Spider Mite/Scale??? devastation

hmmm... sounds kind of like a SCHEDULE!

For shame, what an awful thing to say, we've just met.............grin

LOL, it does start with ........

Youse guys have been sniffing seaweed.

Yes, Equil, I'm still here and I am no closer to actually deciphering what a schedule is than I was before,,,,,woe is me. I can only stick to a schedule in the Salon. There I actually HAVE to. Personal life, don't count on it,,,,lol

And yet another woman after my own heart! Psst, kittens are doing great and are not only full grown but filled out. I must admit they are both attractive animals. When I go over there and see them I can't help but remember how tiny they were just a year ago. They're still tearing around her house but they are very young cats. They constantly reinforce for me why I would never want a cat under 5 years of age. Man those things are destructive!

But they sure are fun! We have two older, more sedate cats, and then we have Sunday, a little black cat that we rescued last year. Sunday is full of vim and vinegar: hence no Christmas decorations last year and this year, except those that can't be torn to shreds or knocked off the shelf. That mainly leaves wreathes, but they have to be high enough on the wall so she can't jump and grab them, which she thinks is just the greatest fun. Maybe next year... (I've gotta admit that she makes a great excuse!)

Older and more sedate is my speed. You keep those house wreckers!

Well now, Equi - It's not like there was a choice. Either rescue her or let her get squashed... She does make us laugh a lot, and she has a lot of loving in that ornery little body too. Absolutely love the older sedate ones, but she adds a lot of spice to our lives! I'd hate to miss these first years.

The breeder of our older cats (Ragdolls) wouldn't let us take them home until they were three months old, and we've always felt that we missed out on so much kitten fun and cuteness...

I volunteered for around 20 years at an animal shelter. I've fostered around 400 orphans and never kept one of them. It's not that I don't think they are wonderful and all, I just want them to go to their own homes and get out of mine before they tear up my personal pets. They're really tough on older animals.

I learned most kittens could be placed safely by 8 weeks and almost always by 10 weeks depending on the family they were going to. Persians and Himmies seemed to be an entirely different ball game and the few times I had those I ended up hanging onto them until at least 12 weeks of age. That is not a bright breed of cat. Exceptionally loving, but they were shorted in the brains department. I will say that the Persians and Himmies were not tough on my older animals.

I have such a deal for you ;) I send you kittens we think have cool paint jobs and you send them back to us when they are out of their el destructo mode.

LOL!!

Have I mentioned our outdoor cat that decided he owned us in June and finally convinced us of that fact too? We tried all the right ways to bring him into the household but couldn't convince him that trying to kill the indoor cats is just not an option! He's around 2 1/2 and we had him neutered, all of his shots, clean bill of health, and then had to turn him back outside. We still feed him, pet him, groom him, and bring him into the laundry room at night. He helps us garden and just loves our company - very affectionate. He has all kinds of cat friends outside that he doesn't fight with (!) and even enjoys playing with the little dog next door when he's outside. I wish I could find a good home for him. We have never had an outdoor cat. It scares me.

BTW, my DDIL in Phoenix fosters cats. She has one of her own. She has returned some very sick cats to health, and I admire her greatly for what she does. I have met some of these cats/kittens, and I don't see how she can give them away! She says that if she were to keep any, she could no longer foster cats, and then she wouldn't be helping to save them.

I admire you too!

Tee he, all of my cats were x-street cats and we've always taken home mostly battle axe males. All of the cats in my house right now are males. They all love each other and sleep together and groom each other but it wasn't always that way. This is going to sound horrible but... when introducing a new cat it is sink or swim over here for about the past 10 years. I used to do the "behind the bathroom door" deal to let them get whiffs of each other and I've also used the crate in the middle of the family room deal and simply figured forget it! They are not like humans and will not fight to death. Sooner or later they find their own space within the family. We toss new comers in and go out to dinner and a movie. We come home and sometimes have to vacuum up some hair sometimes we don't. Sometimes they disappear into the basement and don't surface for a month and sometimes they walk around like they have lived here their entire lifes. It's different every time. They can and will establish their own pecking order. The longest the horrible "I'm getting mauled" wake you up in the middle of the night sounds have ever gone on was for two weeks before they figured out that they simply had to work things out. Our dogs aren't the problem with new cats. It's our cats that are the problem with new cats.

