Teetering on the brink

MFWannabe

EatingBeans said:

Another eBay item just sold for £3.50. How weird! Literally no sales for weeks, then 3 in less than 24hours. I’d given up with listing but maybe I’ll add a few more items. 

Still only ever sold one thing through Vinted though! I get a decent amount of items favourited but then nothing. I am very tempted to just stick to eBay. Whilst I do hate their new Buyer Protection fee, I have genuinely made money through eBay before. Everything I have heard about Vinted makes me think great for buying but rubbish for making any money from selling. 

I’ve done well with Vinted sales 
Maybe it depends what you’re selling? 🤔

badmemory

I think it is more to do with how your brain deals with auctions.  You see a buy it now price & say well I.m not paying that.  But an auction, most people don't seem to say, well that is my maximum & just keep bidding because they like the idea of winning & the adreneline.  I bought a lot of jigsaws last year & I would know before I even looked just how much I was prepared to pay.  If you don't do that then it can get expensive.  My collection of wasgijs is almost complete.

EatingBeans

Yeah, I did consider to switching back to auctions. Historically that is how I always sold but I thought everyone had moved away from that so I’ve listed everything as BIN. I think I am going to give it another go as I used to love watching the last minute bidding wars. I found it just as much of a rush as buying the stuff myself! haha

EatingBeans

In other breaking news today… little cat has been downstairs and approached little dog (who was in her crate), without getting scared, and without little dog barking! This is a huge step for us!

The back story for this is we have two cats and two dogs in this house. 

Big cat is a 13yr old morbidly obese uncastrated male tabby who was originally my ex-husbands and now belongs to dd1. We have tried many attempts to slim him down, including a very expensive prescribed diet from the vet, but every time we tried he stressed out to the point of making himself very ill (and almost died last time we tried). I believe this stress is due to his past where my ex abandoned him (I didn’t know as we had already split by then and only found out when I bumped into an old neighbour who had apparently been feeding him as they realised the house was empty but the cat was still crying at the door!😭) Needless to say, I immediately drove to the house and ‘big cat’, who at this point had become skin and bone,  leapt into the car like his life depended upon it. He literally clung to me for weeks and had gone from the big confident young cat in charge of the neighbourhood that I once knew, to a ravenous mess who was terrified of the world. Don’t worry, I fought to keep him as part of the divorce so he is now legally mine/dd1’s. The point is, big cat has been through trauma and was the only cat/dog in the house when we moved in just over 2years ago. His primary focus in life was staying close to us and getting fed (understandably). He has the option to go outside, which he does briefly to spray in the garden, then he comes straight back in. 

dd2 had always wanted her own cat and had been saving up diligently as I had promised that if she paid, then as soon as we owned our own house again, she could get her own cat. So, literally a week after moving in, along came little cat. And little cat really is little. When we went to choose a kitten we originally went to view a different one. The kitten we had planned on was healthy looking and full of beans (as was the majority of the rest of the litter), but then there was one, scruffy looking, tiny runt of a kitten that basically just sat in a corner, seemingly scared of everything. dd2 took one look and was adamant that that was her kitten. I tried to explain that maybe that wasn’t the best choice and there were lots of kittens in the world to choose from, but nope, there was no persuading her. It says something that even the owner wasn’t trying to sell it to us! I genuinely was expecting large very bills and for it to die very soon after purchase. But no. After much love and coaxing from dd2, little cat finally started to eat and gain a bit of weight. She began to lose her long dry, all-black scraggly hair and in it’s place a truly gorgeous short orange and black tortoiseshell coat emerged. Slowly she began to trust and now she absolutely adores us all (dd2 being the clear favourite of course!) and she comes down the stairs every night to give me a head bump goodnight. She is still very small even as an adult cat and she has a bit of alopecia plus a small growth on one of her pads but she’s done pretty well considering what she came to us like. She is still petrified of strangers and the outside world so she is 100% a house cat and always will be but she has a zillion toys and loves playing with big cat and people, when she isn’t snoozing the day away in her favourite radiator bed. 🤣

Now, the ridiculous thing is I was 100% convinced big cat would be fine with dogs (as he grew up with (and loved!) my previous labradors, cocker spaniel and pointador), but I was not so sure about another cat since he had always been our only cat. As it turns out, he adores little cat (she has been spayed so no risk of producing kittens), he play fights and grooms her every day, and not long after she arrived he even started playing with toys again (he hadn’t done that since being rescued). Now the two cats are inseparable. 

Not so when it comes to the dogs.

Big dog was brought up around cats but from day one has hated big cat. Big dog barks, big cat hisses (and swipes!), and despite many attempts at training there has been no improvement. Little cat, (being afraid of everything until proven otherwise), is just plain terrified of big dog. He barks, and given half a chance will chase her too. At least big cat has worked out either to stand his ground or move very, very slowly away from big dog. He still gets barked at VERY loudly, but at least this way he avoids being chased. 

