I woke up to find a kitten on my belly, so I grabbed my phone to take a picture and see which one it was.
I forgot my phone’s camera was set to auto flash.
Those are some terrifying eyes!!
The Re-Farmer
Are you awake, yet?
Month: August 2023
A little green friend, and painting progress
We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow morning, but I’m not counting on the forecast. The garden needed watering. So, while I had a sprinkler going in the main garden, I took off the diverter on the full rain barrel in preparation to water the south garden beds.
Look what I found hiding under the down spout!
I just love these tree frogs! They’re so adorable!
Between the smoke and the heat, I decided to work on a semi-indoor job today. The inner sun room door is not meant to be exposed to the elements the way it is, when we have both doors wide open as we do for most of the summer. Since we’ve got outdoor paint left over from doing the stump bench and table, I decided to use it on the door.
Here is the progress so far.
I’ve got inside and outside shots starting after I’d scrubbed the door down and removed the loose bits of veneer, then after using masking tape on it. I made sure to cover the hinge plated, door knob roses and the latch.
One of the things I noticed as we cleaned and cleared stuff shortly after we moved here is that any doors that got painted, no one taped off anything. Which is almost painful to see, when the antique door knob/skeleton key plates, and even the knobs themselves, were painted over. Unlike the door I’m painting now, which is a modern, hollow core door, these are solid wood doors, too. I’d love to strip the paint off and maybe stain or varnish them, but that’s a project for well into the future!
I got the first coat of paint on, and I figure this is going to need at least three coats. We might end up finishing off the gallon of paint on this! It would have been nice to use the same blue as the outer door, but we use what we’ve got. That outer door isn’t going to last too much longer, anyhow. Like the one it replaced, it’s already starting to come apart in places.
Depending on the weather, I hope to get another coat done tomorrow. I’ll be heading out tomorrow morning on some errands, then the next day I’ll be taking my mother to her medical appointment. My younger daughter is feeling better now – she was actually able to eat! – so maybe she’ll be up to doing a coat or two while I’m gone, and if it doesn’t rain. We shall see. With the first coat on, at least the door won’t be getting any worse while waiting for more coats!
The Re-Farmer
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Tiny harvest, and a bit o’ nip
I didn’t head outside to do my morning rounds until after TTT got her morning medications. Somehow, I managed to not look out a window until then, so it was quite a surprise to see how hazy everything was. There’s smoke everywhere. I’ve just checked the live fire maps, and all the fires are well to the north of us. Air quality warnings say the smoke is coming from the territories and northern areas of the prairie provinces. Looking at the live feed on the security camera as I write this, I can see the smoke in the trees of the old hay yard, and my younger brother’s field across the road just sort of disappears.
I didn’t do much of of harvest this morning. I didn’t have a container, so I didn’t try to pick beans. I might come back this afternoon, but will likely leave it to tomorrow.
While pruning the Roma tomatoes, I knocked three off their vines, and found a fourth one already on the ground. I’d put them in my pocket as I found them and kept working and, unfortunately, squished one while bending over! So that went into the old compost pile. There was only one zucchini ready to harvest, and I grabbed the last two of the Sweet Chocolate peppers that had matured the earliest. My daughters had picked the third one a couple of days ago. I can certainly see why they are called “chocolate” peppers!
It feels strange to be half way through August and be harvesting so little. The peas are still having their second production, but there’s only enough that I pick a few pods and eat them while doing my morning rounds. We have yet to have a good year for peas. I think it’s time to harvest the potatoes in the old kitchen garden. They’ve almost completely died back. The purple potatoes in the grow bags are still lush and green, though.
The Roma tomatoes are ripening steadily. I could have picked more, but I want to leave them to ripen on the vines longer. The Indigo Blue and Black Beauties are still rock hard. I suppose I could be harvesting carrots and turnips, but I want to leave most of them to harvest for the winter, not for casual summer eating. With our garden turning out to be so much smaller than planned, there just isn’t much to harvest on a regular basis.
