Orange is the New Green

Tile guy came today. Bright and early, 7 a.m. there he was knocking on the door. Good thing I was up and showered and ready to go for the day already. Did mostly prep work and now we have orange flooring:

I had no idea what that stuff was or why it was on my floor. So I looked it up. Nice of Schluter to put their name so prominently on their product. Here is what they say it is:

Schluter®-DITRA is a polyethylene membrane with a grid structure of square cavities, each cut back in a dovetail configuration, and an anchoring fleece laminated to the underside. The anchoring fleece is embedded in thin-set mortar to provide a mechanical bond to the substrate. Tile is installed over DITRA using the thin-bed method in such a way that the mortar becomes mechanically anchored in the square, cutback cavities of the matting. Designed specifically for ceramic tile and dimension stone installations, DITRA serves as an uncoupling layer, waterproofing membrane, and vapor management layer that accommodates moisture from beneath the tile covering. Further, DITRA performs all these functions while still providing adequate support/load distribution for the tile covering. The combination of these four essential functions allows for the successful installation of tile over a wide range of substrates, including plywood/ OSB, concrete, gypsum, heated floors, etc.

So there you go. We have a plywood substrate in our kitchen so it seems to make sense use something like that to…oh hell, who am I kidding? I trust they know what they’re doing. I was just curious what that stuff was. I’m convinced by Schluter’s marketing.

Anyway, remember this?

They started to tear up the floor in the foyer and discovered another layer of tile under the existing tile. They thought they were going to have to jack-hammer up the concrete underneath it all and then decided to just remove the top layer and tile over it. Well, the tile guy fixed that all up too.

All better now full of nice, new concrete (or whatever that stuff is).

He says tomorrow he’ll be able to tile the entire floor. That’s great news, except that means we have to go spend the night somewhere. Once the tile is laid, we’re supposed to stay off it entirely for at least 24 hours to allow it to set. Otherwise we could break some of the tile. Since the foyer and kitchen completely block off all access to just about all the rest of the house, we’re gonna go get a room for the night.

I’ll still try to get some pix before we take off and post something.

That’s it for today. Tune in next time for the further adventures of Jim & Dena’s kitchen.

JIm

It’s Not Easy Being Green

I’m slacking again. Sure there were a couple of days of inaction lately and they’ve been working the last few days but the progress has been somewhat minimal and hard to show off.

They basically took this

And turned it into this

And then turned it into this

The drywallers have been here finishing up the walls and today the painters showed up and painted it all green. That’s going to be the color of the kitchen. Or at least, those parts of the walls you’ll actually be able to see. That wall there you really won’t see much of because it’ll have cabinets on top and bottom, a range and range hood in the middle (you can see the venting sticking out of the wall there) and a tile backsplash where you’d expect backsplash to be.

Here you’ll see more of the green:

This will be the dining area and that green wall is pretty much what you’ll see when this is all finished.

Still looks like they need to do another coat over the whole room. Then the tile guy is supposed to show up and start laying tile.

This is beginning to look like a real room for a change.

Take care all,

JIm

Drywall, Venting & Lessons Learned

I’m always amazed at what professional plasterers can do. And how quickly they can do it.

I’ve done my own drywalling and hole-patching over the years. Having kids, and life in general means you have to patch walls on occasion. I get it done, but it always takes me like 47 rounds of spackling, sanding, spackling some more and it end up looking…OK. Occasionally I achieve “good”. But professionals, in one day the get that whole edge cleaned up and looking like a real wall.

Then look at this. Here is before:

And now here it is after today:

That’s almost looking like a real wall. Not bad especially since almost that entire wall will be covered in cabinets.

Then we also had some venting installed. You’d think they’d have done this before they put all the drywall up, but what do I know?

I think they had scheduling difficulty with the HVAC guy so they kinda had to do that. This is going to be where and how the range hood vents. They ended up having to go down with the venting rather than up like we had wanted them to. They say it’ll be OK. I’m not sure I’m convinced of that, though I’m not sure what else can be done at this point.

Finally a lesson learned that has nothing to do with the remodeling project.

