The situation is no longer intolerable.

The house is still just barely habitable.

This morning, it being trash day, I got to the habitability project early, attempting (somewhat valiantly if I do say so myself) to address the bug-infested shithole that is the room set aside for the Contagious Cat, aka Alli.

In the time it took me to walk down the loft and grab the vacuum, the door had already been opened, and the contagious cat was out. I bellowed. It ran back in and all the non-contagious cats scattered. I proceeded with the vacuuming.

What I didn’t know was that the Bad Kitty, aka Lexi, had scattered not to the winds, but into the contagion room and under the bed.

I found out five or six minutes later, and used the vacuum hose, and more bellowing, to chase it back out into the house.

That may have been a stupid thing to do. Maybe I should have left Lexi in there. But I reacted on instinct, and whatever damage is done, is done.

My main fear now is that Lexi was in there (lingering in the still-unclean horror under the bed) long enough to pick up the virus, or even worse, to become a carrier and pass it to Kali or Riley.

I don’t need this. To me, being a cat person has meant, at most, Having A Cat, singular.

They like it much better that way too, and can thrive.

I finished vacuuming.

Alli is down to one relatively clean catbox.

The second one, still smeared with filth, is sitting on the hood of my pickup, waiting for me to decide how to deal with it.

Also sitting there are two timer-feeder dishes, filthy in their own way, the source of the bugs, which I thought had been cleaned up some time back.

That belief was mistaken. So many of my beliefs have been mistaken, and so many of my choices have been irrational.

Lexi still gives zero fucks–if I’m yelling, that’s my problem. Maybe that’s true. But I’m not going to believe it yet. I’m tired of holding beliefs and feeling them shatter. It’s making me old and burning up the fragment of life time left to me.

***

In less stressful news, I made seventy bucks yesterday helping the Professor Lady pack up for her move to Tucson.

I took the windfall down to Speedway and put every cent into fueling my truck, the one with the hood, which is now alone among the three vehicles left here in having a tank that isn’t near empty.

The glass might be half full.