All the kids are out partying and this old maid is home with the animals. And the cat is in heat. It is D#1’s cat which I rarely see since she lives in D#1’s room and associates me with the dog which she usually hides from. When D#1 first brought home this cat she told me it wasn’t spayed. And I told her it needed to be and she did go out and buy the carrier that the free spaying van requires. And then it didn’t go into heat. For months it didn’t go into heat and I assumed one of two things – it had been spayed and she just hadn’t been told because the chain of information around the cat was rather flimsy, or that it hadn’t been spayed but had some kind of hormonal problem and wasn’t going into heat. Well, now it is in heat and I am wondering if the real problem is the cat’s age. D#1 had said she was about five years old, but D#1 is very bad with time and numbers. I didn’t think she was *that* bad, but who knows.
This is the second time the cat has gone into heat. The first time was, I thought, the last. I had assumed that her girlfriend or D#2 would have made sure she took care of that one since they sleep closer to the cat and have to hear it all the time. But now they are all out and it is creeping closer and closer to my room and yowling.
D#1 had a puppy for six months During which we had horrible conflicts over what “responsible” meant until she did realize that if I wasn’t willing to take care of the pup, she couldn’t either and we found it a new home. I spent sleepless nights listening to the puppy barking. D#1 would come home and, to my complaints, reply “you should have told her to sit.” You know, sitting fixes everything. Up till now she has been pretty responsible for the cat but, well, I will try hard not to think “here we go again” and harder to not start worrying about what will happen when the baby comes in January.