Most of my friends are all animal people and they were in disbelief that I was doing this as opposed to slowly introducing them until a few of them tried the new and improved "go out to dinner and a movie" method. I've got an entire slew of converts to my credit these days. You can get your cat in the house! Try my new and improved "go out to dinner and a movie" method and tell me how it's going after 2 weeks! Do I sound like a commercial yet?

Just can't do that. My 10 year olds are Ragdolls that don't fight. Wusses. Just get the crxp (and urine) beat out of them. And Cat is much larger than little Sunday. And this house would stink to high heaven if I did that!! Cat had Jasmine down and was biting into her throat when I intervened - I'm not at all convinced he wouldn't kill her. I guess I'm a wuss too.

Equil,
Nice to know the little sweeties are getting on fine and having fun. I wonder about them sometimes.

ceejay, I had the incisors and canines filed down on one of my cats for being a bully. That took the wallop out of his bite in no time flat. It took him all of a week to stop sinking his teeth into other animals. It was either that or return him to be adopted to a different family. Cost was only $30. Talk to your daughter in law about it. Vets will do it to keep a "problem" child from causing puncture wounds on another animal resulting in the loss of a good home.

They are living in the lap of luxury and want for nothing. They can do no wrong. When they destroy something, she replaces it. She thinks her babies are cute??? Do you know they can still go straight up her curtains? Kelly, then can go straight up the curtains even the bog male. She didn't replace the last drapes because she figured after they did it to the replacement drapes that it didn't so much matter if it was like an astronomy show when she closed the drapes. As a joke I was going to create more pinholes in the shape of the Big Dipper for her to discover the next time she closed those drapes during the day decided against that. I told her I had thought about doing it and she just laughed and said there are so many holes in the new drapes that she probably would have never noticed my Big Dipper. Really glad it worked out for her. Personally, I probably would have broken down and declawed them if they did even 1/10 of what they did to her house to mine. And, her precious babies have an assortment of scratching posts and they still do this crap. I sat down at her dining room table a few months ago to look at some photos and realized the fabric on every cushion was shred. Oh they're just so cute! They did the same thing to the arms of her couches and love seats. Actually, I don't think there's anything in that house that is a textile that is devoid of the marks of zorro.

Aw, the little monsters. Sounds like it was a good thing I didn't end up keeping them. I can't afford to replace things that they shred. Also have no patience to wait until they grow up a bit. I would have definitely had to de-claw them as sad as that is to say. Would love to see the shredded house though,,,lol

Actually, she can't afford to be replacing all this stuff either so she hasn't been any more. She'll wait it out until they cool their jets a little bit over the next few years. I have a photo of one of the arms to one of her loveseats in my e-mail somewhere. It's pretty riotous. Looks as if the thing had an alien in it incubating that birthed or something. No other way to describe all the stuffing sticking out. I rib her, she ribs me. Let's face it, our pets (like our children) can do no wrong. They're perfect even when they're definitely less than perfect. For what it's worth, Twinkletoes isn't teething on any parts of our house any longer so I haven't lost any more lower kitchen cabinet doors lately. I must admit he still has a thing for paper goods though. He will shred paper towels so we have to keep those in a closet instead of on a roller and he will also shred any mail he can get his teeth on. No more stair treads though lately. He did slide out when racing around the L shaped counter in the kitchen and put his head through the drywall last week. That's the third time he did that in almost the exact same spot. It's as if he loses control of his body whipping around that one corner there and just crash lands head first in the wall. The dry wall man is coming back out again after the holidays to repair it. The painter said it would be easier to match the paint this time since he still has left over from the last time Twinkle slid out and stuck his head through the drywall. He's so cute. They all are!

Aw, poor Twinkles,,,,,lol he sounds like such a honey. At least he's gotten over his teething stage. That stage cost you a lot of money! Drywall is easy to replace.

Actually, the total damages blow the cost of replacing the lowest tread and riser of the volute to the staircase in the entryway that he teethed on when we first brought him home.