Wow. In the time it took me to write that, I can see on the security camera that the smoke has gotten even denser!
In other things, TTT is doing incredibly well after her surgery. The vet clinic called yesterday to follow up on her, and we made an appointment for her to get her staples removed. This will be just with a tech, not a vet, unless we see some sort of problem that needs to be checked.
We did have a surprise last night.
She actually nursed Tin Whistle for a while! Until now, she’s shown no interest in nursing, nor have the kittens shown an interest in her. Considering that one time, when we let Cheddar in, the kittens tried to find nip on him, I am slightly surprised. They are very close to weaning, though. In fact, Decimus has taken to batting them away when she’s done with them. She comes in just long enough to nurse for a minute or two, and that’s it. She wants out again, and spends almost no time with them at all now!
TTT, on the other hand, it quite okay with them. I’ve seen them grooming each other and now, she actually got nurse. I don’t know that she’s producing milk anymore. While she was rolling around, we could see only two active nips – possibly three. I know I saw her nursing 6 kittens one time. Did she have losses that we never saw? I know her kittens are hanging around the house now, but we’ve got other little ones from other litters, and all the moms nurse all the kittens, so we just can’t tell which kittens belong to which mother!
As for TTT and the inside kittens, so far, there have been no other attempts to nurse, but we’ll see.
There is one major downside with TTT being in my bedroom/office isolation ward.
She hasn’t figured out the litter boxes yet.
With the kittens, I had to put puppy pads under my desk, but it does seem we’ve been able to train them to stop going there. I’m not finding little puddles or tiny turds anymore.
No. Now I’m finding big, adult sized puddles and turds.
At least the puppy pads make it easier to clean up. It’s obviously TTT. Last night, I even caught her peeing on my pillow, and we had to strip the bed and do laundry. I had grabbed her and dropped her into a litter box, but she was so startled, she just ran off. With so many litter boxes to choose from, you’d think she’d figure it out, but nope. She wants the puppy pads! She waits until I’m out of the room, since it means I’m no longer at my desk, so I come back to find the results, and she’s back to napping somewhere. Frustrating!
Another, different sort of frustrating, is in sympathy with my younger daughter. She got sick yesterday evening, and is still stick now. So far, she doesn’t feel bad enough to go to a hospital. She’s trying to think what she might have eaten that could have done it to her, but she didn’t eat anything different than the rest of us, and no one else is sick. During the night, she tried to eat a piece of bread, and that didn’t stay down. She’s so hungry, but doesn’t dare eat. At least she’s feeling a bit better, but that’s not saying much right now.
Hopefully, whatever it is, will pass quickly and completely!
As for me, I’m going to see if I can escape my room, without any kittens escaping, and try and get something useful done today!
The Re-Farmer
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This and that
I seem to still be in recovery mode today, even after taking yesterday as a day of rest. I tend to forget just how draining it can be after spending time with my mother, even when she’s having one of her better days!
It’s also working out to be a hotter day. We’ve got a high of 26C/79F for today and tomorrow and, depending on what app I’m looking at, we’ll be hitting either 29C/84 or 31C/88F by the end of the week.
I did get at least one thing accomplished – finally! I cut away the web of roots and got the water pipe out from where I’d tried patching it, to the tap.
It took more digging and cutting to find the bottom of the tap and cut it free!
The only thing holding it upright was the web of roots, and that length of conduit pipe.
The short sections of rigid pipe were filled with dirt and roots. A couple of them had to be blasted with water before I could get them off the water pipe.
I did find where water can been coming out, when I did the patches and tested the tap. Quite a split in the pipe!
How the ground pipe was joined to the tap pipe was not what I expected. I thought there might be some sort of threaded connector. The metal pipe is jammed into the water pipe – and it is still very water tight, and very secure! I’ll probably have to cut it off, if I bother to at all.
