The Litterbox

Odds and ends and bits and pieces, all bundled together with flushable clay.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 , early evening

Off to Canada!

I’m off for a short trip to Canada for Mother’s Day… Flippy will be holding down the fort, so wish her good luck!  At least on this trip we know that no cats will go into heat (no cats who are on the premises today, that is).  I wish I had time to write more, but the last three days have just flashed by, so all I have time for is a photo or two of the foster kittens I babysat a couple of weeks ago.  I only had them for 5 days, and was offered a chance to babysit them again this weekend, but I had to decline.  I bet they’d be a big hit on an airplane, though!

I miss you all, and I hope trip will be refreshing and calming so I can get back to happy blogging again.  Now, kittens!  They are about 7 days old in these photos, they’re brother and sister, and they love having belly rubs:

kittens_0408_3

kittens_0408_2

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Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/06 at 07:08 PM
The Litterbox • (4) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 , evening

Up with the birds

I often keep an odd schedule, and the past 24 hours have been one of those days where I’ve been “up all night”.  I didn’t get up until about 6pm yesterday, and then I had my functional time (I use the term “functional” loosely) while it was dark and quiet outside.  Flippy hasn’t been feeling well and was in bed, so it was just me and the cats, enjoying silence, some tapioca pudding, and American Idol.  Around 7am I was sitting at my desk, noticing the sun coming up outside.  There was a cool breeze coming through the window, and I felt very peaceful.  Then I heard the chirping sounds of birds… quiet at first, but getting louder and so pretty!  I thought to myself that if every morning was this fabulous, I was going to start getting up at sunrise!  I was enjoying the sounds of the birds so much that I went to the window in the livingroom, so I could listen more closely and enjoy the view of the mountains… and I realized that the bird sounds were only on TV.  Bah, what a let-down!  All I could hear from outside was traffic (and I saw a few pigeons), but on the television there was a show called “Sunrise Earth”.  It seemed to just be scenery and a nature soundtrack, and I guess the high-pitched chirps carried to my desk while the rest of the sounds were too low to be noticeable.  It was nice, but it would have been nicer if I lived in that beautiful place on TV!  I’d better be careful what I wish for, as I’m sure the mortgage company would be happy to see me living in a meadow, sans even cardboard box, sooner rather than later. 

Speaking of the mortgage company, we have until Thursday to have some paperwork notarized and to send them 3 grand or the house will go up for auction on Friday.  The $3000 isn’t a mortgage payment, it’s the fee we need to pay for the “privilege” of having our mortgage reworked.  When the paperwork arrived a few days ago, we realized that our new payment will be $500 more than our old, atrocious payment, not the $200 that we thought.  It doesn’t really matter… we couldn’t afford the old payment, so we can’t afford a more expensive one.  Our only remaining option is for Flippy to declare bankruptcy, which will again delay foreclosure, and to hope that the intervention of a lawyer might encourage the mortgage company to offer a more reasonable payment.  Does anyone reading want to buy our house and then sell it back to us in a beautiful owner-financed deal?!  George Soros, are you out the there?  Oprah? 

Something interesting happened a month or so ago that I didn’t bother to blog about.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up by writing about this “something”, and to have you all reinforce my hopes about “something”, because I knew that if it didn’t come to pass the disappointment would be worse.  Ultimately, it didn’t come to pass, so my instincts were unfortunately correct.  I was trying revese psychology on the universe and it didn’t work!  In any case, what happened was that the office manager position at our vet’s office opened up again.  This is a job I’ve applied for twice in the last couple of years, but I’ve always been rejected for the position with reasons like I’m “too nice” (ha!).  This time I found out about the job opening before the job was actually open, so I took my time and prepared a very personal application, rather than a more business-like one.  Since I’d last applied for the position I’d taken a couple of relevant classes to increase my chances of being hired, and I truly hoped that this would be a case of “third time’s a charm”.  I also hoped that we were finally going to have some good luck, because the job paid exactly the amount I’d need to get approved for a mortgage to buy our house.  Everything was falling into place, except that I didn’t get the job, again.  This time at least the vet decided to not hire anyone for the position, but it’s hard to not feel like the fates are out to get me.  I’ve heard through the grapevine that the vet is considering creating a new position, sort of an “office assistant” job, and that she is considering me for that.  However, rather than being a job which pays $70K like “office manager”, this new position would be $9-$10/hr.  A job with benefits, especially veterinary care benefits, is better than none, but the pay wouldn’t even cover half our mortgage payment, let alone all the other bills.  I make more than that in half the time in my contract position with the charity, so in some ways it seems like it might be two steps backwards.  No point worrying about the job until it exists, and until it’s offered to me, but it’s not going to be the solution that I’d dreamed of.  Now you see why I didn’t tell you about it?