The wall he put his head through was the 30' wall to our kitchen which extends into a breakfast area then up a staircase to the second floor where it joins a very long hallwall to every bedroom we have and back down into the family room where there is a 25' vaulted ceiling via a catwalk.

Total cost to repair and tape drywall- $200
Total cost to repaint all walls that were "adjoining" since this home hasn't been painted since we moved in- $3200.
Husband's face when he got the bill for his baby's head going through the wall- priceless.

Twinkle Toes is his dog. The others are mine. All mine ever did was eat 25' phone cords and whole kitchen throw rugs that had to be surgically removed. A mere drop in the bucket comparatively speaking. Sorry Kelly, he's not available for placement in a new home. My husband and Twinkle have bonded. They're inseparable buddies here at home.

oooo, the painting cost quite a pretty penny and I bet his face was priceless. I'm glad they bonded. If not, I would love to have Twinkles here with me. At least he's bigger than Mooshka''s toys. But I'm sure Mooshka would get the pecking order down flat real quick like. This is her home and I'm sure she would take her sweet time allowing anyone else to be comfy here,,,lol

I have to tell you that I was in shock over that price and went out and picked up quotes from some other painters. Other painters were higher because they wanted to blend walls to save money. Egads, talk about wanting to puke.

You are correct, this particular dog is a whussie (sp?). He gets backed into corners by cats for over stepping his boundaries trying to get a few good butt sniffs in. They don't know their size, that's for sure. I can't imagine what Mooshka would do to him. Probably run him right through a wall to the outside where he would be "freeeeeeee" to get hit by a car again which is how he came to be in a shelter anyway. He's a runner! Still can't let him off a leash to go pee and poop to this day or the ingrate would take off. He's so cute :(

RATFLMBO!!! I am feeling so much better about Sunday's little foibles. (Our small, black cat.)

What kind of dogs are these? Big?

Great Danes and a very old Mastiff

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse- my husband went to try to save some money and brought something home from work called a drywall saw. He said he watched them cut out the drywall around where Twinkle's head went through the wall the last two times it was repaired and figured he could do it himself. I am going to go get my camera and take a picture of this. Your eyeballs are going to fall out of your head. I knew I should have been having heart failure when I heard him mumble oopsie under his breath. Be back.

Ok, here we go. This happened just before Thanksgiving. The drywall guy said he couldn't get out to fix it before Thanksgiving so my husband tried to mud it in or something so there wasn't a big hole in the wall for the holiday. Ok, I could live with that. Look at the bottom of the cut out and you can see a portion of where Twinkle's head hit the drywall. Isn't that an interesting compression in the wall? We looked at it as one would look at clouds in the sky and found all kinds of interesting images in it. It was fun for a few minutes. If you look close at the photo, notice the nice new shiny paint. Isn't that nice? It did look real nice before numb nuts put his head through the wall sliding out a third time while racing around the L shaped counter with the other younger dog. Anyway, I guess my husband decided to take things into his own hands. He told me he needed to find a stud and that he needed to drill a few holes so he could cut a chunk of drywall out in a rectangle so that it could be pieced back in with a new piece of drywall then taped and sanded and painted... I told him to go for it that we couldn't be any worse off than we already were (famous last words). Take a real close look at what he hit when he was drilling around looking for a stud before he started using that drywall saw. That doesn't look like a stud to me, does it look like a stud to you?

Here's a close up of the stud he hit-

If you guessed by now that he didn't exactly hit a stud, you would be correct. That is our hvac. Isn't that really neat? Instead of finding a stud, he found our hvac.

I wonder what an hvac guy is going to charge us to replace that section of hvac before the drywall guy comes back out to do his thing?

Lesson learned- there is a reason why drywall, painters, and hvac guys are called skilled labor.

I'm sorry - but rolling on the floor now!

He should meet my DH. I have the ultimate plumbing story...

Considering how he used to take polaroid photos of saliva hangers that my dogs shook off that landed on things and hang them on the frig with the comments, "Lauren's dog's shoestrings" or something equally silly... I'm in no great rush to get this repaired. I have every intention of putting up two little signs. One is going to say, "Daddy did this" and the other will say "Daddy's little darling did this".

