April 10, 2014, thru April 27, 2014

Xander is in Hawai'i! As promised, I brought a cat for Dad. Some of you may be familiar with the rabies quarantine program that Hawai'i is infamous for. Previously a cat or dog entering the state would need to undergo a 120-day quarantine at the state facility; the owner paid for the quarantine. The Hawai'i State Department of Agriculture now has the 5-day-or-less quarantine program as well as the standard quarantine. So prior to the trip Xander had to get 2 rabies vaccine shots a minimum of 1 month apart. A month after the 2nd shot a blood sample was taken from him and sent to the military lab to test for rabies antibody. If he had an antibody level of at least 0.5 IU/ml, the date that the blood sample was received by the lab started the 120-day waiting period prior to arriving in Hawai'i. The exact date is listed on the state website (by microchip number); if you arrive earlier than the date shown on the website, the animal is held in quarantine until that date. If you follow directions and arrive after that date, it will take only a few hours, at most, before the animal is released. He was out about 30 minutes after I got to the inspection office!

In the kitchen, waiting for the journey to begin

At the airport

In the plane

Waiting to go to inspection

Out of quarantine, waiting for the ride to his new home!

Relaxing in his shark bed

Xander spent the first few days in the laundry room, getting used to the new sights, sounds, and smells. He has never been an outside cat so I planned to build a cat run for him so he could safely enjoy the Hawai'ian sunshine. In the meanwhile, I put him on a lead outside the family room door; he did not like that one bit.

When I arrived Aunty Michi and her daughter Eileen were staying at Mom and Dad's. Aunty Michi was visiting her brother who was having some health issues. They had already been there a couple of weeks and left the day after I arrived, so we were able to at least spend the evening together catching up.

Eileen, Dad, Aunty Michi, Mom

The day after Aunty Michi and Eileen left I was washing the bedding and towels when the washer decided to stop working. It quit right after it drained the soapy water. So I had to haul all the wet sheets and towels down to the laundromat to finish the rinse cycle. I brought everything home to dry since we had the lines outside and the dryer still worked.

The next day we went to find a new washer. Mom buys all her appliances from Sears because Aunty Gert (who passed away several decades ago) used to work at Sears. (It makes sense to her.) So we went to Sears. The very patient salesman was heading her for the fancy, new washers with all kinds of special cycles and buttons and touch screens, so I stopped him and explained that she needed one with a knob like her old one. There was only one choice and it was almost exactly the same set up. Mom always gets the extended warranty; which is a good idea for her since she does not listen to the best practices to keep the particular appliance working at its best. (The refrigerator guy comes around about once a year to "fix" the freezer. She keeps it open a long time so lots of warm, moist air gets in and freezes in places it shouldn't. He has to come and do some spot defrosting to get it to work without making funny noises. Because everything else is from Sears and has extended warranties, it makes it easier to keep everything together. And Sears keeps good records so they know they are dealing with an elder who needs help with all these things. The service techs are very nice about coming out to make the same fix each time.)

We needed to move the old utility cabinet that was on the opposite wall from the washer so we unloaded it. When we moved it we found that over the years of mopping the floor the bottom had rusted. Mom decide she wanted a new one that had legs to lift it off the floor so she could clean easily under it. I found one at Lowe's, however, it was out of stock and expected in the day after I left. On a lark I called the morning before I left and it was in! So I went to pick it up.

Mom asked me if I was still interested in buying the Kohala house and I said yes, but I was still working on getting a loan. Truth is, after the subprime debacle in 2008, credit unions can no longer make loans for out-of-state-properties so my credit union could not finance me. But a bank and some other lending institutions could, so they gave me a referral to one. Unfortunately, the loan officer I was working with flaked out on me due to some family issues in her life, so I was back to square one in finding a lender. As it turned out that was OK. It seems the aunties had been talking to her and convinced her that since it really wasn't a trust, she should just give the house to me. Now her only concern was that my brother, Curt, was alright with me getting the house and the $40K account that came with it. When I asked him, he laughed! He said it was going to take way more than $40K to fix the house and if I wanted to spend my time doing that, I was welcomed to it. So Mom had her attorney transfer the Kohala house to me.

The cat run

Originally I was going to purchase a kit for the cat run but the cost to ship the kit to Hawai'i was about 50% more than the kit itself! So I decided to build it from scratch. I spent the more time measuring and designing the cat run than I actually did building it. The run had to be secure enough to keep 4 cats contained, it needed to be fully enclosed, it had to be temporary, and it could not be attached to the concrete block wall of the house.

The result: a 27 foot long x 4.5 foot wide area with concrete and grass. And lizards. It can be accessed from the outside as well as the sliding glass door in the family room, sort of. It turns out the sliding door, doesn't. At least not easily. But I had run out of time to find someone to fix it while I was there and Mom did not want anyone there that she did not know. That is a task for the next trip.

Since the sliding door doesn't, for the next couple of mornings before I left I would carry Xander out and place him inside the cat run door. And every evening, at feeding time, I would let him walk back to the laundry room door so he would associate going through that door with being fed. On my last night there Mom thought she was helping and picked him up to take him from the cat run to the laundry room. Xander, however, did not know what she was doing and tried to climb over her shoulder to get to the laundry room door. She kept yelling for me to make him stop and I kept telling her to put him down, but she wouldn't do it until she got in to the house. Her skin is very fragile now so she ended up with a very deep scratch in her upper arm.

Scratch in upper arm

Because I could see the subcutaneous fat I decided she need to go to the emergency room to have it cleaned up and closed up. But since it was late Saturday, we had to go to the Moanalua clinic (about 30 minutes away), since the downtown clinic closed at noon. On the way there Mom kept talking about how cats did not like her and they always bite her. She was remembering the one time our big black tomcat Midnight bit her (not very badly) because she was lying next to Dad and Midnight did not want her there. We finally got to Moanalua; I dropped her off and went to park the car. When I returned she was telling the nurse that Xander bit her; I had to clarify to to the nurse that one of our cats bit her 50 years ago! Today it was a cat scratch. They cleaned it out, spread an antibiotic on the open area, used butterfly adhesive strips (they said since her skin was so fragile it would just tear with regular sutures), and bandaged her up. They also gave her oral antibiotic tablets to take.

All bandaged up

Mom and Dad were going to Las Vegas in 3 weeks and she was concerned that the scratch would keep them from going, just as Dad's infected sore on his foot made them cancel their trip in November. We used that to our advantage and told her she needed to take her antibiotics every day until all the pills were gone so she would be sure to heal up quickly or she would not be able to go to Vegas.

Because of the ER trip I was unable to put the utility cabinet together for Mom before I left. I let my brother know about it so that he could set it up for her and get the old utlity cabinet out of the hallway, where she kept hitting it with her arm and developing a lot of bruises.

Addendum: Mom took all her pills, her arm healed nicely, and they went to Las Vegas as planned.  Dad says the nice people at Las Vegas are keeping his money safe for him.

Mom called several times to say the washer was not working; she said it was not washing the clothes properly. She thinks its not working because it is so much quieter than her old machine.