Living
The good news: I’m 31.1 hours into my private pilot certificate and now I’m ready to start my solo “cross-country” flights. One of my homework assignments this week is to chart out a flight to some airport at least 50 nm away (that’s “cross-country”); I’ll probably fly there next Saturday morning and that will take care of my first of three solo cross-country flights. Last Thursday morning I took a plane up all by myself and did some maneuver practice right north of the town of Maricopa. I did about 10 minutes of slow flight, including turning 360 degrees in each direction, did two power-on and three power-off stalls (the power-on stalls needed work), some S-turns and turns around a point and then flew back and drove off to work. It was a nice way to start a day!
The bad news: I’m opening myself to advice about living with felines versus living with roommates versus living alone. I’ve been living with a cat, Zach, since January. At the end of April two more cats moved in, Simon and Addicus. Individually, none of these cats are bad (though the majority of my readers know my stance on all things feline). However, Simon and Zach do not get along and their strife causes disruptions which range from leaving tufts of hair from the fights to computer equipment being knocked over and stuff getting unplugged (including the phone system). I learned to get along with Zach and deal with the normal things that come along with cats, like their tendency to vomit on important things semi-randomly. The tripling of the cats, however, has left me much less happy. In fact, at times I find myself not wanting to come home to deal with one cat whining about not being able to go outside and the other cat being chased by and hissing at the third. I like things fairly orderly and quiet and I’m having difficulty imposing sufficient order and simply can’t manage the quiet at the times I most want it. Sometimes I pick up my laptop and flee to my room, carefully pirouetting around the briefly-opened door to keep cats from rushing in to hide. It’s been a bit more than six weeks since the cat numbers here tripled and apparently things have gotten remarkably better: Less cat yowling and fewer scratchings and bitings, or something like that. I have difficulty seeing the improvement.
I’m not a cat person. In fact, at this point I would just claim to not be a pet person.
I’ve started looking at places to move; I’ve found several apartments I like and have made a list of favorites. However, I’m not sure I want to live alone; I’m worried that I’ll end up with all of my social interaction occurring at work and just being lonely for a year. I’m now looking for roommate situations to move into, however Chris has pointed out that roommates could well be worse than the cats (which is true). Roommates, however, tend to be trainable. Or I could stay here and try to be less verbally hostile about the cats and deal with the daily annoyances. And no, the cats aren’t budging, so any flexibility must come from me.
I’m not sure what to do. I’m idly checking into roommate opportunities but I don’t want to leave my brother. I could get a nice, big, quiet apartment three miles from work and move in next week, but I don’t want to live alone nor leave my brother. Everything I’m looking at is up in the northern part of the valley, up near work. Chris lives in the south part of the valley, and additionally, my flight training airport is on this side of the valley. I have comfort reasons to stay here another 10 months, but if I do I’m going to have to become numb to the cats somehow.
Other than this, life is good. However, regarding my living situation, this is my solicitation for advice. Please comment below.
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Honey;
You are on the right path, listing the pros and cons and attempting to be more flexible regarding the situation. Keep the path of communication open and I think it will work out for you. Never, never let this cause a schism between you and your brother.
Social interaction does drop once you live alone. I’ve been in that situation since Thanksgiving. That’s mostly why you’ll find me at Razzoo’s 2-7 nights a week: social interaction.
But there are times when living alone is great. Everything in this apartment is MINE. Everything is where I want it to be. Only movies, music, and shows that I like will play within these walls.
Oh, and I received your card, and, as per instructions, opened it in the company of others. Hilarious, man =)
Is there a reason why you have three cats now? Are they permanent additions or is a temporary situation? Having multiple anything is difficult petwise but I think cats can be more difficult in certain respects. I’ll poke Gremlin over here in case she has some advice. I’m sure you’ve brought up your concerns to the cats’ owner(s)- also, cats shouldn’t be puking regularly (that’s not normal).
I would suggest getting a water gun to ‘mark your territory’ but I don’t know how good that would be around computers, and more than that, some cats don’t mind it (unless you spray them in the head like I had to start doing).
I’m sorry they’re making you so unhappy sweetie.
Squirt lemon juice and aim for the eyes!
Tae:
They’re permanent additions, all male and two of them have dominance issues.
Male cats….gah. >_>
Have they all been neutered? If not, I stongly recommend having it done, it will help a little.
That said, neutering won’t stop brawlers from brawling. But contrary to what mst people think, cats can be taught what they aren’t allowed to do.. Depending on how willing your brother is to have the both of you discipline them, that can help. A squirt gun and shouting when they mess with things (like computers) they aren’t supposed to is how I stopped mine from clawing the carpet. Picking them up by the scruff of the neck and putting their head under a running faucet is a more severe way of letting them know they’re out of line - I did this the first time my new stray (15 pound male) attacked Piper, and he hasn’t since. “Time out” can help calm them down if they’re fighting as well - putting one them alone in the bathroom for 5 minutes can stop a fight and defuse some of their aggression.
