Selling the house and building the new one

[grim1500]

It's ours! We closed on the house Monday and started moving stuff in. We'll finish moving everything in Saturday and start living there then. Then it's time to start buying new furniture and other miscellaneous things we need. I need a new desk for the office, we need a dining room set, and we want a new bedroom suit. We'd like a new living room suit too, but that may have to wait depending on how much the other stuff costs us.

[Sensor Echo]

Congrats dude.

[grim1500]

Thanks. I've been sore for several days from all of the moving. We're still unpacking boxes, but we're getting there. I thought I had the sprinkler system figured out, but I guess not. It was set to run for 20 minutes at 5:30 this morning, but when I left the house to go to work around 7:50, some of them were on and when one stopped, another set would turn on. I think they should have trained me on it or something.

Super bummed about the internet situation. Our only option is AT&T at $40/month for 18 mbps with a 1 TB data cap. We were paying $65 for unlimited 100 mbps with Charter before that. What's even more aggravating is that AT&T charges the same price up to 50 mbps, but we can't get that speed where we are, so we're paying the same price for a lot worse internet.

[Sensor Echo]

Oof, the internet stuff hurts. I mean, I can take being sore from moving, just give me my internets.

[grim1500]

I can't remember what all I've said in this thread, but if I've already mentioned this before, pretend like you haven't seen it.

When Kaylie wanted to do the back side of our fence lower than the rest (4 feet vs. 6 feet), I said I didn't think it was a good idea because I was afraid our cat would be able to jump over it and get out. Our fence at our old house was 6 feet and he never once got out in 3 and a half years. He doesn't have front claws, so he can't defend himself, and he's essentially an inside cat anyway, so he isn't really equipped for prowling around away from home. We also have the woods behind our house, so there's plenty of places for him to get lost in and us not be able to find him. She got aggravated at me and said he wouldn't get out, and to keep from being the bad guy, I went along with it. The fence looks really good and I completely agreed that it would be nice to have it lower in the back so that we could see the trees and everything better. My concern was just the cat getting out.

Well, 4 days after we move in, he got out. When she got home from work yesterday, he was gone. It took about two hours to find him, and I think he only showed up then because he heard her shaking the jar of his cat treats.

I don't know what to do. There's nothing we can do about the fence now. It's done and it was extremely expensive to put in, so I'm not taking the back part down and redoing it at 6 feet. Besides, it's only a couple of weeks old anyway. He went outside last night, and I watched him for about 20 minutes to see what he'd do. He eventually started walking up and down that part of the fence, clearly looking for a way out. It looked like he was trying to get under the fence at one point, but I only see a couple of spots he might be able to get under at and it'd be extremely tight for him if he did. At one point he stood up on his back feet and put his front feet on the fence; he comes to the middle of the fence like that, so he can easily jump over it. Now that he knows he can do it, he's not going to stop. I'm expecting him to be gone when I get home from work today.

I've looked at fences that shock you when you try to go across them, and that may be our only option. I hate to do that, and I don't know if it would work on him anyway. All of the reviews are talking about dogs.

Edit: Pictures attached. His name is Harry.

[Sensor Echo]

What a cute little furball!

[The Watcher]

https://i.pinimg

[Indilwen]

Adorable!! But... why not just... keep your indoor cat........ indoors?

[deplorable]

Adorable!! But... why not just... keep your indoor cat........ indoors?

Probably because cats are disgusting

[Indilwen]

[grim1500]

Adorable!! But... why not just... keep your indoor cat........ indoors?

We have a doggy door for our dog. The cat loves to go outside. He goes out on his own. He's an indoor cat in that his food and litter box are inside and he sleeps inside, but he very much loves going outside and lounging around. We could tell he hated being in the rental house for 3 and a half months because we couldn't let him out there.

Chad, that'd defeat the purpose of doing our fence lower in the back. Thanks, though. I looked at several options, but none really looked like a good idea for us. One thing I saw was basically attaching this huge net to the top. No thanks.

I'm hoping we found the problem, though. When we got back to the house Friday night from going out to eat, he was gone again, so we started looking. He eventually came back, and Kaylie said she saw him going for a spot of the fence, so she looked at it. It obviously had just enough space for him to squeeze under. There was cat hair stuck to the boards in that spot and everything. So we went and got some paver stones and put under the fence in that spot on Sunday to fill up the gap and he hadn't gotten out through yesterday. Hopefully he's still there when I get off work today and the problem will be fixed. He's still more than capable of jumping over the fence, but I'm hoping he never figures that out. I don't see any other low spots on the ground that he could use to crawl under the fence.

