I tried to do a headcount while feeding the outside cats this morning. I got either 21 or 22. Hard to say for sure, given how much they move around!
Once bellies are full, they tend to get playful.
I found some strange fruits in the ornamental apple tree! 😄
The little grey tabby in the back had been, until the bitties showed up, the smallest of the kittens. Even younger than the second litter of white and grey kittens that were in the pump shack. I don’t see any of the kittens with mamas anymore. They are all weaned, whether they wanted to be or not, because almost all the mamas have taken off!
When the cat lady was here, she noticed the stuffy noses and leaky eyes. She recommended adding lecithin powder to their food as a preventative. She said it can be purchased from a vet, but it’s very expensive that way. It’s a human supplement, too, and very cheap. She uses it regularly. Looking it out, it sounds like something I might want to add to my own supplements, too! 😄
I definitely want to pick some up soon. This is the time of year when the outside cats get hit with the leaky eyes, stuffy noses and sneezing the most. I want to give those babies everything I can to help them make it through the winter!
Well, the transfer is done! The bitty kitties were picked up late this morning… but not before they had a good nap.
On me.
After filling their bellies, and cover themselves in kitty formula!
The grey and white tabby is male. He is a show off, so that was pretty easy to determine. It took more effort to check the black and white, but I’m pretty sure it was female.
The cat lady, meanwhile, came baring gifts! A big bag of dry kibble, a cat bed, some small cat blankets, a baggie of cat treats and…
… a toy for the outside cats!
We talked a bit about all the cats running around, with several of them coming right up to her. She noted quite a lot of them look old enough to be fixed, so after she gets the three we have in mind right now done (they will stay with her for a week after surgery, then come back, unless she finds adoptees for them), she will start looking into booking visits for more outdoor cats, and hopefully adopt some of them out, too.
We didn’t stay long after she left with the bitties, heading out to pick up my mother soon after. It was supposed to be a warm day today, but there was a chill wind, and my mother wasn’t too happy about that. We picked up some fried chicken and wedges for a picnic lunch, though, and she was very happy about that! After we ate, the girls took the short hiking path around the marsh, while my mother and I made our way into the interpretive centre. She wanted to visit the gift shop. I ended up buying a cookbook of recipes submitted by volunteers. We left soon after the girls caught up with us again. My mother is noticeably having a harder time walking. It’s a shame we couldn’t load her little power chair into the van for her. The ramps we have are fine for loading snow blowers and riding mowers. Not so great for something more delicate! Mind you, just getting in and out of our van was really pushing it for her, too. My mother was more than happy to go home and get some rest.
The girls and I took advantage of the outing and went to a different town. They wanted to hit the grocery store. Our mechanic’s garage is across the street, so while they did that, I went in to talk to him.
After booking an appointment for my mother’s car, to get the leaking tire looked at (I expect it will only need to be patched), I talked to him about our van. He sells vehicles, too, now, and I was suggesting maybe using it as a trade in – he’s done enough work on it to know it very well – and talked about what we might get. It would have to be another older vehicle, because we can’t afford much, but once the quarter beef and the branch chipping are paid off, we can use that money towards a slightly newer vehicle.
He actually recommended we try selling our van privately. At best, he’d be able to give us $300 for the van, and it would be sent for scrap. On a private sale, we might be able to get about $500. (Or, he suggested, we can just keep it as a back up vehicle.) For someone who has the tools and knowledge to do most of their own repairs, it could still do well by them. The problem is all those little things that go wrong on an older vehicle – it’s a 2005 – that is the issue. There are just too many little things that should be fixed, before they become big things, but taking it in to get them all fixed at a garage is still more than we can afford.
We talked about what sort of vehicle we are looking for; the Grand Caravan we had before did well by us, and this Uplander is doing remarkably well, considering how abused it turned out to have been before we bought it. The Uplander hasn’t been made and sold in Canada since 2010, though. He still finds some decent Caravans, though. The other possibilities we are looking at are an older F150 or Ram1500 – both vehicles that are highly rated for winter driving, and that my husband would be able to get in and out of all right. He happened to have an F150 in one of his bays that was for sale that he could use as an example. It was a 2010 and well out of our budget, but my goodness, it was in fine shape!
Because he’d mentioned scrap dealers, I brought up that – now that our vandal can no longer try to claim the junk here on the farm – we can actually have it sold as scrap. He said to wait. This past spring, the prices where the highest he’s seen, but right now, the prices are down again. They go up again in the spring.
So we will wait.
I think we’ll be waiting with replacing the van until spring, too. Whatever we get, I’d want to be able to have it paid off within a year, and that might not be easy.
Ah, well. We do what we can!
