Cool Weather Returns

Lutz, Florida

The cold front arrived last night and it was 57 degrees when we woke up this morning.    This is the weather Floridians wait for all year.  When we lived here, October marked the beginning of our  camping season. 

The lady at the office of the rv park is a cat lover, so I brought Baxter in to meet her.   She told me he is a Main Coon cat and looked just like her cat Wolfie.

I got to meet Wolfie  yesterday, and I had to agree….Baxter looks just like her cat, down to the huge feet and fluffy coat.  I did a little research on the breed and they are called the “gentle giant.”  Baxter is definitely not  gentle,  in fact  “mean as hell”  is a much more accurate description!

He loves to attack anything that moves and he bites!   That’s normal kitten play behavior and we’re working on correcting the biting.    He gets lots of  “time-outs”, water sprays and smacks on the butt!  The article said male Maine Coon’s can get up to 25 pounds (oh Lord) and they don’t quit growing until they are 3-4 years old.  It also said they love to eat and we’ve already noticed that with Baxter.

I was playing photographer yesterday and took some more Baxter baby pictures.

He was sleepy so he posed for me. 

 

I took a picture when we first got him with him laying by my shoe.  See how much he’s grown?  The first picture was when he was about 7-8 weeks old.

and look at him now.

I hate that he’s growing up!

Big yawn.

 

We’re trying to get finished up here in Tampa this week so that we can head north.  We’re getting anxious!

We are still dealing with getting the rental house ready for new tenants.  We have a new refrigerator and stove being delivered tomorrow, so I’ll have to be there. The interior has been completely re-painted, and they only charged $890.  We felt that was a pretty good price. It would have taken us a hundred years to get it all painted.

We’re having the same company paint the exterior of the house.  It needed it and he’s giving us a fair price.  He is going to  pressure wash the house, and both screen porches, the drive-way and sidewalks, clean the gutters, fix a bad piece of fascia board,and put two coats of paint on the house for $1200.  We felt that was a pretty good price, so we have that scheduled for next week.  This guy works for our property management company, so we trust he will do a good job.  We would like to be here to watch them, but we’re  going to just have to trust him, and of course follow up when we get back.

The maid cleaned yesterday.  When Al went by, he said it appeared she was doing a good job.  The carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow and then we should be good to go.  I think we have a new tenant lined up as well…she just needs to pass the credit and background check.   She is a friend of a friend, so we don’t anticipate any issues there.  We’re still going to do the credit check though.  We’ve spent a lot of money this month, but it was things that needed to be done.  We didn’t want to do all the painting ourselves.  By the time we would have gotten it all done, we would have lost that much in rent.

So hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of town this week-end!