My daughters and I were outdoors when Rolando Moon appeared. We haven’t seen her for weeks! As we went around the yard, my younger daughter noticed Rolando was growling at something by the outhouse, so she went to investigate. Next to the outhouse are two old rotting barrels. One of them doesn’t have a top, so there’s a piece of sheet metal weighted down with a brick that covers most of the opening.
There was a cat inside!
This was a surprise, and I thought it might be stuck in there, so my daughter move the brick and started to move the metal, only to have the cat burst out and run away.
Not far away, though.
This would be why.
Yup. It’s another litter of kittens! Very, very young ones!
I’ve zoomed into the full size photos and tried to see how many there are. There are at least 6, but there may actually be more!
Oh, my goodness. I just realized that there is another kitten under that board, towards the right! Which means there might be as many as 8 kittens in this litter! This is the largest litter we’ve ever seen.
The mama is one of the more feral tabbies that I noticed a while back, looking ready to give birth any time.
I think. It may actually be another mama. The one in the above photo has stripes. The one I saw today, I thought it was more spotted than striped. I really didn’t get to see her much at all. As I said, she’s one of the more feral mamas.
That is really not a good place for kittens. It’s certainly a very safe place, but with the way it’s covered, rain would be getting in there, and everything’s all hard and dirty.
If the mother were less feral, I’d be making a box nest and working to get the babies out, then setting the box somewhere the mother will find them, but if we do that, she might just abandon them. She would certainly end up moving them somewhere else.
I knew the Cat Lady hoped to swing by to drop off some cat food for us today. Just a drop and run, as it would be on the way to somewhere else. I expected a message from her ahead of time, and was going to open the gate for her, but instead I got a message saying the stuff was at the gate!
So I snagged a daughter, grabbed the wheelbarrow, and went to pick it up.
Wow!!
First up, I’m impressed with how far she was able to get some of those pushed under the gate! Especially that 40lb bag of pellets.
She had mentioned she might have litter pellets, too, but I was not expecting them! There’s the two big bag, like we usually get at Canadian Tire, plus a smaller bag of pellets made from recycled newspaper.
She mentioned leaving Marlee’s favourite cat treats, but I didn’t except to see two crinkle caves for the kittens as well.
I was also not at all expecting canned cat food! I am really appreciating it, because right now, I’m using a lot more than usual for the cats in my room. It allowed me to give the two older kittens more controlled doses of lysine. Their eyes are looking better, but are still quite sticky. This morning, I found Question’s eyes completely stuck shut again (that’s the name the girls have settled on for her, because of the question mark pattern on her back).
Speaking of sticky eyes, the next photo is kinda gross.
There are a lot of tuxedos among the kittens this year, and one of them has a really messed up eye. Not as bad as the kitten we got to the vet – at least not from what we can see so far – but still pretty bad. I did catch him once, but he really panicked and one of my hands got pretty scratched up as he made his escape. Today, I sort of caught him, but didn’t want to freak him out too much, so I gently held him in place and pet him, letting him go before he started to panic.
This is what he looks like.
That inner eyelid is so swollen, I can’t even really see the eyeball, but there’s quite a bit of swelling in there.
I told the cat lady about it, and she said that if we can catch him, to let her know, and she will see what she can do for us.
Like she doesn’t have enough on her plate already!!
It kept raining off and on yesterday, so it was a little damp when I came out to do my evening rounds, starting with putting food out for the yard cats first. One of the things I do it toss a handful into the two lower shelves of the shelf shelter.
When I put some in the bottom shelf, I hear scrabbling and growling noises! Beep Beep Baby prefers to eat in that bottom shelf, so she started to go for the food, only to be chased away by hissing, snarling and more scrabbling! She tried again, but got chased off again.
The noise was coming from one side where there is a cardboard box, and I just couldn’t see anything. So I stuck my phone in and got this picture.
It was a very terrified kitten!
Also, that box is falling apart completely. 😄
As I distracted the cats away by filling the kibble trays, I could eventually see the kitten through the opening, in the corner where there is a crocheted cat bed.
I am pretty sure this kitten is one of the litter of six that live in the board pile beside the spruce grove, where I spotted these two.
I was able to move a bit closer to get the photo, but I didn’t want to scare them away and didn’t push my luck. In the past, I would put trays of kibble for any kittens in this wood pile, but I’m seeing them by the kibble house so often, I’m leaving things be. Hopefully, they will start hanging out in the sun room with the other kittens.
Today has been another day of on and off rain., and I believe all last night, too. When I came out to feed the cats, I was met with a sad sight. A very wet, very dead kitten in the grass in front of the sun room. There was nothing visible to show why it died. Given its bedraggled fur, I think this is another one that died somewhere else and was brought close to the house.
It is now buried with Keith and the dead kitten that had been brought into the sun room some weeks ago.
This has been quite the year for kitten losses. I’ve no doubt we’ve had as many in previous years. It’s just that this is the first year we’ve actually been finding their remains, or having them brought to us.