If I had to summarize everything that’s going on, I think I’d say “tiring”.  Rather than each day being full of possibilities, it’s like each day is scary because something else might go wrong.  I can certainly think of many positive aspects to life, and we have it better than many people, but it’s not normal to have to live with the incessant sense of foreboding and disaster.  Nothing is fun, nothing is enjoyable, nothing can be bought or indulged in without guilt, and we panic about things like overdraft fees and over-the-limit fees and such daily.  I don’t know what it’s like to live in poverty, but I’m understanding how it is to be “poor”, and how it gets you into a pit keeps digging itself deeper.  As an example, we can’t afford to buy Flippy’s meds in 30 day doses anymore, so we tried to buy them in one week increments.  We then found out that if you buy 7 pills, it costs $10 per pill, whereas if you buy $30 pills, it’s only $8 per pill.  The less you can afford, the more you have to pay.  If you miss a credit card payment, you’ll get a late payment fee, and if the fee puts you over your credit limit, you’ll get another fee.  Then you have to come up with the payment you missed plus another $80 that you didn’t have in the first place, and if you don’t, you’ll get more of those fees every month.  All the while, your credit score goes down, down, down, and your interest rates go up, up, up.  I tried to get a “payday loan” for $250 last week, and I planned to repay it in 7 days, but the interest charge was going to be $89.  It doesn’t fucking stop…

I will say that the animals are all great (please, please, please just let me have that one thing).  They’re all still eating Wild Kitty or Harrison’s or something very good for them, because I know their health is tied to their diet and I don’t want to skimp.  I know some of them feel our stress, but others are just happy and cuddly and they make us laugh every day.  Flippy and I have stopped eating everything but oatmeal and yogurt, but the weight-loss will make us faster and sleeker so we can run away from the bill collectors, bwah ha ha…

This blog entry started on a fairly good-humoured note and then it deteriorated, sorry.  But, that’s what’s up.  Has anyone read any good books lately?  Have your pets done anything funny?  Hung any spammers by their toenails?  Entertain me with stories of your good times smile Oh, I know what’s new for me and that I liked—I caught an episode of “Barking Mad” on Animal Planet and thought it was super.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/16 at 09:33 AM
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Sunday, April 06, 2008 , lunch time

MyPetVideo.TV get their lawyers to be condescending to me via email

I’ve been holding out on you, and not telling you the interesting stories and “goings on”.  So, I’ll share the story about MyPetVideos.tv.  You might remember that I wrote a blog entry about them a couple of weeks ago, because I was so annoyed that they wouldn’t remove me from their subscriber list.  They kept sending their weekly newsletter to three of my email addresses, and wouldn’t stop, so I figured a blog entry would at least let me vent my frustrations.  I was actually a bit surprised when it got the company’s attention, but whatever works.  Their “administrator” wrote to me, and asked for my side of the story.  I told him I’d be trying to unsubscribe for weeks, and even told him the dates of my removal request emails (as they were still in with my “sent” mail), and he said he would investigate.  About a week later, he’d concluded his very thorough, “unbiased” investigation, and stated that I’d never asked to be removed from their list.  I was making my story up.  He conclude with some huffy and indignant stuff about how I needed to remove my blog entry immediately, because I was a liar.  He didn’t say the word, “Liar”, but he did say that I had never asked to be taken off their subscriber list, so that’s sort of the same interpretation.  I wrote back and said no, I would not remove my blog entry.  The really hilarious thing was that in the “Administrators” snotty email to me, he never denied or even addressed my claims that he sent unwanted email (aka, “spam"), and that he bought lists of people to send email to.  He also didn’t deny that the first couple months of newsletters contained absolutely no unsubscribe information, which had been another thing which initially pissed me off.  But the best part was that after he’d huffed and puffed about his company’s morals and values and you get the idea, what arrived in my email inbox but a newsletter from MyPetVideos.TV?!  In other words, after making a big production out of telling me that I’d no longer receive their emails, I got one of their emails.  It made me smile smile