If you’re ever out in your backyard smoking some ribs, and you have left-over apple cider and oil you’ve been using to spray on the ribs to keep them moist during smoking, don’t just toss the remaining cider on the lawn. It’s not just like water.

Lesson learned.

JIm

Drywalling

Today the dry wall people came and patched things up.

You can see they got the left-over wall all covered up. Patched up the holes in the walls and fixed up the ceiling.

And over here is the other side of the opening to the family room. Guess we’ll have a little angle-thing in the corner there.

I cheated a bit. I know I said I’d blog every day someone was here doing something. Well, yesterday the electrician was back doing a couple more things. They put in one too many can-lights in the ceiling so he had to come back and remove the wiring for one of them. That was about it. Didn’t seem worth blogging about so I didn’t. Mea culpa.

See ya’ next time!

JIm

Guess the city of Janesville is satisfied with their work. Yep, that’s all that was done today.

JIm

p.s. I got to help my son change the spark plugs in his car. OK, he did all the work and I stood around and made fun of him. That’s kind of like helping.

Electricity, E-lec-tricity

Today we got some electrical work done. How about that. Let’s look at a couple of views from the corners.

Each of those place where there are white wires hanging down out of holes in the ceiling is where can lights are supposed to go. Curiously, the plans called for 9 can lights to go into the ceiling. When I was speaking with Jerry a week or so ago I was questioning the need for 9 new can lights given that we’re supposed to have 3 pendants hanging over the island. He assured me we’d figure all that out when the electrician came and he’d make suggestions and we’d talk about it and I should not worry.

Now I got holes in the ceiling all wired up and I’m not quite sure I want them that way. And they never did talk with us about it beforehand. Is this normal for contractors? I also noticed there are only 2 pendants roughed in over the island where there’s supposed to be 3. Guess we have some talking to do. And probably a dreaded change order.

On the bright side, I figured out what “nailing plates” are. See these

Those are nailing plates. Imagine if you will, people hanging drywall with screws (or perhaps nails). They could easily drive that sucker right into the pipes. Hence, put in a nailing plate and that’ll stop any nails or screws from causing you a much bigger problem. I noticed we got a bunch of those nailed up all over the place where the wiring goes through the joists as well. Of course, if Wisconsin used conduit, they wouldn’t have to put in nailing plates to protect the wiring, but that’s a story for another day.

That brings us to the end of day 22. Hope you’ve been enjoying this. See you tomorrow.

JIm

Yep. That’s it for today.

Seriously. They capped a couple of pipes.

JIm

What?!? Day 21! Yeah, I reconsidered my day numbering convention. At first, I was going to go by work-days. They started on Tuesday the first, worked through Friday the 4th, that’s 4 days, but then I counted the following Monday as day 5, not day 7. But now with this lull I realized, who cares about work-days, I want to keep count of how many days I’m without a functioning kitchen! So, this is Day 21. So there.

Finally got back to work today. Plumber came to remove some old plumbing and put in some new.

See those nice new pipes sticking up out of the floor? That’s our water for our sink and a drain. How nice.

See those tape lines on the floor? Dena and I got impatient and taped out where the island was going to go so we could get a better feel for what this will look like when it’s done. We like it so far.

They also took out that last little bit of wall. Cabinets will be all along that wall.

I thought about titling this post, “Another day, another change-order”. Any time something new comes up that wasn’t in the original estimate, they file what they call a change-order. It’s essentially a legal addendum to our contract specifying what additional thing we’re going to have to pay for. Some of these have been expected—money for the permits, credit for their not having to jack-hammer out the concrete in the foyer. That sort of things. Others not so expected, but I kinda feel like they should have been.

Take today for instance. We’re going to have another change order because, by code, when they put in new plumbing they also have to put in something called “nailing plates”. Now, if this is something required by code and they knew they were putting in new plumbing, don’t you think they would have known they also had to put in nailing plates and factored that into the estimate? I think so. smh

Anyway, it was good to once again see some progress. I’ll keep on blogging as long as they keep on working.

