Month: January 2022

Morning rounds still have to be done, and more convoy talk

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

After the very sad call this morning about Cabbages, I headed out to do my morning rounds and take care of the outside kitties.

Though the temperatures at the time were about -28C/-18F, it actually felt a lot warmer. At least around the house. There was a wind chill, but the wind is from the west, so we weren’t really feeling it. The outside cats were a lot more active, too.

It was feeling warm enough that I shoveled out the burn barrel again, and got it going.

We clear enough space to have room for the bags of burnables. That wall of snow is now taller than the barrel in places!

We couldn’t use the burn barrel in the summer, because of the drought, but we are now burning the wood pellet cat litter, instead of having a cat litter compost behind the outhouse. With so much snow around, I let it go down to a smolder, then put the cover on and leave it. It can continue smoking for days. As the pellets are used by the cats, they break up into sawdust. Which then freezes when the girls dump it into the burn barrel. By leaving it to smolder, the sawdust slowly thaws out, dries out, then smolders. It can take a few days, but it eventually gets burned away. It’s been so cold, though, I’m still finding frost inside the burn barrel when I uncover it, even as smoke still rises from the contents!

As soon as I cleared the area around the barrel and moved on to clear the path to the electricity meter, the space around the burn barrel got filled with cats! Not only does the space give them shelter, but the smoldering barrel gives off a bit of heat, too.

Still not as cozy as an insulated, sheltered, sun spot!

Oh, I got a peak at Potato Beetle this morning. The wound on his head seems to be healing up just fine. I could barely see the wound, and he looks more like he’s got a weird bald spot.

In other things, I’ve been keeping on top of what’s going on with the trucker convoy. This is something that affects us, even out in the boonies. We are surrounded by farms, and farmers need truckers. Heck, a lot of them have their own trucks. Most farmers have to have some other source of income. Farming doesn’t pay very well and, unlike most businesses, farmers have to buy retail and sell wholesale, instead of the other way around. So everyone around here is very supportive.

So are many others.

Last night, I heard that an estimated 10,000 truckers from various US states are heading for the border to join the convoy. Those that are not allowed to cross the border plan to stay at the border. Chances are, there are even more truckers from even more states by this morning.

The provincial convoy that started yesterday is still at the city. The national one is expected to arrive this afternoon, and they will join up and continue on to Ottawa.

In the Facebook groups supporting the convoy, I’m seeing numerous restaurant owners announcing that anyone in the convoy will be fed, for free. Food truck owners are announcing where they will be setting up to provide food. At least one of the Hutterite colonies has announced they are setting up kitchens in one of the muster points to feed everyone in the convoy.

Garages are offering free mechanical repairs.

People are offering their extra bedrooms for overnight stays, and bringing meals to the truckers.

The GoFundMe has topped $4,000,000. Because of how eager our government and GoFundMe are to prevent the money from actually getting to the truckers, there is a whole process worked out where truckers will be submitting receipts to be reimbursed for expenses, etc.

I haven’t confirmed it yet myself, but people have talked about finding the traffic cams along the convoy route are showing images of empty roads, or have simply been shut down.

The mainstream media is finally reporting on the convoy, but have been misrepresenting it like crazy. Almost all that I’ve seen have been reporting wildly lower numbers. A CBC article that tried to claim the truckers were protesting icy road conditions was so inundated by people calling them on it merely added a “correction”, saying they were talking about a different protest. Which they weren’t, because there were no truckers out there, protesting winter. Others I’ve seen have tried to say the truckers are protesting only the most recent mandate made against them. They aren’t. They are protesting to have all government mandates and restrictions for everyone, ended. That last mandate against them was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, after being treated like crap for years.

Commenters have been calling out the media like crazy for their misinformation and sloppy reporting. What’s interesting as well have been the (very few) detractors. I’m seeing people say things like, what difference does it make for them to protest in Ottawa, when it’s the US that won’t let them cross the border. Which has nothing to do with what the convoy is about. I’m guessing some media somewhere claimed that, and they believed it. Others have been calling the truckers selfish and making the usual insults about people just being scared of needles. I’m still seeing people saying that losing their jobs is just a consequence of their “choice” not to get the vaccine, and calling them anti-vaxxers. Most truckers are vaccinated, bigots don’t care about truth or reality.