Jump ahead about a week, and I get an email from a law office in CT, ordering me to remove my blog entry about MyPetVideos.tv, claiming it contained lies, defamation, yada, yada.  I wrote back and mentioned that the lawyer was paraphrasing sentences from my blog and taking them out of context, making them say things I hadn’t said.  For example, I questioned why a legitimate company would want to put their servers in Costa Rica, and suggested it would be a way to avoid following American laws.  The lawyer wrangled that down to me saying that “MyPetVideos.tv isn’t a legitimate company”.  I don’t even know what kind of insult that would be if I had said it… a lame one, if nothing else.  The lawyer also claimed that his client didn’t spam, so I told him about all the emails I’d saved as proof that I kept asking to be removed from the subscriber list, but I was not being removed.  And I explained that “spam” is email a person didn’t ask to receive, so his clients were indeed “spammers” under US law.  The lawyer said he’d take what I’d said “under advisement” with his client.  The saddest part is that I pissed the lawyer off, by telling him to “bite me”, so now he won’t communicate with me via email.  One of those sensitive types, I guess.  I’m being “punished” because I have to communicate through postal mail, oh, the humanity.

When I blog, I tell the truth.  I don’t have trouble remembering details because my entries are based on what actually happened.  I really do have proof that MyPetVideos.tv sent their newsletter to three of my email addresses without my permission.  I have proof their first emails didn’t contain information on how to get off the list—I know this because I searched high and low for their contact info via Whois, and that’s how I figured they were hosted in Costa Rica.  I have proof that I asked to be removed three times via email, and was never removed.  And if nothing else, MyPetVideos.tv doesn’t have proof that I ever asked to receive their mailings.  I didn’t fill out a form on a website, I didn’t write back to confirm my email address—you know all the steps you go through to sign up for a proper newsletter. 

I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens.  Mostly, I’m just happy to no longer receive their stupid videos (idea ripped off from YouTube and CuteOverload), although I seem to still be getting one of them.  I don’t mind removing my statement that you potentially could get spyware or malware on their website, even though that can (and has) happened from Flash ads on huge sites like MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, through no fault of the websites themselves.  I caught malware which had taken over the servers at a Canadian government website and also on a retail website where I was buying printing supplies.  It happens, and now that Flash can be infected, you need to be diligent on Flash websites.

Anyway, it was a bit of excitement to brighten up my dull week… nothing says “good times” that meeting a lawyer with no sense of humour.  The lawyer said I had, “no manners”, as if that’s my biggest concern in life.  Maybe Emily Post will want to come and teach me manners in the nice cardboard box we’re living in next month.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/06 at 12:25 PM
The Litterbox • (5) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, March 22, 2008 , the wee hours

The “Modification”

Perhaps you’ve seen or heard all the news stories about how mortgage companies are working with home owners to try to prevent foreclosure.  The stories talk about principal amounts being reduced to reflect a home’s current value, interest rates being fixed at a safe level, etc.  Well, you know Flippy’s house is in foreclosure, and that we’ve been working with the bank for quite a long time, trying to work out a “modification” that will prevent us from being escorted from the house by the sheriff.  Our zip code is number one in the country for number of foreclosures, and on our tiny street, there are at least two houses empty from foreclosure.  A bank tried to sell a house identical to ours at an auction a few weeks ago, and the house was purchased by another bank for about $275,000.  They couldn’t even find a person willing to buy it.

