Water Bowls and Feline Phobes*

I bought and electric water bowl. Those are words I never thought I'd write. Why? I have pets, but they come inside during freezing temperatures. We do, however, have a inside/outside cat that comes inside during winter. She dislikes being inside, but she hates the cold even more.

We brought her inside at night, and decided to let her stay inside during the day, but she has some issues with the litter box. So, during the day she goes out. She has a nice, warm house on the porch, but the water in her water bowl would freeze.

We do long hours at the bookstore, and we didn't want her to go thirsty. So, we bought an electric water bowl at Rockwell's just outside Wellsboro.
The bowl works great. The weather has turned too cold for even the outside cat to go outside, but her water hasn't frozen.Now if it just warms up to cold.

This has reminded me of my first cat, Hobo. He's been gone just about a year now. He started out as a Hobo, but after being an outside kitten I fed all summer, he became an inside cat.

Hobo was my cat before I met my wife, and then he became our cat, and then he became the store mascot of From My Shelf Books. Hobo started coming in several days a week when we opened the store in the basement at 87 Main St. He never seemed to mind getting into his pet carrier and coming to work. Though, he didn't enjoy being the car for long. Luckily, we only live a mile from the store.

Hobo came to be associated with the bookstore. He had his own children's book, Hobo Finds a Home. Children and animal lovers alike loved coming in to see Hobo. We even got a local artisan to carve a statue of Hobo sitting on a pile of books. A regular A frame sign would blow over in a gust of wind, but not the Hobo statue.

Everyone loved Hobo. OK, not everyone. Some people don't like cats, but cats and books just seem to go together, and from my experience, most people who enjoy books also tend to like cats. Our landlord isn't one of them.

Our current landlord, owner of LYDA LLC, served us an eviction notice in October of 2012. We never broke the lease and we were never late with rent, but our co-tenants, Pop's Culture Shoppe, wanted to rent the entire space that we shared, and resorted to some pretty low schemes to convince the landlord to evict us. Ultimately, they failed because the lease wasn't violated, and the bullying didn't work.

One of the bullying tactics was attempting to evict our cat Hobo. Hobo, of course moved with us to the new location at 25 Main St. With the better location, Hobo quickly met new friends and fans. Our landlord was the same landlord that we had at 87 Main St. He knew Hobo was part of the bookstore, and two other businesses at 25 Main Street had animals.

The Enchanted Hollow has a lovely black and white cat named Luna, and Mountain Home Magazine is owned by Beagle Media for a reason. They almsot always have beagles, and at that time had a senior beagle who was having some issues with his bladder. Neither of these businesses received any eviction notice for these animals.

It's true that are lease is up here at 25 Main St. March 31, 2015. It's not really a surprise that our landlord isn't renewing the lease after so many nasty attempts to dislodge us from dragging us to court simply to make us expend money and energy to fight him, to attempting to evict an icon of Tioga County.

We are still paying off our lawyer. We are running a a fundraiser campaign to help with that. If you'd like to donate, you can find the fundraiser here If you can't donate, but you can share it around. We would all appreciate it here at the bookstore. Every little bit helps.

We are also running a petition to show the landlord he's making a mistake. As we've said, we have never broken the lease and never been late with the rent. As my older and wiser neighbor has said, "Friends are friends, but business is business." What he means by this is that the landlord and myself don't have to be drinking buddies.

From My Shelf Books is a community oriented bookstore and great for Wellsboro. Having a viable business makes the landlord's building worth more. He owns several buildings in downtown Wellsboro and I would think that someone who owns real estate would want to think long term.

If you'd like to sign the petition and let the landlord know what a mistake he's making. You can find it here. The landlord is of course not under any legal obligation to rent to us, or even rent the space.

The public is also not obligated to patronize a business that takes over the location of the bookstore or the Wired Rooster. He could of course just not renew our lease and have a nice empty space on Main Street.

I certainly would not suggest that anyone would rent from this man. We are not the only business he's trying to ruin. He also owns the building that contains the Wired Rooster, a great little coffee shop. He hasn't served them an eviction notice. I guess the game store doesn't need the space. He has, however, raised the rent so much that it's just not possible to sell enough coffee and be able to pay the rent.

It's just plain greed if you ask me, or maybe it's just not looking at the future. Why anyone would want to rent from a landlord that tries to destroy a successful business is beyond me. The owner of the Wired Rooster isn't accusing the landlord of trying to ruin him. He also said that he hasn't done anything to help either.

He probably doesn't want to do anything to earn this man's wrath. There are other things he's done that I'm not going to write about, at least not yet. He's already threatened to drag me back into court, and after the money I've already spent, that's not something I'm looking forward to.

I am, however, not someone who is easily intimidated. If I can save someone trouble by not dealing with this man, then I am not going to hesitate. There's an old Irish saying that states "Beware of people who dislike cats." That should tell you everything you need to know about the landlord.

The Wired Rooster is still open as of this post. The future is unknown. Though, I hear that they are trying to find a new location. It's unlikely the landlord will come to his senses anytime soon, but do not worry. From My Shelf Books is not going anywhere. Sure, we might have to move from 25 Main Street, but we aren't moving from Wellsboro. We'll be selling books even if we have to walk up and down Main Street with a peddlers pack...

*The actual name for one who hates cats is a ailurophobe