I think the funniest detractors are those trying to portray the truckers and their supporters as PPC “cultists” (the PPC are the People’s Party of Canada, a new party that ran in the last federal election). Even more laughable are those trying to accuse the truckers of “dividing Canada”. I haven’t seen Canada more united over something in my life. I’ve even seen people dismissing the truckers for protesting now, instead of when our Prime Dictator called a useless, early election.

Oh, I just tried looking something up and saw that the GoFundMe has now exceeded $4.4million. Someone posted a screencap showing a $10,000 anonymous donation. I also just found this screencap.

May be an image of text that says "#TruckersForFreedom ForFreedom #FreedomConvoy2022 Rollando Lepageo Colorado 420 trucks Georgia 675 trucks South Carolina 650 trucks California 19,000 trucks Heading to Canada 1h Love Reply 2 2:55 AM. Jan 25, 2022. Twitter for Android"

If for some reason you can’t see the image, it reads:

Colorado 420 trucks
Georgia 675 trucks
South Carolina 650 trucks
California 19,000 trucks
Heading to Canada

Way to go, California!! Assuming that’s not a typo. That’s a massive number.

Not on this list are the trucks coming from Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Alaska and Florida, that I’ve seen elsewhere.

The most recent update I’ve heard is that the main convoy from BC is now over 150km long. That’s over 93 miles. I don’t think they’ve even crossed the middle of Canada yet, and more mini-convoys are joining all along the way.

What I’m not hearing is much from our politicians. Including our own Premier. I might just be missing it. As for our Prime Dictator, I’ve heard he’s on another vacation. The truckers are supposed to arrive in Ottawa on the 29th. Parliament was supposed to resume today, though from the parliamentary calendar, they’re scheduled to sit in parliament for only 1 day this month, and that’s on January 31.

The truckers and their supporters don’t plan to leave Ottawa until all mandates and restrictions are lifted.

It should be interesting to see how our “leaders” handle this.

The Re-Farmer

Cabbages update; it’s not looking good

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

I had been so encouraged after the last communication we had with the woman who took in Cabbages for us.

Last night, things changed for the worse.

She found Cabbages barely able to lift her head, and rushed her to the vet, where she remains now.

They can’t find what’s wrong with her!

The vet even asked if it was possible Cabbages had ingested something – which is something I’ve been wracking my brains about, too. When she told me she had replied by saying she didn’t think we were the sort of household to have that around, I realized the vet meant more illicit substances. Which, no, we don’t. I did mention my husband’s medications, but most of them are in bubble packs. It’s a rare thing for us to drop pills, and when it does happen, we don’t stop searching until we find and dispose of them. She asked about plants and started listing some off. I mentioned the Jade trees, but she didn’t know about them being a problem. The cats have been leaving the Jade trees alone now, anyhow, other than trying to claw through the cage around the one, to get at the dirt.

The vet also said that it could be she was born with some sort of congenital defect, and it’s just showing up as a problem now. Which is more of a possibility that anything else I can think of.

At one point, she mentioned that she’s already spent $800 on Cabbages, though she quickly added that this was not a concern, before continuing. I had not realized she was paying out of pocket. I know this organization covers all costs of cats for fosters, but I guess she’s not a foster!

She is heading from the city to the town our vet is in today, to pick up some frozen cats. Cabbages remains with the vet as they try to figure out what is wrong with her. It’s hard to treat an illness when you don’t know what the illness is! She assured me that this is the best vet in the province. He’s been nicknamed “Jesus” for all the animals he’s been able to bring back to life. Still, there is only so much he can do, and they will not go beyond the reasonable and cause her more suffering.

If she does pull through, there is already someone lined up to adopt her. Someone who works for the city humane society.

As much as I hope she makes it, a got a sense that this is very unlikely.

Damn. She really did seem to be improving for a while, there. :-(

Aside from this, we confirmed a few other things. We still have Butterscotch and Nosencrantz slated to be fixed at the end of the month. On Feb. 7, we have Beep Beep and Fenrir now booked. After that, she wants to focus on the adoptable indoor cats, two at a time. We would drop them off for the surgery, and she would bring them back with her at the end of the day to go to the waiting fosters, where they will recover before being adopted out. I asked about when, and she said she hoped to start on Feb. 21. I told her we will work with her schedule, whatever it happens to be.

*sigh*

What a rough way to start the day.