We got news on Thursday that our modification was approved.  After assessing our profit loss statements from the last two years, bank account records, etc., they raised our principal to $380,000, and gave us an interest rate of 8% (when average rates for a mortgage are about 6%).  Our new mortgage payment will be a couple of hundred dollars higher than the payment we couldn’t make previously, and we’re paying on an amount which is $100K more than the market value of the house.  Isn’t that just the best news?  We were told by the mortgage company to either accept it, or to have the house put up for auction on April 10th.  They said we could not negotiate with them, and that any monthly expenses we have (like the hundreds of dollars in medical expenses), don’t count towards their assessment of “available income”.  Basically, they took last year’s tax return (which I had to throw together over a weekend), looked at the GROSS income, and decided that was enough to pay the mortgage.  They didn’t care about any other expenses that we need to live, like all the doctor bills we have since we both got sick.  If I needed, say, $1000 per month in dialysis, they don’t care. 

So, we’re up Poopy Creek without a paddle, because we cannot pay the new mortgage amount any more than we could pay the old amount.  The last couple of months we’ve had less than $100 in the bank by the time we get paid, and that’s without paying a $3100 mortgage payment!  The pets still live like little kings and queens, but Flippy and I barely eat because we can’t afford anything more than the most simple, inexpensive food.  I’m having flashbacks to 18 years ago, when I lived in a sleaze bag, “by the week” motel and lived on instant mashed potatoes and marshmallow pies.  I am going to finally give up Internet living and get a normal job, and that would allow us to pay the mortgage on the real value of our home.  We hope that maybe one of our parents can step in and buy our house from us (the bank will sell it to someone else for $275,000, but won’t let us live in it for that), and then we can pay the mortgage to them until we can buy it back.  I tried to get approved for a mortgage so that I could by the house, but without a 700+ FICO score, they aren’t giving anyone a mortgage.  That’s why the real estate market is in such a funk… there are lots of houses available, and there are people who want to buy some of them, but the pure “mortgage companies” are going out of business, and banks are barely approving anyone for loans.  The people getting approved have put down about 20% too, and that’s something I couldn’t do even if I was approved.

It was entirely medical problems and medical bills which put us in this situation.  We didn’t buy a new mansion, we’ve never been on a vacation, we don’t have a second car (or even a new car, for that matter).  I’ve applied for insurance for years and am never approved because of pre-existing problems.  Flippy has insurance, but the benefits have been reduced as quickly as the premiums have risen.  She used up her pharmacy benefit for the entire year in the month of January.  Neither of us can work without medical care and our prescriptions, but it’s come down to us working just to pay for the meds and doctor visits, and there’s hardly anything left over.

Thank you for allowing me to whine.  As I said, the pets are all still well-cared for and given the best of everything.  I’ve cut down on what I give myself rather than take anything from them.  And yes (if any visitors are thinking it), the Internet is a luxury that some people could cut from their budget, but you can’t cut off the Internet if you work from home via the Internet.

I’ll write a blog entry about pets next time.  I can’t afford to take in any new ones, so there will be no orphan kitten photos this kitten season.  I can still write about the pets ones we have, however… they’re still adorable, and the only thing cheerful around here!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/22 at 02:37 AM
The Litterbox • (15) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, March 05, 2008 , lunch time

MyPetVideos.TV: SPAMMERS!

I’m sorry it’s come to this, but I have no other choice.  For about the past six months, a website called MyPetVideos.tv has been spamming three of my email addresses.  They claim that I signed up to receive their weekly newsletter, but I certainly didn’t sign up with the email address I use to receive Wee Paws donations.  In fact, the three email addresses they spam are ones that I don’t use for subscriptions, so they must have trawled the web and scooped up addresses from pet-themed websites.  For a while, they didn’t even have “remove” instructions in their emails, but now they finally do.  The problem is that they ignore removal requests!  I’ve asked for all three of my email addresses to be removed three times, over the past three weeks, and it hasn’t been done.  My removal requests aren’t even acknowledged.  So, I’m calling them out as the spammers they are.  I don’t know what they’re up to, but I’m sure they didn’t sign me up three times because they thought they were doing me a favour.  Perhaps there’s some sort of spyware or malware in the videos on their website (which would then be downloaded to your computer if you view the videos), or maybe they’ve filled their pages with advertising… I just don’t know.  I refuse to go anywhere near their site because there’s something strange going on.  Normally, I’d report them to their ISP for spamming, but they decided to get hosting in South America so they can’t be touched.  That’s another hint that they’re up to no good… what big corporation decides to set up a legitimate website and then host it in Costa Rica?

