Looking back on our September

October 7, 2019 Catlady Natascha22 Comments

Hello everyone! The late evening of October 7 already! Unbelievable. September was a busy month and a month with lots of migraines and fatigue, unfortunately. But as of now, I’m getting into a good phase again, feeling well. Hope it will last a bit longer than the last.

Sweet Sonic is doing really really well! He’s not had any issues anymore with his tummy. His digestion is working like it should now with the new food. He’s happy and playful.

The weather has turned to autumn for good by now. But it started getting rather cold at the beginning of September already. Since then we had more days with rain or heavy overcast than sunny days. Though we had two wonderfully sunny and warm days the previous Thursday and Friday. So the cats were able to enjoy the sun on the balcony again. Sonic enjoyed the sun on the bed, while Murli and Samantha were on the balcony.

Sonic on the bed — Sonic on our bed, enjoying the sun

Recently it had been too cold to leave the balcony door open all day, even with the sun it had been too chilly. But the cats have to get used to that again for the winter…

Now I will often put a chair in front of the balcony door when it’s sunny, because the girls absolutely love to curl up on chairs in the sun. But especially Murli really isn’t too happy with the door closed most of the time now.

Everyone a the door — Murli right at the door, Samantha on the chair and Sonic sitting behind them.

I recently started to give them kitty grass again and they can’t get enough of it. They just absolutely love it! I only put it down for them a couple times a day, because otherwise, they would be at it constantly.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As I mentioned, the weather turned cold right at the beginning of September. We had planned to go to a huge Airshow not too far away from Graz, which only takes place every two years. We had looked forward to this one for so long! Though, right at the weekend of the Airshow, the weather had turned from summer to autumn from one day to the next. The temperatures had plummeted, it was raining, windy and the visibility was low. That is why we decided not to go, as we would have been in the cold and rain all day. Hopefully, we can go to a different Airshow next summer!

The Birds

The Sparrows and Pigeons are all quite happy! The swarm of Sparrows is very active and lovely to watch. I feed them every day and they’re not afraid of me, coming really close sometimes.

Sparrow nearby — Cute Sparrow near our balcony

The pigeons are coming really close to me too! Most days there will only be one or two visiting. But sometimes it seems they have a party going on and bring all their friends.

Pigeon Party — Pigeon party on our bedroom window and balcony

Of course, it’s great entertainment for the cats inside, when the birds sit on our bedroom window.

Pigeon 2 — This pigeon likes to sit on our bedroom window shutters

The Bathroom

Two weeks ago, they fixed and sealed off the area around our shower tap, so no shower water can get into the wall anymore. Also, it was found that the shower tap itself did not even have a problem… That was great, as it made the work a lot easier.

Tomorrow morning, the man from the company who measured the humidity, in the beginning, is coming again to see if the humidity is decreasing. Since the repairs dragged out for so long, it’s kind of early to measure now, since it was sealed off only two weeks ago. But we will see what comes out of that. I guess he’ll have to come again at some point when more time has gone by.

There are many more posts coming

I have lots I want to write about and share! I’ve got many ideas and hopefully my health (migraine, fatigue issues) will be holding up as well as possible, as there is so much I would love to do.

We’ve been doing great and are really happy! Though we feel the summer was too short for us. Ralph isn’t looking forward to the cold winter… But I’ll make sure it’s going to be comfy, warm and cozy at home.

All the uncertainty regarding Brexit isn’t nice and no one really knows what will happen in regards to Brexit, but hopefully things will get worked out. It will already be good to have an end to the uncertainty regarding it.

Hope you’re all well! Thank you for stopping by.

Love and Purrs!

Everything · Pictures · Ralph and I · The Cats

Hot day today! Some more flopped out cats.

August 12, 2019August 12, 2019 Catlady Natascha22 Comments

It’s been hot with high humidity all day. Even Murli didn’t stay on the balcony and went inside at 10am already. She’s been up on the fridge all afternoon. I found out that there is a slightly cool spot right in the middle at the top of the fridge. So that smart girl found that out at some point, which is why she’s always up there when she feels hot.

