Mini-Update

I should be sleeping by now, but I´ll stay awake 10 minutes more and write a mini-update....

I think the cats really wanted to tell me something important when they decided to shit in the place where I store (among other useless things...) tons of old newspapers and magazines, because that got me started, and during the last week I have gotten rid of almost all the newspapers... (even the non-shitty ones). I can´t believe this! For years I thougt I just had to keep them, just in case... I mean, maybe I would later want to try to find that interesting article I read sometime in the summer of 1998, but forgot to rip out of the paper at the moment. But now they are gone - most of them, and I haven´t had any serious problems with separataion anxiety. At least not yet. So I think I can live without them... It´s actually so much fun getting rid of newspapers, that I can hardly wait for the postman to bring me new papers every day so I can get rid of them right away.

The cat´s have been behaving perfectly since I understood what they were trying to tell me. Today they were a little annoyed, though, since I left them alone for such a long time - but I was busy improving my French and taking my new young friend G. to the movies to see "Crash". A bit confusing to speak Spanish and listen to French before going to watch a movie in American English, with subtitles in Swedish and Finnish.... S. joines us for a beer after the movie (she is the new caretaker of Nissan Pissan), and then we switched to English.
When I got home I had a message form S. on my phone telling me the car (NP) was stolen (!!!) Un-fucking-believable!! I mean, if you really want to commit a crime and steal a car, why not steal a better one, once you´re at it?
[Stay tuned for more updates later]

"Number two" - lots of it!

[I can´t believe I forgot to write this... ]
I now know the reason why there has been so little action - and no scooping needed - in the litter box. (And I wish I didn´t know...)

I made a promise to myself the other day, I decided to start throwing away old newspapers, not all of them at once, because that would take forever, but minor amounts, like 200 papers a day or something. So, I went to the storage place where all the papers have been piling up since we moved here (8 years ago...), and I noticed a strange smell - not urine this time, but it smelled like shit!!
And it was. (No, you don´t want to hear the details!) I feel so silly for anxioulsy looking for "number 1" the other day - while the cats were busy producing several loads of "number 2" just behind my back. The good news is, some of it was dry by now. The bad news is, all of it wasn´t...
I think Liffi is the guilty one... I´m almost certain this is his way of telling me that he i not happy with Kjell being away - so I can probably look forward to having him shit all over the place for the next three years.
[But, let´s not fall into despair - I must try to have a positive outlook on things - so... let´s see now...]
Except for having to solve the cat shit problem and remove the damned turds, I had quite a nice day... I interviewed a couple of old class mates, and it was actually quite fun - and for once I didn´t spend too much time trying to find cheap flights to Stockholm. But of course it´s only a matter of time before I will hate this town again.

But I managed to get out quite a few old newspapers. All the soiled ones, and then some.

In case you wondered...

... if I´m absolutely nuts, I can tell you right away, that YES, I probably am...
But at least I don´t feel so lonely in my craziness today, since my one eager reader sent me a couple of interesting links (that I feel compelled to share wiht any lost soul that might have ended up reading this cat pee-reeking blog)
and these links prove that we are not alone, Rebecca and I...
http://www.slate.com/id/2102390/
http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Cat pee is no joke, peeing in the wrong place could prove fatal - for the cat...

Really Old Litter

I know I´m not updating this blog very often, but I have some very good reasons/excuses; some of them are: work, parties, books, friends and - of course - cat feeding... It´s hard work being the single care taker of Liffi, Svarti, Frissi and Otto - I just can´t believe how much they eat! But no, there´s nothing interesting to report about the litterbox. (Sorry!), they all do their things outside still, since it´s not that cold yet. But wait until we get below-zero temperatures...

Yesterday I got paranoid, and thought I smelled cat pee through the half open door of one of my messy closets... I was probably influenced by stories I´ve heard recently about a geriatric cat that pees all over the place, plus, at some point (years ago) the cats had been using that same closet as a kitty litterbox, so I stuck my head in, and tried to determine if there was a faint smell of cat pee or not. I´m still not sure. But, I got other things to think of, since this very closet is the one where I store about half of all my old diaries and writing books... (so I got really upset thinking about what cat pee could have done to all my old documents... which, of course, I can´t even imagine throwing away! Neurotic, I know - but I think I can handle it...). The other half is in a bag that weighs about 1000 kilos - or at least that´s how it feels every time I have to move it around to get to something stored behind it.