So, pass the message along that MyPetVideos.tv is a malicious website and you should not download their videos or even load their site in your browser.  Legitimate websites ask your permission to put you on their mailing list.  Legitimate websites honor removal requests.  Legitimate websites answer your questions and concerns when you write to them and ask for proof that you signed up to receive their weekly emails.  This company is bad news and they’re taking advantage of pet lovers.  Please pass the word along, and please scan your computer for malware, spyware, viruses, etc. if you’ve been to their website.  If you haven’t been to their site, I think you should stay away.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/05 at 01:51 PM
The Litterbox • (3) Comments • Permalink

Guest post!

My name is Susan Daffron and I’m the founder of the National Association of Pet Rescue Professionals (http://www.naprp.com) and the author of books on caring for adopted dogs and cats called Happy Hound (http://www.happyhoundbook.com) and Happy Tabby (http://www.happytabbybook.com).

Spay Day is February 26, this year and I thought I’d share a list of reasons why it’s so important to “fix” your pets because so many myths continue to exist when it comes to spaying and neutering. Here are three facts:

1.  Spayed or neutered animals are healthier. Female cats and dogs can’t get uterine or ovarian cancer and the possibility that the animal will get breast cancer is greatly reduced. Neutering reduces roaming and fighting and most animals lose the desire to constantly mark their territory.

2. Spayed or neutered animals live longer. Statistically, animals that have been spayed or neutered live an average of two to three years longer than unsterilized pets.

3. Spaying or neutering saves money. Spaying is a one-time cost that is tiny when compared to the cost of providing care for a mother and a litter (or litters!) of puppies or kittens.

It’s a myth that it’s good to let a pet have “just one litter” of puppies or kittens before you get her spayed. The bottom line is that by letting your pet have that “just one litter” you contribute to the problem of pet overpopulation. Even if you find homes for the puppies or kittens, those critters produce more critters and the problem grows exponentially and quickly. One cat or dog who has babies and whose babies have babies can be responsible for the birth of 50 to 200 kittens or puppies in just one year. The reproductive rate of dogs is 15 times that of humans and the reproductive rate of cats is 30 times that of humans.

Virtually every pet rescue requires that adopted pets be spayed or neutered. These people work tirelessly to save animals every day, so do your part to help them help the animals. Spay and neuter your pets!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/05 at 12:00 PM
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Thursday, February 28, 2008 , evening

Stuff for sale!

Ah, this is what life is reduced to when you want to eat more than cream of wheat every day.  I do have some stuff to get rid of, so if you’re interested in any of it, please speak up (an email would certainly work).  I’ll send it to you for free, so whatever price you pay is it.  I’d list it on eBay, but they’ll take too much of the profit and I’d have to charge more.  So, here’s what’s on the block for today:

- 4 x $5 coupons good when you purchase a 30 lb. bag of Merrick dry dog food.  In English, there are 4 separate coupons, and each is worth $5.  I’ll sell you the entire lot for $10, and I’ll mail it in a pretty envelope, too!  The coupons don’t seem to ever expire, and you need to use them at a retail store.  You can’t use them to shop online.

- I’ve got coupons for free bags of Dr. Elsey’s Precious Cat litter.  You can have a free 40 lb. bag of litter for $8, a 20 lb. bag of Cat Attract for $7 (great for kittens or cats with “litterbox issues"), and/or an 8 lb. bag of Senior Cat litter (also available in a jug of crystals) for $5.  I’ve only got two of each coupon, so speak now or forever hold your peace.  You could really use any of the litter types for any kind of cat… I like the Cat Attract, myself, as it’s really compact and the bag is small enough to carry around easily.  All the litters are clumping, and the regular, 40 lb. bag comes in scented or unscented.  I love this litter, and hate it when I have to use anything else.  I’m stocked up on litter but am “cash poor” so I’m hoping these will interest someone.  I don’t know if they can be used in Canada, but I wouldn’t want to risk it.

