He's Always Complaining (RV Pics)

He's always complaining that he's given up ALL of his surface spaces because of the cats. (He can complain all he wants - everyone knows he's completely smitten. Our customers, however, collectively think Gary needs to "get a life." What do they know? They obviously don't have cats, LOL!)

Anyway, I'm just proving to my on-line friends that he hasn't given up all his surface space, the exaggerater!

Here is Gary's "area". As you can plainly see, he has a magazine rack (granted, cat brushes are on top of it), he has the top of his computer - it fits at least a drink! And he has that little table under the window. What is he complaining about?

Oh - here you can actually see the surfaces. ...you can't see them too well, but there ARE two cups full of pens there!

Oh Well, of course that is PLENTY of room, and I don't think ya heard him complaining about lack of space when Mae was napping with him did ya!

I mean - REALLY! All I get is half the couch and a little corner of the kitchen counter!

(ooops! Guess that pic should have gone in the let's post our REALLY BAD pics thread, lol!)

Here's my space from the other angle:

OoOOoOO Is that MaeMae? Man she's a heartthrob! And he has more room to put drinks than you doooo!

That's right, Cassie! The complainer!

(No wonder I'm having problems with my hand apparently as a result of posture problems!)

...as you'll note, my laptop monitor broke and we had to get a stand-alone monitor. I didn't get a separate keyboard and touchpad or mouse, though, because it's just too awkward. BUT, as a result of having the monitor, and needing it to "stand" on the couch, I got a box, and I get to put stuff in it! So I reclaimed THAT portion of the couch, LOL!

Ooops! I was answering your other post, Cassie. ("of course that is PLENTY of room, and I don't think ya heard him complaining about lack of space when Mae was napping with him did ya!" LOL!!!)

Yup! That's MaeMae.

...and MA - there's no toys around because I'd just picked everything up to vacuum. But since I've done that, I guess I should put some of them out now.

You guys need a extra large tour bus!!

Oh - like the Wall of Water, as we call it? LOL! Of course the cats can easily step over it now, but they couldn't as kittens. We put it up as a barrier for them from just stepping from the couch to the kitchen counter. We have to keep it up - because even though they KNOW they're not allowed on the counter, if we take the Wall of Water down, it's like an open invitation to them or something. It gets pretty funny when we forget to buy water and we get low - we start grabbing things from around the house to block their "entrance" to the counter.

So... see? We have the kitchen counter as "our" space, too!!!!!!

but isn't it cozy

Val - like a stretch Limo, right - just a stretch bus, LOL?!!! We're 37' which is mid-range. RVs on "affordable" frames go 40' I think. Maybe 45' ? Actual bus conversions (Greyhound frames) are 45 feet - but they start at $1 million!!!!! Guess we need to win the lotto, too, eh?

If I win the big NJ lotto I'll by you a tour bus!!!

We have a little baby 19 foot RV it has a bathroom, small kitchen and that is about it. it sleeps 4!

Nah! If you're spending $1 million then you should just buy some land and a house and keep the RV for traveling purposes !

It IS cozy! And it works for us. So he can complain all he wants... we all know the truth. Each time we moved jobs, we discussed getting an apartment in the area (LA or NYC). But it never happened. We're supposedly looking into houses for rent around here... which reminds me... gotta call the real estate agent. ...but the apartments never happened because we actually love our little home, we love being able to move around (though all of his surgeries the past 1 1/2 years enabled us to get really settled here!!!!), and in the end... some day we'll probably just get a larger RV.

HE LOVES IT!!!! ...and so do I. ...and I don't think the cats mind too much!

Cassie - isn't that what we HAVE to do? How would we take care of the feral colony otherwise? Here we've made arrangements with the woman who adopted Magic. The park grants her access when we're gone (even though we're not allowed to have pets here... we fixed all their ferals for them so the place no longer has a stray cat population growth problem), and she's such a cat nut we're sure she'd continue keeping it up if we moved along. But it's not going to be like that every park we go to!!!!

How many cats do you have??

