Posting in another thread, then getting up to kill a bunch of moths (sorry, I am mercifully quick in squishing them) reminded me that I really have an overdue vent here.
My In-laws and Their Crap-factories (or Reason number one why I am looking forward to our own place)
I live with my husband's parents and brother. I am grateful that they opened their home to me, but I am not sure what they expected when I moved here. I am not going to get into everything in this post, but I am going to focus on one aspect of living with them.
They have six chinchillas (crap-factories). They used to have eight. Two died. I didn't have anything to do with their deaths, and I have a solid alibi. They are old chinchillas. Like around 15. It doesn't take me to push them into the cold embrace of the Grim Reaper.
I don't hate these things. I think they are cute in a way. My in-laws have just over done it in terms of numbers. One or two would be fine. In fact, I could see them as endearing, soft, bundles of fur in small doses (still crap-factories, but...). These are my brother-in-law and father-in-law's pets. Not mine. Not my husband's.
One wanders around in my brother-in-law's room, chewing cables and staring at you when you take a shower. Yes, our shower is in my BiL's room, but that is another post entirely. One crap-factory is in the living room. This one is relatively clean because my mother-in-law cleans his cage every other day. Four of them, formally six, are right outside our room.
My brother-in-law doesn't clean out these cages. I guess since they are outside our room, we are expected to do it. They reek. The crap goes everywhere. I think they might be part of the reason I get so ill here. My husband cleans them out weekly, but they really need to be done more often as they really do crap and pee a lot.
My brother-in-law is on holiday, and asked my husband to feed them. So who feeds them? My husband, my mother-in-law, and my father-in-law. This overfeeding means that a lot of the food gets pushed out of the cages, they over eat and crap even more, and that moths who come with the food hatch and fly about. My FiL has stopped feeding them, but my MiL still does it despite being asked to stop.
Even when my BiL is here, they give them raisins, which they don't always eat. These raisins stick to the cage, get pushed out of the cage, and attract fruit flies. The raisins that get pushed out of the cage end up on the bottom of my slippers, and conveniently help the little bits of crap stick there too.
Really, I should clean the cages. I mean, I shouldn't, but I should. It would be more fair to the animals, and would keep the place cleaner. However, a lot of things in this house have ended up like this. No one does it, so I end up taking over. And taking care of someone else's pet, not because they are on holiday or too ill to do so, but because they are irresponsible about it gets to me.
Apparently they all ran about the flat before I came. My obvious distaste for finding crap all over the place stopped them from doing that much.
