Greetings,
As many people who live with cats have found, our lives are not exactly our own. I bet there are even dogs who have serven…. nah. Dogs worship humans. OUR four-footed boss–er um companions have certain demands that they insist we must adhere to. Even now, Miu sits behind me and with a very penetrating voice, demands that I let him in my lap to give him hugs and pets. Others are helping my husband fill out very important forms on his computer. (Much to his dismay because he doesn’t think he needs ‘help’.) We would like to eventually start or join a feline non-profit organization to provide sanctuary for domestic abandoned and feral cats as we are also in demand from many such felines in our area. Before we can get to that point, we have a couple of blocks in front of us we would like to smash with our superhero picks and we invite you to help with our cause.
Firstly, we DID own our own home, but in 2019 an earthquake hit our area and our home was condemned. We adjusted. A house just down the street was for rent and we were accepted as tenants. We have faithfully paid rent ON TIME to our absentee slum lady, putting up with the haphazard idiots she’s sent to repair the property. We stopped telling her things were broken and fixed or put up with the problems on our own and out of our money. I haven’t had a hot shower in years. Our pipes are so gummed up with minerals they need replaced. Bleach is our friend, (it eats at the minerals),–and forget putting toilet paper in the toilet. We have a separate receptacle for that. The bathroom and kitchen sinks are useless. We wash dishes camping style–outside with a hose. A few months ago, the light switches decided they didn’t want to work anymore, so Walmart made a bundle on our purchases of extension cords for the few sockets that work. Why don’t we have the landlady fix this stuff? Well, fixing the plumbing alone would require that we move out. We have nowhere to go. Until…
We looked into repairing our house. We thought we would do it on our own if we just got a little money set aside. Then….. Covid. Forget about saving money, now it was a matter of getting enough money each week to feed the cats inside and outside of two residences, because, of course, the rental house had….if you guess cats living under the house, YOU WIN! Prices on cat food went up and sometimes the stores didn’t even have any. The feral population jumped as people dumped their animals because they couldn’t pay for food. We were barely making it. We used to buy wet and dry food. The canned wet food became too much and we stopped buying it. We struggled just get dry food, but we did it! We came through to the other side of covid. Then the car broke, then the husband lost his job. (I’m skipping the struggle to get unemployment approved. WHAT a nightmare!) We had a friend help get us new car, Hubby got a new temp job while he looked for one in his preferred venue, and we started digging stairs back to the surface of our sinkhole. We looked at our house again. This time with the idea of getting professionals to fix it, then selling. We want to leave the state. One realtor with a contractor friend looked at our house and said, “I’ll give you $15,000 because of the utilities, but it probably isn’t worth fixing to sell. I just happen to have a house a few blocks from here coming up for sale. I’ll take 30K down. I’ll give you fifteen for the house and you come up with the other fifteen and I’ll bank roll the rest.” SOLD!!!
So we need help getting $15,000. The total cost of the house is $59,900 but the monthly payment is cheaper than our rent by several hundred dollars. PLUS the darn NEW car developed the most unique way to die. The crank case has a hole in it! How the neck did THAT happen?! There’s a freaking crack in it with a thumb-sized hole! So we need to get a freaking car as well. The previously mentioned friend has a car he’s lending us, so YAY, job saved, but we have to have a another new car. So that’s another $5,000. All together we need to find about $20,000.
Another motivation for moving? The landlady sent a minion to look at our evaporative cooler, which we’ve kept limping along and I guess she’s decided it needs replaced cause she’s raising our rent. Raising. Our. Rent. On a house with barely functioning electricity and toilet. Pipes that need replaced through the connection to the city, (and it was like this when we moved in), water damage from a poorly repaired roof that caused the ceiling to fall in, (and what a pain THAT was to fix! And its still not right.) Holes in the walls (there when we moved in) from uncompleted and poor construction of a new wall she SAID she would send men to finish. (Cardboard is a GREAT invention :)) I mopped the floor ONE TIME and the paint came off the floor cause its not sealed. Can’t wash the walls, cause, you know the paint comes off. SHE is supposed to pay our water bill, but we’ve been doing it and she complains when she gets a late payment notice. Use the kitchen or bathroom sinks and you’ll be walking on water, but not because you’re Holy. (Water is pushed back up from the clogged sewer below the house.) Bathroom faucet broke, so gotta fix that. (The pipe behind the wall squirted out another lake before we noticed a problem and shut the main water off, tore the paneling off the wall and plugged the valve.) The cooler is sooooo rotted through on the bottom it can’t hold the side vents in their correct positions. (Some tar and roof tiles can work really well by the way if you need to fix yours.) And shes raising our rent to replace it when we told her FIVE YEARS AGO it needed to be replaced! We’ve been grateful this house has been here for us despite it all, but the rent is sucking us dry. We could be using that rent money for our feline dependents. As we did when we lived in our now condemned house.
When we get the other part of the down payment, we’re taking all the feral cats with us when we move! We used to work with the humane society to spay and neuter the cats. The program stopped for awhile, but they have a new one. However, its a co-pay. Still, we will be getting these guys spayed and neutered to limit the feral population. Meanwhile, we give them sanctuary, a shelter under the house, medical treatment as they allow, food, and water. Especially the water. This is a desert. Help us help them. Yeah we benefit by moving out of this place, but it really is a necessity. We appreciate any help given. Shoot, cat food is a help! I know we aren’t the only ones. Hubby talked to a lady who said she had a couple hundred she cared for! Yep. That’s just about right.
Sincerely,
The Barrera’s
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