Since the dogs are banned from going up the stairs unless they are asked to go up for a bath, the house has become, cats upstairs, dogs downstairs. This was never the plan, and frankly, I miss the cats! They get plenty of love and attention from the two dd’s, but at some point they will move out and I will be left with cats and dogs in different parts of the house and only one me! So I am desperately hoping they integrate and I think the key is finding one of each pair to bond, thereby showing the others it is all ok. 

Enter, little dog. Whilst she is the full sister of big dog and came from the same farm environment as big dog, she is thankfully responding to training re the cats so long as big dog isn’t around. She certainly likes to bark at lots of other things, but she is just a tiny bit more curious too. Unfortunately, her curiosity comes with boundless energy and she usually scares the cats with her over enthusiastic approach to wanting to say hello.

Today was breakthrough as little cat (without any coaxing!), ventured down the stairs and went to visit little dog whilst she was calm, but awake, in her crate. BOTH seemed totally ok just saying hello. No over excitement, and no running for the hills. Just a hello for a few minutes, followed by a quick hello to the humans and pottering back up the stairs to tell big cat all about it. 🤞this is the start of a beautiful friendship. 

biggerpickle

Awww that's such a sweet milestone for your pets @EatingBeans .

Teenmonster#2 periodically suggests we should get a cat but we live in a flat, there's a balcony but a cat could easily get through and while we do have some very nice and spacious grounds, we also happen to be on a main road on one side so guess we'd have to get a housecat. I am talking DP round to getting a cat and a dog when (if!) our respective teenmonsters ever move out and we can both upsticks and relocate to the shires somewhere.

EatingBeans

lol @biggerpickle I love the name teenmonster! Haha It’s funny how it seemed to be a given back in the day that teenagers would grow up and move out and now there seems to be universally accepted that this has become an ‘if’. Kind of a blessing and a curse? 

For me, it really is lovely having them around and my gosh I will miss my dd’s when they go, but the freedom I thought would come when they hit 18 isn’t really materialising. I’ve always know dd2 was going to be a cling-on, she has made that very clear at every opportunity, but even dd1 who has always been dead set on moving out asap, has now started talking in terms of, this uni is better than that uni because the commute home is shorter. Er, hang on. What commute home?! 🤣 I did have to point out that whilst she is absolutely 100% welcome to visit, my plan once they are both at uni is to sell up and move well out of town to an as yet undecided location. They’re like, yeah but we all know which bit if the country you like is and given where your family is, we are betting you’ll move somewhere around… points to map… here! I mean they are right but I’m not going to tell them that! They both also seem to think they will have a bedroom in the new house! And the thought of paying rent doesn’t put them off either as they just respond that, yes, they are expecting to pay their way but living with me is so much cheaper than moving out. So even if I move they will work around it! 🤦‍♀️ Got to love them!

With regards to getting a cat and a dog, I think what I am learning is whilst it absolutely can work, it very much depends on each personality. I also think young cats with older dogs works better than young dogs with older cats especially with big dogs. Older dogs are generally calmer and better behaved/easier to control. Old cats tend to be grumpy and not very patient with young boisterous dogs. When big cat was a tiny kitten he came into a house to be met by two middle aged labradors, one of which was a known cat chaser. Big cat, matched in, put every bit of fur on his tiny body on end (like a cartoon cat) and matched straight up to the two labradors that towered over him and went nose to nose. The dogs just stood there not really knowing what to make of him and from that day on, big cat ruled despite the size difference! I am sure if the dogs had jumped around at that first meeting it would have been a totally different story but it was a case of fake it till you make it gone mad. Before long they all used to sleep in a  pile together and as the rest of the menagerie followed, big cat was always just seen as boss. That was until ‘big dog’ arrived as a pup in this house and even though at the time big cat was actually bigger than ‘big dog’, no amount of persuasion was going to come out with big cat on top, or even just friends.  

Sun_Addict

I still have my DD living with me and she’s 38 😱 So don’t think you’ll be necessarily getting rid at some stage 🤣

EatingBeans

Omg @Sun_Addict  38 is mental! I am definitely going to need a bigger house if mine stay that long. 🤣 

Cherryfudge

Mine all moved out - then DS1 and his partner sold their house but were waiting for a new build that got delayed a few months, so rather than lose the sale, they came in with us. Shortly after they moved out, DD and her partner's tenancy came to an end, so guess who they moved in with? All this time DS2 was with us, but at some point he had left to go to Uni, which lasted a year before he changed course and came back to us while training to do something else...

So they might move out, but they might also move back bringing others!

All are now homeowners in their own right so perhaps we should move in with one of them?  

Love the animal 'tails', I hope it's the beginning of better things.

EatingBeans

Ok so I’ve now just sold a top on Vinted for £2.50. It seems ridiculously cheap but hey, £2.50 for something I will never wear is better than nothing.