=== SHORT VERSION ===

Stressed but not frantic. Artie is HERE AND SAFE, that's the most important thing.

And I'm... okayish. I just asked my boss if I can take the week off, since I've got the time piled up. I can figure out Artie stuff, talk to the landlord about pet leases, work on That Parallax Opportunity, maybe clean the house up and regather a little sanity.

I'm okayish. I will probably be leaning on y'all for more support and advice soon. But Artie is safe. That's so important and good. (She is also an idiot who learned NOTHING for three days stranded. That is frustrating and bad.)

=== LONG VERSION ===

And if we do have to let her out and she does it all again, FOR NOW the solution seems repeatable.

For now we're probably gonna try keeping her in for as long as she/we can stand it. I'm kinda looking forward to it, honestly? She's a good kitty and has mostly been taking it well. Main lingering fear is landlord stuff since we aren't supposed to have pets on the premises. (Heh.)

But yeah. I'm okay. I'm mostly okay. Watching my funds drain kinda fast while we're in Just Get Through The Day mode. We'll be fine. Lots of good news on Peg's career front.

So here's what else I'm still ruminating about:

The door in the abandoned apartment gets weaker and weaker each time and might not be reclosable next time. We are pondering installing our own latch and key-- it's not like the rightful owners couldn't get in through the front if needed. And fuck 'em at this point tbh. Failing that... I dunno, a lot of good thick adhesive tape to keep it shut between break-ins?

I'm also not thrilled about asking the rental company for a pet lease, because there is a mention in their online docs about "pet rent" and... it's not like we need an increase in cost of living right now. It's definitely never gonna be a solution for all the cats-- they want the pets DOCUMENTED and VACCINATED and there's no way they'd let us have five in there without charging us a fortune at best.

The "bright" spot: I looked at the lease and unless it's a explicitly an eviction-level offense like non-payment or, like, meth lab, the process for violations is possible fine + a "written notice" that we have five days to comply with. We can only be booted on the SECOND offense and it looks like that might even be legally binding on them? So I'm taking that as "you have one freebie." :p

And we've gone, what, 2 yrs and 8 mos now and nobody's hassled us about the cats? The worst we've ever gotten is "Yeah, could you try not to leave so much extra food out? It's summer and there are flies. Thanks!" I like to hope that if we explained the situation to them and made sad enough eyes at them they'd cut us a break and help us work out a solution... Of all the tenant offenses to commit, I think "Broke lease because worried about cute kitties" is one of the more charismatic.