the filters/fountain part! On to changing or retucking the sheets to keep the furniture clean. (My biggest pet peeve—sheets twisted and crooked and cushions all haphazard.) At this point, things start to go downhill and crazy real fast. Smokey is tangled up in everything I'm doing now. She's under the sheets, pulling them out as I tuck them, crying and trying to climb onto me so I can hold her. If I choose to ignore her, she decides to cause chaos—knocking stuff over, jumping on me, and any other antics. One of these days, I'll bite the bullet and buy a baby swaddler for her.

I move upstairs at this point, which theoretically has the least amount of work. There are only 2 litter boxes, 2 food bowls, and 2 water bowls. Somehow, this is usually more work. Jasper's kingdom (aka the bathroom) is a quick job—so long as he hasn't peed on the floor—scoop his litter, change puppy pads. His favorite water bowl is a bubbler that has to be cleaned frequently and is a pain. He is a messy drinker; more water ends up outside of the bowl than in his mouth. He's not much better with his food, and I'm not sure why. He has the only automatic food bowl, so he only gets a tiny bit of food at a time, but somehow still manages to spill food all over the floor. Most times, he just supervises from his tower, but sometimes he will wander with me looking for pets.

I move on to the hallway litter box - always a hot mess. It gets used the most by everyone. Vera prefers to be upstairs with her favorite human Gene - so it's convenient for her. Now that Clara likes to hang out with Gene, she uses the puppy pads to do all her business. What does that mean for me? Picking up her poop with paper towels and throwing the puppy pads in the wash. Then I can go about scooping and sweeping (my cats think it's a game to see how much litter they can throw out of the box).

Next, I head to the bedroom, which just has a food bowl but somehow manages to be a mess. This is the favorite food bowl as it's the tastiest food in the house. All the food downstairs is prescription food for kidney disease. At any given time, there could be 3-4 cats eating out of this bowl at one time, which leads to the "grab a mouthful, drop some on the floor" method, allowing everyone to get some food and not hold up the process. They waste a lot of food; as much as I try to let it be, I have to clean it up every few days. Sometimes Dobby will clean it up for me, as she likes to eat right off the floor, but usually, she waits till I pull the vacuum out to start eating the floor food.

In Gene's office, there is a water fountain—it gets used frequently but requires less cleaning than Jasper's. It's a quick rinse and fill back up for that. His office is mostly cat hair and dander, as all the cats like to spend time with him when he's working.

That, in a nutshell, is my midday break with 11 cats. If I stick to that, it's a happy, cat-filled house most days, and they all are excited to see me. In their own ways, they each let us know if they aren't satisfied with the cleaning. Some of them are a bit more obnoxious when things aren't up to their standards.

Till our tails cross again,

Mel

Jasper Edition part 2!

Here we are a little under 2 months after Jasper's hunger strike. How did we make out? Well... for us, we got no answers to his little hunger strike, but for him, he got us wrapped around his paw a little tighter.

Not wanting to end up on the road that would lead us to a bigger vet bill, I decided we would do whatever it takes at home to get him to eat more. Right off the bat, I decided to let him explore the house for a few minutes when we got back from the vet's office.

His first stop: the dining room food bowl, second stop: the food bowl in the living room, and a third stop at the kitchen food bowl. Have we been here before?! We sure have - his little overnight stint at the vet hospital. We paid over $1500 for a deposit when he stopped eating before, only for him to eat right off the bat for the hospital staff. What the... seriously, that's a lot of money for him to try and make liars out of us. So sure, we just spent a quarter of that for the same issue - should I be surprised that he pulled that stunt again?

We get him back to his room, and he still won't eat his portioned-out food. Fine, we will switch his food to the general population food. He eats it, but not as much as when he was out with free rein. Why?! Nothing has changed in his room. Since I don't want him to lose any more weight, I decide to let him have free rein, but Gene said it has to be supervised.

So he was getting an hour or two at a time of free rein as my schedule allowed. Then it turned into all-day free rein. Theoretically, nothing can go wrong; he's eating more and is even happier being out and about (which he hated before!). I mean, when you have the choice of one food bowl or 8 different food bowls with 2 different foods, we would all choose the latter.

The unexpected result that I didn't get to witness right away was his very loud and obnoxious meows and cries to be let out. Gene, as usual, was sticking to his guns; he doesn't want to clean up messes or deal with fighting, so he doesn't get free rein when I'm not home. Jasper and Clara fight—sibling love, I guess. So when things get heated, he either doesn't let Jasper out or puts him back in his room.