Murli_Samantha_20190811 — Murli and Samantha

Even Samantha likes to be near the fridge and she enjoys Murlis big cat bed. Though Samantha likes to move around a bit more and changes her sleeping spot repeatedly.

Sonic moves around as well and changes his sleeping spot constantly throughout the day. Especially when it’s hot, he likes to simply be flopped out somewhere. It’s his favourite position when it’s hot.

Here is a of photos of him flopping all over the place. Some of the pics are from earlier in the summer, but most of them are recent.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After Murli has been on the fridge for most of the day, she’s just gone on the balcony again. It’s almost 7pm now and still hot outside, although less than during the day of course.

Murli is herself all flopped out now…

Cute Cat Lady Stuff
I’m enjoying working on my crochet Cat Curtain for the living room. Once I have a bit more of the cats, I’ll post my progress. I just love doing it. It’s relaxing! I especially enjoy doing it while I listen to podcasts on my phone, sitting outside on the balcony.

Something else I wanted to share are those cute things:

CatladyStuff_20190811_01 — Cat figure on the bathroom window

A little cat figure on the bathroom window…

and a kitty wind chime above the balcony door…

CatladyStuff_20190811_02 — Kitty wind chime

I love wind chimes! When I saw this one on Amazon back in 2018, I had to get it for our home. It’s lovely when I hear the chime when a breeze comes through. It’s been difficult to photograph because it’s so high up. The chime is hanging in front of the top window that’s above the balcony door.

There is a lot of Catlady stuff throughout our home… But it makes me happy seeing those cute things around lol.

WordPress Premium
In case you’ve seen the way my blog looks, with the new background and colours changed, that’s because I have finally decided to get WordPress Premium. The reason I did that was to be able to monetize the blog. It would be crazy awesome to be able to earn a little bit with blogging. I want to get into blogging a lot more and it would be wonderful if I can add a tiny bit of income with it. No matter how small, everything counts.

Yet another unexpected update regarding the bathroom/wet walls problem
Today a contractor from the company that will fix everything rang our doorbell. We didn’t expect anyone today, but I guess he was having a look at everything outside. He asked to have a look at the shower tap and shower wall. Of course, there’s nothing to be seen, but I explained to him what the other contractor found out.

He told me that they will come by again soon to decide how to go about fixing everything. Because apparently, they do want to get into the wall now to look at the pipe. On the other side of our shower tap is the back of the communal toilet in the hallway. And it’s that wall that is quite wet. That wall can’t be seen at all by anyone, except the people using the toilet, which are two people. I never knew what it looked like in there until the contractor showed me.

Thankfully we have our own toilet IN our apartment and also thankfully, our toilet is not wet and won’t have to be messed with.

Something has been going on there for a long time and I guess they just want to have a proper look at it all and fix it all for good.

He said they will come by at first to decide if they are ripping into the wall from the side of the communal toilet, or if they go in from our side in the shower. If they go in on our side, it means a much bigger construction site for us and tiles being removed and everything. Which is a shame, since it’s looking really nice. I love the tiles we have…

If they have to rip out the whole shower including basin and everything, then we’ll have them put in a new shower. The new shower would be paid by us anyway. The reason we would have it changed then is that the shower basin currently has no proper foundation/support underneath. As it is now, it will break completely anyway at some point. You can feel it is a bit bouncy, because the shower basin kind of just hangs in the air, for the most part, only supported at the edge probably.

Whoever did the installation of the shower and shower tap long before us, probably wasn’t a proper professional. Thankfully they’re all professionals from proper companies now. So things will be done properly.

Of course, being me, I got a refill of anxiety after hearing about having to have a construction site in our bathroom after all. But Ralph got me calmed down again, talking about how there isn’t really anything to worry about and how I should just let them get on with it, doing their jobs and then it’s over with and how it’s a good thing if they fix everything. We also don’t have to pay for that fix either, since the landlord’s insurance pays for it.

