Eenuh

I think we had trouble with Nationwide as well when we were looking for a mortgage. Our mortgage broker applied with them, but their computer systems couldn't handle @Fierce_LiNk's name... it simply wouldn't fit in their forms. So we had to switch to a different provider because of something silly like that.

I'm so sorry, that is a horrible thing to happen. Poor kitty. She looked like a lovely cat.

I've uploaded them somewhere else now, so hopefully they work!

They are finally here! Too bad Jim isn't, he's off on a school trip. But it means I can help the cats settle in all weekend. Meet the new members of our family, mum Aya and son Ico! Aya is very timid at the moment and keeps hiding in the cupboard behind her (where we keep Jim's guitar stuff and our old consoles). Ico is a playful kitten and just can't sit still! So they are very much opposites at the moment, but I think that is normal. Also, it is bloody difficult taking pictures of a kitten, they can't sit still! Exploring the wide world (or second bedroom). He's already got a favourite toy! Food! Tired from all the playing and exploring. :3

Great to hear from you again Jay! Was actually thinking about you recently, I think it was in relation to Brighton and I remembered when we met up for a drink there once. We should meet up again when we are down there sometime. Good to see you posting again, don't become a stranger! We're still the same uncool, nerdy but friendly bunch of people!

Taxis can be funny with pets, some of them here don't take dogs so I'm not sure how they feel about cats. Plus the local taxi service charges a small fortune! But I managed to book a spot with a local pet taxi service, who will drive me there, wait for me to pick up the cats and then drive me back, all for a very low fee. So hopefully on Friday I will finally pick up the kitties! They told me that the kitten is currently driving the mum crazy, so I will have to provide lots of toys to keep him entertained. I spent a small fortune on cat stuff this month, so hopefully that should all be fine. :3 By the way, Clementine looks lovely! And I love that name (thanks to the Telltale Walking Dead games haha).

Definitely do the readings! Because otherwise they are just making up numbers, and you could be paying a lot more than is necessary. I try to do mine once a month or every 2 months at least, which is how I got my DD lowered.

Do you send in meter readings to them as well, or is all this based on an estimate they do? I have been sending in occasional meter readings (both gas and electricity) and our Direct Debit is now being dropped from £59 to £52 or something. The £59 was an introductory deal because I switched to them when we moved, so not sure if that will change at some point or not. But it's definitely worth looking into switching if you are paying too much, just make sure you are free to leave and don't need to pay a leaving fee. I am very energy conscious though, never have lights on in rooms we are not in. And the heating will only be turned on when it really is needed (usually not until around October).

I'll be buying a carrier at the adoption place yeah, can't really transport kittens without one. I am not sure if the normal taxi company here takes cats on their taxis... I've sent them a message but not had a reply yet. However I also found a pet taxi service that can drive you and your pet around (for example to get to the vet) and I'm asking them for a quote. Hopefully it won't be too extortionate heh.

Are you paying for it? How generous of you!

Yeah I wasn't happy. Apparently one of them keeps trying to open her stitch wound so she's not ready to go home. They'll be taking her to the vet on Tuesday for a checkup and then we'll see how it goes. The only problem now is I don't really have a way of getting to the Cats Protection place as Jim is working (and they close at something silly like 3:30). So I need to figure out how I can pick them up. >.<;

To be honest we bought the 3rd house we viewed. But like Serebii, I had spent ages looking online for houses, probably more than a year heh. You kind of know when it feels right.

It wasn't a fun day! But the gas leak was sorted on Monday, then yesterday the floor guy came back and finally fixed our wonky floor (yay!) and we had another guy come in to remove our hob. Our new hob is getting delivered tomorrow and he can install it tomorrow or Friday, so hopefully it will all be ready before the cats come this weekend! Though I'm still waiting on Cats Protection to let me know if that is going ahead or not! Hope they call today!

It's been a very expensive week. My wallet is crying. Just ordered an induction hob (read the Bad stuff thread to know why), now still need to buy new pans for it: Then yesterday my new drawing tablet (Wacom Intuos Pro Medium) was delivered after my old one broke: And then I ordered lots of cats stuff (food bowls, toys, fancy litter box) and this thing, which I hope they actually use!

So yesterday felt like one of those days where everything is just sort of going wrong. Long post coming up! First of all, it was going to be a busy day as I was expecting quite a few packages to arrive, such as items for the cats we are getting, but also my new drawing tablet as my old one died last week (cost me a small fortune, boooh). We were also getting someone to come in to sort out our laminate floor in the living room. My dad and uncle put this down in December, but they probably didn't leave enough of an expansion gap, and as the weather got warmer (and as we used our heating in January and February), the laminate expanded and had nowhere to go but up. So we had some nice bulges in our floor, one very prominent one under our sofa. As we were moving our sofa away from the wall so the guy coming in could have a look, we noticed a smell of gas. We had noticed this before, but never too prominent. And I was certain it was gas as that was the exact spot where my uncle had accidentally cut through a gas pipe and then fixed it (or so he claimed). Seems it wasn't completely fixed. D: Jim went off to work and I made a call to the National Gas safety number saying I could smell gas. They sent out an engineer, who arrived about an hour later. He came in, turned off the gas and then tested the inside of the house. And yep, there was a gas leak. Funnily enough right where the biggest bulge is in our laminate (might be a coincidence but who knows). As the gas is trapped under the floor though, it didn't really have anywhere to go. And although the national gas safety engineers don't do repairs, he was not allowed to leave until the gas was gone. So he got someone else out to come and help. In the meantime, my floor guy showed up and I showed him the issue and explained he would have to come back a different day as he just couldn't do anything now. Felt bad about this. Then the gas people decided that we needed to create a way for the gas to escape. So they carefully ripped off one of the skirting boards, hoping that would help, but it didn't do much. And slightly pressing on the laminate didn't do much either to help the gas escape. They then decided to cut off the gas pipe that leads into the house from the outside, as we thought it was only connected to an old fireplace that was no longer there (another pipe lead through the garage into the kitchen and boiler). So they cut it off and capped it, which should solve the gas leak... only then we found out that that pipe was also connected to our gas hob. >_<; So now the gas leak should be fixed, but we are left with a hob that doesn't work (luckily the boiler still does). We were planning to replace it at some point anyway, but not right now. So now we need to get someone in to take out the old hob so we can order a new (induction) one and have that fitted. I got no work done yesterday at all, spent all day arranging things, letting people in my house, receiving packages, sending out messages etc. And now I still have to sort out the hob and the floor. And cat stuff. D: So my moral of the story is, be careful when you ask your family to do DIY for you, even if they are experienced (retired) builders.

Probably, if you have the right tools to cut them to the right size... And quite a bit of patience. One thing I can say, make sure you provide enough of an expansion gap on the outside, as apparently my dad and uncle didn't do that when we put ours down in the living room, and now we are having to get someone to come in and fix it (a story I might share in the Bad stuff thread later).

That's less than we paid for our small terraced house... Whut?! There must be a catch to it somewhere!

I would've felt bad if we'd left one of them behind! We're visiting them again tomorrow. If all goes well, they'll be coming home with us next Sunday. :3

Like Jim said, I think in general your mortgage provider will ask you to pay 10% of the sale price of the house you're buying. We agreed to pay a bit more as we had saved up to bring the mortgage price down a bit. So if you're looking at a house of £200,000, you would need £20,000 just for your deposit. But on top of that you should count in solicitor fees, fees for house survey and the searches they do, fee for your mortgage advisor if you are using one, stamp duty fees (which depend on the price of your house), and of course money for moving and sorting out your house. So yeah, quite costly!

Good luck with the house search! If you've found a place you like and you need a suggestion for a solicitor, feel free to drop me a PM. Ours was a lovely person. I feel like we did loads in our house since we got it half a year ago. All the rooms have had some work done in them, some have been completely transformed (bathroom and garage). The kitchen has had the least work done (only painted the walls), but that's because we hope to extend in the future and just get a new kitchen then. We're getting someone in one Monday to fix an issue with our laminate (thanks dad for not listening to me and not leaving enough of an expansion gap ). Then I think we'll tackle the staircase; ideally I would like to have wood cladding put on it but am struggling to find anyone that does it! It's like a neverending task list, owning a house. But then I prefer this over renting where issues never get fixed because of shitty letting agencies that don't inform your landlord!

Thanks for the advice @Raining_again! We went into Cats Protection on the bank holiday and spotted quite a few cats we liked... We spent ages looking around and then eventually we settled on a 1 year old black lady and her black and white male kitten (there were 3 more kittens in the litter but they were already taken). We've put a reservation down on them but now we have to wait for them to get neutered. Will contact them soon to see when we can hopefully pick them up! Been spending my time online looking at loads of cat stuff: litter trays, activity trees/scratching poles, food and drink bowls, toys, etc. Will have to start ordering things soon! The place suggested we stick with the food and litter filling they use for now, to help the cats get settled in. So I'll probably just buy what they sell and then see in the future if I can switch to something different. Looking forward to it! Still need to find out what names we're going to give them though!

Thanks for the tips @S.C.G! I've owned cats, but this was at my parents' house so not my full responsibility. Ideally if we get two cats, I'd look for them to be from the same litter or having been brought in from the same house or something. The Cats Protection website usually mentions when the cats are related to each other, which is useful. I think we'll have to see if we can fit 2 litter trays, as we have literally no space downstairs to put one (no downstairs toilet, no space in the kitchen or living room). They would have to go upstairs, but not sure how I feel about putting one in the (future) guest bedroom. At my parents we only had one litter box for 4 cats, but they went outside a lot (and sometimes accidents did happen inside the house, which I want to avoid). I think we would have to cat-proof our sofa somehow... we bought it new and it's a lovely fabric, which I'm sure any cat would love to put their claws into haha. No carpets anywhere though, I might have to get a small rug for the cats to lay on in front of the sofa or something. Though we had the neighbour's cat in earlier and he/she seemed fine just laying around on our laminate floor! I actually work from home so I would be home most of the time to look after the cats. We would just have to find a solution for when we go on holidays (don't have family or friends around here, hmm).

Cat owners, some advice needed please! I think we are ready to get our own cat(s)! We always said we wanted two cats, but I am worried we might be getting a bit too much to handle... maybe? How does it work with litter trays, would we need more than one if we got two cats? Or might one be enough if it is cleaned daily? Because we are a bit limited for space; I already have to try and figure out where we can put 1 tray (no space in kitchen, so possibly would have to go in my office or the spare room). Any tips for the type of litter tray and filling to get? Also need to look at cat beds and a scratching post! And cat food and bowls and all the other stuff needed! And a vet! Oh god, all the responsibilities! D:

I am so looking forward to this! Age of Empires III is one of my favourite/most played games! Only problem is I don't actually own a PC...