roof is done and it is gorgeous (plus a cat)

Demetrius and his crew just left—the roof is finished! They did a great job, and what’s more, charged us exactly the estimate. Demetrius said it should’ve cost us about $240 more for replacing the rotten fascia, but, he said, he ignored that to compensate for the inadvertent leak, which damaged the bedroom ceiling. Which I thought was really classy. Stanley hadn’t asked Demetrius for anything for that—just told him to let it go (he put it in the “shit happens” category). Stanley is still stunned—he thought all the replacement work and plywood that needed to be put down would probably push things up and extra thousand, but it didn’t. The entire job was $8,100, just as he estimated (it cost us an extra $600 for the red shingles, which we were more than willing to pay).

And they cleaned up—everything seems to be neat as a pin, though Demetrius said there might be some stuff that got under the dumpster (which will be removed in the morning!) I can handle cleaning up under the dumpster. Debris, gone. Gutters cleaned out. I am happy.

So now we have a nice, tight roof. A red roof. Which means that now Stanley can repairs ceilings and walls in the “new” part of the house that were damaged during past leaks. Which means the kitchen can finally be painted! I got my Christmas present early (I asked for a new roof). What was cool, too, was that Demetrius estimated the shingles accurately—no extra bundles of shingles sitting around that we would’ve had to pay for (along with the mark-up).

So, if you need a roof and live in Fairfield County and areas within a reasonable distance of Bridgeport, we highly, very highly, recommend Demetrius Pettway Construction (203) 332-7567.

PLUS A CAT
We went to Animals in Distress in Wilton on Saturday. It’s a cat shelter. We were (I was) ready to try again in our quest to find Twitch a buddy. And we did: a beautiful, all-black, six-month-old cat that we’ve name Slink. Because he slinks—if he got any lower to the floor I wouldn’t need a dust mop. I will get his photo up soon—just don’t have time at the moment.

Animals in Distress was very off-putting, kind of depressing in a way beyond any animal shelter is (at least for me—I want to take them all home). I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was the kitty litter dust hanging in the air—they get the cheapest litter they can delivered by some pet shop. Everything is coated with the dust—our faces and, I’m sure, lungs were when we left. The volunteers were nice enough, though the woman there could’ve handed me the cats I was looking instead of making me wrest them from her!

We wanted a three- or four-month-old kitten, but the young kittens there, though pretty, were scared and hostile—the place was in no way calm ... more of a madhouse ... and I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. Then I spotted this older black cat, about six months old, and he leaned into me. And Stanley really liked him. So, after submitting to a BS interview (like we would spend 90 minutes in a dust-laden, piss-reeking madhouse if we really didn’t want a kitten), we paid our $100 and adopted him.

I keep telling Stanley that as bad as that place seemed, it’s still a world better for the cats than being in the woods or hanging out at a dumpster.

Anyway, we took Slink to our vet today (A Cat’s Place, affiliated with Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital) to get him checked out. Oh, my. Slink has a slight cold, which we knew. But he also has ear infections in both ears, possibly because he had mites at one time (but not now), and fleas. FLEAS! So it’s costing us an extra $150 to deal with the fleas and the ear infection—we have to treat both cats (the dog already got her treatment). So we’re not too crazy about whatever vet AID is using.

And we don’t want to entrust Slink to whatever vet AID uses for the neutering (some vet in Darien), so A Cat’s Place is going to neuter Slink at the shelter rate for us on January 3, which is very nice of them. Twitch and Ginger have received nothing but top-notch care from A Cat’s Place & SHAH over the past five-plus years, so we want to stick with them for everything.

Slink will have cost us about $450 by next month, rather than the less-than-$200 we’d anticipated—all because AID needs a better in-house vet. Ah well. At least Slink loves Twitch—even if Twitch is still semi-ignoring him. Twitch: too cool to play. At least for now. (And I really, really like Slink.)

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