We’re getting another warm day today. The forecast was for 1C/34F as the high, hte we were already at that temperature before it was fully light out! Now I’m seeing a high of 2C/36F for this afternoon, but I would not be surprised if we passed it.
The critters do seem to be enjoying the mild tempertures!
Chadicous, of course, was determined to be stepped on.
The heated water bowl was completely empty again. My suspicions that deer have found it were semi-confirmed last night, when I glanced out the kitchen window and saw one at the small gate in the chain link fence. No tracks that I could see around the water bowls, though.
While putting kibble into the trays in the kibble house, I had more cats coming for pets than for food. Including *drumroll please*
The Distinguished Guest!
Yes, I got to give our new addition a thorough petting and ear skritching. :-D I still can’t walk up to her, but at least she’s willing to walk up to me, now.
I even got to pet my brother’s dog, who came for a visit this morning, though the cats were not happy to see him! :-D
This pair of deer are morning regulars, enjoying the bird seed. It’s not the best photo I got of them with my phone, through the living room window, but when I saw the chickadee caught in mid flight, I just had to post it!
Later on, my husband looked out the kitchen window and spotted a big cat going by the barn, to the old hay yard.
And by “big cat”, he actually meant a *big* cat. Most likely a bobcat. I know they are around, but have never seen one, yet.
As for the inside critters…
… here is Keith, getting some major cuddles from Beep Beep.
Keith didn’t seem to have many issues last night. He was noisier while Beep Beep was lying across him than he was before. :-D My daughter has brought him into the bathroom with her so he could get a steam treatment while she showered. :-)
I don’t know if he’s any better. I can only say for sure that he’s not worse. Still not much appetite, but he seems to be moving around more. I think it will be a while before we can say for sure whether the anti-biotics are helping or not.
My daughter and I brought Turmeric to the vet for a check up (driving into a wall of fog on the way!), as she was the most recovered of the cats that had gotten sick – all of which started just within the past few days. The vet checked her over, and she’s fine. It was just difficult to listen to her lungs, because of the purring! It did not take her long to settle in at the clinic at all, and she was more than happy to jump at the vet for attention. :-D
As for Keith, it was decided to try him on antibiotics for two weeks, first. He got an injection at the clinic, and we’ll be giving him half a pill, twice a day. If he gets and stays better after those two weeks, then he just got hit with what the other cats got, but harder. If he doesn’t, then it’s heartworms, and we need to take him back and figure out the next course of action. The vet does think it’s heartworms because, when she did an ultrasound of his heart, she thinks she actually saw a worm. It could have been a “heartstring”, but those should not be visible in an ultrasound.
Personally, I am leaning towards respiratory infection. Even this morning, he seemed a bit better than yesterday, and after we brought him home, he actually showed interest in food and water. Not much, but at least enough for a nibble and a lick. As for the other cats, after examining Turmeric and hearing the descriptions, it sounds like a feline herpes flare up. The clinic knows that both the inside cats and outside cats have it – we’ve brought various kitties for treatment over the past few years. What is possible is that the outside cats have a different strain than the inside cats. While treating Tuxedo Mask, as careful as we were about hand washing, etc., we could have exposed the inside cats to a new strain and, as the vet put it, the two were fighting it out, and some cats were being affected by it more than others. Which makes sense to me.
Also, if it does turn out to be heartworms, this will be the first time the vet has personally seen heartworms in a cat. She sees them in dogs fairly regularly, but it’s just so unusual for cats to get them.
So we will be monitoring Keith and medicating him for the next two weeks (unless he takes a turn for the worse and has to be taken back, of course). Thankfully, my older daughter filled all her slots for quick commissions and was able to pay for it. All those tests added up. :-(
As for the couple of other cats that seem to be having a harder time of it, it was recommended to have them in a steamy bathroom. So my younger daughter will be taking a long, hot bath tonight! With feline company :-D
We just talked to the vet. She thinks Keith has heartworms, but she can’t say that with complete certainty from the X-rays.