JIm

Another day, another senseless school shooting, and another round of politicians offering their “thoughts and prayers” while not actually doing anything about the epidemic of gun violence in this country. I’ve reached the point where all I can conclude from this is politicians want these shootings to continue.

Why they want this, I don’t know. I know if they actually wanted to reduce the number of people murdered every year by gun violence, they would take action by passing sensible laws to restrict or otherwise control the flood of arms and ammunition into our society. But they don’t. Hence I can only conclude they don’t want to. They want this violence to continue.

I know, they talk about second amendment rights and how they can’t do anything, but that’s bullshit plain and simple. We don’t let people in this country buy fully automatic weapons and that’s constitutional. Why not restrict the ownership of other types of weapons as well?

Because they don’t want to.

We already have laws that prevent certain people from owning guns and those laws are perfectly constitutional. Why not pass more laws expanding who can’t own a gun?

Because they don’t want to.

They’ll say laws like that don’t actually reduce gun violence but that’s a lie. Reduce the availability of guns and you’ll reduce gun violence. It’s that simple.

My own congressman, Paul Ryan, is the goddamn Speaker of the House! He sets the legislative agenda for the entire House of Representatives. He decides which bills come to the floor and which do not. Furthermore, he announced he’s retiring at the end of this term so he has nothing to fear from constituents or doners and yet…he’ll do nothing. All I can conclude is that he, like all the other politicians in congress, for some sick reason, wants this senseless slaughter of children to continue. I don’t understand it.

I don’t care what party any of these people belong to, they’re all at fault because they all clearly want this to continue. If they didn’t, they’d do something about it.

It is that simple.

JIm

Well, today we got some good news and some bad news.

The good news: Got a call from the lead guy, Jerry, telling me things are going great. They got the inspection from the city today and all is well. They are happy with all the structural work and things can move ahead. Even better, the workers are ahead of schedule even, way ahead of schedule. Things are great.

The bad news: According to the schedule, the next step is to have the electrician and plumber come in and do the work they need to do. But, since we’re way ahead of schedule, they aren’t ready to be here until week after next. So…a bit of a “lull” in the project. If they can get the folks to come out sooner, great, but usually they’re pretty booked up so…be patient.

sigh

Take care all.

JIm

More walls coming down and beams going up.

So, I missed Day 4. That was last Friday. I got home from work that day, took a couple of pics and then headed to the airport to go to Vegas to watch my older brother get married. That was fun, but no time for writing blog posts. So, today is a two-fer.

Recall, prior to Friday, the kitchen looked like this:

When I came home, it looked like this:

We’re opening up the wall to the family room to make the whole thing more open. To do that, they built a temp-wall to hold up the ceiling while they removed the old wall and put in a new beam to hold up the second floor. Like such:

and such:

That was about it from Friday.

Then today I come home and things are looking a bit more open.

A big improvement. Our family room is hidden behind that wall of plastic. A good look.

Then they turned their sights to soffits. Remember, way back when, when the one wall looked like this?

Well, now it looks like this:

We’re still gonna put cabinets in that opening. But for that, you’ll have to wait a while. I don’t want there to be any spoilers.

Take care all.

JIm

And the walls come tumbling down—well, sort of.

Continue to make slow but steady progress I guess. That whole wall, for the most part, is coming down and will then be open to the family room. Looks like they’ll need to move some plumbing I’m thinking.

Then in the foyer they got that top layer of tile off.

Maybe we should just leave it? Kinda trendy and plaid-looking with the old tile and the left-over grout. OK, maybe not.

That’s it for today.

JIm

I’m shocked. I honestly think never before in the history of home remodeling projects has a project been reduced in scope and price. But yet, that is exactly what happened to me today.

I generally approach this project with the thought that if the project lead ever calls me in the middle of the day, it’s gonna be bad news. Why else would they need to call, right? So today I get a call from Jerry and I’m thinking, “oh shit.”

phone rings

Jim: Hello.

Jerry: Hi Jim, this is Jerry, how you doing today?

Jim: Fine ’til you called. (Yes, I really said that, I know, I’m a jerk.)