I am so incredibly grateful that she has been willing to take Cabbages on and able to get her into a vet so quickly. We’d still be feeding her with a syringe right now, of course. And we’d have no idea what was wrong with her, and no resources to get her to the local vet ourselves. The fact that the city vet also has no idea what’s wrong with her actually helps, if that makes sense. They really want to figure it out, because if it turns out to be something contagious, we need to know when it comes to the other cats. None of whom are showing any signs of it. Cabbages did have that brief period where she was throwing up more, before she stopped eating and drinking. Another reason I wonder if she ate something that did this to her.

Poor little thing.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, a mini convoy, seed sorting and s Cabbages update

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Late last night, I got a message letting me know that a convoy was going through our area this morning, to join the main one heading for Ottawa. I was invited to be there to cheer them on. So I headed out early to do my morning rounds and make sure the van would start.

At -27C/-17F, with a wind chill of -35/-31F, the cats weren’t too keen on coming out!

Unfortunately, we’re using some of the donated cat kibble (we got one bag for the inside cats, one for the outside cats), and they don’t like it. It’s a Superstore no-name brand. I’m happy to have it, but the cats, not so much!

Once that was done, I headed out. There was a group of us that met up in a parking lot along the main road (I later saw there was another group at the one other area we could park and face the road at). Thankfully, I was able to keep in touch with someone in the mini-convoy, who was letting people know how things were going. There was a huge turnout at the starting point, with trucks, tractors and personal vehicles. An estimated 150 or so. It took them a longer time than expected to get organized, and a long time just to get through town and onto the highway.

Of course, none of those farmers in their tractors, and other supporters, were going to be joining the main convoy to Ottawa, so it was a smaller one heading our way. By the time they passed by, there was a bunch of us waiting, including a family with young kids, holding signs and making noise to support our truckers. The kids got a lot of horn honking and enthusiastic waiting. :-) I don’t have the winter gear to be outside for long in these temperatures, so I cheered them on from inside my van while taking video. It ended up being more than 7 minutes long!

This was the lead vehicle.

This, btw, is “downtown” in our little hamlet. LOL

As to the lies mentioned on this sign, to give one example, the CBC – a Crown corporation that gets about $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars every year – had the most insane headline talking about the convoy leaving BC. It was described as people protesting dangerous road conditions. !! I haven’t trusted what the CBC says for decades, having had too many first hand experiences of how incapable they are of reporting accurately, but that is bad, even for them.

As I write this, the mini-convoy continues on its way to the city to join the main convoy and, from what I hear, as they pass through larger towns and another small city, more truckers are joining.

The truckers have been put through so much over the past couple of years, it’s insane. They have massive grassroots support.

Since I was there for so long anyhow, I hoped to pick up the mail on the way home, but it was still too early. The mail was in, but not sorted yet.

Of course, it was after I got home that my husband got a notification that a package is ready for pick up.

I am not going out again, today!!! It’s still -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F out there!

When parking the van in the garage, I saw Potato Beetle was perched on the old tire we use to keep the doors to where my mother’s car is. The black rubber is a favorite sun-warmed seat for the cats! As I tried to pet him on the way by, though, he didn’t want me to touch him.

He has a wound on his head!

He kept squirming around and wouldn’t let me look too close, but it seems like he’s had some fur torn out, a bit above and to the side of one of his eyes. It’s not bleeding, and the wound looks small. Mostly, it’s just missing fur. In this cold, however, we need to keep an eye on it.

That’s what he gets for all the fights he’s been picking! I’m guessing it was the Distinguished Guest. She doesn’t back down.

There were other cats out and about, too, but not this one…

Nosencrantz usually comes out for pets, but not this time. She was staying in their nice, cozy house!

I noticed the timer got knocked off its perch again, which means the light sensor is not facing the window. That means the heat bulb will be on, all the time.

At these temperatures, I’m good with that. When things warm up again, we’ll pop open the roof and set it facing the right way again.

We’ve got one more day of this cold, before things heat right up. I’m seeing all kinds of crazy temperatures in the forecast for Wednesday. The Weather Network is saying we’ll reach -1C/30F. The weather app that came with my desktop says -4C/25F. Accuweather says 0C/32F.

The only consensus is that we’re going to warm up by more than 20 degrees Celsius in less than a 24 hour time period!

I am not complaining. :-D

After that, we’ll be dropping back down and hovering around the -20C/-4F range and staying there for at least a couple of weeks.

