We all survived the night, though not without some cost. After hauling from store to house, erecting, and setting up the two cages, getting the Tedster settled, and so on, I then spent several hours sitting in the recliner next to him, keeping him company while watching TV and doing some proofreading; then went to bed – and woke up, midsleep and this morning, with a wicked lumbar backache. I’ve hit it with ibuprofen and Ben-Gay, gently stretched the area in the course of the usual morning cleaning of eight litterboxes, and hope to do further limbering in an hour or so when it’s horse chore time. And definitely stay out of the recliner today! Sigh....
Ted seems fine, calm, mildly complaining now and then but otherwise unfazed. He ate breakfast with vigor, despite my having stirred into it a dissolved Wellbutrin dose. I stuck a yardstick through the bars of the big cage to rearrange the towels, since I can’t otherwise reach them without an ungainly contorted effort from the small cage end door, and he enjoyed a yardstick back scratch. The only thing that concerns me is his failure to use the litterbox yet. Didn’t use the towels, either, or spray outside the cage. He went into the slammer in late afternoon yesterday, so it’s not a full 24 hours yet. Hopefully breakfast will move him to void soon.
Not having a side door on the big cage is proving to be awkward. I may need to go ahead and get a two or three door large crate ASAP. There are such crates available at Petco in Topsfield. Only problem is, the Petco crate doors aren’t removable and they don’t open back flat against the cage side; I’d have to jigger a filler for the triangular space between crates when butting them together. So: added cost, added backbreaking labor of taking the current setup apart and installing a new crate. Ulp. The heck with it – for now.
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Off to check on him
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Still no litterbox use, but I crawled halfway in through the small cage (draping myself over the [fortunately, in this case] still-unused litterbox), propped myself on one elbow, and reached the other arm into the large cage for some serious cat-skritching and stroking. Ted gobbled it up, purred, wallowed, reveled. Then I withdrew, cautiously – between the iffy back and the imminence of bashing tender body parts on cage wire, speed is not an option – and gave him a couple of catnip mice. He’s having a blast with them.
Still sucks for both of us, but I think he’ll be okay. Time will tell.
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