The funny thing is, after the girls and I were back at the van and were about to leave, someone came knocking at my daughter’s window, wondering if he could ask us about how we liked our Uplander. I recognized him as an employee from one of the local hardware stores, so I just got out and went to talk to him. It turns out he needs to replace his wife’s car, and was thinking of getting an Uplander, but had been hearing conflicting reports on how good they are. So we had plenty that we could share with him! I think he found it helpful.
We did get a laugh about his asking about the van, just as we were talking to someone about trading it in for something else!
We shall see how things work out. I’m glad I finally had the chance to talk to our mechanic about it.
Oh, and guess what?
He also hauls scrap. Which makes sense. With all the cars he works with, he’d have plenty to send to the scrap dealer. One of these days, I’ll have him come out to our place and look at what we’ve got and see what he says about it.
All in all, it’s been a very productive day, even though we were away from home for most of it!
The girls had set up a next in a laundry basket for the bitty kitties, which they promptly climbed out of. Last night, we kept them in the cat carrier for the night, to be safe (and I got some sleep!).
Butterscotch does NOT like the kittens. She hisses and runs away from them, clearly very unhappy. Nosencrantz growls and them, but won’t go near them. Cheddar sees them and runs away.
Then… there’s Leyendecker.
He has claimed the laundry basket as a bed.
He will chase after them and insists on grooming them. When he lay in the basket, I put the bitties in with him, and he immediately starting licking them both!
The kittens are quite active as I write this. And loud! They are wandering all over my office/bedroom as I write this. I got the heat pad for under seedling trays out. It’s water proof, so I put it under their bowl of formula. The little black and white one, which is more content to turn into a loaf and just sit for a while, discovered it. 😁
The grey and white tabby is definitely the more active one, and rarely settles for more than a few moments. It’s very talkative, too!
It’s coming up on 9:30am as I write this. The cat lady was hoping to get here by about 10am. Not much longer before we’ll be saying goodbye to the bitties, and turning them over to her tender loving care. She’ll be able to get them checked by a vet, too.
Oh, a bitty is crying by my feet now. Gotta watch out when I roll back my office chair, that’s for sure!
With our plans for the day, I headed out earlier than usual to do my morning rounds.
I am not a morning person, but sometimes…
Sometimes, it’s worth it!
I did discover a kitten got missed when we closed up the sun room last night. With the work we did in there yesterday, there wasn’t the usual bowls of food and water in there – just a bit of kibble under the swing bench. I’d also emptied the sun room litter box, but won’t be setting it up again until we’re done with cleaning and winterizing the sun room, which means there’s now more mess to clean up. Ah, well. It was one of the non-socialized white and grey kittens, so it wouldn’t let me reach it to take it out. I left the door open while setting out the kibble and water, and it STILL didn’t want to go outside!
If finally did, though, and joined its siblings and cousins for a morning feast.
I didn’t even try to do a head count this morning! 😂
There are a lot of jobs that need to be done before the snow flies, but some of them are more weather dependent than others.
Working on the sun room is one of them, because we basically have to empty it in the process.
So instead of working on winterizing the garden beds and yard, as I’d originally intended, I started on the sun room.
Well. Half of it.
The main thing was to clear the area in front of the pair of windows on the east side of the door, so that I could clear away as much broken glass from the inner pane as possible.
My daughter had already cleared the big pieces of broken glass from the bottom window – the top one has cracks, but hasn’t broken apart, yet. There were many jagged pieces left that she couldn’t get out. I tried using the glass cutter, but it really didn’t do much of anything. I ended up breaking most of the pieces off with a pair of pliers. Some pieces came out entirely, others broke away closer and closer to the frame, while still others just got crushed by the pliers.
After sweeping as much of the glass as I could, I used a vacuum to get the rest.
While doing the concrete floor, I spotted something that either I completely forgot about, or somehow managed to miss when we first cleaned out the sun room of my parents’ stuff.
Right in the corner, there are foot prints in the concrete. You can see one hand print as well, and there are just barely signs of a second hand print.
My late brother poured this concrete. My guess is, these are his son’s prints.
Awww…
Once the glass was cleaned up as much as possible, it was time to put insulation in place.
I covered both windows, as I’m hoping the insulation will prevent the top window from cracking even more. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s temperatures that are causing the cracks, though they certainly are a factor. The entire sun room is shifting, and sinking slightly, at the corner by the rain barrel. Likely because the barrel was allowed to overflow and, before winter, simply tipped over on the spot to be emptied.
I decided to rearrange this side of the sun room to something I hope is more functional.
The shelf I had the kibble bin stored in used to be in this corner, and the counter shelf you see now was in the opposite corner. It’s on bricks, in case the floor gets wet. The roof leaks above this corner – which will hopefully no longer be a problem soon! We still don’t have a date for the roofers to come int.
The hanger on the wall was on the wall beside the door to the old kitchen, but it was too long, so it was mounted diagonally. It partly worked, but it’s in a more useful spot, now.
Then it was time to clean out this corner, by the bathroom window. That space on the left is where the hanger had been. The counter shelf was in the corner, with all sorts of stuff, including my husband’s walker and my crossbow target, blocking the front of it. The top had become a mess of tools and containers.
Unfortunately, by this time, it was getting late. The shelf went into the corner and I started out organizing things as I brought them back in. After a while, though, I got a daughter to help, and we just shoved everything into this corner, to be finished another time.
The other half is going to take more work. Aside from having to wrestle the swing bench out the door, that side is where the cats – and sometimes skunks – would leave messes in inaccessible corners.
Thankfully, we’ve got a couple more warm, dry days before the temperatures start to drop, and we have the possibility of rain. We won’t be able to get back at it tomorrow. In the morning, we’ve got the cat lady coming to pick up the bitty babies, then in the afternoon, the girls and I are heading out to pick up my mother, then going to the marsh to see the migrating birds, while we still can this year. So after tomorrow, we can get back to work!
Speaking of which, one of the things the girls did while I started on the sun room was head out to a stand of willows behind the barn, with the loppers. They were looking for branches appropriate to use on the wattle wall I’m building in the old kitchen garden. Unfortunately, the only long, straight ones they found were branches that died long ago, and were in no condition for use. The live branches were not suitable for wattle weaving. The best they were able to do was prune some small but straight maple suckers that can be used as space fillers. I’d already gathered some last night from the maples now clear of the branch piles that got chipped, that I hope can be used. I did not expect it to be this difficult to find suitable materials for that project!
Well, that last paragraph took a lot longer to write compared to the rest of this post. The bitties needed attention, and are now back on me. The black and white is content to curl up on my chest, but the grey and white tabby wants to explore!
This morning there was a real crowd when I came out to feed the yard cats!
I’ve taken to leaving kibble on the ground for the babies that like to hide under the cat house. Counting these four, I spotted 27 cats this morning! There were more adults than usual, but certainly not all of them.
Sadly, as I was putting food out, I checked inside the cat house, as I always do, and spotted a little black and white kitten.
It was lying alone, in the middle of the floor, looking like it was asleep. Except, it wasn’t.
Now, I know the cat house was empty when I checked it last night. My best guess is that the bitties were hiding under it, then made their way inside during the night. Or just one of them did. There was no sign of the dark one.
I buried it with Keith.
Definitely a sad way to start the day.
Today being a warmer and sunnier day, I started working on cleaning out and winterizing the sun room. In the process, I found the buckets of old seeds my mother saved over the years. Some had vague information on the packets like “yellow flower”. Others had nothing.
I ended up dumping all but the tree seeds into a shoebox sized bin. Found some squash seeds of some kind in the process, and what look like dried currants. The packages said only “shrub” on them.
I decided to just fling them out somewhere. These are old seeds that have been through temperature extremes in the sun room, so germination rates would be very low, but who knows?
I decided to fling them somewhere in the outer yard, closer to the secondary gate. As I was leaving the inner yard, though, I changed my mind.
Out by those willows, things got very wet with the spring flooding we had this year. I figured in a more average spring, it would be a better place for the seeds, as it would at least have more moisture.
That arrow is not where I flung the seeds.
As I took the mowed path towards one of the Korean pines, I suddenly started hearing tiny mews.
That arrow is going to where I found a pair of bitty kitties! The second black and white one, and the grey and white tabby. They were at the base of a tree, and there was no sign of a mama. There were broken branches all over, hidden in the grass, but I got to them and picked them up. They were mewing like crazy, so I quickly (and carefully!) made my way to the south end of the trees, flung the seeds, then put the kittens in the bin to carry them home.
As soon as I got inside, I turned them over to the girls, then went back to look for the dark grey little spitfire. While I did that, I sent a message to the cat lady.
It turns out we have a much better data signal in the outer yard than in the house!
After a few messages, the cat lady called me and we talked about the bitties. She is going to be in the area tomorrow morning, so she will make coming here her first stop. She just ran out of kitten milk with the babies she’s already taking care of, but will pick up more. We will giver her the formula we have now, too.
Then I kept looking for the last kitten in the tall grass. Unfortunately, many other kittens came out to follow me, so any time I stopped to listen for meowing, I was hearing bigger kittens rustling through the tall grass.
I kept looking, using the flashlight on my phone, until my daughter came out to get me. She had seen an owl swooping around, so we needed to get the kittens back to the house. I moved ahead so they would keep following me, while my daughter kept watch. Once by the house, I rattled kibble bowls and topped up the water bowls to get their attention, and they eventually all came over.
Meanwhile, my other daughter was with the babies in my bedrooms/office. They had set up a nest in a laundry basket, but the kittens climbed right out, found the kibble bowls for the other cats, and started eating. Amazingly, Leyendecker was following them around, trying to lick them. Including butt licking. Which is good. Butt licking is very important for such young kittens, and I’d rather he did it, than have to try and simulate it with a damp cloth! While two of us were there to play interference, my daughter opened a can of wet cat food and divided it up, setting bowls in different places for Nosencrantz and Butterscotch (who wanted nothing to do with the bitties!), and the smallest bowl for the bitties.
These babies seem to have had guardian angels watching over them!
They dove right in. The only problem was, they kept trying to bite the sides of the bowl, too!
As encouraging a sight that was, dehydration was another concern. After a while, we broke out the kitchen scale to weigh them, so we could calculate how much formula powder to mix with water. My daughter ended up having to bring a mixing bowl to put on the scale, zero it out, then put a kitten in the bowl. The grey and white tabby was 430 grams/15 oz, and the black and white was only 310 grams/11 oz.
My daughters took care of getting a bottle and formula ready while I tried to comfort the babies. They just wouldn’t stop mewing. The grey and white one really runs around a lot! The black and white will sit quietly for a while, but then wants to be with its sibling and starts trying to find it.
We tried to feed them with a bottle, but it just did not work. They didn’t want to take it, and when they did, the formula didn’t want to flow, even though we snipped the nipple as the instructions described. Finally, we tried pouring some into a tiny bowl to see how that worked.
The bowl was too tiny for both of them, as the voraciously went after the milk! One of my daughters ran to get a small rectangular bowl, and that worked much better. After giving them a chance to have some, we transferred them, and the bowl, into the cat carrier we’d set up so we could safely tuck them away as needed.
Once they were done, they started crying at the door, so I let them out. They were both absolutely wet with formula, and seemed to be quite happy with nice, full bellies!
As I type this, the black and white is curled up against my shoulder. The grey and white tabby had settled on my thigh, but is now on my wrist, wondering what my fingers are doing on the keyboard!
And mewing.
I’m not going to get much sleep tonight.
My only concern right now is for the kitten we never found. I can only hope that it is safe with the mama somewhere.
Today, I was able to make the trip to the nearest Walmart, primarily to pick up some kibble for the outside cats. There was a pet store nearby, where I was able to pick this up.
What they didn’t have in stock was cat milk or kitten formula mix. I did my shopping at Walmart, then took a different route home to swing by our vet. They had only 2 little cans of kitten formula left, so I got one of them – expensive stuff!!! – and headed home.
Once everything was brought inside, I quickly set up a nest for them in a bin in my office, then went looking for the babies.
They were gone.
The cat house was completely empty.
On the one hand, this is good news. The bitties were not abandoned, for all that we never saw them with a mama. She tried to bring them somewhere safe, but there is just too much activity near the house. The mother is doing her best to take care of her teeny babies.
On the other hand, their chances of survival just dropped significantly. Not just from the elements, but the farther they are from the house, the greater the risk that a predator will find them. Once the mamas start bringing them back to the house for kibble, the kittens tend to stay of their own volition. That’s why we have a yard full of kittens right now, but hardly any mamas. Rosencrantz is really the only one that hangs around, and she’s the oldest of the mamas still outside, now that Butterscotch and Beep Beep are inside.
I’ve just been in contact with the cat lady. Unfortunately, she had not had a chance to look at the emails I’d sent her. There’s a reason she prefers texting! She is currently caring for a 3 week old kitten found to the north of us; the mama had been killed by a coyote, and the rest of the litter died of exposure, so there’s just one lonely baby left. She has been dealing with her own health issues, and just got the go-ahead for major surgery, so things are going to be pretty wild for her for the next while! If we do find any abandoned kitties, though, she told me to let her know right away, and she’ll come get them.
Meanwhile, we now have the nursing kit and formula on hand, just in case.
I really hope things work out well for the bitties!!
While my daughter was working on attaching the metal roofing to the water bowl shelter, I played interference with kittens.
I also got to cuddle with this little spitfire!
This one hisses and spits whenever we pick it up. While I held it and scritched its ears, it would start to calm down, then seem to remember that it wasn’t supposed to like this, and hiss and spit some more! For just a second or so, though. 😂
We’re supposed to hit a low of -8C/18F by 8am, and then warm up to a high of 3C/37F. After that, we’re supposed to jump to a high of 10C/50F, with a couple more days just a tad warmer, with overnight lows just below freezing for a couple more nights before staying above freezing for a while.
Hopefully, the bitty babies will be staying in the warmth of the cat house, and their mama – whoever it is – won’t take them away again!
The Re-Farmer 