It makes me want to start planting something. :-D

Last night, I went through our seed packets and sorted them. They had been sorted by how they arrived; by whichever company’s seeds arrived first. Since we have several things with multiple varieties, I sorted it by type, first. Then I put all the ones that need to be started indoors in their own box. Today, I’ll go through those and sort them by when they need to be started. The onions and luffa will be started the earliest. I’m also eyeballing what I might be able to do more winter sowing with, even if it’s just using the sun room. Oh, that might not be a good idea. That will be where Butterscotch and Nosencrantz will be recovering from surgery for 2 weeks. Butterscotch, in particular, is going to be hard to keep in there, and she’ll knock over anything on the shelves, trying to get out.

One of the other purposes of sorting through the seeds is to figure out where we want to plant things, and where we need to build new beds once things start warming up in April or May. Most of these will still be temporary beds, as we move things closer to the house, in preparation for planting trees further out. I am thinking, with all the winter squash we are planting, we may want to let those sprawl on the ground, rather than climb, to help shade and kill off the weeds. They would do better on trellises, though, and be more protected from critters. Hhmm. Something to think about.

Along with how to fence things off from the deer and groundhogs!

When I stopped to buy some honey from my cousin, after dropping Cabbages off, we chatted for a bit. They have gardens around their bee house (not the hives, but the little house they’ve got for their honey business). They have one small garden with a deer fence around it, but the rest is open. When I told him about our plans to plant sea buckthorn, he told me they have some – but no berries! They ended up with only female trees! They’re about 8 feet tall and bloom beautifully, but no berries at all. We’re getting only a 5 pack, so it’s possible we’ll have all males or all females. It’ll be at least a couple of years before we find out, one way or the other.

Oh, and before I forget. I got a Cabbages update last night. They are still force feeding her, but she did eat some food on her own, as well. I was sent a photo, and she’s being kept in a large kennel with all sorts of things to play with and climb on. She was looking right at the camera was HUGE eyes, and looking very alert. I am encouraged. She’ll be seeing a vet again tomorrow, if things stay to plan.

I think she will be fine, but I’m so glad our contact with this organization was able to take Cabbages and get her to a vet, just in case.

I will keep updating about her, as I hear more.

The Re-Farmer

A rare indulgence!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Have I mentioned just how glad I am we were able to get that quarter beef this winter?

Thanks to paying the same price per pound for the whole thing, regardless of cut, last night we got to enjoy a rare indulgence.

T-bone steak!

In our younger days, when it was just my husband and I, and we had fewer expenses, we would *gasp* go to restaurants and order things like steak. My husband would order a T-bone, but he didn’t like the bone, so he’d give it to me. That’s the best part! I would happily gnaw every last bit off the bone, much to his amusement.

I’m sure the other patrons were not to impressed. ;-)

That was a long time ago. When the BSE, or “mad cow disease”, crisis hit our cattle industry, restaurants stopped selling bone-in beef. Even grocery stores stopped selling any bone-in beef, though for a while, getting any beef at all was difficult. Today, restaurants, with few exceptions, still don’t sell bone in beef, and even grocery stores never returned to pre-BSE levels of inventory, and that happened back in… 2003? Quite a long time ago. What is available in grocery stores is so insanely expensive, we could never afford it.

Which means, we haven’t had a T-bone steak in decades, and I’ve never cooked one before in my life!

So there I was, with 4 beautiful steaks and not sure what to do with them!

Ideally, I would have grilled them, but it’s freezing out, and the BBQ is buried in snow. I decided to go with pan searing them (after seasoning them with only coarse salt and freshly ground pepper), then transferring them to a baking sheet to finish them in the oven, at 450F, to finish. What that was happening, I used the pan drippings to make a gravy.

They came out looking amazing!

They tasted amazing, too. Even though I ended up over cooking them. I probably could have skipped the oven part completely and just pan seared them.

Best of all, I got to gnaw on some delicious, delicious bones!

I’m thinking we really need to find a way to fit a half beef next year, instead of a quarter beef, because having cuts like this is just amazing. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Dramatic kitty, and looking ahead

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

I had a smaller crowd of outside cats this morning.

There was still kibble left from being topped up yesterday, so I think a lot of them were well fed and content to stay in wherever their preferred shelters are.

But not Chadiccus!

He kept flinging himself under my feet while I tried to walk, then lying there as if he’d been slain. :-D

What a ham!