Hmm... *wonders how many cats I can stuff into my 1 bedroom apt* lol

I think he has too much room and should volunteer to give some of it up!

Sicy, we had four cats. Well - it started with one. A mom had kittens in a burrow out back in the woods. There were five. We didn't know it then, but she would take them on excursions... only on the 4th of July last year, they all disappeared except for Lazlo (as we ended up naming him). After his crying for two days (despite our feeding him), we decided to bring him inside as a pet. I was insanely allergic to cats, and Gary used to hate them. But he wiggled his way into our hearts (we'd been caring for them outside for about a month already).

So we decided to "grab" another one as a friend for him. That was Sheldon, Gary's boy.

We then started trapping and having spayed/neutered all the cats around here, and ended up building a feeder, etc. We worked on getting the other kittens adopted out. Another littler of three kittens turned up, and Tuxedo (at the time, still outside) almost killed little Munchkin. So we brought her in - she was too small to survive what was by then the incredible cold of last year. We built heated condos for all the outside kittens. Julius and Spooky went to what turned out to be a terrible home. That was before we had a screening process in place. We took the cats back, and Spooky became part of the family, right after we adopted out Munchkin. (SEE? We are CAPABLE of fostering, LOL!).

Julius got adopted by one of the Vet assistants who fell in love with him. He was a HUGE ginger and white kitty with very faint tabby markings.

We ended up putting Tuxedo, Thanksgiving and Magic in boarding - it had just been too cold for too long, and every time they heard our door open, they'd come running out. It was a terrible winter here, and we just couldn't live with the guilt. (All the no-kill shelters are always full around here).

We ended up finding homes for Thanksgiving and Magic. And Tuxedo had bonded with Gary, he was always very aggressive, and though at the boarding facility he got somewhat socialized, he also ended up getting very, very ill. We took him to our vet, and once he was no longer ill, he wouldn't eat. They told us we'd have to bring him home. So Gary nursed him back, and he's part of the family now.

Four just seemed - a little too much, though. Lazlo, Spooky and Shelly all got along just fine. I don't know if it's because of the space or because Tuxedo is kind of mean and aggressive, but he's frequently after Spooky, although she only seems to mind when it's happening.

We have created as much vertical space as we can. Our bedside tables are cat beds. We put in a bookshelf along Gary's side of the bed that is for the cats. On my side, we purchased tubes from Walmart (thick cardboard construction tubes). Two of them are on the floor next to each other, with space enough at either end for the cats to get in and out. On top of that is a store-bought tube lined inside with fake wool - on either side of it on top of the other tubes are platforms for them to walk on. On top of that we've placed a kind of hard pillow and cat bed - that's at our bed level. So that's three levels high. We removed everything from the overhead cabinets over the bed - the cats can easily jump in and out ('cept little MaeMae ).

We took out the dining room and put in cat furniture. We did leave the bookshelves - though now they're devoted mostly to our cereal, cat food, cat brushes, lint rollers - stuff like that. . So that's across from the kitchen counter.

You can see the back of the couch - it fits four cats.

The top of the printer (which is snuggled inbetween the dashboard and the driver's chair) has a cat bed on top of it, and they can walk across all the crap we have stored up on the dash.

We have two litterboxes - one under the dash in front of the driver's chair and one in front of the passenger chair. There just isn't anywhere else to put them! ('cept little MaeMae's. Her teeny box is in the bathroom, although if she's going to live here, when she grows out of it, the five of them will just have to share the two boxes. ).

So.. they have under Gary's chair, the end of the bookshelf next to the front door, all the floor... and we're working on emptying out the overhead cabinets next to where their cat furniture is. That'd open up another 6 or 7 sq. ft. of space for them.

It's tight - but it works.... so far! I'm not too sure how it'd work if we keep MaeMae and she turns out to be a honker!

So... we actually have 8 beds for them permanently in place, and we constantly rotate a lot of toys. We work mostly from home - thank GOD for telecommuting! - so we get to spend a lot of time with them, making sure they get a lot of exercise.