- organic catnip!  I’ve got an assortment of catnip toys and products… I’ll list them in another entry.

- a brand new battery for these cordless phones!  The battery is an Empire CPB-403J, which is supposedly the same as a GE TL96563, GP GP40AAK3BMX, Radio Shack 23-956, and a Sony BP-T37.

- another brand new cordless phone battery, a Lenmar CBD312.  There’s a listing of which phones this is compatible with in this eBay listing. 

Suffice to say, neither of the preceding cordless phone batteries was compatible with our cordless phone.  I don’t recommend the “trial and error” method of buying a replacement battery.  You can have either brand new battery for $4, almost all of which will go towards the postage.

I wish I had more mp3 players but alas, a girl has to run out of them sometime.  Is there anything else you can think to buy from me that you know I have, and you know you want?!  My modesty is out the window… tell me what you want and how much you’ll pay, wink, nudge.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/28 at 09:31 PM
The Litterbox • (3) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 , terribly early in the morning

Meet the Statistics

I’ve needed to write this entry for a long time.  I stalled a bit by trying to figure out if I could write song lyrics for “Meet the Statistics” to the theme of “Meet the Flintstones”, but the syllables just weren’t right.  Anything to try to cheer the entry up… now I’ll just rely on self-deprecating humour.

Flippy and I became one of the national numbers back in August of last year when we received a foreclosure notice from the bank.  I think Vegas holds the national record for most foreclosures in the population… it’s something like one in every five houses in Vegas is behind on payments and in trouble with the lender.  Unlike many newspaper stories and letters to the editor imply, this did not happen because we were greedy and bought “more house than we could afford”.  In fact, we live in the same house we’ve been in since 2001, and when we first moved in, our mortgage was barely higher than our apartment rental rate.  We ended up in this situation because of self-employment problems and medical bills.  We know we’re not alone… we live on a tiny street, and there are two other houses in the same situation.  The difference is that both those families have already moved out, but we’re still scratching and clawing, trying to hang on.

This past weekend I had to do our 2007 tax return, print a copy of our 2006 return, and write up a profit/loss statement for the first seven weeks of 2008.  That all could have been avoided Flippy could have produced a paystub, but she’s a contract worker like me.  So, the lender insisted that it instead had to be taxes and Schedule C and a lot of fuss and bother.  There’s apparently an “investor” who perhaps might “sponsor” our mortgage via our current lender, but we had to prove that if the mortgage was adjusted, we’d be able to pay it. I really don’t know if we’ll be able to pay it… it depends what the “adjustments” are going to be.  Right now our mortgage is for an amount about $100K more than the current value of our house, so I really hope the overall loan is adjusted downward, and our payment is reduced by about $1000.  That will still be a challenge for us, but at least it will be feasible.  Our last refinance was about a 18 months ago, and it was for an ARM, and if I could go back in time and change one big mistake, that would be the one!  At the time I still didn’t have my Green card so I couldn’t go and get a job, and Flippy had just had back surgery and was also housebound.  We had bills for $60,000+ arriving from various doctors and outpatient centers, and we figured that with one last loan, we could pay the medical bills and put some money into our Internet businesses and try to make them profitable again.  What we should have done was to just not pay the medical bills, but hey, our parents taught us to be responsible, so we did an irresponsible thing (in retrospect) while trying to do a responsible thing.  The medical bills were paid, but the Internet businesses never regained the success they once had.  We did have some savings from when times were better, but when you have a “rainy day fund”, it’s there to spend when it starts to, well, rain.  It’s been raining for us for a couple of years.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2002, I think, but with some pretty basic medication I could feel really good, even “normal”.  Now that I’m under incessant stress, I never feel anything close to normal.  I’m either in terrible pain or I have terrible fatigue.  Some days I’m too weak to walk up the stairs.  I stopped being able to do yardwork a couple of years ago.  I love reading, but have trouble doing it because I can’t stay awake.  I haven’t blogged much because I can’t concentrate.  If I listened to myself and was an outsider, I’d think that I lacked willpower and focus.  I’m a driven, ambitious, Type-A personality, though… no one hates the state I’m in more than me, and no one’s more frustated about it than I am.  No amount of willpower changes anything.  In fact, when I beat myself up over how beaten down I am, my symptoms just get worse.  Sometimes I think I can feel stress hormones literally eating me alive from the inside.