Heartworms are really unusual in cats. Especially indoor cats. And we have 16 indoor cats, and for all the coughing and sneezing, there is no way they all have heartworms.
So this afternoon, we are bringing in Turmeric. She had similar symptoms, but seems to have recovered. This will give us a comparison.
If we treated him for heartworms, it would be a long term thing, and the medication has risks, because there really is no heartworm treatment for cats. Not a risk we want to take for something he might not have. Alternatively, we can go with an antibiotic treatment, because we do know the cats have feline herpes, and that is much more likely to be an issue.
We will talk about it after Tumeric has been checked over.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
I was hoping to have more news before now, but I figured I’d better post while we wait.
My daughter and I headed out to the vet first thing, shooting to get there when they opened at 8am. My daughter tried calling shortly before, and on her second try, someone answered. She quickly explained our situation and told them we were on the way.
They had three surgeries booked for this morning. Depending on the timing, there was a possibility the vet could quickly check Keith out before going into her first surgery. If not, we could drop him off and she would try to look at him in between surgeries.
She still hadn’t arrived when we got there, one minute after opening, so my daughter did a drop off. We will get a call when they are ready. They got permission to do various types of tests, if necessary.
As for Keith, he was isolated with me for the night, but one of our other cats joined us, too. It seems the coughing and sneezing has finally affected one of the cats we brought with us during the move. He’d been fine until last night. He’s 10 years old now, so we seriously considered bringing him in, too, but after observing him for a while, decided against it. They both had access to food, water and litter, but touched none of them by morning. Keith did have a coughing fit until he threw up, then did that face grabbing thing, once during the night, but thankfully there was no blood this time. He almost looked a bit better.
Most of the cats are actually fine. Just a few are coughing or sneezing. Beep Beep has her occasional coughing fits, but she’s always had that, even before she became in indoor cat, so that’s not out of the ordinary for her. Susan does the same thing, so they don’t seem to have picked up anything new.
Hopefully, we will have good news soon, but with three surgeries, it might be a while before the vet can even look at him. We shall see.
As much of an inconvenience it was to set up our new Starlink system in the winter has been, it looks like it was good timing. It looks like we’re all getting our OS updates, and with each of us having our own desktops, that would have done a number of our data limits!
My computer downloaded the update when I shut it down last night. When I started it up this morning, after doing my morning rounds, it spent the next while updating and restarting itself until it was done.
I did remember to get photos of the finished set up, this morning.
You can see where my brother ran the wire across, above where the old cables were. The one that’s hanging down was from the dish that was removed, which was the only one that had a connector. I’ll have to go back and tie it off so it doesn’t blow around in the wind, as soon as I can, until we can take it the rest of the way down.
Plus I’ll re-wrap the excess cable and make it tidier. My brother was a bit enthusiastic about making sure it was secure to the wall, so I’m not in any hurry to take out those screws! :-D Hopefully, I’ll be able to use the same screw holes when I put it back, because I sure don’t want to make more of them!
I did a speed test on my phone while I was at the burn barrel in the outer yard. Not too shabby!
This is my desktop, taken just this evening.
We have better signal in the outer yard than I have in my office! :-D
It’s still pretty darn good. Especially when I checked checked the outage log on the Starlink app. There were just three of them in the past 12 hours. Not sure what could obstruct it up on the roof like that. One, shortly before noon, shows the signal was obstructed for 10 seconds. The other two were just a minute apart. One was “no signal received” for 3 seconds, and the other was “network issue” for 13 seconds.
We never noticed any of these.
The app has a visibility check, showing any obstructions it is picking up from its current location – which is handy, since we have no way to get up there and do a check with a phone – and there are just the tiniest bits of red showing in a few places on the edges. Most of it is clear view, in all directions.
Since we got set up, my husband has tested its limits. There were some games he was curious about and downloaded them, tried them, then uninstalled most of them. There was one game he’d tried before, but it was unplayable. He’s now able to play it. Even my daughters, who play Star Wars in the evenings, have had a number of problems they were having simply disappear. For my older daughter, it’ll mean she’ll be better able to upload files, which will free her up to do more complicated, data heavier pieces, such as her animations and videos.
