House update. Settlement date is mid-May. We'll be on a bridging loan - on top of the mortgage - while we sell our apartment to help purchase the house. I don't know what it's like elsewhere (are they even called bridging loans elsewhere?) but the rates on bridging loans in Australia are high - as in 8-9%. So we want to sell our apartment asap to minimise the amount of time we're on the bridging loan. This means having the apartment open for inspection by potential buyers twice a week until it goes to auction at the end of March. This means having the apartment spotlessly clean and devoid of personal ephemera twice a week, which is itself a labour of hours every time. My wife's boss is ludicrously demanding at the moment (a whole other story I won't get into right now) which means it's me on me to take care of this while also managing a major increase in my own workload. Upshot of it is, there's not a lot of spare time at the moment.
Also, this little fellow is not a fan of being forced out of the house to sit in his carrier in the local park twice a week.
the most important and most unfortunate aspect of your update!!
Yeah, he's a private little guy. He likes the two of us, tolerates one or two others, and will literally hide for hours to avoid being seen by anyone else who visits our apartment. He does not like feeling exposed.