I would like to use the original tap again. Even parts of the original metal pipe, too, if I can. However, my intended replacement for all this is to use an ordinary, heavy duty garden hose that can be easily removed, as needed. The dirt and roots in the short sections of pipe reinforce my plan to have a long pipe, from house to tap, to protect the hose.
For now, however, I will not remove the rest of the pipe, to the house. There are going to be much larger roots to cut through, plus it runs through a higher traffic area that gets regularly mowed, so I don’t want to dig a trench until I’m ready to put in the new system. I’m very interested in seeing how that hose end that comes out of the ground is attached to the water pipe!
So, for this project I need to get a long enough heavy duty hose, enough pipe, with drainage holes, to fit together and reach from house to tap, angled fittings for the ends that will get a removeable seal around the hose to prevent water, dirt or critters from getting in, and appropriate pipes and fittings to attach the hose to the tap assembly. For the tap itself, I want to build a box for the vertical pipe with the tap mounted on the garden side. I liked the original post’s little roof over the tap and will probably expand on that, to double as a shelf or something. The box will have a door at the back to access the hose and pipes, with room enough to store a few things, like the cord that will be used to pull the hose through the underground pipes, should it ever need to be removed, repaired or replaced.
Once this is installed and complete, I plan to make a vegetable washing station under the tap, using salvaged materials I’ve found around the property.
Hopefully, by the time it’s done, it’ll be good enough to last another 50 years or so.
After I finished up with the tap and hose set up, I headed towards the house and checked out the old kitchen garden. I was finally able to get a photo of one of the developing luffa.
I’ve been able to spot three of these. Hopefully, they have been pollinated and will develop into mature luffa gourds before we get frost. These are so high up, there’s no possibility of hand pollinating!
Before heading back to the house, I had an adorable surprise.
Tiny, familiar kittens.
Octomom had brought them to the house!
I only saw 4 of them, including this one.
They still can’t move very fast, so I was able to catch this one and hold it for a little while. This one is completely black. I saw the other black one, and it appears to have a white patch on its chest. I also saw the brown and the grey tabbies. Where the other 4 are, I could not see. Eventually, Octomom came around for them, but only two followed her across the yard. The rest were still hiding under the storage house.
While I was outside, I started to get some messages from the Cat Lady. She was at the vet with the kittens, and the prognosis is not good. They would have died within the week, she was told. As it is, they have a cat virus (calci), herpes, low glucose, low oxygen, pneumonia, infected ears and sores in their throats. The kittens have been at the vet all day, and the bill is getting high. I feel so bad about this. We were only going to pass on the one kitten, so now it’s double the expense for her, and we have no way to help out.
Priority is going to be spaying and neutering, because a lot of this is exacerbated by the sheer number of kittens.
Oh, wow!! Something just happened while I was writing this!
Two Toes is letting Tin Whistle nurse!
I had been expecting the kittens to at least try to nurse on her, since Decimus leaves the room once she’s done with nursing, and batting them away when they want to nurse more. They had not been trying, though, nor did Two Toes, until just moments ago!
Two Toes is doing really well. She seems quite happy, loves head pets, and gave me kisses today!
Whatever fight she was in that left her with a broken leg, the fur on her face and head is full of scabs that are healing well.
The only down side is poor Snarly Marlee! She does NOT like the kittens. The girls try to bring her into the living room for a while, so she can get a break, while they are there.
Hopefully, it won’t be for much longer. It would be fantastic if we could adopt them all out!
The Re-Farmer
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A survivor!
One of the things I did in the garden last night was go through the squash patch and cut away any dead or dying leaves, dropping them for mulch.
Which is when I found a survivor!
The slugs were especially bad around the yellow zucchini. There were two plants in the mount, and one of them was completely destroyed.
Or so I thought!
Not only did it survive, but this morning, it was blooming!
It’s so spindly and has barely any leaves, but look at all those flower buds!
There is even at least one female flower in there.
Talk about resilient!
