Still Asking....
"What Do You Do when You Inherit +/- 18 Cats?!"
The Pride Cartoon™ Creator's Blog, Halloween 2011
An Update to What Do You Do When You Inherit +/- 18 Cats?!
A QUICK HEADS UP FOR FANS WHO ARE ACCUSTOMED TO ENCOUNTERING ONLY HUMOR ON THIS SITE: This is not a funny story. It has humorous moments, and perhaps in ten years when I'm on in a cottage on the Irish coast, watching the waves lap the cliffs below, I will laugh in retrospect over my scone and tea. But right now, it's not funny. Some parts are sad, some downright heartbreaking. The whole thing is exhausting. Read at your emotional peril.
* * *
10/29/2011: So
much has happened since the original article 14 months ago. Dottie Jane's
did great during it's first Summer and Fall (2010) and I was really excited. I had a hit; a magic bullet answer to my whole knotted mass of problems.
Winter,
in a shocking reversal of fortune, was absolutely barren. With no
rental income from December through April, I hit almost
the bottom of my savings. But then, things picked up in the Spring, and
the house was booked solid all Summer and Fall 2011. Feast!
But just when you thought it was safe to buy a latte with an extra shot, and eat something besides rice cakes, Winter 2011 is shaping up to be another famine with only the
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays booked. That won't even
pay the gas bill. And though all the accounts were current
this Summer, and all the mouths were
fed, the checking balance never recovered, so there's no safety net. I can't do another 2010.
Not dramatic enough? Wait for it: The
very same week I greeted my first guests last year, having advertised my
home as a cozy, quiet haven on a homey street, the house next door (4
feet from my north wall) was bought by a developer who tore it down and began building an apartment building. (Do you believe me now? That there is a fatune on me?) This has been going on almost the entire time since the original blog post 14 months ago.
The guests have largely not minded, to my amazed
relief and immense gratitude. They're out enjoying NYC during work hours, so it
was not the instant death of my new business that I expected. Still, a
construction site right next door to a vacation rental, in the middle of
an otherwise pretty street, is an eyesore at the very
least. A blight on the whole atmosphere in my opinion. Not just
aesthetically, but for the poor cats who are now comfortable to come
home to their own yard only after the dust
settles and the jackhammers stop.
Still
not dramatic enough? Wait. The first month after this developer
bought the property and started prepping for demolition (which was one
month after I said, "Hallelujiah, we are saved!"), the poison cubes
appeared. The holes on these little black boxes were only big enough
for a rat or a squirrel to get in, and they were there, according to the posted signs,
to kill vermin by order of the Health Dept. So you might think they posed no threat to a cat. And maybe on
their own, they wouldn't (if you receive my meaning). Nonetheless, within a week, Jack A. went
missing, Opal was found suffering and near death, had to be PTS, and her
daughter, Garnet, still just a kitten, passed away alone in her insulated house a few days
later before I could find her.
I was heartbroken. Sick. And
furious. And I didn't give a damn who knew I trespassed in
their yard to collect all the exposed traps and threw them in the
dumpster. When traps reappeared, I threw those in too. I then
put signs on every pole and tree advertising Neighborhood Cats' $2500
reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone
caught poisoning cats, and I promised to double it. For 3 weeks it
was a war of disappearing traps and signs.
I
won that battle with a certified letter to my developer
neighbor letting him know that he had got on
the wrong side of the wrong person by poisoning cats, and I had installed surveillance
cameras that could see everything on the block. Anyone putting out
poison for cats would be recorded, and I would make it my personal life's work
to see them taken away in handcuffs.
The traps did not reappear. And the signs thereafter stayed put. But the damage was done. Two
cats dead, one missing, the whole colony upset, and me beside
myself with anger and fear for them; back to twisting that Rubik's
Cube... around and around and around and around...
night and day and afternoon. What am I going to do with all these cats?! They were never mine to
begin with. I'm NOT
that cat lady. But I have to take care of
them. Will I get winter rentals? Am I not listing in the right places? Is this whole thing just a losing ridiculous proposition? Should I take a tenant? Should I just
sell before I lose everything? OMG, what
on
EARTH am I going to do with all these CATS!?
I made a million
more phone calls that went nowhere. At one point Aunt Betty found
someone willing to take my feral cats at a private sanctuary upstate, but it all
fell apart when I tried to get help trapping, holding and
transporting the cats. I can't do all that on my own. With asthma.
That lady may still be willing to take them, but I need reliable,
committed, hands-on help to do the job. Without that, it's just a pipe dream. Because once we start it has to go all the way to the end. There can be no cat left behind.
At least my
strong letter
put an end to the poisonings. But who knows what will happen when that building is finished and there are new people in there who probably won't like cats.... around and around and around and around.
A year later, it has just been revealed, in all it's sickening sickeningness, exactly what is going up on that parcel next door to me. I knew it would be a large,
multi-family building, too big for the space and right up to
the property line per the pattern with these developers. But this is going to be a 4-storey, 8-family building with parking, and a medical office. Yes, you heard me right. 4-storeys, 8-families, parking, doctor. On a single family plot. 2.5 feet away.
