Of Crystals and Crickets

The Big Clean from my last post did not get wrapped up quite as tightly and quickly as I had hoped... apparently the scale of a "Big" clean changes considerably when you've increased the size of your home by 300%. My 200SF studio in Cambridge could be big cleaned easily in two days... I guess that means I should have budgeted a whole week for this one? Well, it continued into a second weekend at least, and more on that in a moment.

Naturally, after investing some time and capital into a steam cleaner rental, something had to happen to overturn all the value realized in short order. So it went like this: on September 10, I'm about to step out the door for work. I was several minutes early (which meant I had not shaven or had to pack a lunch) and Fenway intercepts me at the door in grand tripping hazard fashion. Rather than simply waiting for his customary three treats thrown in Olympic curling style across our faux wood floor, he started a meow... long, drawn out, low, and very unhappy-sounding. Definitely not normal. As he kept up the pained meow, I went to check on the litter box (feeling that perhaps he was getting uppity about how often I clean out the box and rather than retaliate with a huge cat poop on the floor as he usually does, he was going to launch a protest march instead). Well, the surprise was that it didn't need to be cleaned out at all, really, and there was one tiny little petrified piddle in the brand spanking new litter I has put in several days before. Ruh roh. Someone's having trouble peeing. Sure enough, when I went back to check on him, he had his belly exposed, his leg drawn up like he was trying an upside-down pee, and crying. Short of pointing at his penis and saying "it's broken, Dad! It's broken!!" I think I had all the information I needed from his end.

I was able to get him an appointment at the vet--his first since moving to Raleigh--that afternoon. The kindly vet and vet assistants left me in the exam room as they took him back to the equipment to, presumably, squeeze his bladder until he peed. Or perhaps there's a secret pee button I don't know about? Do cats have prostates? Anyway, after a fifteen minute wait, the vet came back and told me Fenway had "a lot going on" in his urine... I hope no one ever tells me I have a "lot going on" in any of my bodily fluids, because it just sounds horrible. It turns out that not only does he have a urinary tract infection, but he has bladder crystals (apparently common in boy cats) that may be impeding his flow, or even ready to cinch it off completely. Well, that explains the tiny pee nugget in his box and the pained meow at the door this morning...

So what does this all have to do with the Big Clean? (Fenway is fine now, by the way, after ten days of antibiotics and special crystal-melting kibble.) The morning Fenway stopped me at the door, I'd sniffed a cat-musky scent around the apartment--the same smell most of his old toys have. Eww, I thought, hope that dissipates quickly, especially since I spent ALL LABOR DAY WEEKEND making smells leave my apartment. Well, it turns out that urinary infected boy cats spray their foul and pungent fluids all over the place. And carpets are preferred. Nice, clean, bouncy, accommodating carpets. So, within a week of their first major clean in over a year, my carpets now smell like super-concentrated cat pee. With crystals.

Suffice it to say, the Big Clean took to the outdoors last weekend. My chief outdoor task was to reclaim my patio closet, which had become a zoo habitat enclosure for large insects and spiders (you know, the dark little room where zoo creatures go to be depressed and disappoint wide-eyed children). I'd known since I moved in that a family of camel crickets had squatters rights in the closet--they all but helped me move my bike and spare kitty box in when I arrived. But I have to admit their presence bothered me. And their otherworldliness, as noted in a blog post last year. So part of the Big Clean was to evict the whole damn lot of them and once again feel comfortable that I could flip a circuit breaker in the closet's electrical panel without being beset by two dozen little aliens with huge tail thingies and heads and eyes and mouths and pokey things...

I'll spare you the grim details but will take credit for trying to remove them peacefully at first. They very much loved that closet, with its reliable moisture, darkness, half-open cans of wet paint, and smaller moving things to snack on. So they were resistant, obstinant even. A couple actually stood up to me--if they had convinced even ten others to do so simultaneously, it would have been enough to get me running off the patio flailing my hands like a little girl. But me and the broom got the job done, and until they regroup and mount a counter offensive, my closet is once again part of my human habitat to mistreat and ignore as I see fit.

The Big Clean

Once again I'm amidst a disruptive moving of furniture and hardcore cleaning of apartment whilst the sound of tennis pops from my TV. Spring cleaning, French Open. Traditional moving day, Wimbledon. Fall cleaning, US Open. This is, apparently, the best thing I can do with a 3-day weekend...

Yesterday was my first amateur use of a steam carpet cleaner. Actually, this one didn't involve steam unless I was using it wrong--just hot water, expensive soapy additive, a vibrating bristle brush, and a hell of a lot of patience. I was hoping for magic, I think--drag the Rug Doctor (trademark) across the carpet and all of a sudden... new carpet! Carpet I would want to roll around on nekkid and take a big ole sniff of. But, the reality was less spectacularly pseudo-sexual. What the Rug Doctor was able to do was take out the camoflage-patterned stain-and-Resolve-bleached matrix that was making it difficult to know the true color of the carpet. Or at least subdue it. What the Rug Doctor could not do, though, was make the highly-trafficked portions of the carpets at the doorways look like the rest of the carpet, which was the "magic" goal. So it looks like I'm due to be embarassed by my carpets for as long as they're there. I will say, though, after letting it all dry overnight, there is marked improvement in the look and feel. They are now ready to once again serve as the substrate for huge clumps of hair and cat barf. The stuff that came out of that tank--out of the carpet--was... well, let's just say I can't believe I let my feet touch those carpets before. Eww.

I had the opportunity to talk to a 56-year-old version of myself at the bar last night. Yes, I went to a bar on Big Clean weekend--my fatigue and disappointment with Day 1 required some medication. I brought my flash cards along to study as I imbibed, and the older gentleman sitting on the neighboring bar stool caught sight and decided to start up a comversation loosely founded on architecture. Naturally I looked a little distracted to begin with, but he was already an untold number of drinks towards oblivion, so he continued. Apparently, he's single and renting at 56. Very displeased with the quality of housing in the area. In a job with a potentially limited future and concerned about being laid off. So, I thought, better keep this conversation going and see where I'll be in 25 years. It didn't sound fun. Mostly boring, with a good dose of bitterness and regret. Is there hope for Warren, my 56-year-old self? Let's hope so. The world needs to cure its Warrens.