The Re-Farmer
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Morning harvest
I’ve been doing so much running around in the last while, I am so glad to finally have a day when I can stay home! I’m going to be doing more running around throughout the rest of the month (our gas budget for the car is already blown away!), so I’m going to take full advantage of this day of rest. In fact, I’ll probably go for a nap right after I publish this!
After medicating our tripod Houdini, I headed out to do my morning rounds and see what was ready to harvest.
There was a surprising amount of bush beans to pick, considering they got harvested yesterday, too. That zucchini grew quite a lot, overnight! I grabbed a couple of larger turnips, and a few Spoon tomatoes. I had to resist picking just-ripe Romas this morning. We will be harvesting substantial amounts of them, soon!
I also picked all the shallots that were at the end of the wattle weave bed, next to the Sweet Chocolate peppers. The kittens have been rolling around on them, so the stems were broken. They won’t get any bigger after that. The stems were so badly damaged, they weren’t even salvageable for the greens!
I’m quite happy with what I’m seeing in the grape vines.
All the clusters are getting very red, and a few are an almost-ripe deep purple.
I think we’ll be making jelly with these when they’re done. 😊
For now, it’s time to peel some kittens off my knees, back and shoulders, and see if I can get a nap in.
😄
The Re-Farmer
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Morning mamas
We always had the hardest time telling Junk Pile and Not Junk Pile apart. When Not Junk Pile got really bad ear mites, to the point of causing wounds behind her ears from scratching, those wounds were one sure way to tell them apart.
Then the fur started growing back after treatment.
Well, we won’t have the problem now!
Here’s a hungry Junk Pile, who will not allow pets, and Baby Beep Beep. Or, Beep Bop, as the girls call her.
Junk Pile is a slightly stockier cat. I don’t think she could have squeezed through 2″ square openings!
As for Not Junk Pile, she was quickly renamed Two Toes Tony at the vet, but now that we’ve had her surgery and her many successful escape attempts, I’m tempted to rename her Houdini. When I messaged that to our family chat, one of my daughters came back with Anthony “2-12 toed” Houdini. (I’m pretty sure she has 15 toes, but that doesn’t alliterate well… LOL)
She is also the easiest cat to medicate we’ve ever had. When she was still in Baby Jail in the sun room, we knew forcing a pill in her mouth, or using syringes for the liquid meds, was not going to work. So the girls put a spoonful of wet cat food in a tiny bowl, buried the pill, seasoned it with the liquid meds, and gave it to her. She absolutely devoured it! When we tried that with other cats, they either ate around the pill, or refused to eat the dosed food at all. Even today, when we gave her the dosed food, the pill hadn’t been buried far enough and got left behind, but as she licked the bowl clean, she ate up the pill, too!
Then she got more food, even sharing a bowl with kittens. To keep them away, after taking the spoonful out for a dose, the rest of the can to split up into other food bowls for the kittens and other cats. Otherwise, the kittens would have been after Two Toes’ medicated food! The babies do have excellent appetites. For wet cat food, at least! Not so much the dry stuff. 😁
Decimus asks to come into the room and nurses the kittens briefly – maybe a minute or so – before checking out the food bowls, then asking to be let out. I think that if she didn’t need to nurse to relieve pressure, she would be completely done with nursing now!
Which means it’s time to look into booking the spay that’s waiting for her, then sending all their pictures to the Cat Lady to post for adoption.
The kittens are so sweet, but I’m going to be so glad when they’re gone!
(I say as a kitten in my chair behind my back starts violently attacking the end of my braid.)
The Re-Farmer
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Our tripod Houdini, sick baby rescue, and unintended harvests
Oh, my goodness. What a day.
Taking my mother to my brother’s place for a visit went rather well, overall. There were a couple of predictable incidents, like when she suddenly started yelling at me in a rage because I took a slightly different route than the one she always took. That took some time to calm her down. It amazes me how, in her mind, the “short cut” that she always took (it isn’t any shorter, nor is it a faster route) is the only right route. Which, in itself, I wouldn’t mind, but the sudden and incredible anger she displays because I prefer a different route just blows me away. She’s more laid back about other route changes, but this one, and one other, just set her off like nothing else. The one other route that sets her off, my brother had driven her and took a different route, probably more than 20 years ago, and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it. Very strange.