Like I wrote in my post yesterday, somebody from the landlord’s insurance company is coming tomorrow morning to also have a look at everything and measure the humidity in all the walls.

I just hope nobody tried to call me today because there’s a massive outage on Magenta Telekom’s network. Magenta T. belongs to T-Mobile. Nobody on that network had cellphone reception since the early morning. No calls or text and no internet on cellphones. But thankfully the normal internet modem works fine. It’s just the cellphones for some reason. I can’t remember there ever being such a big outage. It’s all of Austria. Not that I care all that much, since it feels actually nice to know that nobody can call me, which means I can’t get any calls regarding the bathroom/wet wall problem, which would only feed my anxiety again lol.

The title in the image below translates to: “Map of Magenta’s outages/problems”

Underneath it translates to: “The last reported problems mostly came from: …”

Screenshot of Magenta-Störungskarte _ Allestörungen — Outage areas for the Magenta (T-Mobile) outage. The only white area is where the big mountains of the alps are lol. No cell reception up there anyway.

So we’ll see what comes out of the appointment with the man from the insurance company tomorrow. I’ll keep you all updated.

Thank you all so very much for your wonderful and kind comments on yesterdays post! All of you are always so sweet to me! Love you all! 💕🙋😻😻😻💕

Everything · Pictures · Ralph and I · The Cats

Bathroom and wet walls update – August 11, 2019

August 11, 2019August 12, 2019 Catlady Natascha23 Comments

Finally getting back to my blog! I always miss it so much. But I’m horribly unable to post as long as I’m feeling anxious. The bathroom problem kept my anxiety high for no real reason, but my anxiety is always over the top for every little worry. I wish I could get rid of it. Though most of the time I’m fine, so I’m actually lucky.

Anyway, I seem to be in a much better headspace today, thanks to my awesome Ralph, who constantly reminds me that there is nothing to worry about at all.

The Bathroom and the wet walls
Last time I left off shortly before somebody was coming by to look for the source of the humidity in the walls of the hallway/stairwell. Back then, we had no idea what to expect and we thought in the worst case we could have a total construction site in our bathroom.

Thankfully that’s not the case. The contractor from a company specialising in finding leaks in buildings and fixing it came by on July 22. He measured the humidity, measured the position of the wet spots in the stairwell and measured the position of the taps in the bathroom and some other things. It seems the humidity comes from the shower tap, and it’s not a broken water pipe. There are apparently two things wrong.

One is the plate that should protect the area behind it and the inside of the wall from shower water:

ShowerTap — The plate behind this tap is not sealed off properly, so shower water gets behind it and into the wall. It’s by now bent and a bit messed up after it had been taken off and put back on many times when it was checked out, which happened on multiple occasions.

So this plate was not sealed off properly and every time we had a shower, water would get behind it and into the wall. In addition, the tap itself drips slightly when the water is turned on. So both things together caused humidity to collect and cause the wet stains in the hallway/stairwell outside.

Though, there have been stains like that already before that have been here since before we even moved in. So what happened was probably that the stains were caused by the woman who lived in our apartment before us already. But after she moved out, the apartment was empty for quite a while and so the stains dried and so nobody worried about it (knowing the building will be renovated in the near future).

Therefore when we moved in, those already existing stains became wet again slowly over time. So, of course, no one noticed, since you would have to look closely to notice that the stains are humid. It probably was the people from the company that cleans the building that called the building management about the humidity in the stains.

That means that the tap has to be changed to a new one and the new plate needs to be properly sealed. Since it was not our fault that is was like that and because there was nothing you would have noticed from inside our apartment, I felt that we should not really have to pay for the changing of the tap. Which is why I contacted the building management about it.

Shortly afterwards, somebody from our landlord called us because he wanted to have a look at the problem himself and talk to us. He came round and wasn’t really worried about it. I just showed him where it was and what had to be done. He said that they will sort it out. He also told me that the stains all over in the stairwell have been there for years.

