First, though, I want to share a photo I took last night.

Doesn’t she look so malevolent? 😀 We’ve still been keeping the cats out of my office/bedroom most of the time, because too many of them go after Nosencrantz and Butterscotch. Cheddar is the only one that is allowed in any time he wants, because he’s also the only one that gets along with them. Every now and then, I’ll let others in and see. Fenrir had a habit of laying across my chest and sleeping while I was on my computer. When I let her in, she took advantage of that and made it impossible for me to get any work done. 😀

Then she started to stalk Nosencrantz, and pick fights with Butterscotch, so I had to kick her out. She can be such a mean one!

Anyhow.

While we are a few degrees below freezing right now, it’s a bright, clear, sunny day, with no wind to speak of, and it feels much warmer outside. So when Potato Beetle showed an interest in going outside from the sun room, I let him out.

He was quite happy, until The Distinguished Guest spotted him and immediately went on the attack!

There wasn’t much of an altercation, as the lure of kibble was much stronger. Potato Beetle had no interest, since he had access to kibble in the sun room, any time he wanted.

In the photo, there are the eight cats in the kibble house, plus Rosencrantz hidden from view at the tray on the ground. Rolando Moon had tried to go in to eat, too, but Rosencrantz started fighting with her, and I had to break them up. Rolando ended up going into the sun room to eat Potato Beetle’s kibble, in peace.

Rosencrantz was behaving very oddly this morning. I did a burn this morning, and after covering up the burn barrel and heading in, she came right to me, wanting attention, but not wanting attention, but wanting attention… It was like she wanted something from me.

What I did get to see was a whole lot of wet fur at her back end, and realized she had just had her kittens.

So I started to follow her.

That was what she wanted. She kept looking back to make sure I was behind her, then disappeared into the junk pile. She took me to where her kittens are!

More specifically, into the back of the big old chest freezer we’d dragged out of the inner yard, and is now waiting to be hauled away with all the other junk.

We’ve been putting smaller junk inside it, so it wouldn’t blow away or otherwise be an issue. The broken old large tire planter is leaning against it, and there are things like the old broken door from the sun room, and the broken stove and washing machine, all waiting to be hauled away, in front of it.

She really did seem to want me to do something for her, but what? Help with her kittens? I tried to get at the freezer, but everything is too frozen to be moved.

She wasn’t happy with me knocking about, though, and I could hear her growling.

After a while, I tried to rig up a sheltered box nest and set it up as far into the opening of the freezer (which is on its side) as I could, hoping she would move her kittens into it, and then we could move them all into the sun room. Unfortunately, the hard plastic bin I used to shelter the box nest from the elements was too large to fit into the space. Too much frozen stuff I couldn’t move out of the way. I left for a bit and she was out when I came back. She veered from wanting me to pet her, to attacking my hand, from moment to moment. I had to move the box nest out, because it seemed to be blocking her too much. We’ll have to check it again later, but I think it’s jut too exposed for her to try and use now.

Crud. If there is a problem with her kittens, we have no way to help her until things thaw out enough to get in there. That will take days.

While I was fussing around the junk pile, I heard another altercation, and saw Sad Face – he’s still around! – chasing a tabby up a tree. I’m pretty sure it was one of the ‘iccuses. I at first thought it might be Potato Beetle, but he’s not big on climbing trees right now. He’s still favouring that leg.

I spotted him later on, blissfully rolling in the snow – and had to chase away The Distinguished Guest, who was stalking him!!

I do hope Potato Beetle will go back into the sun room again for the night. There are just too many cats wanting to beat on him!

While doing my rounds, I was able to get at the trail cams and switch memory cards. Getting to the sign cam meant breaking a trail through some new drifts blown over the low spot where water was accumulating. The water under the snow was deep enough to overflow my (short) rubber boots, which means it was at least about a foot deep – with another foot or so of snow drifted on top! Aside from the drift, though, most of the path to the sign was blown clear.

When switching the driveway cam, I also tended to the gate. One side is clear – I could even see it being blown back and forth by the winds on the garage cam live feed, so I wanted to check on it. The other side is still stuck in snow. There’s a hard packed drift across the driveway, right at the gate posts. Other than that, though, the driveway is passable. The only concern I’d have right now is how soft the gravel is, and whether or not we might get stuck in it. There’s one lower spot, about half way to the gate, that’s full of water, but I think we could get through it okay if we had to.

We’ll see how things are tomorrow, which is when we would be making the big shop in the city.

While we are doing all right where we are, quite a few people are having much more to deal with. I’ve seen local photos people are sharing, showing ice and snow covered highways, ditches and fields filled with water and, in some areas, washed out roads. Where my brother lives, closer to the city, one of the highways he would normally take as part of his commute is completely undermined. The asphalt looks fine on the surface, but the road materials around the culvert have been washed away, so it’s basically just hovering. The road is closed but, amazingly, people have been moving the roadblocks aside and driving right over it, anyway! The water below is flowing at a very high rate of speed, so if anyone ever broke through, their vehicle could easily be swept away. What are people thinking when they do stuff like that? I don’t get it. It’s not like there aren’t ways to detour around it.

Things are warming up, starting today, so all this snow is going to melt and add to the water levels. The ground is still too frozen to absorb all the water, so I’m actually hoping for cooler temperatures and a slow melt. Still, I expect we will soon have even more water seeping into our basement to tend to. The gravel roads around our place were already in rough shape from the daily freeze/thaw cycle we were having, and it will be a while before the municipality will be able to do anything to fix them. We were also already avoiding travelling south on the road past our driveway, because I know there are low spots that would be trouble in these conditions. Instead, we take the main gravel road. It means driving past our vandal’s place, but I’m not worried about that. I’d be too busy watching out for deer running across the road, anyhow!

Once the snow is going and the water has receded, we’re going to have a fair bit of cleanup to do.

The Re-Farmer