La Nina has certainly made her presence felt in Toronto thus far this January. First we get a record snow fall that paralyses the city; now we're getting rain and freezing rain. Given the limited skill set the vast majority of drivers in Toronto possess, I look not forward to this evenings commute home. In my experience, Toronto drivers are the most selfish, self-centred, narrow-minded, goal-oriented, cheating sons of bitches when it comes to being behind the wheel of an automobile.
(Don't dither, Ron; tell us how you really feel about them.)
In recent months, there has been a rash of carbon monoxide incidents in homes and apartment buildings. The most famous of these occured last month in the apartment building that was our address prior to our current one. We turn on the television news at 6:00 that day, and simultaneously say "That's our old place!" That it was involved in such an incident didn't surprise us in the least, given our experience there. As a matter of fact, we believe it was the superintendant of that building that's fucked up our one cat's personality for good.
When we first got Abby, she was a gregarious, friendly to strangers, fun filled little monster kitten. She used to run out into the hallway of that building when we'd get home from work and zoom up and down to blow the stink off herself. Later that year, we decided to move and gave our 60 days notice. One day, we discovered that she was hiding under the bed and refused to come out until she felt safe. We hadn't a clue why she was acting this way. Later, we found out the super had been showing our apartment without giving us any notice. Ontario law states that they must give us at least 24 hours notice of entry. We've deduced the following to explain Abby's sudden change of personality.
The super opened the apartment door to show the place, and Abby ran out into the hallway, expecting us. The super likely had to chase her down and manhandle her back into the apartment. This being a total stranger to her likely traumatized her so much that ever since then she has an absolute fit and must hide whenever someone she doesn't immediately recognise enters our home.
Fast forward to this week. Due to the aforementioned carbon monoxide incidents, all landlords now must bring all their holdings up to code. For our place, this means they have had workmen in our apartment every day this week. Abby must be reliving that original trauma in her mind, because she has been a total basket case all week. Last night she slept the entire way through on the high shelf in Lisa's clothes closet. She climbed the dresses that are hanging there to get that high and feel safer.
I'm hoping they have finally finished ripping our place apart to complete this work. They added some sort of sheet metal or something to our front door; it looks like a prison cell now. Hopefully they'll paint it soon. There's a honking big red fire alarm device in our hallway that looks so out of place it's ridiculous.
I'll be padding the walls of the sandbox this weekend, I suspect, while Lisa sews a little Abby sized straight jacket for our cookoo kitty.Who knows how long it will be until she returns to normal after this.
T.F.I.F. Point me to the beer.