Then on Friday afternoon, I got a call from the landlord’s insurance company about it. He asked me about it all again and he also needs to come by and have a look at it, which will be on Tuesday morning. Of course, that caused me anxiety to spike again…

I just want it to be over with and fixed, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Back when the contractor came on July 22, the cats really had a difficult and confusing morning…
Since I had no idea what to expect and because I took a possible construction site with multiple workmen into consideration, I moved all the cat’s stuff into the bed and living room and the hallway in between. Then I closed the door, so they could not get into the rest of the apartment (hallway, kitchen, bathroom, toilet…)

Needless to say… they weren’t exactly happy. They were totally confused as to what’s going on.

Whats_going_on_20190722_01 — Sonic: “What’s going on Mum?”

Yes, Sonic was totally confused as to why his toilet is over there all of a sudden. Also, the water fountain had moved a bit and the cat food has moved from it’s the normal spot to the right of the cat fountain. In addition, Murli’s big bed moved from the kitchen to this little table in the corner.

Whats_going_on_20190722_02 — Stuff is all in the wrong place

Murli’s toilet moved into the bedroom… (Samantha goes on both toilet btw, it’s only Murli and Sonic that keep to their fav ones.)

Whats_going_on_20190722_04

While the door to the rest of the apartment was still open, Murli walked around and was really confused as to why her toilet was gone after having a look inside. The slightly open door you see is the door to our toilet. The human toilet, which is where her toilet usually is.

Whats_going_on_20190722_03 — Murli in the hallway

Also, my bicycle, which is normally in our rather wide hallway, was now on the balcony.

Whats_going_on_20190722_06

So after finishing off with moving everything, I closed the door to keep the cats in the bedroom and living room area. There was lots of meowing and scratching at the door from Murli. Sonic and Samantha just sat in front of it quietly for a while. All of them looked thoroughly confused.

But thankfully it did not take long at all. So I was able to put everything back to normal soon later again.

The contractor will come to measure the humidity in the walls again a while later after the tap in our shower has been replaced with a new one and the plate sealed. If the humidity decreases after that, then it will be clear that it was just the shower tap causing the wet walls.

We’ve got household insurance now!
I finally got us household insurance, and I found a really great one too by comparing all household insurances and insurance companies. I should have done that a long time ago really. This insurance protects us really well. If I had gotten it much sooner, it would have covered anything we might have to pay to get the tap changed. We might not have to pay anything, it all depends on what the landlord’s insurance company will do after the appointment on Tuesday morning. Still, I feel much better just having it now. It’s not even expensive at all, which is awesome.

I’m working on a second post right now, because it would have been way too much to put everything in one single post.

Hope you all had a nice weekend and have a wonderful remaining Sunday!

Everything · Pictures · The Cats

A possible construction site in our bathroom, a Crochet project and happy cats

July 20, 2019August 12, 2019 Catlady Natascha23 Comments

We stayed at home for the past two weeks, as the weather wasn’t really predictable to go take the cable car up the mountain. They would have shut it down anyway as it was too windy. It had cooled down a lot for the first week and it rained a lot. It’s warming up now, but we still get rain every afternoon pretty much. But we always enjoy our days, no matter if we’re home or somewhere else.

I also had a lot fewer migraines! Instead, I had quite bad fatigue for some reason. I also have low energy, or rather, not enough for everything I want to do. But that fatigue was really annoying, as I felt too tired for anything. Even too tired to use the laptop, read or write much. I might have not been drinking enough… It’s better now after drinking more, but it’s not yet totally gone.

Even though it’s looking like a thunderstorm is coming right now, we finally had a lovely summer day today!

I’m using two umbrellas on the balcony to have shade on the whole balcony for the cats and us (well mainly me, as Ralph does not mind the sun).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The cats are happy! With the bad weather, the cats stayed in for much of the day for two weeks. Inside, Samantha’s favourite spot at the moment is this carrier. This old carrier has been a bed for a long time already.