The one bright spot in the past couple of years has been the pets.  If I didn’t have the pets, I wouldn’t even bother to get out of bed.  I don’t know if I’d ever laugh without them, but instead I laugh every day.  I think I’m in a bad state, but can’t imagine how much worse it would be if I wasn’t surrounded by furry things (and I don’t just mean the dustballs).  While the pets add to our financial challenges when they’re sick, the day-to-day expenses have always been affordable.  We do get a lot of free food for both the dogs and cats, as well as free cat litter, so they really don’t cost us much at all.  We’ve also been so lucky to have received a few donations via Wee Paws, so we’ve been able to take in strays like Dobby, and know we’ll be able to pay for their vaccines, spays, and neuters.  The pets are cared for as well as any pets could be cared for, and that’s the biggest, scariest part for me when I consider the possibility of foreclosure.  I’d of course take them wherever we go, but I don’t know where that will be.  Maybe we’d end up at our old pet-friendly apartment complex, but even that is complicated.  How do two broke and somewhat handicapped people move a houseful of furniture and animals someplace new… and how do you fit 2100 sq. ft. of belongings (and a quarter-acre yard) into an 1100 sq. ft apartment with a balcony?  I’m too old to keep going backwards, and running an animal rescue has been a dream I’ve had my entire life.  Now that I have it, and love it, I don’t want to let it go.

I wanted to write about this for a couple of reasons.  I wanted to put a face on the foreclosure problem, other than the face of the couple who bought a 4 million dollar mansion with a stated income loan when they really only earn a combined $60000 a year.  If we were like those people, we’d be in danger of losing a 4000 sq. ft. single-storey house on a golf course right now.  I’ve always wanted to live on a golf course… they’ve got bunnies.  I also wanted to explain why I’ve had some trouble blogging since last December.  I had a “stress crescendo” over the holidays, and I think part of me is broken.  I don’t know what to do to feel well again, but I know that a small lottery winning ( or a donation of about $100,000 from Rosie O’Donnell) would go a long way towards giving me some relief.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/27 at 03:29 AM
The Litterbox • (5) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, February 23, 2008 , evening

Eli and the tooth fairy

I’m pretty happy that when my elderly dog decided to have a problem, it was a pretty basic one.  The lump that suddenly appeared on Eli’s face last week was from an abscessed molar, so treatment was tooth extraction and antibiotics.  While we had her in the office for her tooth, we also got meds for her bladder, so she’s been fixed up and is good for another 10,000 miles.  We had ZERO money to deal with this situation, and I was proven correct for all the times I’ve said that the best pet “insurance” is a good relationship with your veterinarian.  We went in and told the vet that we needed an inexpensive, temporary solution until we were able to pay for something more, but instead of just putting Eli on antibiotics to buy time, she insisted on doing the surgery that very day, and told us to just pay when we were able.  That meant permanent relief for Eli, and at least some temporary relief for us!

As for Eli’s bladder, we decided to try her on PRN because the potential negative side-effect (rapid heart beat) would be easy for us to detect, and completely reversable.  It looks as though she’s helped by just two pills per day, and so far there have been no side-effects.  It’s been so nice to get up in the morning and know I’m not going to greated by a soggy dog bed and a bunch of towels needing to be washed.  It’s nice for Dante, too… the poor guy often slept on the floor because it was the only place that wasn’t wet.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/23 at 09:43 PM
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Thursday, February 21, 2008 , lunch time

I got out of bed for this?

- our fabulous pain management doctor, who gives us free medication, and who we just started to see two months ago, has taken an indefinite leave of absence
- the company that has been giving me free food to feed the cats for the last year can’t afford to send any more food
- Eli has a golf ball-sized lump under her eye and we’re off the vet.  Wheeee!

Shoot me now.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/21 at 01:47 PM
The Litterbox • (4) Comments • Permalink
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