One day I'm home around lunchtime and I hear a very obnoxious and loud meow. I'm baffled; it sounded like one of the cats was trying to say they didn't feel good. Gene matter-of-factly says that's Jasper—he wants to be let out. Apparently, he does that in the middle of the night too...

I shake my head, spoiled beyond belief all because of a short hunger strike. He's slowly gaining his weight back and truly thinks he's the king of the house. So be it, he's our million-dollar cat at this point.

Till our tails cross again

Mel and Jasper

Dealing with Unexpected Vet Bills: The Jasper Edition

Jasper—God love him—keeps us on our toes. New Year's weekend was no different. He decided a great way to start the new year was a food strike. His dry food and squeeze-ups are no longer good enough for him. The only way he sees fit to tell us is to stop eating, and if he does eat, just throw it back up—all over the bathroom.

We've been down the non-eating road with him before; it cost a small fortune back then and really isn't a road we want to go down ever again. Naturally, a small wave of panic sets in—are we really here again? We never got a true answer last time; can we afford this again?

Gene and I decide - let's do a trip to the vet when they open after the holidays. We get him scheduled for a Monday afternoon. We are left to ponder: is this delay too long, will he be okay, it's just over the weekend. In the meantime - we switch his dry food out with another one that the general population in our house is on. He seems to be more interested in that, but still not eating enough. That's alright - we can manage a lower food portion till Monday. We supplement him with wet food as well.

Thursday afternoon, the vet reaches out - how is he? Do I think he can last the weekend, or should she squeeze him in on Friday? He's holding steady - not eating enough, but not severe enough to warrant a true emergency visit. She asks if we have Cerenia (anti-nausea meds) and a way to test his glucose at home. Cerenia - we have; I like to keep that on hand because it's been very useful among all the cats the last few years. Testing his glucose - no - but we are pretty good at seeing when his sugar level dips too low. Seeing it go high - that's another story - we never know, but for now, higher is better than lower.

Since he's not eating his full portion, we have no way to know if he is getting too much insulin (most likely) or not. So we keep giving his usual dose and hope for the best. We thankfully make it through the weekend with no major setbacks. However, I had to change his appointment on Monday three times due to work, which I truly hate doing at the last minute, but it was out of my control. Thankfully they could still fit us in and didn't charge for the last minute reschedules!

We finally get to the vet's office, where he is cute as a button and acting like nothing is wrong. He's getting all the pets from his favorite vet techs and his favorite doctor. Since we aren't doing his annual shots this visit, he spends more time in the back getting tests done—glucose, urine sample, and blood samples—which he handles like a champ, of course.

Glucose is an immediate result—he's right where he needs to be (at least for today). They decide to take a quick look at his urine; if they see anything, we can start treatment right away. They see nothing, so they decide to send it out with the bloodwork to the lab. Meanwhile, we chat—he's down about 1 and 1/2 lbs. Not bad, not great. Keep an eye on the weight. Try to get him to eat. Depending on what the test results say, we will determine our course of action.

We go home and wait for test results. I figure he's had a rough go of it - let him explore the house (he's strictly a bathroom cat). He explores and enjoys sampling food and water from the dozen bowls that are out for the other cats, takes a snooze in Gene's computer room, and does a second sampling of food before he heads back to his domain. Now he gets "free rein" a few days a week for an hour or so... because he eats more when he's out.

We get results back a few days later from the tests. Lo and behold - everything came back normal and within normal ranges. I'd like to be baffled by this - but I can't be. Truly, I have come to accept that my cats all test my financial and emotional limits on the daily. So aside from test results being normal - he decides he's going to go back to eating dry food like there was never a problem.

So we are left with this: if he continues to lose weight, we can do one of two things - a stomach ultrasound or put a Libre monitor on him (that is a 2-week monitor of his sugar levels - it gets sent right to the vet's office). We are in a lovely holding pattern of doing nothing, hoping he holds steady or gains some weight back. So fingers crossed, he had some wacky bug and is all better now!

Just under $400 all so he could visit his friends at the vet's office. I roll my eyes at this because there are plenty of other things I could spend that money on, but honestly, I'd spend it all again to know he is doing great and is going to live another few years with us.

Till our tails cross again,

Mel and Jasper