But then he goes on to tell me that he actually had good news. Remember that tile over tile over concrete thing in the foyer? Well, turns out, he decided if he removed it all the way down, he would have to rebuild up the subfloor by 2–3” which seemed silly to him. So he had the bright idea to only remove the top layer of tile and then tile right back over the old layer. This means no jackhammering, no rebuilding up the subfloor which saves both time and money from the original quote! Yay me! So, all he has to do is fix up that area they already dug into and they’re good.

Will wonders never cease? Let’s hope so.

As for the rest of the kitchen, they basically got all the tile off. That was about it for the day. I’ll leave you with one glorious picture of a plywood floor and talk to you later.

JIm

Here it is! Day 1! The start of our kitchen remodel. I hope to post every day about how the changes went so everyone can share with me the joys of a full kitchen remodel.

First a reminder.

Before:

And after:

And I must say, this is going to be interesting:

They mentioned there being concrete below the tile in the foyer but they didn’t quite notice the layer of tile below the current tile, and then concrete below that. No word yet on if this’ll cost us extra. They were already anticipating having to jack-hammer all the concrete out—maybe that extra layer of tile won’t matter.

That’s it for day 1. Stay tuned!

JIm

Almost ready to start!

So we had our “final walkthrough” a couple of weeks ago, which really wasn’t final, cause we’re gonna have yet another “final walkthrough” just before they actually start – which is Tuesday, May 1. They wanted to start Monday, April 30 but Dena and I will be travelling back from Idyllwild, CA and we didn’t want them to start when no one was here. We figure someone should be here to let them in.

So, what have we been doing in the meanwhile? Cleaning out the kitchen! We have to get everything moved out so they can start demoing.

First we had to get everything out and our kitchen looked a bit like this.

Then today, Greta, Tom & Traigh came by to take our appliances. Turns out, they’re remodeling their kitchen as well and our appliances would go just fine in their new kitchen. So what the heck. They also took some of our countertop since they’re building a peninsula as well. Who knew you can just saw through a countertop with a circular saw? So our kitchen looks a bit different now.

The smart reader out there is asking, “What are you doing for eating?” Well, we moved into the basement!

We have this beautiful bar with a mini-fridge and a nice room behind it so we decked it out and we’re basically gonna live down here for the two months while our kitchen is being redone. It’s a bit cozy, but it’ll work.

That’s it for now. The next step is we meet with them this Thursday for our final-final-walkthrough and then they begin the following Tuesday. Once that happens, I plan to blog every day showing the progress and adding some pithy commentary (I hope). Keep coming back, should be fun!

JIm

Eh. Had our “final walk-through” with the builders. The lead guy came here with the lead builder-guy who will be doing most of the work. They pretty much agreed that, yep, work needed to be done. About the only new thing that came out of this meeting was our start date: May 1.

sigh

So hopefully we’ll have our new kitchen in place by July 1.

That’s it. See ya next time!

JIm

Signed the contract today. Sent off 25% downpayment. We’ll see what happens next!

JIm

This is test of the emergency blogging system. If this had been an actual blogging emergency we would have provided information about what do to next. This is only a test.

Today we met with our project manager, Jerry, for our kitchen remodel. We went over the final estimates and the contract. He gave us a nice overview of how the process will work and what they’ll do. He says to be ready for some stressful times. I think we are.

Here is a picture of the new floor plan I talked about in the previous post.

Ignore the way the seating is drawn in there — otherwise its all correct. One big island, fridge built into the wall where we currently have pantry-style cabinets. Take out most of the wall between the kitchen and the family room. Gonna be messy around here for a while (9 weeks!) and Dena and I will be living in the basement that whole time. Should be “fun”.

We actually had a few questions about the contract after we read it over and sent off an email asking for clarification on a few issues. Mostly minor, we’ll see what they say. I’m not too worried. Next step is to get the revised contract signed, give them a bunch of money to start and off we go!