Not
dramatic enough? Not yet proof of a fatune? Ask me
when I
learned of this!
I learned of it as I stood opposite my developer neighbor
before a Supreme Court Justice while begging for a restraining order against him. This I had to do (at a cost of $310 in filing fees plus a $50 process server) to stop his
constant, brazen and contemptuous trespassing on and destroying
my property, as well as cutting into the concrete at a bogus point, claiming it was the property
line. In fact it was 4" - 8" over my property line, and was a clear attempt to claim more space for his skyscraper than legally belongs to him.
Oh, what fun it's been. Particularly the day I arrived to find my entire back yard swarming with hardhats, and 2/3 of my yard (which is to say MY yard, behind MY house...) piled high with their construction materials, debris and tools. There were stacks of wooden sheets appr. 6' x 12' x 1" piled in a mountain taller than my head. There were bundles of 8 foot steel rods weighing who knows how many pounds or tons clustered together in bunches all over the lawn killing my plants and grass; drills and tools and wires lying all over the ground; the cats' shelters kicked aside for their convenience, and men walking all over my property wherever, however it most facilitated their work. Exactly as if they had permission to do this.
You may imagine that I lost control of my temper seeing this scene on my property which had already been the venue for this crew's repeated, outrageous infringements. And you would be exactly right. "Who's that screaming?" they said in Brooklyn.
How about the day I arrived to prepare for the next guest and found the wooden "safety" partition around my neighbor's construction site turned inside out, with the support beams 4" over my property line and (24) 8" long x 1/2" round giant screw bolt things exposed and sticking out 12" into my alley. That's 12" into an alley that is only 30" wide after he filled every inch of his own space. With 18" of alley left to squeeze through, any one of those could have taken a leg off. Or torn a chunk out of your arm. There were 24 of them along the length of my alley, evenly spaced. That wall of spikes positively shredded my umbrella. Whereupon I had to stand in pouring rain with no cover taking pictures of that and my personal favorite, the 4" nail with the rusty point standing at a perfect right angle to my eyeball. One wrong step and out go the lights. No more cartoons, no more paintings, no more writing. It's over.
That was the last straw. And here we stood in court. The judge asked the defendant exactly what
was being
built on his property. After refusing to answer me for over a year, the defendant was compelled to tell the court, under
oath, what it will be.
And
there it was. The full sickening scope of it. And with that, what was previously a homey, residential, quiet street,
the place my mother chose to live for the last 30 years of her life and leave to me so I could have the same sense of peace and home and refuge (even if I didn't love it - even if it needed more work than the sunken Titanic), will be an
over-developed, encroached, noisy, congested eyesore. Lord knows what
the property value will be now with this monstrosity on my north side
blocking the light and air and view. It's
not even a McMansion. It's a Crackerjack box. A cube. It's back on it's own side
of the property line after being ordered to move, but.... man, I dunno. Is this
really where I am two years after both my parents died? In
court, fighting, no peace, scraping for every dime, struggling to feed 18 cats? Really?
My mother's house, after the renovation I did, is beautiful. It gets rave reviews from guests across the board, and constant compliments. I forget sometimes, being so mired in the unhappy details, how lovely it is now. It
really does draw you in and make you want to stay. The view of
the yard from the new kitchen window makes the house. The sunny kitchen breakfast nook is such a nice spot to sit with a cup of morning tea; watch the black squirrel that comes along the back fence, the shadows of the oak tree's leaves dance over the lawn in the morning sun. At that hour, you can actually hear yourself think.
I've never loved the area, but I had come to the precipice of almost
surrendering, for the sake of all the cats, to the idea of maybe moving in
there someday. It could not bring rental income with me in it, lord knows how I'd pay the bills, but that was the last obstacle, once
I got over all the others, to my resistance to the idea of possibly, maybe, moving in there.
That was before this revelation. Now that I know what's going up on my north side, living there is
not an option. Certainly not while it's a construction site, and
absolutely never if it's going to be a hive of activity for 8 families, a
doctor, his staff, their patients and all their cars. Any or all of whom may hate cats. And
with that it's a Hindenberg Zeppelin crashing and burning all over again. And I'm spinning this Rubik's Cube. Around and around and around and around...
omg. What am I going to do with all these cats!?
all these cats....
all these cats...
- JD
------------------------------
FOOTNOTES: I was not granted a restraining order. The judge did not find "irreparable harm." However, the defendant stipulated to respect my survey as to the location of the property line, refrain from trespassing, and fix at his own expense all items damaged in the course of his construction. Of course he cannot fix Opal, Garnet and Jack A. His name is David Lynn, his office is in Richmond Hill, Queens, and he's asking the public to throw flaming bags of dog poop on his porch for Halloween. (Just kidding. I wouldn't really publish his details. But not because he doesn't deserve it.)