Anyway, when I had convinced myself that there was no (fresh) cat pee anywhere near that closet, which also contains clothes that I will probably never use again, since I can´t get into them - but that I have been to lazy to sort through... I mean, among all those too-small items of clothing there might be something I can still use, that´s why I can´t just pack it all into a huge box and carry it to some second hand store, or to the "recycling station" - which seems to be the most recent word for "dump"... So when I stopped looking for cat pee, and was about to put all those messy things back inside, I decided that I might as well try to put order into some part of my life - and since my "now" is quite chaotic, why not start with the past? My plan was to just put my old diaries and other personal writings in chronological order - starting from my first diary from the summer when I was 11 (- which must have been 1970...) The problem was, in order to determine which decade, and which year, a certain book belonged to, I had to open it and read a little - which got me stuck with a bunch of diaries, all from somewhere between 1978 and 1990...
OK, I know that many people think that the smartest thing would be to make a fire and burn all those old things from the past, but on the ohter hand... why would I? Even though it´s painfull to read, It´s fun as well (sort of...)
Im just very gratefull blogging wasn´t invented in, say 1972, because then I would probably have written all that´s now in my diaries in a blog, and how embarrassing would that have been!? I mean, it´s bad enough to notice what an incredible amount of time, energy and paper I have wasted on documenting what certain male persons (that I have had seriuos crushes on, evidently...) have said and done - or not done - over the years. (Why the hell was I wasting my youth in that stupid way?!) And it didn´t get any better once I got over the stage of one-way crushes, oh no! Once I got a boyfriend, I keept on documenting every word, every kiss, every... well you know. (Why?! Why couldn´t I just enjoy it?! I seemed to think that if I didn´t write down as much as I could, it wouldn´t have happened - and I would forget... Which I sure had! But now that I read some of the more revealing diaries from my years as a teenager, I almost wish I hadn´t been writing things down in such detail. Things that I really had forgotten came back to me - and do I really need that?).
So, anyway, I didn´t find any cat pee in my closet - but I got stuck in some other kind of shit. Right now I´m trying to get through the autumn of 1979... ( what a fucked-up year that seems to have been!).

[By the way, what I thought was the smell of cat urine could have been the smell of some half rotten basil that I had forgotten to throw away... at least that smell disappeared when I got rid of the old basil...]

Ok then....

Since the only reader of this blog craves cat pee - here comes: cat pee, cat pee, cat pee - but (un)fortunately there´s nothing else to tell about that right now. All my 4 cats behave well, they go out in the morning, sit down in front of the door, get that glazed over look in their eyes - and pee! They do it outside, as cats are supposed to do... Not much more I can say about that. Then they run around doing cat things until they come in again - but the litter box looks like virgin snow (I found that white stuff that doesn´t stink...) - not one turd handle, so what am I supposed to do?! Invent kitty litter stories...? [Hey, I happen to know someone who really has stories to tell in that area... maybe I can make her take over this blog during some time...]

[And about deleted comments - ever heard of spam...? That´s where I draw the line! I hate spam, I hate spam, I hate spam! (got it? I hate spam!) People who send out that kind of shit should be condemned to swim in cat pee forever and ever...]

I probably shouldn´t be writing this...

It´s way past 2 a.m., almost 3, I notice now, and so called "normal" people should be sound asleep at this time of the night... But I´m not normal, and I just came home, after having emptied almost an entier bottle of red wine with the lady down the street. What?! Anybody has a problem with that? Shouldn´t a couple of left behind wives be allowed to celebrate that it is (was) September 13th? Which also happened to be the other left behind wife´s wedding aniversary (among other things worth celebrating). The simple fact that we had no men present wouldn´t keep us from having fun, would it?