JIm

We decided to remodel our kitchen. Mind you, our kitchen looks fine the way it is…

but there are some problems. Mostly they stem from the fact that all the cabinet doors are falling off. You see, the previous owners seem to have had all the doors removed, stripped and restained to the color you see here. While that worked fine, one problem we’re finding is that the side walls of the cabinets are that cheap particle board and when you remove screws from it and then try to re-screw the hinges back into the same place, they just don’t stay. So we end up with a number of them looking like this.

To make matters worse in one place, they wanted a big cabinet, so they just cut out the center partition that holds things up and we now have this happening.

So we want a change.

Having watched plenty of HGTV over the years, we knew we wanted a design-build company to come in and help us decide on how it should look and then actually do the work and subcontracting.

We first found a local company who seemed interested, but after getting some preliminary renderings from them they went dark. No responses to our “We like this. We want to hire you. Please contact us.” emails so we gave up on them.

Then we went to Property Revival. They’ve been pretty good so far. We started with them almost a year ago. We’ve spent that time going over every little detail about what we want. Most of that time is Dena and I changing our minds on countertops, cabinets, faucets, sinks, etc. But we’re finally done picking things out and should be ready to start soon.

Here is how the kitchen is laid out now.

We’re going to remove the peninsula and replace it with a big island. We’re also going to remove the wall between the kitchen and the family room to go with a more open concept.

Soon we should be signing the contract and having our final walk though and then getting on the calendar. I plan to keep blogging our progress as we go. So stay tuned. More to come (and soon I hope).

JIm

I’m back to boating! Got off my butt recently and got started on it again. From the last blog post from, gosh, 2013 I was working on the nibbing strake on the foredeck. Wow, made a bit of progress since then.

First off, I got the aft deck completely planked.

Then I stained the whole deck

Why stain the deck now you ask? Well, the next step is to add the stanchions back on, finish planking above the waterway and paint all that white. By staining the deck now, I think it’ll make it easier to mask the deck and paint all the rest white. At least, I’ll find out eventually.

Next I had to re-attach all the stanchions I cut off before (see earlier post about creative destruction). So I built these guides I stuck to the outside so I could use them to make sure the stanchions all lined up properly.

As you can see, I think that worked. Also note my beautifully stained deck is now completely covered in blue painter’s tape. This is because once all the stanchions are on and the final two rows of planking are installed and the new rail put in place, I’ll have to paint all this white. And I’m gonna use spray paint for that.

Last but not least, I’m cutting notches (I’m sorry, scuppers), in my planks.

You see, the next row of planking has to go even with the waterway and there are supposed to be little tiny notches, I mean scuppers, cut into those planks on either side of nearly every stanchion. So, I laid out the planks, marked where all the stanchions are, measured and marked where all the fake stanchions will go between all those currently in place and now I’m cutting notches. I’m actually using a small file to file out those notches. Each one you see there is about 1/32” wide. Kinda small.

That’s it. Last of the updates for now. I hope to keep on working and keep on blogging about this. Feels good to be back into this.

See ya!

JIm

Thursday night I said to my wife I thought the Bears were suddenly 5+ years away from being competitive. Another couple years of Pace & Co., they’re fired and the Bears are back to looking for a new GM, head coach and several more years of rebuilding. Trading away 3 picks to move up one spot for a quarterback that would likely have been there for them at #3 made no sense to me. After a few days to mull it over and read opinions, my feelings have changed.

It’s clear the Bears, specifically Ryan Pace, think that Trubisky can be The Guy. By that I mean they believe Trubisky has the potential to be a 10+ year starter for the Bears who will play at least as well as guys like Matt Ryan, Matt Stafford, Carson Palmer and Eli Manning. A true “franchise quarterback”. Now I agree we can all debate this. Pre-draft you could take nearly every top quarterback (Kizer, Watson, Trubisky, Mahomes) and find some analyst that had each one picked as the best quarterback in the draft and find others explaining in detail why each of them will be a bust. None of that matters. What matters is that Ryan Pace and the Bears clearly made the decision Trubisky was The Guy for them and they were going to get him in the first round no matter what.