I brought Murli’s big pillow from my Dad’s home. I forgot to bring it when I moved and then I forgot for all this time… It’s not like she was out of beds or anything. We have countless baskets of all types, sizes and shapes and countless other nice spots for the cats. But Murli was definitely happy to get this big pillow again! My beloved Mum bought it for Murli when she was a kitten. She loved it ever since. The perfect spot for the pillow was the washing machine, since Murli likes to hang out in the kitchen anyway.

Sonic still loves the bed the most…

I’m starting Crochet

I always loved Crochet! And I’m going to crochet a Kitty-Curtain for the top part of our living room window.

20170714_ourWindow_002 — Living room window

This is the curtain that I’ll be doing. I bought a German book with lots of cute crochet curtains on Amazon.

20190720_CrochetBook_01

This is the curtain I’ll be doing:

CatCrochetCurtains

It’s been a long time since I did anything though and my Crochet stuff has been lost for the most part when I moved one time… Because I really wanted to start it up again, I ordered what I needed…

Like a book that teaches everything I need, as I forgot a lot and I also want to learn more.

20190720_CrochetBook_02

I also got a set of crochet needles and a bag to put the yarn in and all the tools. The bag has a pocket for the yarn that you can close. But it also has little holes so only the thread gets pulled out while you crochet. It’s helpful because if I have the yarn just out on the table, with it spinning every time I pull on it, Murli goes all silly with it. So that bag is helping a lot with that.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I’m really going to enjoy this little project and all the ones that will follow!

Water damage in our building

A couple weeks ago, a contractor sent by the building management came to inform us that a wet stain in the stairwell has been reported to the building management. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he showed me.

June 6, 2019 - Wet stains — Yucky wet stains where the pain falls off

After he showed me that spot, I knew what he was talking about. I just never thought it was water damage. That stain was there for a very long time, maybe even since we moved in. I always thought it was damage from people bonking furniture into the wall when moving. The stain never changed and always looked the same, but looking closer it is definitely wet.

The problem is, behind this wall, which is a very thick wall (about a meter thick), is our bathroom. The back wall of our bathroom. Within that thick wall are numerous water pipes. Immediately to the right of the stain, much closer to the stairwell, is the hallway toilet that two neighbours use who live in the two one-room units on the same floor as us. The contractor had a look in that toilet and with him, I did too. The back wall of that toilet is wet with stains as well. It’s not a big leak, it must be a tiny little leak somewhere that has been going on for a while.

From our apartment and our bathroom, you can’t notice anything. It’s all perfectly nice. No mould, no bad smell, no tiles falling off the wall. It’s a nice bathroom and I love the tiles. I really hope they won’t have to rip our bathroom to bits… Our toilet is fine as well, you can’t notice anything there either.

On Monday the contractor comes again and they are going to look for a leak in the pipes. No idea how they’re going to do that. Maybe they already rip the bathroom to bits tomorrow. He said the fault search will take about two to three hours when I asked. Hopefully, they don’t find the fault within one of our pipes, so that they don’t have to make a construction site of our bathroom. Of course, everything is paid by the building management, but it’s no fun. I just have no idea how that is going to go.

The other side of the wall, in the hallway toilet and the stairwell wall need to be repaired anyway, so I would hope they would open the wall from that side and not from our perfectly fine bathroom.

Anyway, before they are coming on Monday, I’ll get both cat litters and their food and all the cats and close the door to the hallway and kitchen. That way they will be in the living room and bedroom and the hallway in between those two. But the door to the rest of the apartment will stay closed, so that they won’t have to be so afraid and are safe. Because with people going in and out of the apartment, I don’t want to risk them running out of the apartment door.

I’ll let you all know what comes out of all that on Monday.

Regarding the noisy neighbour I wrote about last time… It’s been quiet for almost two weeks now. The temperatures have been low during most of these nights, so we had the bedroom window closed and would not have heard anything. But we didn’t hear anything when out on the balcony really late either. Also, it’s been gradually warming up again these past days, and now with the bedroom window open again, we did not hear anything from that neighbour either. Maybe enough people complained or they calmed down lol.

Hope everyone and their kitties are fine! Sending love from all of us and Happy Caturday! 💕