Mold

My apartment has mold. Here's the long version of the story:

I have this robotic litter box that removes the waste from the litter box every time a cat uses it. The censor broke almost 2 months ago and while I waited for more than a week for the replacement to come in the mail, I had to use the old style of litter box.

The replacement part came in, I put everything back together, but someone soon started shitting beside the litter box. With 3 cats, it's hard to know who's doing what. And it smelled like cat pee everywhere. I thought it was because of the old litter box we still had out, but weren't cleaning, to encourage the cats to use the robotic one again.

We cleaned up the old litter box and moved it to the balcony to get it out of the way. Nope, the smell was still there. What he hell is going on? Then I find cat pee, and lots of it, in my closet. I cleaned it up, but the smell lingered.

Next thing, someone peed in my basket of clean towels I had sitting at the foot of the bed. Shitting beside the litter box is one thing, but pissing on my clean towels got me really fired up. It had been like a month since putting the robotic litter box back together, so something wasn't right.

Then, early in the morning just last week, I was groggy, still half asleep and I heard that distinct pissing sound. I shot up, wide awake, and there was Emilio pissing in another laundry basket. That fucker!

Now that I knew who it was, I could figure out what the problem was. I wanted to make sure it wasn't medical, since it had been a solid month of problems. Turns out the only medial reason for him to not use the litter robot was because he was too fat to fit inside of it. Why didn't I think of that? My poor kitty's gained almost 4 pounds in 2 years. For a cat, that is outrageous apparently. If he were a human, he'd be a contender for gastric bypass surgery.

I don't overfeed my cats. They eat grain free, portion controlled meals twice a day and they play and get lots of exercise. The vet said there's nothing more I could be doing, cats are just too hard to put on a proper diet. However, a brand new, sort of experimental cat diet emerged this month and it doesn't limit calories for weight loss. Instead, it jump starts the cat's metabolism and helps it run at a higher rate. He'll be starting that soon.

So, now I have to set up the old style litter box again. I do that. That damn cat pee smell is so strong, I'm sure there's more spots that I missed. Yesterday I started the arduous process of removing everything from the bedroom to clean it thoroughly. Our bedroom is not simply a bed and a dresser, oh no, that would be too easy. Our bedroom is packed full of boxes of junk that we didn't know what to do with when we moved in, so it sat in the bedroom. It's also full of laundry.

I washed 8 loads of laundry yesterday. It cost $30 or so. Some of it had cat pee, some of it didn't. Either way it all got bleached. We had a basket of random cords and electrical type things that I dumped on the floor many moons ago and half of it was sitting in cat pee. There were 5 boxes of stuff sitting on the floor. Surprisingly, none of it had cat pee on it. But my purses had to be thrown out because they were soaked. A few other items we were able to save with a good Lysol wipe, like my belt and craft box.

So much fucking pee omg I wanted to die.

After getting everything out of the room, I vacuumed and I mopped the floor with my Swiffer and then again with vinegar water so there would be no ammonia.

It was while vacuuming that I found the mold. We have one of those clear plastic bin things on wheels in the corner of our room. I pulled it out so I could vacuum behind it and there was like, 2 feet of black mold growing right in the corner. I was so disgusted, but I couldn't call the landlord until I had all the cat urine cleaned up.

We have mold growing all around all of our windows and in the bathroom around the tub. Those are moist places, and it shouldn't happen, but it makes sense. I don't know what's going on with the mold on the wall though. It's a cold corner, because they're outside walls, something to do with lack of air flow or something.

Someone is coming tomorrow to tell me what the plan is. They have to section off our bedroom to clean it up and not get us sick. If my litter robot had never malfunctioned, Emilio would never have pissed everywhere and I never would have cleaned my bedroom and I never would have found the mold. What a life.