We’ve got a couple more cold days after today, one really warm one, then back down to average temperatures for this time of year. I’ve been looking ahead at the end of the month, thinking on when would be best to head into the city for our monthly shop. We shall see if we will even bother going in. Thanks to continued draconian restrictions, the supply chain was being disrupted, and the truckers have finally had enough. There is currently a convoy of truckers on their way to Ottawa, in a protest to end medical tyranny. Last I heard, they had more than 50,000 trucks from all across the country, with more expected to join as they slowly make their way across the country. They’ve also raised over $2 million in donations, to help pay for fuel and other necessities for the truckers. About the only response we’ve had from our federal government has been for our Prime Minister to threaten to designate the truckers as domestic terrorists, which would allow GoFundMe to deny them the funds raised. Our government funded media (which is basically all mainstream media, since they got billions in bail out money), of course, is trying to ignore what’s happening completely, or if they do report on it, they don’t tell the truth about what’s actually going on. We shall see if their tune changes over the next few days. Personally, I doubt it. At least not for the biggest companies. Their survival has depended on government handouts for years, now.

We’ve got about a week before we need to go into the city to stock up again. Depending on how things go in the next while, there may not be a point in trying to shop in the city. There won’t be anything to buy.

The Re-Farmer

What I woke up to this morning

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Since I no longer had to keep my door close, to make sure a sick Cabbages didn’t take off somewhere, I actually got a lot more sleep. I didn’t have cats constantly clawing at the bottom of my door, to get in or out!

This morning, I was awakened by this cuddle pile.

They actually started out on the other side of my head, where there was just a few inches of space, clambered over me and settled in to this aggressive grooming session.

Which I can’t complain about. We had to keep Turmeric in my room with me for about a week, because she kept turning into a snarling beast at the other cats for some reason. Particularly when a tuxedo came by. Beep Beep would also go after other cats, but she would stop as quickly as she started, and just always does that. It took days for Turmeric to calm down, and now she’s back to grooming and snuggling with cats she had been snarling and growling at. !!

I could feel another cat at my legs, so I used my phone to find out which one it was.

Only to discover it was two cats! I wasn’t twisted around enough to see Tissue. :-D Which is funny, because the cat I felt was not the cat I could see!

Tissue really, really loves jamming herself against the back of my legs, or my lower back.

The cats are all very happy my door is open again. They missed having access to my bed. :-D

Silly kitties!

The Re-Farmer

We have news! (Cabbages update)

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I just got off the phone with the lady that took Cabbages. The early news is good!

The initial bloodwork has been done, and she does NOT have feline aids or leukemia.

Honestly, we didn’t think she did, but it’s good to confirm.

The vet checked for a few other things, such as symptoms of FIP; Feline Infectious Peritonitis. I’d never heard of it before, but she said it was a coronavirus, which is something I did know is a large and common class of viruses. The vet wanted to know if she had been outside recently (she hasn’t been outdoors since we brought her in as a kitten), or if she had symptoms like diarrhea (no), blood in stools (no) and vomiting (no) – even if we had a dog in the household (no).

She is so very tiny, but the vet did think she was just a small cat, so we talked a bit out how she didn’t have a lot of weight to lose in the first place, so once she got sick and started losing weight, she quickly became skin and bones.

So far, they hydrated her and have her a 14 day slow release antibiotic. They even put some high fructose stuff on her gums, just to put some calories in her. Then she went home with the woman we are working with, where she will stay for the next while. They will be feeding her a high calorie version of food goo, and trying to get her to eat some salmon. Cabbages is not a happy kitty right now, though, not just from getting so many injections, but with having so many people handling her. She has never been that keen on humans. The poor thing must be pretty stressed out right now!

On Tuesday, she will be back at the vet for a follow up, and will continue to stay with this family until she is healthy. There is already a foster set up to take her; an older woman who fosters cats for longer periods, to work on socializing them. I told her that Cabbages doesn’t like to be held or cuddled, though she does get along fine with other cats! I think that, without so many other cats around, she will start taking to people at least a bit more. Then, she will move on to her forever home.

I can’t say I’m happy about her having to go through two other homes before finally being adopted out. She’s not going to be a happy kitty for a while. However, at the same time, I’m happy that she’ll be getting the vet care this organization provides.

Well. It’s done.

As for the other adoptable cats, she is hoping to have them picked up, little by little, and placed with fosters by the end of April. Which means that we will not be getting the indoor adoptable cats fixed, ourselves. The adoptable cats will be going to fosters, and all their care and feeding is provided by this organization. Which means, for the indoor cats, we only have to get Beep Beep done, because the males are already done.