At least we have some successes, like the kitten that got adopted when we brought it to the vet. It all sort of balances out.
Today, after many, many delays, we finally got some progress on those raised bed covers we need to build!
My daughter and I set up the folding table we made using the legs we found when cleaning up the new basement, and a section of 3/4 plywood found in the pump shack. The hard part was finding level enough ground for it, and still be close to the outside outlet. We ended up putting it almost against the house, and that’s where we set up the miter saw. Then we moved the swing bench that’s been sitting on the sidewalk block patio under the kitchen window for the past while, so we could set up the table saw close enough to plug it in without an extension cord.
The first thing we tried to do was cut the 12ft long 1″x4″ boards in half, lengthwise. My daughter, sweetheart that she is, found where the saw blade could be adjusted up and down. My husband and I had tried everything to raise that blade and finally concluded it couldn’t be raised. Turns out, it was just badly rusted and that’s why it wasn’t moving. !! I wonder how many years it sat in that shed before I found it?
The first two boards we cut in half did not go well! My daughter was feeding the board from one side while I supported it from the other, but it just did not want to stay against the guide. We ended up with some wobbly cuts! So we cut the others shorter first, then cut them in half. We measured the beds first to confirm the dimensions. The side boards total 9′ long, but then there’s the width of the end boards; I forgot I’d attached those to the ends of the side boards, and not to the insides. That made the beds 9′ 2″ long. The end boards were 3′ 1/4″ long.
So we will be cutting 9′ and 3′ for the cover frames.
The boards were exactly 12′ and 1/4″ long, so we just measured off the 9′ and cut it. The cuts take off a fraction of an inch, so the remaining sections should be almost exactly the right length for the short ends.
It was much, much easier to cut the shorter lengths in half on the table saw!
All the pieces are now cut. The 3′ lengths are in the front, then the 9′ lengths. In the back is one of the two first 12′ boards we cut in half, with the wonky cuts. The other one was used to cut more 3′ lengths, since being a bit wonky won’t be an issue for some parts of the build.
There is also one board at the top of the photo that was set aside because it has damage on it in two places. We will still be able to use the undamaged parts at some point.
As for the plans, I sketched what I had in mind out for my daughter.
We will be building four 9’x3′ frames, but two of them will be used in one cover. The Tom Thumb corn is going to need taller protection from deer, so two frames will be joined by 3′ vertical supports. One more support will be added across the top in the middle, to keep it from bowing outwards. I also plan to add screw eyes inside the middles and tie a cord across, to keep the sides from bowing out. A cord that close to ground level will be less in the way of growing plants.
At this point, we could just put a net around it, though if we wanted this over a bed with taller plants in it, we could potentially add hoops to the top for extra height.
That box frame is the one we need to get done first, as the corn is most at risk for getting eaten. Between the deer and the racoons, it’s going to become an issue in the near future! If we want to keep racoons out, though, we’ll have to use hardware cloth and find a way to secure the cover to the frame, so they don’t just knock it off.
The other two frames will have rounded tops. We have some wire fencing with 4″ squares that I plan to use with one of them, making a slightly higher cover. The fence wire can then support things like netting, plastic or shade cloth, as needed.
With the other, I was thinking of using the hoops that are currently still over the carrot bed, but… now that I’m looking at the plans, I realized we have enough of that wire fencing to use on both frames. We could make them different heights, for different needs. A shorter one, for example, would be handy for shorter produce, or to create a mini greenhouse over newly sown beds. A taller one would be great for plants that grow higher, but not high enough to need that box cover we’ll be putting over the corn.
As we build more high raised beds, the plan is to stick to the 9’x3′ size, so that these covers can be used interchangeably on any of them. We’re doing three covers for now. One of them should be useable on the high raised bed we have now, which currently has hoops to protect the beans from the deer. The box bed with the red onions does not really need a cover, except maybe to keep the cats from lying in it, or the birds from digging in the mulch. Over time, we plan to build enough covers for all the raised beds we make.
As for cutting the pieces, I was really happy. We will definitely need to get a new table saw, as this one was having issues. It will do for now, though. What I was really excited about was the miter saw. I bought it at a garage sale, and this is the first time we’ve tried to use it. Of course, it didn’t come with an instruction manual! Which is fine. It’s easy enough to figure out.
Up until now, I’ve been using a hand saw to make cross cuts. No matter how careful I am, I always end up making crooked cuts, and there are always those little bits of wood that break before the saw can cut them that need to be sanded. So excited to get beautiful clean cuts! Plus, the speed of it was fabulous!
Once the cutting was done, I realized we would not have enough screws to assemble them all, so we decided to go into town and get more. The table and miter saws got put back into the sun room, and the cut pieces went onto the table we used for the miter saw. We were getting hints of rain, and we didn’t want to take a chance. It’s a good thing we did, because there was a downpour while we were out!
