New House Blog: Episode LXXVII - The Three Seasons

October is in the air and the zig zag cactus are in bloom; and October brings with it the Three Seasons.

Season One is, of course, Hockey Season.  So far the Sharks are off to a good start.  Go Sharks!

Season Two is only slightly less well-known - Accursed Clover Season.  Yes, the accursed clovers, also known as Bermuda Buttercup or Buttercup Sorrel, have returned for another season.  This season, however, it seems that their numbers are way down compared to this time last year.  They are mostly showing up in the food garden and around our trees.  Only a few have dared to show themselves in the succulent garden.  This reduction in number is, we believe, due in large part to our continued vigilance in pulling them up by their roots.

Season Three is Fireplace Season, not to be confused with California's Fire Season.  Our wonderful fireplace is open for the season and we have had some fires already (after checking the spare the air website, of course).  We have a good supply of firewood available, and if there aren't too many spare the air days we plan to seriously reduce our stockpile of combustibles.

Cat Motivated Repairs

We have four, count 'em, four cats.  That's a lot of cats for two people, and this Episode will have a lot of cat pictures.  Most of the cats get along well with, or at least tolerate, each other most of the time.  One cat, however, was quite upset and decided that it was necessary to claim some territory.  I won't go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that we discovered said territorial claim when a certain smell began to saturate the air in our bedroom.  Our first suspect for the smell's source was the cat closet, where one of their litter boxes resides.  Close investigation of the cat closet confirmed that at least one of our cats was claiming territory in the back left corner of the cat closet.  We uncovered visual and tactile clues in addition to the olfactory clues.  By that I mean that the carpet in the claimed corner was quite damp and we could see fresh liquid on the baseboard. Additionally, the black light revealed more evidence of recent territory claiming.

At this point we didn't know who was responsible, but it was pretty obvious that this behavior had been going on for at least a few days before we discovered it.  We liberally applied Arm & Hammer carpet cleaner to absorb liquid and stop its spread, then we set up a critter cam in the closet to discover which cat, or cats, was responsible for the mess.  We set the camera to take 20-second videos when motion was detected.  The black and white photos are stills pulled from some of these videos.  They are black and white because that's how the camera captures night and low-light footage.

Satchmo in the contamined zone.  He and Daisy were the only two visitors to the zone that we caught on camera.

We have our culprit!  Here you see Daisy just before she put an additional claim on this territory. I was not surprised that it was Daisy, because she is the cat that has been the most upset and disturbed since Edgar's arrival in our household several months ago.

Now that we had determined our culprit we could begin cleanup, repair, and cat behavior-modification.

The Cleanup

We headed to our local pet megastore and picked up the appropriate cleaning and calming chemicals.

Before cleaning we moved the camera to see if anyone else might be involved, but no one else went into the corner. This is Edgar just sniffing around.

This is Miles, also just sniffing around.  If you look closely you can see that the baseboard has absorbed some liquid near the corner.



The first step of the cleanup was to vacuum up all of the carpet cleaning powder and dispose of it.  After this came the pulling up of carpet and the removal of baseboard. Underneath the carpet we discovered that the carpet pad had been contaminated and some of the subfloor had soaked up some liquid. We also discovered that the sheetrock and some of the framing had absorbed some liquid. We treated the contaminated areas of subfloor and framing with the appropriate chemical and we disposed of the contaminated carpet pad.  We also thoroughly soaked the contaminated carpet area with the same appropriate chemical and provided a copious amount of raggy towels to absorb everything.

Finally, a color picture.

This is the corner with everything pulled up. You can see where we had to cut out the contaminated sections of sheetrock. The heater was used to help with drying everything out.

This is Miles roaming about the bedroom  while the cat closet is temporarily off-limits to cats.





The Repair

At this point we entered the repair stage.

Here you see the new sheetrock in place.

All taped up and ready for joint compound.

Fresh joint compound, with a fan to encourage drying.

Dried and sanded joint compound and new carpet pad. Home Depot only sells carpet pad in large rolls.  We only needed this small piece, but the smallest roll they would sell us was 6' x 8'.

The carpet is reattached to the tack board and new baseboard is in place.

The cat closet was finally painted.  Because this is a cat closet we didn't really care about precision or taping.  We wanted color and we got color.

From top to bottom we used Mermaid Harbor, Apple Harvest, and Autumn Glow.












Cat Behavior-Modification

With cleanup and repairs complete we entered the cat behavior-modification stage, a stage that will probably be ongoing for a while.

An initial step was to add a second litter box to the cat closet.  This will prevent cats from getting back into the corner, provide an additional place to do their business, and hopefully let Daisy know that she needs to do all of her marking inside the designated receptacles.  The new box on the left should also provided a little more privacy for the user.

For now we're keeping the critter cam active in the cat closet just in case we need to investigate any more inappropriate behavior.

This is Daisy checking out the new setup.

Edgar is also curious about the new setup.

Satchmo, being Satchmo, is even more curious about the new setup.

Sadly, we didn't capture any good footage of Miles investigating the new closet arrangements.  It seems that he may have been in and out of the closet so quickly that the motion sensor wasn't activated by his presence.  Or maybe he just didn't go very far into the closet when these videos were captured.

Additionally we are trying to give Daisy more attention, more playing, and we are using calming pheremonses - both spray and edible.  We may also try to keep Daisy and Edgar separate more often.  He tends to be rather rambunctious, and we think, at least in part, that several months of Edgar's pounciness and staring contributed to Daisy's anxiety and need to claim territory.  While repairs and cleanup were in progress we had Daisy in our bedroom alone at night, and she seemed much happier and cat-like when no other cats were around.  Hopefully we can find the right combinations of everything to keep all of our cats happy and well-adjusted.

Additonal Cat-related Pictures

Here you see our camera setup.  It is a Moultrie critter cam, hanging upside-down from a Joby Gorillapod flexible camera tripod.  When this whole thing is over and Daisy is calmed down I hope to use this camera outside to see what critters pass by our house (and occasionally leave gifts in the front yard) at night.

This is Miles and Edgar.

Cats love paper bags.











Bonus Pictures

You remember the blooming cactus mentioned at the beginning of this Episode?

This is one of our zig zag cactus.  We were pleasantly surprised to discover that they bloom in the fall - right now.

Happy cactus.




















Does anyone need some carpet pad?
    bIsh