Please start typing out the ultimate plumbing story. I can't wait!

Have you ever seen that commercial that has the husband in the hammock sleeping and his wife says, "Sorry ladies, he's already taken"? I forget what was going on with the sleeping husband but I remember it being ridiculous funny and I'm thinking this is going to be one of those stories where you should be saying, "Sorry ladies, he's already taken".

Too tired to wait up for my beddy bye night time story of the ultimate plumber.

Here's the 'lil darlin when he was a wee pup making "nice nice" with the wall-
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3118877

Psst, that photo was staged for another thread. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

Oh oh oh! Check out what this person has in their house-
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4284661

tapping toe and waiting for my ultimate plumbing story!

I'm sorry. I have (and still am) very busy trying to get Christmas packages together and mailed. All of my children and grandchildren live many miles away and time is running out...

Now I'm afraid you won't find it so ultimate after all! But he has never been allowed to "plumb" again.

Let me get this done, and I'll be right back.

Loved the photo! He looks like he could really eat your house if he wanted to. What's the story behind the staging? LOL the signs!! Well worth the cost of the repairs. (I think...)

jeri11 had created a wall washing demo. I think that photo was something to do with me having a resident wall washer. I can't remember. I'd have to go back and read the whole thread. I think I put a little bit of butter on the wall to get him to lick it. The dog is a licker anyway so it wasn't hard to get him to lick the wall. It was hard getting a picture of him licking the wall because almost as fast as I could smear a little butter on the wall and grab my camera, he had licked the butter off. Took quite a few tries.

Good one! Sunday is our resident paper shredder, and she takes her job very seriously.

Equil,
Next time your DH has anything in his hand bigger and sharper than a butter knife tell him to put the nice little tool down and back away,,,,,roflol @ that story

Tools, did somebody suggest that my husband put down and back away from anything bigger and sharper than a butter knife? Surely you jest. He likes buying tools. I think he likes to mostly just look at them and know that he owns the right type of tool for any job but there are times that he fancies himself the star of Tool Time and actually uses them. Woe is me as we can see the outcome of him going beyond just owning a tool above.

You can fix that hole with a piece of duct tape, of all things. Use the good, shiny, metal foil kind, and just spackle over it. Or put a small metal tapping screw in the hole, then spackle over it.
Good thing you don't heat with radiators or baseboard heat. He could have drilled a hole into an iron pipe. Or maybe a wire... maybe you should hide the sharps!

All joking aside, how long exactly does duct tape last? Once we have the drywall replaced I'm sort of hoping it never gets broken open again. I haven't called the hvac guy yet because I've been too busy so I can mention this to him. He's normally pretty conscientious, this was truly an accident.

It depends. I've seen some that was fifty years old and still sticking to the duct. Sometimes it fails after six months. It looks to me like the drywall repair will cover the hole anyway, at least hold the tape down.
Maybe you could reinforce that wall with plywood or steel behind the sheetrock.

I don't think we'll want to go with duct tape since its lifespan is unpredictable at best. I'll just let the hvac guy deal with it. I suspect he'll cut out that piece and fit in new. No sense having duct tape fail behind a repaired wall with it blowing hot air all the way up into the attic or who knows where it would go.

We thought about reinforcing with plywood behind the drywall believe it or not. We're ditching that idea because we're afraid of knocking our dog unconscious when he slides out into the wall again. The reason why he keeps hitting that one spot is because he is running around an L shaped island in our kitchen and his body is so big he literally doesn't make the corner when he gets going too fast. So far we have thoughts of adding egg crate foam and batting layered onto a piece of plywood and covering it with something that can be taken off and tossed in the washer and figuring out some way to permanently attach it to the wall to absorb the impact of his head. If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Oh, duct tape's adhesive properties are predictable enough... if you put it on indoors, on a warm, clean, and dry surface it will be no problem. Hopefully the ducts already have tape on the joints. Having an hvac technician replace that duct is overkill, to put it mildly. If they're responsible, they will tell you over the phone to put a piece of duct tape over the hole. Wrap it around twice if it'll help you sleep better! Or put a drop of silicone in the hole and a screw.

They'll probably charge $75 just to show up... you could maybe get a shrub with that...