As for the outdoor cats, aside from Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, then the boys we can catch, that will wait until things are warmer, and it’s safe to trap them.

For now, I’m just thankful to have an update on how Cabbages is doing. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and a day of surprises

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This morning was quite chilly, but that didn’t stop the kitties!

We didn’t get much new snow, but it was blowing enough that I had to dig out the water bowls again.

Hmm. As I write this, I’m noticing the red flash on a weather alert on my desktop weather app. It’s an extreme cold warning. We’re supposed to reach -29C/-20F tonight, with wind chills of -40C/-40F!!

While doing my rounds, I made sure to check the end of the driveway, since I was expecting to head out with Cabbages today. The road was plowed, and it looked like we would be able to get through the end of the driveway without too much trouble.

When I came back to the house, I found myself being watched!

I love how Nosencrantz is still licking her chops. :-D

As cold as we’re supposed to get tonight, this afternoon warmed up to -17C/1F, so the cats were up and about when I started getting ready to take Cabbages into town.

I found Agnoos sitting on the sun-warmed black plastic of the snow shovel! I wasn’t quite fast enough to get what would have been an adorable picture of him, but I rather like the action shot I got, instead!

After starting the van to warm it up, I went to unlock the gate and found my first surprise.

The end of the driveway was cleared! We never heard or saw a thing! That was so very sweet. I just am assuming it was done by one or our renter’s hired hands, while on his way to somewhere else.

After opening the gate, I backed the van up closer to the gate in the chain link fence, so that Cabbages would be out in the cold as little as possible. Then, because I didn’t want to leave her, I didn’t stop to close the gate behind me and just headed into town. I would love to leave the gate open all the time during the day, but we’re still not quite sure our vandal would be able to resist coming in, despite the court order to stay away.

Which is how we ended up with my second big surprise.

The driveway was done while I was gone!!

The girls were cooking when my husband told them to look out the window, where they saw a yellow front end loader suddenly go by. This was a huge surprise for them, because they didn’t know I had left the gate open! Normally, I would have asked one of them to lock it behind me, but it was a last minute decision.

As you can imagine, once I was settled inside, I sent a thank you message to the renters. We have got to do something for them as a thank you. They won’t even accept payment for the fuel!

Since the driveway was cleared so nicely, I didn’t have to back up to the chain link fence to unload. I could park in the garage and bring the wagon over to haul the cat food.

And some honey. I had noticed my cousin snow blowing the driveway to their honey house while on the way to town with Cabbages. He was still there when I came back, and I happened to have some cash on hand, so I bought a couple of kg of his creamed honey. What a treat!

While going to the sun room to get the wagon, I found myself with a co-operative model this time.

Agnoos was perched on the sun warmed black plastic of the other snow shovel this time! :-D

As I am writing this, I can see the live stream from our garage security camera. I’ve bene seeing cats running around in the cleared driveway the entire time I’ve been writing. Right now, I can see The Distinguished Guest, sitting in a big, black, fluffy loaf in the middle of the driveway, and a bit of another cat, next to the wall of snow on one side. Oh! There’s another one, making its way through the snow from one of the sheds, into the cleared driveway.

They are appreciating our neighbours as much as we are!

They are just fantastic people! I am so glad they are renting the bulk of the property from my brother. We have such awesome neighbours.

The Re-Farmer

Saying goodbye; a Cabbages update

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Well, it’s done.

As I write this, Cabbages should still be on the road to the city.

Last night, we tried her on some of the cat milk we picked up. She wouldn’t do it while I was close by, but once I stepped away, she did drink from the little bowl. Which was adorable, with her snout completely hidden, but no chance of a photo!

We also fed her food goo, thinned with the cat milk, using the syringe. She definitely liked it better than thinned with plain water.

So did Turmeric. While the girls were feeding Cabbages, Turmeric tried to eat the food goo right out of her mouth!!

Once she had a full belly, she got to enjoy some cuddles and grooming.

I think Beep Beep is going to miss Cabbages!

Here she is, getting some post-breakfast cuddles from “grandma”. :-)

I got texts this morning from the woman that is helping us with the cats. She was going from town to town, so we arranged to be her last stop before returning to the city, to reduce the amount of time Cabbages would be in a vehicle. She had a kennel for Cabbages, and was also picking up six (!!!) other cats along the way.