From this base, the decision to move up to the second pick makes more sense. They were sitting at three and knew they were going to draft him, the only question was whether they would have to trade up to get him. The Browns made the obvious choice at #1 and picked Myles Garrett which left the Bears wondering what was going to happen at #2. According to Adam Jahns the Bears heard from multiple sources that the 49ers were in serious talks with other teams wanting their #2 pick. Should Pace sit at #3 and hope no one jumped ahead of them and possibly take Trubisky, or should he make sure he got his guy? As Pace himself said in the post draft press conference, he wasn’t going to sit on his hands and trust to fate, he was going to do what was necessary to get the guy he wanted. I can respect that.

What about Glennon and Cutler? Why sign Glennon if the plan all along was to draft a quarterback in the first round, especially when they already had Cutler (a proven starting-caliber quarterback) under contract?

It’s easy to argue they should have kept Cutler, drafted Trubisky, let Trubisky develop until ready to start then release Cutler. The cost to the Bears for Cutler in 2017 and beyond was pretty low and the contract was such that they could cut him nearly any time and owe him nothing. But let’s face it, Cutler was a pretty polarizing figure in Chicago. Half the city hated him, half the city loved him, and that proportion shifted every Sunday depending on how many fumbles, interceptions and touchdowns he had. If the Bears kept Cutler and drafted Trubisky, there would be an immediate “quarterback controversy” that would only grow louder and louder with every injury, interception or fumble. Those are distractions the team doesn’t need. Instead, the Bears released him and got Glennon.

Why get Glennon? According to this guy, word is Pace thinks Glennon has the potential to be The Guy in Chicago as well. Now again, we can all question this, but our opinion doesn’t matter, only Ryan Pace’s opinion matters. If he thinks Glennon has the potential to be The Guy you go get him but sign him to a team-friendly deal. His pay for 2017 is reasonable given his history and they can cut him any time after this season with not much dead money.

So where does that leave the Bears? In pretty good position in my opinion. There are four ways this can play out, three of which are net positives for the Bears. Glennon can turn out to be a genuine, starting-caliber NFL quarterback. If he does, the Bears play him all of 2017 and let Trubisky develop. If it’s looking like Trubisky is The Guy as they expect, we could see a real quarterback competition in training camp in 2018 or the Bears can trade Glennon away and get something for him. If Trubisky takes longer to develop or is looking like he will not be The Guy, they keep Glennon as their starter and begin to look for The Next Guy. Let’s say Glennon turns out to be the mediocre-to-bad quarterback many think he is. Mid-way through 2017 we see Trubisky become the starter and we’ll get to see if he is The Guy Pace thinks he can be. Only in the case where both Glennon and Trubisky turn out be busts do we see the Bears with another top ten (or maybe top 5) pick in the 2018 draft, possibly with a new head coach or even a new GM.

Like I said at the start, my initial reactions Thursday night were WTF and SMH. After a few days and a few deep breaths, I am beginning to be more optimistic. Only time will tell if Pace is right. Until then I’m going to remain hopeful and continue to cheer on the Chicago Bears.

Hmm. Lately again I’ve seen this quote floating around on Facebook and other social media sites:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” – Ben Franklin

It is often used by people to justify their standing up for their individual rights against an oppressive federal government. I decided to do some research to get some historical context and came up with this: What Ben Franklin Really Said. Turns out, it’s really being misused in most circumstances.

When Franklin wrote that, he was writing to the Governor of Pennsylvania. The state legislature was attempting to pass a law raising taxes on land owners to pay for a militia to help defend homesteads on the border against Indian attacks. The Governor (at the request of the Penn family) kept vetoing the legislation. The Penn family offered to pay for the militia out of their pocket if the legislature would agree they did not have the authority to levy such a tax. This was what Franklin was arguing: Giving up the essential liberty of self-governance to obtain temporary safety was wrong. The legislature had the right and the duty to act in the best interests of the people. Seems to me, the most parallel situation today is our Congress’s unwillingness to challenge executive orders ostensibly designed to protect our borders and keep us safe. If there is such a threat to our safety and security, then Congress ought to be passing laws to increase border protection and raise the taxes necessary to pay for such protection, rather than ceding that authority to the President. The Democratic Congress was derelict in its duty when it allowed then President Bush to launch wars for our protection through executive orders rather than through a congressional declaration of war. Republicans in congress showed some spine when Mr. Obama was in office and they were willing to challenge some of his orders, but now that they have “their guy” in office, they too are willing to cede their responsibility to the President. All those people who want change in Washington need to remember this in 2018 when all of congress is up for reelection. Vote for people who will stand up for our constitutional rights and who will do their job rather than running scared from a President with a twitter account just because he belongs to your party.