My husband called around midnight to tell me how nice it was so to come home after several days of hard work and find somebody waiting there... (Obviously that other person was not me, since I´m here, and not there - so if you happened to read this, and actually know me, now you got something to think about --- "Oh, are they really separating? Is that why he left...?", "Is he living with someone else already...?", "Well, considering her cooking and her housekeeping skills, no wonder..." --- You were thinking that, weren´t you?)
Maybe I should should hope that the Swedish Feminist Party eventually will be successfull in abolishing marriage as we know it (which is one of their main goals...), which would allow multiple persons of one or several genders to register some sort of "living together agreement", and in that case El Trio Infernal could also have an official status - at least in Sweden. But I can think of at least one person who might have some objections to that Trio-arrangement- or, thinking about it, why stop with a Trio? We could add more people as they happen to come in our way... ;-)
No, I´m not completely serious - but I´m not only joking either... I mean, if we live only once (which seems quite likely, if you ask me...) shouldn´t we try to spend as much time as possible with people we really like, instead of having to endure people you can barely stand...or at least are indifferent to? And why not then live close to each ohter, or even share a home? I´ve never been very convinced that the nuclear family-model would be the only possible way to arrange your life , anyway...
But, as I said, I´ve been drinkin red wine on a Tuesday evening (- oh, thinking about it, it was martes y trece when we started... that´s supposedly not a good time to do anything...), and I´m very, very tired, so never mind what I say, I probably won´t remeber I wrote it in the morning. But it seems like my being alone in this piece of shit town for too many days or weeks in a row might (just might!) be a bit hazardous to my liver...

So, what did we talk about while attacking that bottle of red wine?!
Hmmm... Do you really think I´m drunk enough to write that in a blog??! Dream on.

Taking care of myself - my way...

After being home alone "for real" almost a week I notice I have to make a serious effort not to let this place become what could best be described as a bachelor´s den... I just let the dirty dishes pile up, I mean, what´s the use of putting them inside the dish washer just yet, since what I prepare in the kitchen is basically coffee, it will take ten days before I have full load of cups... This is not to be taken as an indication that I don´t eat - because I do! I just don´t prepare food at home... What´s wrong with sandwiches and beer? Or frozen pizzas, if I happen to need a change. I´ve been thinking of doing something about my uselsessness in the kitchen, but so far I haven´t done much about it. Why can´t human food come in easily served 12-pack envelopes, as the "special treat" cat food I sometimes buy to bribe "Liffi" - who otherwise ignores me completely; he kind of blames me for Kjell´s absence, stupid cat...
Ok, time to grab a beer an watch the sports news (no, just kidding!) - the beer part is true, though, and I´d like to watch some TV - if I just manage to figure out which one of all the damned remote controls that my husband has left behind that will actually have something to do with the television...
Oh, and I haven´t even mentioned my collection of old newspapers that date back to --- before September 11- yes, 2001... I mean, there might be something interesting in one of those old papers that I would like to read, say in the year 2013, if I´m still alive by then...
Got to go and feed my furry friends - otherwise they might apply for jobs in Sweden and abandon me....

Selling it...

As I might have told before in this kittylitter related blog, I will get rid of Nissan Pissan - and if all goes well, I´m "selling" it today. My goal is to get rid of it, so I won´t have to pay insurance, maintenance, tax etc. Not to mention gas! Of course, I now realize I really should have it airlifted to D.C, so Rebecca could have car matching her house, but I´m afraid I won´t be able to do that... (sorry!)

Tonight I had a "3-cats-experience", that is, I had three different furry creatures trying to grab as much space as they could in the now quite big bed. The most faithful one is Svarti, he is always sleeping with his little head on my pillow, and only now and then does he get the urge to jump on my chest so I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I´m having a heart attack. It´s a small nuisance, considering...

But now I have to go and clean out Nissan P., since it´s so full of ... stuff! Old newspapers, CD:s, books, broken umbrellas, empty boxes, bottles with unidentified liquids (no, it´s not cat pee!), blankets, from last winter, maps from 1996 (when we bought it...), not to mention the bottle I´m going to throw in for free, if this potenial byer actually drives away with the car - the "anti-odour" spray that halfheartedly disguises the smell of cat pee...