When we got to the hardware store, we drove around the block a couple of times but could find no parking, so my daughter offered to buy us lunch! By the time we were done, things were no longer so busy, and I was able to park and run in.
Before we left home, I took a pair of calipers to the water pipe leading from the house to the garden that needs to be repaired. It’s a 1 inch pipe. After finding the screws we needed at the hardware store, I went looking for a flexible PVC coupling with metal clamps. The smallest size they had was 1 3/4″. That would leave too big of a gap for the clamps to be able to seal it on a 1 inch pipe. I talked to an employee, and showed her the picture I took of the calipers on the water pipe, which also showed the crack in the pipe very clearly. She tried to find something else that would work, but there wasn’t anything they had. In the end, she recommended I talk to a plumber.
What I will most likely do is go to the hardware store in my mother’s town, which is where I first had the flexible coupling recommended as a possible fix. They are a bigger store with a larger plumbing section, and may have a smaller size coupling in stock. If worse comes to worse, we can order them online. In fact, I’ve already found some sized specifically to fit on 1″ pipe.
As you can tell, I’m really hoping to avoid having to dig up and replace the entire length of pipe!
By the time we got home, the downpour my other daughter told us about was done! I don’t know if it’ll be dry enough for us to start assembling the first cover today. We’re supposed to get more rain, too.
This is where I really wish the storage shed wasn’t full of my parents’ stuff, that my mother insists we keep and is constantly afraid someone might come in and steal. As if anyone would be interested in the bags and bags of their old clothes, boxes and boxes of household stuff, or their old furniture. My late brother had used that building as a workshop, but that was more than 10 years ago. We never had a chance to even see what all was still in there, as my brother and his wife had already started moving my parent’s things into there before we moved in, and it was being used as storage for other things even before then.
So we make do with working outside, when the weather allows!
Well, this project has been delayed repeated for about a month now. One more day won’t hurt, if it comes to that!
Just before I went into the sun room this morning, I saw this through the door.
What as funny was watching that one kitten lift its head, then slowly let it flop backwards like that!
I saw the orange babies as well. The first time, I saw one of them nursing on Baby Beep Beep along with a white and grey kitten from another litter. Some time later, I saw this through the door.
The three siblings, all nursing on Baby Beep Beep.
I was sure these were Caramel’s babies. I even saw Caramel yesterday evening. But it’s Baby Beep Beep that I’ve been seeing nursing them.
Well, the main thing it, they’re still safe in the sun room and being mothered!
It took me longer just to get outside this morning. Twice, as soon as I went into the sun room, I spotted a kitten that needed eye washing and was able to catch them. When I was finally able to go all the way through the outer doors, I found a tuxedo on the hand rail by the rose bush. It had one eye mostly closed and just gross with… ick. I was able to catch him, but he was not happy about that and managed to get away. I now have a few new scratches on my hand to show for it!
The indoor kittens are getting incredibly active, and a couple of them have even started going to the door and “asking” to be let out.
Not going to happen!
It’s funny to see them using the regular litter pan instead of the one in baby jail. They are so tiny, if it weren’t for the lower front of the pan, we wouldn’t be able to see them in there at all!
We really need to watch our step around them now. They have a thing for running over to our feet unexpectedly.
Snarly Marley does NOT like the kittens. At all.
I’ve been keeping in touch with the Cat Lady. It looks like her cat that was blocked is now stable after surgery and is coming home with a catheter. She is so amazing. She’s got so much going on and going wrong right now, but she still managed to take advantage of a deal, picked up bags of dry cat food for us and hopes to swing by with them, tomorrow.
When I finally got outside to do my evening stuff, I was able to pick a bunch of peas and raspberries.
It seems quite a lot of our peas have been “topped” by deer, but they seem to like the leaves, and not the pods.
I wanted to have that photo first, so no one squeamish sees the next photo in the post previews. You are warned!
The first time I started to go outside, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. After putting the food out, I was able to snag it and bring it inside for an eye washing.
That eye was looking worse than ever. The swelling was massive, and it looked like the eye was not going to make it.
We decided to call the vet. After talking to them for a bit, they had me come in as an emergency visit. This is how the kitten looked after we got it in the carrier.
That is not good. Not good at all. You can’t actually see in the photo, just how bad the swelling is. Just a great big ball over his cheek bone and partly towards his ear. While we washed the eye, I move the lids around and could see gunk was accumulating under the eyelids, too – not something we had any way to wash out.
By the time I got to the vet, it actually looked better, though all the pink tissue was blood red. The eyeball itself no longer looked cloudy, like in the photo.
I was taken to an examination room immediately. Just before leaving, I messaged the Cat Lady with the above photo, and we chatted for a bit while I waited for the vet. She has seen this before and told me about some medications that worked wonders for her, in just a couple of days. I was feeling better about that, by the time the doctor came in.
Not so much for the Cat Lady, though.