Then I got a text saying they had an unexpected extra cat, and were using the kennel intended for Cabbages. She was wondering if we had one they could borrow, though she might be able to borrow one from the vet clinic. We have three carriers in total, but won’t need all three until they start taking more cats in, so we’re okay with lending one of them. We’ll still have enough to bring Butterscotch and Nutmeg in to get fixed, at the end of the month, and can get it back then. Plus, it meant not having to transfer Cabbages from one carrier to another, while in a parking lot! I’m good with that.

I had an awesome surprise when I headed out early to meet them with Cabbages, and an even bigger one when I got back, but I’ll share about those in my next post.

I left early with Cabbages, because I expected to have snow issues. I didn’t, but I didn’t mind being early. They got to the place we arranged to meet early, too. We got two big bags of donated dry cat food and a case of wet cat food they couldn’t use (the wet cat food had no labels on the cans!).

She let us know that Cabbages would first be tested for Feline Leukemia – she made an appointment for her at the vet this afternoon, and it’s a quick test, so she will be able to let us know by this evening. If she does test positive for that, all the cats will need to be tested. !!!

She was happy to hear that Cabbages has been doing better and starting to eat and drink on her own. She hasn’t been throwing up anymore, and there has been no blood in her stools, which are other positive signs. Hopefully, the blood tests they will be doing will answer some questions.

So there we are. One cat, already gone. She is hoping, over the next few weeks, to be able to take 3 cats at a time. Including Cabbages, we have a total of 8 cats to be adopted out, so that should work out to 3 trips.

The house is going to feel pretty empty with “just” eight cats left in the house!

The main thing is that Cabbages is now going to get the vet care she needs, and that makes us happy.

The Re-Farmer

We made it!

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We made our much needed trip into town!

As I write this, we have warmed up to -7C/19F, with a wind chill of -13C/9F. It was just a couple of degrees colder and had stopped snowing when my daughter and I headed out to town.

For all the clearing we did, once I started down the driveway, I didn’t dare stop until I got to the road. My daughter could take care of the gate for me, so that worked out.

The winds were still coming from the south-southwest (as I write this, they are now coming from the northwest), and the roads were drifting over, but we were still able to get through all right.

We were a bit too fast with our shopping, though, and when we stopped to get the mail, the post office wasn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet. So we unloaded the van, put stuff away, then my daughter crawled through their upstairs window to start shoveling the roof while I waited until I could go back to the post office to pick up our packages. If we didn’t get them today, we wouldn’t be able to get them until Monday.

I was heading back out in less than an hour, and by then it had started to snow again.

Very picturesque, but the visibility had dropped dramatically. I’m glad I only had about 3 miles to go!

Once back, I brought out the telescoping roof shovel we’ve got, to get some other parts of the roof. I did as much as I could reach over the sun room which, unfortunately, isn’t very far. I was able to clear under the Starlink dish, however, and I’m glad I could. Once the snow under it was moved, a whole bunch more immediately slid off the dish. I really appreciate that these dishes are self heated!

The cool thing is, even though there was snow built up on the dish, we’ve had almost no noticeable loss of connectivity. There was an hour last night that had a series of short outages, due to network error, while this morning there was one, due to obstruction, but in all that, there was only one that was long enough for even be noticed.

Aside from the sun room roof, I also got as much as I could off of the entryway roof. The west side of it had a drift that was at least 4 feet thick!

I’m glad we got that done, though I’m a bit concerned about tomorrow. We’re supposed to meet with the woman that will be fixing our cats, to pick up donated cat food and drop off Cabbages into care. With the way things are blowing, we might have issues getting out of our driveway. I do expect the plows to be out already, but it’s hard to say when our gravel roads will be done.

It’s a bit late, considering Cabbages is to be taken in tomorrow and getting vet care through this organization, but one of the things we picked up today was cat milk. We need to get more calories and nutrients into her, and I’m hoping she’ll actually like this stuff enough that we won’t need to use the syringe. I’ll be trying that out once I’m done writing this post.

It does look like the snow had stopped again, so that’s a good sign for getting out tomorrow! Though we are supposed to be getting cat food donated to us, I still looked for some while at the grocery store, and the big bags were out of stock, just like the stores in the city. There have been real issues with lack of inventory for quite some time. Particularly in the big bags. We were never quite able to stock up adequately. All the more reason to be thankful for the donated food!

Now if we can just pray that we don’t get snowed in – and neither does the woman we are supposed to meet up with tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer