First of all, I wanted to update on the cat lady’s husband. They’re awaiting the results of neurological tests but, so far, he seems to be all right. It turns out that, while he stopped for a traffic light, a tow truck, towing a vehicle and driving 80kph, didn’t notice that vehicles had stopped. It hit her husband’s truck, pushing him into the vehicle in front of him. If he had been driving a smaller car instead of a large truck, he would have been killed!

Road conditions have been slippery on the highways, and it got brutally cold last night. At about 7am this morning, I checked the weather and we were at -32C/-26F, with a wind chill of -36C/-33F

My husband got this picture through the bathroom window, this morning. We left the doors to the sun room propped open just enough for the cats to get through. The spare ceramic heat bulb is set up, and sometimes we’ll see cats under it, or on top of it, but mostly they just pile together on the swing bench. When I headed out this morning, the thermometer in the sun room was at -20C/-4F. Better than outside, but still nasty!

The big tuxedo and its black and white sibling were covered in frost! I’m not sure why those two were the only ones that were so frosty.

Meanwhile, I’ve managed to bring in three kitties that are now in baby jail.

Cheddar was most curious about the strange ladies!

The other cats were not at all happy to see them. Nosencrantz sat there next to the cage, staring at them and growling.

They aren’t sure about being in the cage, but when I was petting Plushy and Princess through a wall with larger squares, they were both purring enthusiastically. Unfortunately, Plushy started trying to shove her face through and actually getting pretty far, so I’ve had to cover about 3/4s of the top with towels. As I write this, Plushy is settled on the red blanket above the litter, Princess is crunching away at the food bowl, and Muffin (the muted calico) has settled onto a towel next to the food bowl and just sitting like a loaf. They are doing okay, but I’m glad I put together the baby jail, because they’d be quite freaked out if they were loose in the room. Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are not pleased to see them. Only Cheddar seems good with them, but Cheddar is good with any cats!

Later on, we’ll keep going outside to pick up any white and greys that will let us, and figure out which one is female. If any. Strange that it seems to be almost exclusively males that are becoming more socialized, but almost none of the females.

Then, tomorrow morning, we’ll load them into carriers (either with another female from outside, or one of the remaining indoor females that still needs to be fixed), and head out to meet the cat lady with them. She’ll take them to the vet the day after, and then we’ll figure out when they’ll be coming back here to finish recovery.

We are supposed to be warming up from now on, though we’re still at -28C/-18F right now, with a wind chill of -39C/-38F. At these temperatures, it takes almost no wind at all for those wind chill numbers to drop substantially. The forecasts have changed again, of course. Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of -20C/-4F, then -12C/10F tomorrow. We no longer have predictions to go above freezing anymore, but in a couple of days, we’re supposed to reach -1C/30F and stay close to that for almost a week.

Tomorrow morning, we should get a visit from one of the guys on the roofing crew. I may be out delivering cats when he’s here, though, so I’m hoping my husband will be able to go out and talk to him, and find out what kind of schedule they’re looking at. Depending on how things go with dropping the cats off tomorrow, I might continue to the city and do the Costco shopping, since I’m booked to help my mother with errands the day after, and I really don’t want to do the Costco shopping on a weekend!

I’ve been driving around more in the last couple of weeks than I have for the past several months!

Oh, that reminds me. I need to call the garage and book my mother’s car for an oil change. I’d better do that now, before I forget again!

The Re-Farmer