Her cat that is blocked is back in surgery, and he’s either going to make it, or be euthanized, depending on how things go. They’ve already spent thousands of dollars on this cat. I’m assuming they are doing the last ditch surgery of creating a “female” urethra. I honestly would never go that far. There can be so many problems after the surgery, and a severe reduction in quality of life. I don’t know for sure, though. Unfortunately, not only are they dealing with this, but family from out of country are in and they have to put a smile on their faces attend a family gathering. She’s a total mess – and yet she still was able to encourage me about the kitten!
When the vet came in, we talked for awhile and I explained the background on the kitten. This is only the second time I’ve been able to catch him (when I mentioned I hadn’t even had a chance to see if it was male or female, she did check and was mostly sure it’s male). She said the eye was likely related to herpes, and I told her how we’ve been giving the outside cats lysine to help with that. The adults are fine now, but once the kittens start getting weaned and eating solid food (including the mice and birds the mamas bring them), their eyes start getting gummy.
She used a light to look into his eye and confirmed that it’s gone. It’s full of blood and apparently starting to rot inside. All that swelling you can see in the photo? That’s all eyeball. *shudder* We’d be treating it for a while, and then having it removed later. So many of them have red, leaky and stuck eyes, but we can only catch a couple of them, once in a while.
The only way we could treat the kitten would be to bring it inside, of course, but that meant we would be able to control the lysine dose. They weighed him and worked out that he would be getting half a scoop – the scoop that comes with the lysine, not the size I’m using for the outside cats! – mixed into his food, twice a day. For an adult cat, it would have been 1 scoop twice a day. We would have gotten eye drops, too.
Note that I’m speaking in the past tense now.
The vet then took him out to wash his eye with saline solution, cover the eye with gel to keep it from drying out, and give him a slow release antibiotic injection.
Then she came back with him and a handful of medications to take home with him, started to talk to me about it, then asked, “unless you want to adopt him out…?”
???
I wasn’t quite sure if she was serious, but I said yes, of course. That would be a huge help. We already have too many cats in the house (the last I saw this vet, we had 16, but now Decimus and the 6 babies are inside, too).
Then she asked if I wanted to take him home first, or adopt him out now?
It seems one of the techs wanted to take him home. Now? Or Monday?
I was a bit confused, things were coming at me so jumbled. At first I was going to bring him home to treat him over the weekend, then bring him back on Monday, but then she told me to wait and went to talk to the tech again.
The tech was happy to bring him home with her right away.
So that was settled!
I was stunned, but happy.
Then I went to settle the bill. I figured it would be more than I got for the van, just this morning, and had already been checking my bank account to see what I could transfer over out of savings, if necessary. I’d mentioned to the vet that I’d been chatting with the Cat Lady, so when I was at the counter, she asked me if the rescue was covering the bill or was I? I told her the rescue was not involved with this kitten. Then I saw some semi-verbal communication between the vet and the tech that was out of view.
Suddenly I was being told it was okay. It was covered. The tech that adopted the kitten would take care of it, and I was basically – cheerfully! – kicked out. 😂😂
So… yeah.
By the time I left, I was in a bit of a daze. It all happened so quickly! I went in with a messed up kitty, worried about how we were going to pay for vet care and sure the baby was going to loose an eye. I left with the kitten in the best of hands. Who better than someone that works at a vet clinic to take care of it? The only way things could be better is if, by some miracle, the eye recovers. Unlikely, but possible.
Well, this has been an unusually busy morning. Maybe busy is the wrong word. Let’s just say, there were a lot more different things that got done in a short time, rather than spread out over the day.
I took quite a few photos I wanted to share, but I am pretty short on storage space in my WordPress account (and I’m not willing to pay through the nose to upgrade my plan, when storage space is the only thing I need!), so I’ve uploaded them to Instagram, instead.
The Black Beauty tomato is well named. They are gorgeous, and there are so many of them! Of course, the colour makes them very easy to see, unlike the Roma tomatoes, where the developing tomatoes are the same colour as the plants right now.
We’ve figured it out. I’m not finding different Abbott’s Sphinx caterpillars. It’s the same one, in different stages of growth. So it went from that incredible blue, to brown and now brown and green. From the photos I’ve been looking at, I think we might see one more colour change before it starts to cocoon itself.
When feeding the cats this morning, Not-Junk Pile actually let me pet her… sort of. So we gave it a try and got the ear mite medication. It too my daughter and I many attempts to get close to her – she kept moving away, but was hungry enough to keep coming back for the food. Finally, while she was in the kibble house, my daughter was able to duck in and use the syringe to apply the ear might medication to a spot between her shoulders. Unfortunately, there’s no way she would let us rub it in like it’s supposed to, but it’s the best we can do.
We have not been able to re-catch that kitten with the messed up eye. The eye is still open, but the swelling around it is huge, and I don’t think it can see at all out of that eye. From what little I can glimpse between the eyelids, it’s just red flesh.
