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The Downside to Buying Homes Near Dairy Farms in Elk Grove
Dairy farms in Elk Grove are scattered in the countryside.
Dairy farms have convinced me. Much as I appreciate the countryside, I am an urban girl at heart. It’s not often that I get out to the country. Living in Sacramento, the country is actually very close at hand. There are lots of places you can drive to from downtown Sacramento and be in the country in 20 to 30 minutes. Which is where we went yesterday afternoon to bring our adopted cat Horatio back to the Sisters Animal Sanctuary on Fogg Road. We drove past a bunch of dairy farms. I’ve never seen so many cows that close up. I asked my husband to stop the car so I could shoot a photo, which you see above.
Holy cow, pardon the pun, but it was a bad thing to do. To lower the car windows. I almost said “rolled down” before I realized nobody rolls down their windows anymore, which certainly shows my age. Lowering the windows instantly filled the interior of our car with the odor of a dairy farm and cow manure. I could still smell it when we raised the windows. We had to turn on the air conditioning and lower all the windows to get that smell out of the car. That’s how I know I am an urban girl. Like Eva Gabor in Green Acres.
Well, I should have known when I was in first grade, now that I stop to think about this. Yes, my first-grade class went on a field trip to a dairy farm. All of us kids got off the bus. As soon as my feet hit the ground and I got whiff of the farm, I vomited all over my beautiful new saddle shoes. I’m not really a vomiting kind of person. It takes a lot for me to vomit. Like after drinking tainted water in the middle of a jungle in Ecuador. Been there and done that.
The bus driver put me back on the bus. I didn’t get to visit the dairy farm. I had to sit in my bus seat and wait for everybody else to come back. Seemed like eons. I sang to myself, Old MacDonald Had a Farm, which a few years later I thought was the same guy who opened a McDonald’s in Dinkytown, Minneapolis. It made sense. Cows. Hamburger. One of the teachers brought me a small plastic cow as a souvenir, but dairy farms remain a mystery to me to this day.
Horatio sits in the window at night.
Sometimes, buyers who purchase homes near the countryside, especially in Elk Grove or Anatolia, complain about the smell. Or, they don’t like listening to pigs squealing or donkeys braying. I say before you buy a home in Elk Grove, it makes sense to drive around the neighborhood and look at the location of your new home in Google maps. Zoom out to see the landscaping around it.
Horatio is at the no-kill shelter again looking for a new family, hopefully a person or persons who don’t have another cat. I bet he can smell the dairy farms from his outdoor enclosure. It will take a few months, I imagine, for our original two cats to de-stress from this 6-month situation. There wasn’t any other choice, and I feel guilty that it took me so long to determine we had a problem. I wanted this to work so bad. Wanting it doesn’t make it so. Sometimes doing what is best is painful. This is best for our Ragdoll Jackson and Ocicat Tessa. I have to keep reassuring myself of this so I don’t cry.
Happy solar eclipse day. Don’t stare at the sun.
Would You Like to Adopt a Lavender Siamese Named Horatio?
A lavender Siamese named Horatio is a very affectionate cat.
It is a very sad time in the Weintraub household as we prepare to surrender our lavender Siamese named Horatio. You may recall when we adopted Horatio six months earlier. He had been living at the Sisters Animal Sanctuary in Elk Grove ever since he was born. He was used to living on his own there, running outside in an enclosed pen, and pretty much doing whatever he wanted. When he came to live with us, his wild eyes constantly darted about the room, half in worry, I suppose, and the other half was just to keep apprised of what was going on. Like a street savvy cat without ever living in the streets. He wasn’t really socialized in a home.
The first thing he did was push out our bedroom screen, which broke and we replaced it. He did it again. So we replaced the window screen with a very durable pet screen, and that did the trick. It was our fault for opening a window right next to the bird bath. Those birds drove Horatio crazy. Today, I’m happy to say, he is a very well behaved cat. He doesn’t jump on the counters, uses Breeze pellets and is not a fussy eater. He doesn’t claw anything in the house and he uses his scratching pad. He’s a very good cat, personable and friendly.
We decided to adopt a lavender Siamese named Horatio because our senior cat, Pica, had died. Pica struggled for several years with diabetes, and eventually developed too many other diseases and we couldn’t keep his diabetes under control any longer. We waited 6 months after euthanizing Pica before we began to look for another cat to fill the hole in our house. Not that any cat could ever replace Pica in our hearts, because that’s impossible. But Tessa, our Ocicat, and Jackson, our Ragdoll, were mourning, too. We were a 3-cat household, damn it, not a 2-cat.
After several months, we were finally able to get Horatio to look at us when we talked to him. He also talked back. He became engaged with us. We taught him to play with toys on a string, which he would drag around the house and put in our laps. But in the process, we lost sight of Tessa and Jackson.
Jackson cannot take the stress of having Horatio in a condo with him.
Look at this photo of Jackson with Horatio. They look like they’re getting along, but they were not. Jackson was in the condo first, and Horatio jumped up and pushed his way in. This upset Jackson so much that he developed an inflamed bladder. Jackson is such a tender soul. Twice I had to take him to the vet for treatment. Two months after Horatio arrived, and again about a month ago. The vet said it was stress that caused him such distress. At first I thought it was because I had gone to Minneapolis for a funeral, but no, it was Horatio.
Tessa is not pleased that Horatio squeezed himself between her and the window.
Horatio snuggles in wherever he wants, without regard to an invitation nor picking up on our cat’s discontentment. Tessa and Jackson stopped sleeping with us at night. Only Horatio came to bed. Horatio barged in to take their toys and interrupted red dot playtime. He is sweet and purrs all the time. He is truly an adorable cat and it breaks out hearts to have take him back to the Sisters Animal Sanctuary. Two days ago, one of Tessa’s 3 eyelids (who knew cats have 3 eyelids?) swelled and began to protrude. The vet said she was stressed. I felt so guilty.
I think Horatio would do well in a home without any other cats. He has a dominant personality, the kind that would get along well dogs. He has no fear of anything, really, except a belt. I don’t know why he is afraid of belts, as I’m sure he was not mistreated where he lived. If you would like to adopt a lavender Siamese named Horatio, he will be available at the Sisters Animal Sanctuary as soon as they can find room to house him.
Much as we love and adore this cat, we can’t let our own cats suffer. And that’s just a crying shame he can’t stay with us.
A Silver Lining to a Sad Successor Trustee Sale
This successor trustee sale focused on a silver lining at the end.
Right before I received the “confirmation of closing” email for a successor trustee sale near Elk Grove, I had received bad news from my vet about our cat Horatio. Poor little guy had a bit of diarrhea, so I took him to the River City Cat Clinic in Land Park. We adopted Horatio about a month ago. The vet suggested we test him for leukemia and AIDS, since he came from a shelter. Well, the vet called yesterday afternoon to say the results came back positive.
When I was 23, I lost my Himalayan, Cairo, to leukemia. I had visited that cat daily in the hospital. He could barely stand up with tubes taped to his legs, he was so sick. I would reach through his cage and gingerly hold him, trying not to sob. He didn’t make it. I can’t do this again, is my first thought.
Never in a million years did I expect our newly adopted cat to have leukemia. They don’t vaccinate for that when your cats are indoor. Tessa and Jackson have not been exposed to the leukemia vaccine. I can’t test either of them for 30 days. Our cats could die. All of the cats at the shelter could die. Horatio could die. I’m absorbing all of that when the email popped up informing me the successor trustee sale had suddenly funded and closed.
I had met that seller when I came out to the house to do my visual inspection. Met both daughter and mother. Days later, BAM, the mother collapsed into a coma. Daughter and I listed the home. Her mom is in hospice now. Just thinking about life and its preciousness was enough to make me want to cry, but I had to call the daughter to let her know the sale had closed escrow. How are you, she asked? Well, I wasn’t planning on saying anything personal, but I could not say peachy keen. I shared what happened with Horatio. I was a bit raw at the moment. We talked about her mom. End of life options.
You can’t always bottle up stuff. It’s not healthy. Now I sometimes fight it, but despite my analytical nature, I am a compassionate person. I try to show empathy for my clients. To be aware. Everybody has some horrible thing going on in their lives, when it comes right down to it. Stuff we share, stuff we don’t. But it’s there.
OK, silver lining time. There is always a silver lining.
I set aside my tears. I reminded the daughter about how many offers we had received, four in all. The very first offer was from a young couple trying to use the CalHFA program for first-time home buyers. This is a program that is hard to get an offer accepted for in our Sacramento seller’s market. Everybody wants the cash buyers or the conventional buyers. Some listing agents wrongly pigeonhole CalHFA buyers and shove them down the totem pole. The only kind of buyer that struggles more with offers than a CalHFA buyer is a VA buyer.