And whether or not disciplining them will be acceptable, I would suggest *trying* to make friends with the cats. Showing them a little interest or kindness will prevent them from hating you between water gun-times, and spending a little time with you will give them something to do besides fight with each other. Probably not what you want to contemplate, I’m sorry. But I think it really would help. A little affection can really help mellow aggressive cats - even if they act like they don’t want attention, I’ve never known a cat *want* to be ignored.
Figaro was a single cat her entire life, until we got Piper and the kittens. She despised them, and was terrified of them. It took two years for her to grow accustomed to them. At first I had to let her stay in my bedroom away from all the others - now she’ll sleep in the same room as them. She still won’t let them touch her, or sit near her for too long, but she’s adjusting. Part of the cause for the long time it took was her age, true. It took alot of patience and increasing her contact with the others by degrees for her to get used to it. What I’m saying here is, that unfortunately there probably isn’t a swift solution to your situation, and that it may take a great deal of patience.
Again, not what people like to hear, I’m sorry. 
Hmm… This is indeed a tough question.
You by and large know my adventures with roommates from my blog. Either you must put up enough money to filter out riff-raff, or get your own place by yourself. There are no guarantees with random roommates. And of course remember that paying extra money kind of kills the biggest reason for having roommates. Otherwise, you are likely to end up in a place like I did, where the police started visiting semi-regularly in the last month at around midnight looking for people. In the course of the ten months or so I was there, we had a crackpot Mexican who brought in another illegal, a crackhead, and a guy who lied to us entirely about his legal status and who is now almost certainly a fugitive, and these are just the most notable annoyances. The prices you quoted to me in Phoenix sounded similar to the ones I was seeing in Orlando, and I was paying $585 a month rent. Think long and hard about how annoying those cats are… Humans have the capacity to be MUCH more annoying. You must also think about the financial arrangement: contract or month to month? Contract locks you in, but you get more guarantees. Month to month you can leave anytime, but anyone can be booted quick too. That’s how we dumped the crackhead in a weekend. Speaking of which, I’m still waiting for my security deposit back; it was $585. I’d hate to have to go by Orlando after nine weeks on my way home… But I really do think she just forgot, she’s a good landlord. You might not be so fortunate in that either.
I’d recommend going it alone if you do get a room, otherwise you’re taking a big chance on the other guy. Yes you can meet some great people you wouldn’t meet otherwise, but you can also meet people like that crackhead who you wouldn’t have met otherwise too. Also, regarding their trainability: you are trainable too. Be careful of such simplistic assumptions. I normally wouldn’t have tried Bacardi 152 on my own, except they bought it all and were extremely hospitable (they felt they were introducing me to a very fun activity) and it would have been bad to just refuse more than $40 of hospitality so blatantly. Then we lit some of the stuff on fire, which wasn’t the best idea in the world.
You’ll have to become more socially outgoing by going to the places where people you like might hang out if you do move out, otherwise you will be just interacting at work like you think. I found a Scout troop I liked, and I was working on getting into the Orlando LUG before I left the place. I was quite lonely in the place, but at least part of that was my fault because I was studying investment science so intently (it replaced my recreational gaming time plus some extra; I found it that fascinating). The other half though was that I was surrounded by people who weren’t like me at work or in my rooming situation. There were some good philosophical discussions with one guy, but that’s it, and they mostly centered around women (Patrick has been through three divorces and is financially on the rocks).
You might just be better off with the cats. Why are there now three cats? How did that happen? That said, I’ve been working out here with mules in mule trains, and I’ve found that callous indifference seems to work well. Hit the cats with a squirt gun when they bug you, and hit them with compressed air around sensitive stuff. You don’t have to be their friend; they just have to know your territory and to stay out of your way. You don’t even have to get them to carry stuff for you, so your standards for treating them are much lower. Just don’t get yourself arrested.
I read my end statement aloud with the staffers here, savoring it, and one of them recommended airsoft on the cats.
I think it’s brilliant. Later!
[...] My brother and his gal are in Grand Cayman this week, leaving me with the cats whose behavior hasn’t changed appreciably since I last wrote about them. I’m keeping them all fed, of course, but I can’t keep them from fighting. The hinged gate which has been carefully located in the stairwell to separate cats when I’m not home has proven ineffective; the cats can push their way underneath it, despite there being only about an inch of clearance. I haven’t seen it happen, but that’s the only explanation due to the gate’s design. [...]
[...] was largely due to the cats. As I blogged previously, I haven’t enjoyed living with 3 cats, two of which regularly fight. Now I [...]