The very last Quint painting shipped yesterday and is making its way across the U.S. to a fine, forever home. There may be a few tears included with that last painting but we don’t think anyone will notice.
Thank you to all who asked for and purchased the last of Quint’s art to help us build our emergency fund toward keeping us together and with a roof over our heads. While we don’t know what our future holds, we don’t like thinking Quint will never paint again.
Please keep us in mind and think good thoughts and perhaps Quint will, once again, be able to share his passion for painting.
With the holidays behind us and finally an off-work weekend in sight (for Mom, Dad works weekends), we wanted to share Quint’s painting retirement news and answer some questions going forward.
Yes, Quint has retired from his 6 year painting career. Yes, it has everything to do with when or whether we’re going to lose our home this year. Yes, this pains us to admit publicly. Yes, we’re living very, very lean and doing everything we can to keep us all together. Yes, undoubtedly, Quint will tell us when he wants to paint again. And yes, it’s possible we won’t be able to do anything about that. The only thing we can do is to take each day the best we can and hope everything turns around, finally and at last.
A friend mused that, if Quint couldn’t paint with paint, perhaps he would go back to painting the walls with cat litter and yikes! Honestly, we didn’t think of that. Hmm…
No, we don’t dwell on what might have happened to change our luck from good to not-so-good. Yes, we will continue to work toward being the best humans we can possibly be for all animals and for this planet, regardless of where our road leads.
Yes, Quint still has a few unsold paintings, and yes, he’s willing to part with them, to see that they go to good homes. We simply ask anyone interested in purchasing one of Quint’s last paintings contact us via email and allow us to send photos of what remains. All sales will go through his PayPal Donation account.
And yes, trolls and haters will continue to be ignored.
We’ve added our Amazon grocery wishlist to our lower right side bar here on this blog. And we thank everyone who recommended we do so. We’re not sure if it actually works or not, but we figure eventually we’ll find out.
In other news, Dad continues to look for a better job that, hopefully, is 1) in our own state/town, and 2) pays enough to pay the bills, including, as of the day after Christmas, the nine thousand dollars unemployment wages – for the one year Dad was out of work – our state has demanded back for some unexplained reason. He has a hearing next week.
On Monday, Mom is being hired on at her manual labor job and getting a teeny raise out of it. No longer a minimum wage temp employee (but close), she’ll get paid for some holidays now, and she gets to pay for her own medical and life insurance benefits. She says she can’t even imagine what that will be like.
Yes, we’ll continue blogging as usual for as long as we can. Yes, we’ll continue to work toward keeping our personal worries out of it and focus on what’s important – those Colehaus Cats. They love that kind of attention!
We’re celebrating 8 years of blogging this month with many of you being here through our highest highs and lowest lows. We thank you for your time and for your support. We are tickled beyond reason that some of you leave comments here. You wouldn’t believe how much each of those make our day brighter. Thanks for visiting and reading us. And thanks again for sticking with us.
The folks at Colehaus Cats
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Per Pia’s approval, we’re taking Monday off so Mom can sort through her work paperwork of which there is a LOT.
Happy 2020! Boy, it sure feels odd typing that one but here it is, the year 2020. Who knew we’d be running a cat blog in 2020? What a crazy world, huh?
What better time than to recap our 2019. We apologize in advance for the length of this post. It was a wild and tough year and we expect 2020 will continue to throw us curve balls. Let’s hope we get to toss some of those right back.
January 2019 was a lean month with Dad still looking for a job and Mom working 12 hour days; that is, when her job wasn’t sending employees home for lack of work. But we were all still together and that’s what’s important.
February 2019 saw ginger girls Pia and Miss Newton waxing on about Dad being at home too much while looking for a job. We had a snow day, started a Cats Who Sing post series and there were lots of shenanigans, as reported by Olivia. Mom, we think she was looking at you.
With March 2019 came more Cats Who Sing, a very important artist Quint interview with Mollie Hunt, some facts and fibs, blog hijacking threats and a Who-Gets-along-with-Who update. It was a very busy month, apparently.
More Cats Who Sing and Things on Cats rounded out April 2019 because, why not? And we were dealt another crushing blow by losing Dad’s ginger girl, Miss Newton.
In July 2019, Mom won a book and got another one that she loves dearly, there was a square on the floor, more of reporter Olivia, a day of nothing but Pia, a moody Tessa (when isn’t she moody??) and even though we aren’t intentionally feeding raccoons, Rose Ears brought her babies for a visit. Lots of other visitors stopped off at Colehaus too. Not initially reported in trying to remain anonymous, July also saw proceeds from Quint’s paintings pay for bloodwork and spaying of a highly-in-need cat and helped shoulder the high medical vet cost of two separately injured kittens. All survived and are living happy lives.
Mom ran an Art in August series throughout August 2019 because she always wanted to and because she started a new manual labor job that kicked her in the backside, leaving her little time for blog post creation. That job is still tough every single day but she’ll say it’s what she needs.
September 2019 included fun crinkle paper, fun mischief, the return of our Friday blog posts, early (for us) near freezing temperatures, more fun and more Colehaus visitors.
We were forced to upgrade our computer system and hard drives in October 2019 after a scheduled system update wiped out Windows 7, two hard drives and most of our files and photos from existence. What a headache that was, and still is, though to a smaller degree. Thankfully, all the Colehaus Cats exhibited patience with our ranting and hair-pulling, even Tessa and Viola who wow-ed us by eating out the same bowl at the same time! And somehow, through all that, there was time for more singing, a 6 year-old birthday, a trebuchet and a busy bee costume.
Taking suggestions from you, our Friends of Colehaus, we added our Amazon grocery wishlist to this blog and subtly asked for donations to help keep us and all the Colehaus Cats together. Olivia reported on seasonal changes outside and those Colehaus visitors probably go home and report on those strange indoor-only kitties reporting on them. Elsewhere, there was fun, facts and fibs, murder mittens and photo bloopers galore because that’s what November 2019 should be about.
December 2019 unveiled our Christmas card(s), brought even more singing, LOTS of judging Mom, lint and finally, ended with a traditional Colehaus Cats post. December also brings the end of Quint’s art shop, as is necessary due to our continued financial strain. While working a very low pay job, Dad’s still hoping to find something better that pays all the bills and Mom still has her fingers crossed things will look up, because they just have to, right? Right! Thank you to all who sent us Christmas cards via snail mail (that’s our only Christmas this year and we waited until Christmas eve to open those) and a BIG THANK YOU for sticking through this and visiting us.