JIm

Well that was embarrassing. I wanted to post something here yesterday, fired up my computer, looked in my Sites directory, saw all my files and realized I had no idea which tool I used to build this site. I’ve obsessed for years trying to find the “right” tool to use and have tried many, many tools. Eventually I apparently picked one but now had no idea which one. Looked around my site and my last post was from over a year ago. sigh This morning I realized that I might have blogged about it. So I looked at a past post and found my blog reboot post wherein I mentioned that I used Jekyll. Yay! Of course, for some reason Jekyll wasn’t installed on this machine so I had to reinstall it, but that was easy and now I’m back up and running so when inspiration strikes, I can post. (I’ve also updated the footer on this site to remind me what tool I use to do this.)

We killed our cat yesterday. Well, more accurately, we had him killed yesterday. Such a blunt way of putting it, yet it’s accurate. In polite society we say we “had him put down” which sounds so much nicer yet amounts to the same thing. His name was Scaliwag (and it bugs me that all my spell-checkers insist his name should be spelled ‘Scalawag’ instead) and he’d been a part of our family for about 15 years.

We got him when he was somewhere around two or three. Dena had a patient who had been a cat breeder and was getting out of the business. We agreed to adopt Scaliwag into a family that already had 2 other cats: Broccoli and Cauliflower (kinda messed up that vegetable-naming thing we had going on). He fit in OK for the most part. Broccoli was an adult boy black-and-white while Cauliflower was a young tortoise-shell girl. Scaliwag was a young, lean, active and somewhat skittish Siamese with beautiful, sleek tan fur fading to black at the paws and face with strikingly blue eyes. A really beautiful cat.

Scaliwag was never much on friendship. While the other cats would come and play with us, walk on us and otherwise demand our attention, Scaliwag never cared much for that. He was, however, a lap cat. If we ever sat down on the couch with our feet up, he was there ready to hop on our laps and make himself comfortable. He was a good cat.

He outlasted Broccoli and Cauliflower. He died from kidney disease and she a year later from breast cancer. Losing him hit our family the hardest. The kids were still little and it was their first experience with death. He was also the first pet Dena and I had gotten together and was always my buddy. They were eventually replaced by Lion, another young, rambunctious, boy cat, this time dressed in orange tabby. Scaliwag took it all in stride, adopting to the changing family while continuing to sit on our laps and otherwise ignore us.

Something changed recently and he stopped being himself. Feeding him became more difficult and he started to lose weight. He developed congestion that would make it difficult for him to breathe. Lion became more aggressive to him and he began to hide more and stay away from us more. He just wasn’t himself, though he would still sometimes come and sit on our laps. We weren’t very good parents at this point. We let this go on too long. At first, too much denial, telling ourselves it would just get better. Later, too much guilt for not having taken him to be seen earlier and still hoping it would get better all while he got worse and worse.

Eventually we got the courage to have him seen and did what we could. Got some medications, tried some new special food but none of it really helped. We thought he was getting better, but he wasn’t. For his last several weeks he lived in the back of Dena’s closet and almost never came out. We would take food to him and find him laying on a towel soaked in urine. He would no longer even use the litter box sitting right beside him. We eventually realized it was time.

We took him to the vet yesterday. They were very kind and understanding. It kind of surprised us that we were both in tears over this cat who never really fit in to our family and kept himself aloof from us all those years. The vet administered a sedative and I took Scaliwag and sat down with him on my lap. I petted and cried and told him it was OK. He kindly accepted my words, my petting and my lap and quickly and quietly went to sleep.

Goodbye Scaliwag, we’ll miss you.

Scaliwag: born 1998?, died August 14, 2015