[Indilwen]

Ahh, I see. Hopefully that fixes the issue!

[grim1500]

It didn't because he found more spots to crawl under the fence. We found more of his hair stuck on the boards in other places after he got out again. So out of an abundance of caution, we bought a bunch more of the stones and filled up any gap we thought he could potentially get under (apparently cats are limbo masters). That was Sunday, I think, and we don't think he's gotten out since then. He's been there whenever we get home, at least. Hopefully this solves it finally.

We ordered a ton of new furniture Monday. We went to order a new desk for my office and ended up getting the desk, a new bedroom suit, and a dining room table and chairs. We're still planning to get a new living room suit, but that should be it for big purchases.

[Sensor Echo]

The stupid way to solve this is to feed him so much he's too fat to crawl under or jump over. I do not advise it, but I thought you might get a laugh thinking of it.

[grim1500]

We've actually been trying to get him to lose weight for a couple of years now. Our old vet said he needs to lose weight and told us what food to give him, but it barely did anything. Our new vet said his weight is fine, so who knows. We have automatic feeders that drop a set amount of food at certain times every day. Before that, he had a bowl of food that he'd eat from whenever he wanted and he definitely got too big from that, so we stopped.

In other house news, we also ordered a new living room suit and a table to put in the foyer on Friday. I think that just leaves a new coffee table and end table for the living room to be bought. Other accent pieces as needed, to be determined by Kaylie, probably after watching a lot of HGTV.

I cut the grass for the first time yesterday. I've been waiting to give the sod time to get some roots in the ground, but it was getting too tall so I went ahead and cut it. There are still some dead areas, but everyone tells me that it'll get better and it's just new sod.

[Sensor Echo]

The front looks like it'll be just fine, but the back does look awfully thirsty.

The real problem is you seem to have used the weed wacker for the whole thing. Jeez, Louise.

[grim1500]

Nah, just used that for trimming edges. I actually had the deck on the mower higher than I normally would. We have bermuda grass and I read that you need to cut it to 1" - 2". I did 1.75" (the next highest deck option was barely doing anything at all).

We have sprinklers everywhere except for behind the fence in that third picture, so that's probably part of the reason it's worse back there.

[Sensor Echo]

lol yeah

No, I mean the back yard, not the easement. That grass would already be dead here in Denver, probably will be fine there though. lol

[grim1500]

Our cat got out sometime last night. I went to put the animals up before we went to bed, but we couldn't find him. His collar was in the backyard by the fence, so it must have come off when he went under the fence again. We looked and looked and we still haven't found him. I'm afraid coyotes may have gotten him. Several people in our neighborhood said there are coyotes around and one woman said she's had two cats go missing since she moved in.

I'm pretty bummed. Kaylie is really upset. I'm going to go out in the woods and look some more when I get home from work. It was 11 pm when we realized he was gone last night, and it's so grown up behind our house that it was almost impossible to see anything, even with a flashlight. I don't see how he was able to get out this time. We thought we had all of the gaps filled.

[Indilwen]

Oh no! I hope he comes back cries.

[Sensor Echo]

I'm hoping you just haven't come back around to tell us he's back and safe.

[grim1500]

He still hasn't come back. We put flyers in the mailboxes at a neighboring subdivision in case he went out there. We've gone in the woods every day/night and looked for him, but no luck. It's been very hard and I'm extremely sad.

One woman did call Kaylie solely to tell her that Harry was probably eaten by coyotes, though.

[Sensor Echo]

[grim1500]

There's a woman who posted in a local lost pet facebook group that has a bloodhound that she uses to try and find lost pets. She charges, but it's nothing we can't afford and aren't willing to pay just to see if the dog finds anything. She says she's searched 30 times and found the lost animal (both dead and alive, not sure what the split is) 14 times. So basically it's a coin flip. I think she's coming tomorrow after work to look for Harry.

Edit: No luck. $120 out the window. I'm going to look in a section of the woods today that I haven't been in that the dog went around a lot. I lost hope a long time ago, so this is a last ditch effort to at least find a body or something. There's a lot of woods out there, though, so I don't expect to find anything.

I ordered him a new litter box and some other stuff right before he went missing, and it all came in a couple of days later. That was sad.

[Indilwen]

Oh noooo