Damp house… confused critters…
Since I moved into this house, back in July, my primary living space has been the huge walk-out basement. My bedroom is down there, and my big-screen TV and comfy squishy sofas, perfect for lounging on with dogs and cats while working (or playing) on the laptop. There’s easy access to the backyard, by way of the screened porch, and it’s just an altogether more convenient and pleasant “critter space” than the upstairs. (It also allows me to keep the upstairs relatively cat-free, since I have friends and family who are allergic to the feline members of the Reddogs clan.)
Last night, having spent most of the day upstairs doing laundry and unpacking books and generally doing rainy-day chores, I headed down the stairs to grab a laundry basket and realized that the carpet looked funny. Then I got closer and realized the carpet was drenched. Oops! The basement was flooding
As I started the process of contacting the insurance company (who ultimately didn’t cover it because it was a “groundwater incursion” for which I’m not covered) and moving furniture to the dry side of the basement, I also relocated all the animals to upstairs. The cats all got caught and stashed in the small bedroom, where they’re safe from the possibility of escaping while workers are in and out of the house. Conveniently, that room opens onto the main upstairs bathroom, so I can go into the bathroom, close the hall door, then open the bedroom door to go in and feed/water/snuggle cats, letting the bathroom act as a kind of “airlock” to keep kitties from escaping.
Then I drug all the dog crates upstairs and stashed them in the master bedroom, which is my temporary sleeping space (on a twin futon… bleah) until the Big Noisy Fans are gone from downstairs and I can have my room back. The dogs have taken this in stride, ’cause they’re pretty much just happy to be wherever I am, and they can still hang out in the living room with me (Thunder the English Setter looks very elegant sprawled on the leather sofa). The cats, however, are extremely unhappy about this turn of affairs. They’re used to being able to sleep with me, and to snuggle against me while I’m working on the laptop. They do not like being banished to a single room, but we’ve got at least three more days of contractors being in and out of the house to finish drying out the basement and I can run the risk of freaked-out kittie escaping through an open door. 🙁
I want my bed back… and my DVR (it’s hooked up to the big TV downstairs)… and I want my house to not sound like I live in a wind-tunnel. But we can all survive a few more days of this, and the good news is that the water was limited to the floor… the walls aren’t wet, and the carpet is probably okay (yay for really good water abatement crews!), and in a few days life will be back to normal.
Tags: cats, daily life, dogs, house
This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.