As we have mentioned, over and over again, Sylvester and Smokey make life hard for Chloe and Dusty. Often it’s just intimidation. Sometimes their very presence is enough. Friday evening we let Smokey, Sylvester and Chloe in for feeding. Chloe is not particularly comfortable with that.
Notice Sylvester’s tail — it’s pretty much upright now.
We had the appraisal of our current house on Wednesday. The appraiser had said she was coming around lunch, so we worried about not being able to get our traditional Wednesday huevos rancheros, but we managed to fit it in before she arrived. That’s a major step in the process of selling. We, of course, have no idea how she will evaluate the house. We have certainly spent enough time and effort to make it as good as possible.
With that step out of the way, the closing date of July 21 looms.
The painter says he will complete his work by this weekend. He has a regular, full-time job as a painter and is doing our work when he can, which has caused the process to drag out longer than I had hoped. The plumber installed the toilets on Wednesday and is coming back Thursday to plumb the vanity in the guest bathroom, assuming I can get holes drilled in the back so it can be pushed up into place. I’ll need help unloading the master bath vanity, which currently sits on my trailer in the garage. The electrician needs to install the exterior lights and hang the ceiling fans in the living room and master bedroom, as well as the vanity lights in the two bathrooms.
When the vanity is unloaded, I can pick up the 12 interior doors that have been waiting at the building supply store and start hanging them. Leah and I have to decide on how tall to make the baseboards. I bought a six-inch and an eight-inch board Wednesday night so we can compare them. After putting them down in the living room, I lean towards the six-inch, although several sites I read recommend eight inches for a nine-foot ceiling. After we decide and I buy a fortune in pre-primed boards, Leah and I have to throw a painting party. And then I install baseboards for a while. And trim the doors and windows.
All of this in the next two weeks. That’s why “scary good.”
Oh, yes, Leah is worried about the cat situation. I have to fit in building two cat pens sometime before we move so that we can acclimatize the cats to their new home and lessen the danger that they will take off into the woods when we move them.
Leah is afraid they will travel up the road to our current house, so we got a sign.
Chloe and Zeke faced off in a friendly way on the front walk last week.
Chloe isn’t afraid of the dogs, and especially not Zeke. Sometimes the dogs sniff her a little too enthusiastically and she backs away or swats at them, but usually it’s a pretty casual affair.
I’m adding another picture to what is usually a cat post because a bird trapped itself in our garage on Thursday.
This time it wasn’t a hummingbird, although it had the same problem figuring out how to escape that the hummingbirds have. At first I thought it might be a swift since we have one nesting under our deck, but the beak doesn’t look right to me, based on comparing to images I found online. I’m not a bird expert so I can’t really identify this one. It’s small, dark on top and gray below.
It couldn’t find its way out for quite a while. We were worried that Sylvester would sit around waiting for it to tire out and then pounce, but apparently that did not happen. The bird was gone after while and we didn’t find any sign of it.