The Cat Cage and the Rat Cage Arrive on the Same Day
Published:
Tomorrow, Amazon delivers two boxes to my apartment.
Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01
Box one is a cat carrier. I do not own a cat.
On Sunday I am going to Austin Animal Center to meet a 3-year-old orange tabby named Pumpkin Patch. She has been at the shelter, her adoption fee is $80, and if we get along, she comes home in that carrier the same day. I bought the box before the cat. The carrier even comes with an orange cat already inside it, at least in the product photo. Mine is still at the shelter.
Box two is a pair of blue humane mouse traps. I do own mice, in the sense that they live in my kitchen and pay no rent.
They came in through an unsealed hole around the kitchen gas pipe. A previous patch of foam and wire mesh had been chewed through, which tells you something about the tenants. My landlord has had a maintenance ticket since October 25. The traps are my own policy while the ticket waits: catch them alive, carry them out, no poison, because a hamster and possibly a cat live here too.
So tomorrow, one cage arrives to bring an animal home, and one cage arrives to take animals out.
Current population of the apartment: two humans, one hamster named ASI (short for Artificial Super Intelligence), and an unknown number of mice. By Sunday night it may also include one orange cat.
The hamster, for the record, is the only resident whose housing situation is fully solved. See the next post.