pyewacketsworld

Part 11:

Okay now to continue with my epic saga.

As I previously mentioned, on Tuesday May 9, 2006, my mother and I were visited by the woman who would be our lawyer and representing us. May 8th, had been our first court appearance, it was by no means the last. Another one had been scheduled for May 25th, June 28th, nothing occurred in July, but then in August there were two dates of court appearances, on August 11 and the 31, then two in October, the last being October 19th. I had temporarily stopped having Animal Care & Control come to pick up anymore cats due to what had happened to Porthos (one can read up about what happened to him in Part 8 of this series). The lawyer wasn’t a happy camper about my canceling out on AC&C coming to pick the remainder of the cats especially since on the May 25th court appearance we signed an agreement that an inspection by representatives of the landlord’s office were to come by on May 31st to see if we only had two cats.

Luckily, I had something else up my sleeve. By around this time, we had a total of ten cats, two of which we could keep according to the prior stipulation agreement my mother had signed on June 11, 2001. One of the pet rescuers from up-state NY who had already taken in five of the cats agreed to take the remaining eight, but there was a glitch. She wouldn’t be able to come down to pick them up until June, and when I told the lawyer this she kind of freaked out….she desperately wanted us down to only two by the time that inspection was to held. Now while my mother had known how to drive, she never got a car…weird no? Way back when, when my grandmother, mother and I went on vacations, she would rent a car. So never had our own car, and I never learned to drive. So the dilemma was how to get the cats up to the rescuer.

Thankfully, out of the blue a friend of our out in the Long Island, NY area and who had adopted two of our cats back in 2001 (Bibbity and Fidget) then also adopted Sherkhan, Bobbity, Footie, Whizzer and Shadow earlier in 2006, said she was more than willing to drive to our apartment, pick up the cats, and drive to the pet rescuers…see? See how things were falling into place here? It was just the principle of the thing…I just DID NOT want anymore cats going to AC&C.

So it was all arranged, that on Friday, May 19, 2006, Lisa came over real early in the morning. Prior to her coming, I placed a very unhappy Pyewacket into a traveling case. Why? I didn’t want to risk the chance I’d goof up and grab the wrong black cat, as I did have another black cat named Smudge. As for Kissy, she hid under my bed and by the “expression” on her face was easier to differentiate from the other tiger-striped cats. As soon as the cats were on their way, I called the lawyer to tell her the deed was done, and now we were officially down to only two cats: Pyewacket and Kissy…I think I can safely say, that she breathed a sigh of relief.

On May 31st, when the representative inspectors came to our apartment, our lawyer came a few hours earlier to give us “instructions” on how to conduct ourselves…in other words, not to “volunteer” any information unnecessarily that could be used against us. Also, one saving grace was that our lawyer had made arrangements for a old sofa of hers to be delivered to us just the night before the inspection, enabling us to get rid of the cruddy old one. She was in the middle of a move, and wanted to get new furniture, and the sofa that she gave us, a sofa-bed mind you, didn’t really look that old, heck it was sure better than the crap-heap of a sofa we did have, that had a lot of pet odor to it, since the cats often accidently peed on it, even though we had a plastic type cover on it. Anyway, when she came over the day of the inspection, she was concerned since according to her though, the apartment still had a slight “cat oder” smell to it, despite all my cleaning. Well, like what was I supposed to do? I had knocked myself out giving a good cleaning the night before, and then another touch up job prior to her coming over.

Well, the two inspectors did come over and checked every nook and cranny, even opening up closets and looking under my bed to make sure no cats were being hidden. Despite everything, I thought, and even our lawyer thought the inspection went well. The main issue that had been resolved: we were indeed down to only two cats.

In my next installment I’ll write about what happened in the middle of our court case. As if I hadn’t enough on my mind at the time.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

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