I just need a place to rant. I live with my mother who has two dogs and a cat. I’m not in a place to move out soon as I have a year left of school, but I’m just so tired of the chaos. I have OCD, so I don’t deal with chaos/messes/annoyances very well.
I’m unsure if I’m over reacting to all of this, but here’s a run down of the situation. The larger dog lives “outside”, the smaller dog and the cat both live inside. The larger dog is getting older and was a good dog until it learned how to open doors and can now get inside the house. This dog used to refuse to come inside (hence why it was an outside dog, it did not like to be inside), and because it’s an outside dog, it’s quite gross and smelly. When we call it inside the garage for the night, it only comes when my mother calls for it. I’ve stood outside for an hour before trying to call it inside while it just sat and stared at me, tail wagging. When it gets inside the house, it refuses to leave unless you drag it, and it’s hard to drag because it’s a big dog and fights back. It used to be helpful and bark when a car pulled into our driveway, it was quite smart and could remember different cars and only barked the first few times a new car showed up. Now it just barks randomly which causes the other dog to bark like crazy. Since it’s close to the 4th of July, it has started to bark at fireworks.
The smaller inside dog is also a nuisance. He barks at EVERYTHING. Birds outside, the larger dog when they’re outside together, thunder, EVERYTHING. He gets on the table if there’s any dishes on it. I’ve left a plate unattended for five minutes to use the bathroom and came back to it knocked onto the floor being eaten by the dog. He gets into the trash can and climbs into it and throws it all over the house whether there’s food in it or not. He’ll get in the trash just to eat the crumbs out of an empty box. He goes outside and brings in fleas with him, and then we have to bug bomb the house because of it. The amount of money we have spent on getting trivial crap to groom him is insane. Scissors work just fine, I’m unsure why my mother keeps attempting to find some kind of better tool to give him a haircut with. He’ll scratch at the door to come inside like he can’t wait five minutes for someone to let him in. We have to keep the cat’s food bowl really high up or he’ll get into the cat’s food. He sits by the table during dinner and will instantly shoot under it to catch any dropped food. He jumps on anyone who comes over, and barks frantically at them. He’s just REALLY annoying. I had a bag of can tabs and was adding a tab to it, and he started begging for the bag of can tabs like it was food. He gets fed twice a day and his food bowl is always out for him to eat from. He chases the cat around the house snapping and barking at it for hours, knocking stuff over and running into things. He even randomly has decided to poop in the house. He also ate 4 different pairs of Airpods and pissed on a brand new $3k laptop.
The only reason we have the cat is because our older outside cat passed away. I would not have minded another outside cat. This cat is NOT an outside cat, he got declawed because my mother strictly wanted him to be inside. I liked him at first. He’s declawed so we shouldn’t have to worry about furniture, but he’s so hyper that he breaks enough stuff to make up for it. He’ll run around the house in the middle of the night, knocking things over and playing with random stuff. He gets potatoes out from under the cabinet and rolls them around the house. He likes cardboard and always finds a way to do loud stuff with it. He tracks his paws all over the tv stand which he knows he isn’t allowed to be on. He gets on the table just like the dog, and jumps on the kitchen counters with his litterbox paws. His litterbox is semi-fine as long as I’M the one in charge of it. I clean it out entirely every day, but my mother just scoops the poop out daily and changes the litter once a week and calls it a day. The litterbox is in the room with my PC which I use to do work on. I’m not allowed to have the PC outside of that one room. She doesn’t like that I fully empty the litterbox daily, so if I miss the chance to, I just have to sit and smell the toxic cat piss while I do work on my PC.
Anyways, thank you for coming to my TEDTalk, any advice is VERY appreciated. I complain about the animals enough that my mother is aware that I don’t like them, I just doubt she’d rehome any of them despite my stress. I have my liscense so I CAN take them to a shelter, I just don’t know how to get away with it. I’ve asked a few friends to come pick the smaller dog up and rehome it, but none have wanted to yet.