After we managed to dose the cat, I threw away the syringe and packaging, then went to switch out the memory cards in the trail cams. I was just coming up on the driveway cam, reached into my pocket for a memory card…
And pulled out a syringe package.
So I went back to the garbage can in the sun room and retried the memory cards I threw out with the syringe… 😂 It seems that when I dug around the bottom of my pocket for the syringe cap, I grabbed the memory cards as well. I also had the empty syringe in my hand, so I thought I grabbed the packaging as well.
Oops!
After I was done with my morning rounds, I headed into town to the post office to pick up the other two books my husband got me for my birthday – and was surprised to find another package as well. I was just turning the corner on my way home when I realized that stick on the road was NOT a stick!
I was so excited to see my first garter snake of the year! Well, maybe. I might have seen one other, squished on the road, awhile back, but definitely the first live one. I carefully drove around it, and it didn’t move, so I stopped to take a picture out my window. Then I drove ahead, parked, and got it off the road. I did not want to take a chance that it would stay there and get smushed by the next vehicle! I hope it would cross the rest of the way towards our garden, but it turned around and went the opposite direction. Ah, well. Hopefully, it will make its way to our garden and start feasting on slugs and other critters that might harm our plants!
Once at home, I quite eagerly opened the packages. Here are my new books.
Somehow, I was expecting the books to be much larger, like the first one that came in. 😄
If you look at the contents pages, the first book (which is on the right) is almost entirely dedicated to food. The second book (on the left) adds in a few more topics, but is still largely focused on food.
I look forwards to going through these!!
The next books I want are newer editions of the Back to Basics book we have now. That one covers growing and raising food, butchering, preservation methods and recipes, too, but it starts with things like how to select land to purchase, how to did a well, and even step by step instructions on how to build three different types of houses, including a cordwood house. I’ll be using some of the techniques in there for when we build our outdoor kitchen. It also includes things like joinery, blacksmithing, etc.
We passed on many of our books before we moved, so we need to rebuilt our resource library!
As for the other package, that was like Christmas! A dear friend passed on some items. There’s a whole lot of very old cookbooks that I’m quite excited to see, and even a collection of seeds that belonged to a mutual friend and neighbour. They are all “expired”, but I will try planting them next year, anyhow. The germination rate will be low, but at least a few should still manage.
Well, this took longer to write than usual, because I’ve also been messaging with our mechanic.
He wasn’t sure the van was worth fixing, either. It hasn’t been long enough to rebuilt our credit rating enough, yet, so applying for financing at this point would not be a good idea. Plus, the Caravan we were interested in has sold, anyhow. I mentioned we were planning to replace the van in the fall, anyhow, so spending so much money to fix it just doesn’t make much sense. He ended up offering to buy it for scrap, of that helps us any. I think that’s what we’ll end up doing. We’ll get a few hundred for the van, depending on what the price of scrap metal is right now, and can cancel the insurance. The van cost less than my mothers car to insure, but it’ll still be reducing that cost by almost half. We can put that money towards savings for a down payment, instead.
So I think that’s what we’ll end up doing. Which means a trip into town to remove a few things from the van. Maybe not today, but we’ll see.
I do hate having to rely completely on my mother’s car, but we weren’t driving the van because of the noises it was making, anyhow.
Well, that got interrupted mid sentence…
It’s decided. We’ll sell the van for scrap. I’ve let him know, and might head over this afternoon to empty it out and do whatever paperwork is needed.
That van had a lot of problems, but considering the circumstances and the mileage, it really did to well for us.
While catching up on a few garden things in the cool of the evening, I happened to walk near the covered board pile outside the living room window, where Not-Junk Pile has her litter. I’ve been seeing 3 kittens running around and playing on the tarp, and the tire and tire rim we have on top to keep it weighed down.
I could see Not-Junk Pile lying in the grass, nursing her littles. They noticed me, and three kittens ran off into the brush around the board pile.
Leaving three others behind! They and their mother watched me closely as I walked by, but did not run away.
Six.
She has SIX babies!!!!
I saw them again later, and it was quite hilarious. I had to zoom in from a distance, and this is the clearest photo I could get.
That’s just a whole bowl full of babies in there with her! 😹😹
As I was in and out of the sun room, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. It’s looking really swollen – even more than before – around and behind the eye socket. I let the girls know, so they could try and get it and tend to it as best they could, but it ran under the counter shelf, and none of us have spotted it since. I did manage to snag a black and white kitten with a gummed up eye, and one of my daughters was able to wash it clear. There’s a white and grey kitten with an eye stuck closed, too, but I haven’t been able to catch it.
As I was finishing up, I spotted a teeny little tuxedo running around outside the sun room door. I’m not sure that I recognise it.
Speaking of recognizing cats, after I put the kibble out and cats were coming around, I realized I was seeing both Junk Pile and Not-Junk Pile. I tried to move closer to Junk Pile, but honestly, the only way I can tell them apart unless they are literally right next to each other, is from the wounds Not-Junk Pile has behind her ears, from scratching herself. We still haven’t been able to catch her to give her that ear might medication, which is really getting to be a problem. The wounds behind her ears had been healing up, but today they are red and raw again. I did manage to come close enough that she sniffed my fingers, but that’s as close as she’ll let me get to her.