So far, we all are really, really happy with the improvements!
At least I have some good news to share, after having to make fruitless run to the vet just a little while ago.
Tuxedo Mask is free!
His eyes got one last dose, and then we left the door to the sun room open so he could leave whenever he wanted. It took him a while to trust he really could go out!
Where he was immediately sniffed at by several cats. :-D
He slunk around for a while, and didn’t seem to sure about his freedom!
Today was a nice warm day – not as warm has had been forecast, but we still hit 0C/32F – and calm, so I was able to use the burn barrel. The barrel is not too far from the junk pile, so I got entertained by cats. They are really going to miss that mess, when we finally get it hauled away!
I found Potato Beetle quite funny, enjoying the sun from inside the old oven! :-D
He’s so sweet, when he’s not being mean to the other cats! :-D
Okay, so this has been a weird day, but I’ll get right into what just happened.
I had just settled at my computer and started a post when I heard a cat having issues behind me. I found Keith, who has been having an odd cough lately, horking like he was about to throw up. He didn’t actually throw up more than some spit, but then he flung himself to the floor and began using both front paws to pull at his face, as if trying to get something out of his mouth. When I tried to reach him, he ran off. When he headed up the stairs, I called on the girls to check on him.
Then I went to clean up the little bit of a mess on the floor.
Wipe, wipe… red?
Which is when one of my daughters came rushing in to tell me that Keith was throwing up blood.
I quickly went online to find the emergency number for the vet. Their website says they are open 24/7 for emergencies, but they also had extended clinic hours. They were still open! I tried calling, but no answer. Just a machine giving their new hours, and saying to call back later if calling during office hours.
My daughters, meanwhile, got Keith into the carrier. While we drove to town, my younger daughter kept trying to phone the vet.
No answer.
We finally get there, and they were closed! There was a quickly made sign on the door saying they were closed and, for emergencies, had the name and phone number for a veterinary hospital I’ve never heard of. I called while my daughter updated the family (I love technology!).
The emergency vet turned out to be in the city.
I asked if there was an emergency vet in our area, because there’s no way we were going to put Keith through such a long drive.
Turns out there are none. At least none in this town.
So much for 24/7 emergency vet care!
Keith seems to be stable, though still coughing, so we will take him to the vet when they open in the morning. Until then, he is isolated with me in my office/bedroom for the night.
It seems to weird to not have any emergency veterinary services in our area! I just finished doing a search, and found one in another larger town, but they are connected to the one we usually go to – in fact, I got directed to the same website.
As to the clinic we tried, they should have been open, but given the type of sign they had on the door, it seems like they had to close unexpectedly.
We plant to be there before they open in the morning.
We were perfectly willing to wait until spring before setting our new Starlink dish up permanently on the roof, but my brother wasn’t. Not at all!
Of course, it turned out to be more difficult than even he expected.
One of the first things he wanted to do – while it was still relatively warm and the sun was bright – was seal the ridiculously large hole we had to make to fit the widest part through (I still don’t know what it’s called) with caulk. He even used his heat gun on it to cure the surface a little bit, before continuing. It’ll take longer to cure because of the cold, but at least tomorrow, we’re supposed to get above freezing.
Then one of the satellites was removed (except the part you can see on the roof), leaving the stand, which we were expecting to be able to use to hold the Starlink dish.
Well, it turned out to be much larger than the support post on the dish. My brother thought he could squeeze it to fit, but the metal turned out to be way too strong. He struggled for nearly an hour up there, using tools I’ve never seen before, before finally giving up. We would have to use the stand it came with. Which meant removing the existing tripod, first. We really didn’t want to make new holes in the roof, but there was no option available for us at the time.
Removing the original support required removing ice and snow.
The ice dam was about six inches deep in places, and he had to clear it all the way to the edge on one side, first to remove the coax cable that was already there – and affixed to the roof in a couple of places – then to be able to run the new cable across. Which also required moving the ladder.