Of all the offers we had received, the CalHFA offer was the lowest. It was only $5,000 over list price. I want what is best for my seller. We want the committed buyer who will close and not try to make the seller pay for repairs or or closing costs. We want the highest offer. But in this instance, I pointed out to the seller that I felt our list price was the top of the market, and it might not appraise for more. All of those other offers are pretty much worthless if they are contingent on an appraisal, and it doesn’t appraise (and they were contingent).
Why not give the CalHFA couple a break? I suggested. Why not sell to them? We can make an agreement that they will take care of any lender-required conditions or repairs, and let’s let them buy the house. They have a family and are just starting out. Wouldn’t your mom prefer to let a young family take over her house? Breathe new life into a home that brought the mom so much joy over the years? It’s really the same money no matter how you look at it due the appraisal situation, and these buyers deserve consideration.
The daughter agreed. The CalHFA buyers were the first offer, too. They had waited through the weekend, after the open house, and that patience won the house, even though there were multiple offers. This successor trustee sale closed, by the way, at my original suggested sales price. The appraisal was at list price, not above. I was right all along. And that’s why it pays to hire an experienced Sacramento Realtor.
The daughter and I wish the new homeowners many happy years in their new home. She and I each are enduring our own pain, you can’t get away from it in life, but it’s good to acknowledge that something wonderful also happened yesterday.
Guess We Are Gonna Keep Horatio the Cat
Horatio the cat loves his new leopard Mondo condo.
Horatio the cat just grows on you. At first you might think, oh, he’s kind of cute in an odd sort of way. Like some drunk person fired paintballs at him. After a few days, you begin to think of him as a treasured work of art, worthy of a portrait hung in the Louvre. He purrs, he follows two-legged individuals everywhere. He talks. And I knew today that when I put a collar around his neck, with a reward tag, that he’s hanging out with the Weintraubs for the rest of his life. That’s a really good feeling. Even better than placing in the 3 top agents at Lyon Real Estate.
He is no ordinary cat, this Horatio the cat. I suspected it from the moment I laid eyes on him online. We decided to adopt a rescue cat, a mutt cat who needs a home. Not a purebred. But not one of those cats who lost a leg or was abused or found on the side of the road because some jerk threw him out of the car — because introducing a cat to our two other cats would be difficult enough. We were not ready to tackle other issues. Bless those people who do. We just wanted a cat who needed a nice home where people would dote on him. Horatio was born and raised at the sanctuary. I can’t believe he was there a year before he found his forever home.
At first I was a little worried, maybe because the sisters who run Sisters Animal Sanctuary in Elk Grove seemed a bit hesitant. They screen all the possible adopters who want a cat to make sure the cats are well matched. They kept telling me we could bring him back if he didn’t work out and they checked in regularly to see how Horatio the cat was faring with us. I’ve gotta hand it to those two, Julie Lindsey and Kathy Monahan, they invest a lot of money and effort into the Sisters Animal Sanctuary. They are thoughtful, caring and simply lovely people.
What a fun place to visit, too, 50 cats live there, and they all seem so happy. But they don’t have a human to cuddle with at night, no comfy bed where they can spread out, no place to truly call their own where they don’t have to share toys or attention. Not like Horatio the cat. We even transitioned Horatio from the World’s Best Cat Litter to our preferred Tidy Cats Breeze Pellets without a hitch.
We are not renaming him, either. My sister wants us to. But let me tell you, she is a person who babysat for her neighbor’s chickens last fall and she renamed everyone of those chickens. Just gave them new names! Without permission. I still don’t think the owners know she renamed their pets. No wonder she wants us to rename Horatio.
Following are a few photos I thought you might enjoy. You can support the Sisters Animal Sanctuary, a 501(c)3 , by making a tax deductible donation on their website, or mailing a check of $1.00 or more to the address below:
Sisters Animal Sanctuary
11480 Fogg Road
Elk Grove, CA 95757
Kathy Monahan and Julie Lindsey, Sisters Animal Sanctuary, posed on my front steps.
Horatio the cat is day dreaming about his future.
Horatio hangs over the edge of the top condo to taunt Tessa.