We reached at least 24C/75F today, though the thermometer in the sun room was hitting 30C/86F. For all the severe thunderstorm warnings we were getting, we didn’t even get rain. So I made a point of watering as much of the garden as I could, while doing other stuff.
It’s too early for the water soluble fertilizer I used to make much visible difference, but that bed with the Roma tomatoes is bothering me. They are just not thriving, for all that they are producing tomatoes. That bed has a mulch of shredded paper, because that’s all we had left at the time. It does the job, but isn’t as good as a grass mulch, and we have a nice big pile of grass clippings available right now, so I went ahead and topped up the bed with a few inches of grass clippings around the tomatoes, between the onions, and especially the edge, where the crab grass comes up from under the logs framing the bed – and right on top of the soaker hose that winds its way around the bed, leaving only the connector sticking out. Then I went around and pruned the bottom branches off the tomato plants. I’m hoping the fresh mulch and the pruning will help the tomatoes get healthier.
After that was done, I hooked up the garden hose, then went to look at the new soaker hose I set up and tested in the purple corn bed. I got the soaker hose because it was affordable, but I guess you get what you paid for. It works just fine, except for the connector. Inside the connector was a flat green disc with a small hole in the middle. I figured it was to control the flow of water into the soaker hose, but when I hooked up the water hose, it sprayed from between the threads. With the disc there, there’s just too much water pressure, forcing the water out through the connector. So I tried taking out the disc and tried again, but there is no rubber washer, so it still leaked. A lot. I have extra rubber washers, but when I put one in, I discovered that the connector isn’t as deep as others. With the washer in place, there wasn’t enough thread to screw on the garden hose! The washer is just too thick. It’s fine on every other hose. Just not this one. I did eventually use it without the rubber washer, but not for long. There was just too much water leaking.
I did, however, have an extra female coupling, so while giving the other soaker hose time to give the tomatoes and onions a good watering, I cut off the connector on the new hose and replaced it. The original coupling was at the end of a plastic tube on the outside of the soaker hose. The new coupling has a metal tube that needs to be inserted into the hose, then a worm clamp is tightened to keep it in place and from leaking. Getting that into the soaker hose took awhile, though! It was designed for a half inch hose – which is smaller than the hoses we have, but the clamp makes up for that. The soaker hose opening is narrower than half an inch! Thankfully, the material it’s made of does stretch, and I was able to get it in properly, then clamp it down.
Once the tomato bed was watered, I tested out the new hose with its now connector, and it worked perfectly!
Oh, slight interruption!
My daughter read that tonight was supposed to be a good night to see the Northern lights, and she invited me to go outside and see if they were visible, or if it was too cloudy. It turned out to be too cloudy, but we heard the barking sound of racoons, so we went to check.
We found two young racoons on the cat hour roof. When they saw us, they flattened themselves down as much as possible, and froze! We ended up using the hose to chase them off, but… gosh darn it, they are so flippin’ cute!
Anyhow… where was I?
Ah, yes.
With the new soaker hose working, I decided to set up a sprinkler over the squash patch, so the whole patch can be watered at once. We have oscillating sprinklers we found after moving here – three of them. They work, in that they spray water, but the oscillating part doesn’t work at all on two of them.
Of course, the one that worked was the last one I tested!
Turns out that if it’s set right, it not only waters the entire squash patch, but also the small patch with the drum gourds and zucca melon – and the corn bed! So it got a real good watering this evening!
By the time I used the soaker hoses and sprinkler for a half our each, it was getting too dark to do much more, so it was time to go in, and away from the mosquitoes! We’re still getting predictions for rain tonight, but I’m not expecting it to reach us, so I might be watering some more, in the morning!
I so enjoy being able to work outside. I’d say outside all day if I could! Heck, with the temperatures we’ve been having overnight, I’d happily sleep outside, too. One of these days, we’ll have a mosquito proof gazebo, and I’ll be able to do just that!
Wow. Things have lurched from great to not-great pretty severely, today!
But first, kitten updates!
All six of the inside kittens have figure out how to get out of baby jail. When I was up and about this morning, they got all excited and started wailing, so I put them on my bed with a bunch of toys, and they were happy!
The new kitten, Question (who, it turns out, is female) is definitely more lethargic than the other kittens. I had to wash her eyes out this morning, and throughout the day, we were more likely to find her sleeping somewhere by herself, rather than running around and playing with the other kittens.
They can get out of baby jail, but then they want to get back in and seem to have more difficulty, so I moved the little scratching post over. They can now climb up it and access the top of the “door” to get back in.
We have to keep the door closed and severely watch our feet, now!
When I went to feed the outside cats, I found several kittens curled up together and sleeping on the cat bed we brought in with the trio of kittens I found yesterday. I did not see the trio and hoped the mama had come by and got them, but as I was finishing my rounds, I spotted the two orange ones. Looks like they were just hiding under the counter shelf. The problem is, there’s still been no sign of Caramel. At least Gooby did show up last night. I was concerned about him. When I told the girls about not seeing him, they told me he’s been up on the roof, looking plaintively into their window, and batting at the screen to get in!
One important thing is that I was finally able to catch the kitten with one eye that’s been stuck shut for days. It took the longest time to gently moisten the gunk. It was completely dry and rock hard. The entire eye area was quite swollen. When it got to the point that I could finally, ever so gently, pull apart the lids a bit, all I could see was red tissue. I feared the eye may have been lost, but when I saw the kitten later, the eye was still open, and I could actually see the eyeball. So maybe I got to it in time. I sure hope so.
It’s been hot today, so all the cats and kittens outside are mostly lying around in the shade, sleeping! We were getting severe thunderstorm warnings today, too, but all we’ve got outside here is high winds. I’ll be dong my evening rounds pretty soon, so I’ll be sure to check on the eyes as best I can.
I have a birthday this month, and one of the books my husband ordered for me as gifts arrived today.
Click on the contents image to see the whole thing. The other two books are being shipped together, and are on the same general topic.
My husband knows what I like! 💖💖💖
Oh, I just checked the tracking, and apparently the other two books came in today! I may have gone to the post office before they had a chance to finish processing the parcels. I’ll have to go back tomorrow to pick them up. 😊
The girls, meanwhile, treated us to take out. Normally, the birthday person gets to choose what restaurant we get food from, but this time I told the girls to use the money to get their driver’s licenses for my birthday – or at least get appointments made. The last time my younger daughter was able to book a road test to get her full licence, the nearest appointment was 3 months ahead. She has to book 2 hours with a driving instructor before she can book a road test, though. That got delayed by the lockdowns, and just hasn’t happened, since. Who knows how backed up things might still be. Her sister needs to do the written test to get her learners licence.
The girls still wanted to treat the family, though, so my younger daughter drove me into town. We got a bucket of fried chicken, then hit the grocery store for a few other things, including the cheesecake I chose for a birthday cake. It was very delicious! Last month, the girls picked up the entire Columbo series on DVD, so we enjoyed the food while watching Columbo.
Anyone else remember when TV shows were actually good? It’s been so long…
There was one major downside of the day, though.
I got word on the van.
That noise I was hearing from the back?
It was the brakes. They all need replacing.
Which… considering how long it’s been since we had the brakes done, is pretty fair. However, it’ll cost almost $730 to do them. The power steering pressure hose that needs replacing will be almost $270. So we’re looking at just under a thousand dollars in repairs.
We don’t have that, even if we dip into savings, which is supposed to be going towards a down payment for a replacement vehicle.
The van isn’t even worth that much.
I saw the message letting me know the cost just before the garage closed, so I don’t expect to hear from him again until tomorrow, but I was honest and said as much regarding the repairs. He knows our situation, so I’m sure he was expecting something like that. Then I asked if he thought it was too soon to apply for financing on that Caravan his still has for sale! For all I know, the price on that has dropped again. I haven’t looked at it since I brought my mother’s car in to get it looked at because the check engine light had turned on. There wasn’t anything serious and he cleared the codes but, yesterday, it turned back on again. *sigh*
Talking about it with my husband, he brought up the possibility of asking if we could pay as much as we can for the brakes now – they would be the higher priority – and pay the rest off next month, then do the power steering pressure hose another month. As he pointed out, the van may not be worth much when it comes to dollar value, but it’s a vehicle that runs, and a vehicle that runs is worth a lot more than one that doesn’t! That’s something I can talk about with our mechanic tomorrow. The thing is, we plan to try and replace the van before winter. If we spread out the cost of repairs over several months, we’d be done at about the same time I’d be applying for a replacement vehicle anyhow – but we’d have nothing for a down payment except the “trade in” value of the van. Which would be going for scrap. So all that money we’d be paying would basically be throw away. When we did apply for financing before, it was with no trade in and no down payment, so maybe we can do that again, too. Either way, I’ll talk to the garage about it tomorrow.
Oh, I just thought of something. If we don’t fix the van and sell it for scrap, we’d be cancelling the insurance on it – and that will free up some budget that can go towards a replacement vehicle… Hmmm…
Well, what will be will be.
Time for me to head outside and check on the kitties!
I had a pretty surprise while doing my morning rounds. A couple of the newly opened poppies are very red, instead of mostly white, like all the others!
This is what they are supposed to look like. At least, this is how the Baker Creek website shows them.
Poppy colours were not my only surprise today!
Today has been a day of kittens.
First, when we brought Ghosty’s brother in to wash his eyes, we didn’t put him back outside. Instead, he went into baby jail with Ghosty and Decimus’ four. I ended up giving them wet cat food, as even the littles are starting to eat solid food. When Decimus came in, she sniffed at the stranger, but was far more interested in the wet cat food!
I’ve been sending updates to the Cat Lady, but thinks are still in the air at their place. The cat that got hand, foot and mouth disease while they were away, is now blocked! The vet is trying to save him. So coming out here might take a bit longer!
Later on, my husband told me he was hearing what sounded like a kitten in distress outside his window, so I went to check.
It took some digging, but I did find where it was coming from. A kitten had pushed itself right into the corner of the house. There are a whole bunch of things stored there, but I was able to get it out.
After snuggling it for a while – it’s a young one with very blue eyes – I spotted a mama in the kibble house, so I set it down beside her.
She was not his mama, though, so she soon left, but he stayed there, huddled among the kibble trays.
While I was getting him unstuck, I’d heard meowing from somewhere else nearby, so I went looking to see where it came from. Which is when I spotted Caramel and an orange face peeking at me! I’d put a strong plastic bin against the wall in such a way as to create a shelter. Originally, I even had a box with an old pillow in it, but it wasn’t being used, so I moved it to the cat house, but left the bin. Now I know where Caramel moved her babies to! She only moved them less than 20 ft! Assuming that’s where they’ve been, all this time.
I went inside but kept checking on the baby, who stayed huddled in the kibble house, alone. So I picked it up and cuddled it some more, before putting it on the cat bed in the water bowl shelter, so it would at least have someplace more comfortable to be!
Again, I kept going out to check on the baby, and decided to use my phone’s camera to see the kittens in the bin.
They weren’t there.
But I did hear mewing.
Behind me was the stack of flattened corrugated plastic boxes. They’d fallen over in high winds, but I left them like that, since they formed a sort of shelter. I lifted them up and found two kittens! One orange, one orange and white.
I snuggled them for a bit, then put them all together in the water bowl shelter, since they are clearly all from the same litter.
Then I went into the sun room and found three black and white/tuxedo kittens cuddled in a heap, napping. It’s a hot day today, and there are cats sleeping all over the place! I just had to take a picture, and could see the eye issues. One tuxedo has one eye that’s been gummed shut for days, but we haven’t been able to catch him to clean it. The black and white one had both eyes gummed mostly shut, so I was able to pick it up. I snuggled it for a while and it seemed really calm, so I went ahead and cleaned its eyes. It took quite a while, but the kitten was amazingly patient the entire time! Then, when it could finally open its eyes, it stayed in my arms for a while, just looking around.
Then it climbed up on my shoulders, where I couldn’t reach it anymore! I ended up having to go to the shelf just outside the door and lean over, so it would jump to the top. Then I was able to gently pick it up and put it on the ground. It didn’t even try to run off!
Pinky happened to be there and started showing me just how long he can stretch!
Which actually called to mind something that had me concerned.
I haven’t seen Gooby at all, today.
The last I saw him was yesterday evening, out by the squash patch. He and Pinky started to fight, and my daughter had to break them up.
The last time a cat that I normally see every day suddenly wasn’t around was Pointy Baby. I found him with his head stuck in the chain link fence, and he died that night from his injuries. So now I’m concerned that Gooby is injured or stuck somewhere. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for him!
The three littlest kittens, meanwhile, were staying together in the water bowl shelter!
Meanwhile, the new indoor kitten seems to have already been absorbed into the creche! He was more nervous of the little kittens than they were of him. I have no idea if he and Ghosty remember each other, but they are getting along just fine. Decimus came in and settled to nurse, but only a couple of kittens were interested. The two bigger ones ate their fill of solid food, then wanted out of the cage. They can get out pretty easily, but the littles are figuring it out, too. It just takes them a bit more scrabbling! I ended up with the two older kittens and two younger ones running around. I definitely have to watch the wheels on my office chair when getting up from the computer!
Oh, my goodness! I was wondering why it was so quiet, so I went to check. Decimus is now lying on the floor, outside the cat cage, nursing those four kittens – including the new addition! – while the other two are still in baby jail, playing!
What a good little mama!
So… yeah. This has definitely been a day of kittens!
On a completely different note, I got word back from the garage. It needs a new power steering pressure hose, and will cost just under $270. Which is under budget, but there’s still that noise in the back. I asked him about it and he asked some questions, then said he would check the van again and get back to me. So I hope to hear from him tomorrow. It could be the brake drums, but we haven’t driven the van in months, before I drove it to the garage, and the noise wasn’t there before.
The question is, if there is something that needs major repair, is it worth fixing? The mechanic thought that, at best, he might be able to get $400 for it at the scrap metal dealer, though scrap metal prices have gone up since then. If the repairs end up costing more than $400, we will have to decide if it’s even worth fixing. We really need a second vehicle; my mother’s car is great to have, but we need that van.
Well, we shall see what he tells us, and go from there.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll got check on some kittens and do my evening rounds!
The Re-Farmer 