This would have been a LOT easier in the summer!
My brother put most of the screws he took out, back into the roof after, to make sure there were no open holes for water to get in. In the summer, we’ll have to remember to fill them.
Once everything was clear, it didn’t take long at all to install it.
I didn’t get a good picture of the completed job, but once the stand was secure, the cable was run across the roof, then across the side of the house, before running down to where it enters the house. There was a huge amount of excess cable – it comes with 150 feet – which was quickly wrapped and secured to the wall. In the spring, I’ll take it down and redo it neatly, but for now, he just needed to get it up and tucked away, where it’s protected.
By the time he was done, it was starting to get dark, and he just dashed off home – but not until after he made sure the parts of the satellite dish were tucked away into the old basement! There is still one piece of the support attached to the roof, but there was no need to remove it, for now.
The unexpected thing is just how much the new dish is pointing north. Those tree branches are actually an obstruction! According to the app, we should expect signal interruption every 17 minutes. The app actually tracks that stuff. Looking at the log now, the last time we had an outage, it was because there was “no signal received”, and it lasted for only 2 seconds. It was happened more than 3 hours ago. In fact, looking at the log, the outages happened pretty much only during the time it was being physically moved around and frankly, I’m amazed there was any signal at all during some of those times. While my brother was working on trying to fit on the existing support, I had to pass the dish up to him several times. I had the base on the shelf against the sun room window, so I could safely put it down in between tests. Several times, the dish started to move, looking for a signal. This was almost right up against the house, and partly under the eaves. How it managed to get any signal at all amazes me. Especially considering the dish is facing North, and the house itself would have been obstructing the signal!
I do have to say some positive things about our Xplornet dishes. They are rock solid, they were installed very well, and we usually had decent speed on it. If we got enough signal strength for it. And that was the problem. We just kept losing our signal. Even when they had tech guys coming out, according to their equipment, we should have had a good clear signal, and they never did figure out why we weren’t. That doesn’t even take into account the problems we would have in high winds, or if there was bad weather to the south of us. The problem just kept getting worse and worse, too.
That will be the big test with this system. How does it hold out in bad weather? So far, we’re expecting things to get colder, the closer we get to Christmas, but there are no storms on the horizon, or even high winds. It might be a while before that test finally happens.
The kitties were quite happy for some fresh kibble this morning! Their heated water bowl was completely empty again. The snow it too packed for tracks, but I strongly suspect we have deer drinking it during the night.
Tuxedo Mask got his eye treatment, and we should be able to let him out tomorrow. His eyes are looking excellent.
I am happy to say that our Starlink is still working. :-D It even moved.
The dish lines itself up to get the best signal. When we first set it up, it was pointing straight up. Now it’s facing North. I thought it might tilt a bit to the North, based on what I was finding online, but I didn’t expect it to tilt quite this much.
After finishing my rounds and checking the trail cam files, I just had to share this image of me the sign cam caught while I was about to switch out the microdisc.
Butterscotch was making the job much more difficult!
Clearly, I have been forgiven for trying to turn her into an inside cat.
With the trail cam on a mounting plate, it can move around while still on the post. I can put it upside down, to make it easier to remove the microdisc, though I do still have to be careful. The spring is surprisingly strong and shoots that disc right out, if I’m not careful! Still, it’s a lot better than trying to get it from below.
Except when there’s a cat in the way!
Meanwhile, I had updated my siblings about how things went with the Starlink set up. Just a little while ago, I got a call from my brother, asking if it’s a good time for him to come over.
He wants to mount it on the roof for us, using one of the mounts for the satellite dishes. He even has something that can fill that hole we had to make to put the cable through the wall. I was more than willing to wait, but having the dish sitting on the ground in the middle of the yard was driving him nuts. He knows we don’t have everything needed to mount it ourselves, and when I brought up about the ice, he didn’t care. He just wants it properly mounted!
So he is on his way over now and should be here in a couple of hours.
The Re-Farmer 