Well, according to the Canada Post tracker, my replacement phone will arrive today. So I am delaying my trip into the city a few hours. It’ll take a while for the postmaster to sort through the packages that should have arrived by now, and scan it into the system as arrived, so I’ll be checking the tracker until I see it listed as arrived. Once I’ve got the phone activated and set up to bare bones functionality, I’ll head into the city. Once I have the time later today, I’ll finish setting it up and transferring my data from the other phone’s backup. Then I can wipe the old phone, and I should be able to send it back as part of their buyback program.

I’ll be able to take pictures again!

I mean, it’s not like I use my phone as a phone, after all. 😉 That’s what the landline is for! 😄

Meanwhile, I’ve done my morning rounds and checked on the bitty kitty. I’m happy to say that I could see him in the soft cat bed I put in there last night, right next to one of the windows. (I even put the sun room litter box in there, tucked into the corner we’ve found they usually crap in, in the winter, when it’s too cold to go outside.)

He also had a fair bit of company. I’d put some other donated cat blankets, and the box with a pillow in it that was in the sun room, inside and it looks like they were well used. I could see several smaller kittens in there with the bitty, though the smallest ones (still bigger than the bitty!) still seem to prefer being under the cat shelter, rather than in it. Among the things I did yesterday was push some larger sheets of leftover rigid insulation under there, so they can sit on those rather than bare ground.

I tried to do a head count, several times. The first count, I got 21, including the bitty. The second time, I got 23. The third time, I got 24, not including the bitty, since I didn’t want to poke around the entry too much, but he would make it 25.

Among the adults, I saw Broccoli running around from food to food, going from the roof of the cat shelter, to under the water bowl shelter, to into the kibble house, and even nibbling on the kibble I’ve been putting on the ground for the kittens under the cat shelter. I also saw Junk Pile, coming out of the cat shelter. We still don’t know which of the mamas the bitty belongs to. If it’s Junk Pile, that would make it her third litter of the year, and considering how young her second litter is (they were the pump shack babies), I just don’t see that as likely. If Broccoli is the mama, that would make it her second litter of the year. That makes a bit more sense, since her two are among the oldest kittens. It seems unlikely, though, because when Broccoli comes over for kibble, it’s always from somewhere outside the yard.

Oh, gosh. I hope that doesn’t mean there’s an even younger litter out there, somewhere!

I know it’s not Rosencrantz. She had two litters, but lost the first one. They were born so early, everything was still frozen and covered in snow. Her second litter is the older white and greys, plus a tortie. That litter is slightly older than the pump shack kittens, and I’m pretty sure they would not have been weaned yet, when the bitties would have been born. It would have been the same situation with Junk Pile’s second litter. I’m pretty sure Caramel is the mother of the youngest kittens (until the bitties showed up), and they look barely weaned.

If it’s not Broccoli, that means it’s one of the ‘iccuses – and they’ve all disappeared. The females since weaning their own litters, and the males even earlier.

Well, whoever the mama is, the little spitfire seems to be taken care of, for all it doesn’t seem to be growing. I’m hoping that, with the kibble I’m putting just inside the entry, it will beef up a bit. I moved one of the baking trays I was using as a kibble tray into the entry, and it just barely fits. Which is good, because it means it won’t get knocked about, like other containers we’ve tried to put in there. I’ve added a smaller container for water to sit on top of it, that I can reach to pull out and refill.

Here’s hoping it works out! So far, so good.

The Re-Farmer