>We don't know each other but it appears to me that, over and over, you >have made reference to many bureaucratic Catch-22's that all have a >single common denominator -- the car....It's time to cut your losses >and move on. In my opinion, you won't have much space in your life for >new and better things until you remove the stuff that's getting in the >way. Hi Linda! That's a great post. And actually I have come to the same conclusion and have my ticket out of here and reservations for the animals -- Oct 28 is leaving day. Abrahame, my employee, and I will pursue the car sale for the remaining time, but primarily it's Goodby, Ethiopia. The lunacy of the gv't bureaucracy will also clearly pursue me till I leave. The latest uproar is that the local gv't might demand that I move to a new office with better "sanitary" facilities. Inconsistently, the federal gv't has recently demanded that I declare bankruptcy for the business and close it, which is a years' long process. Also, and more to the point, there are (presumably fully surmountable) complications with "exporting" my animals as I leave. I described that at the end of this post, [...] The additional problem is that Eth Customs wants to inspect all the animals in their airline crates 4 days before departure. This is to ensure that I am not taking Ethiopian animals to sell abroad without paying export taxes. Four of the cats are very skittish and tend to run off from time to time. I have been working hard to keep them calm and motivated to stick around home. A 4-hr RT car ride plus the time in the airport will freak them out, and some or all would likely be impossible to catch on the leave date. A solution would be to keep them locked up for the 4 days in their carriers between the inspection and the departure, letting them out only within the animal room. Which would add to their stress-- and mine, since I'd have to stay in the animal room all the time they were out of their cages because all rooms in this house open directly to the outdoors, and neither of my workers is careful enough to trust to not let them escape. I'd also have to figure out a separate new place for the dogs and Cleo Ferret for those days. I hate this. Most likely if the cats did run off, Abrahame could eventually catch them and send them on, but that way of shipping is more stressful them and more expensive for me. Not to mention the approx $180 the preliminary trip to the airport for that check will cost. And then there is the problem with the landlady and her family not wanting Abrahame on the property if I am not living here (the "witchcraft" issue). Probably they wouldn't be aware that I'd left, but who knows. Wont it be wonderful when I am Out Of Here? After writing the above, I remembered that I have some very old Feliway, a spray with calming cat hormones. We'll see if it works. [Posted in FML 7925]