There was also the very predictable attempt to pit my brother against me. Of course, she brought it up completely out of context, saying that I’d “reminded” her that this is no longer her house – but she paid for the roof! She neglected to mention the parts about her and my sister being in the area, and my not inviting them over for an unexpected and unplanned visit, or how she had tried to guilt me by saying “don’t forget, you’re living in my house.” Then she tried to say that she “paid for everything”. Everything? She seriously has zero understanding of just how much my brother and I are spending to keep this place up – the “perfect” house she asked us to move into that turned out to be in far worse shape than I ever thought.
Thank God my brother now owns the property!
What was also not a surprise, but still sad to hear, is that after I said no to her about coming here, they instead went to visit our vandal. This, in spite of the abusive messages he still leaves on her answering machine, and the horrible things he says to her about me. I’m quite disappointed in my sister for doing this. She says she wants to stay out of it and be neutral, but there is no neutral in this. Part of taking care of our mother is protecting her from herself, too. And there is nothing neutral about staying in contact with him, knowing the things he’s said and done to the rest of us.
Ah, well. What’s done is done. I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt.
My mother was very tired, even before we left, so the visit was relatively short. Which, of course, she turned around and made it sound like my brother wanted her to leave early, when all he had done was be solicitous about her being so tired, and giving her choices. She chose to leave.
During the visit, my daughter sent messages to keep me up to date on what was going on at home.
Two Toes had escaped again.
They reinforced the cage, and were able to catch her.
After I got home, I wanted to walk around outside, only to find…
… a tripod staple cat walking past me!
It took a while – and the help of another cat! – but my daughter was eventually able to catch her again and put her in the carrier.
She is such an escape artist, and so determined to get outside, that we had to make the decision to bring her inside and add her to the “isolation ward”. Which is getting pretty full! Her babies will be okay. Other creche moms will nurse them. Who knows. Maybe she’ll even nurse these guys…
When I brought the carrier in and put it on my bed, the kittens were immediately interested in it – and her! They were pawing at the door, trying to get at her. After a while, I opened the door, and a kitten dashed right in.
Much to my surprise, there was no hissing from her at all. The girls had tried to put the two sick kittens in the cage with her, but had to take them out, because she was hissing at them so much.
She comes out every now and then, but the carrier seems to be the spot she feels most comfortable in, and she goes back into the carrier fairly quickly. As I write this, she is napping in it right now.
So far, Butterscotch seems indifferent to her, contentedly sharing bed space with her, Nosencrantz is keeping her distance, and so is Marlee.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
While I was still at my brother’s, the Cat Lady came by to pick up the sick black and white kitty. She asked if there were any other sick kitties, so my daughter brought out the white and grey one.
I took this picture of the two of them napping together, yesterday.
I had not mentioned the second kitten to the Cat Lady because, to be honest, I didn’t think it would make it. Instead, it started to get better, though it’s still very weak and looks a mess. Plus, when I found out they were doing this out of pocket, instead of through the rescue, because donation money had gone to spays and neuters, I didn’t want to add to their expenses!
As sick as the white and grey one is, the black and white one is in worse shape. Before I headed out this morning, I washed both their eyes. The black and white one’s eyes were stuck shut again, and as soon as they started to open a bit, puss started to ooze out. From both eyes. The Cat Lady, however, has already let me know she’s picked up medication for them, and they will be seeing a vet soon for testing. Because she has the rescue, she can pick up medication that I can’t, without first bringing the cats in.
She is also asking if we can catch 4 older female kittens to place at that farm she was telling us about, plus she is going to arrange spays. Catching the mamas is not going to be easy, though! She was in a rush and using her vehicle to pick up kitchen cabinets they’d bought locally, so she wasn’t able to drop off a trap or anything else. She just took the kittens and that’s it.
She will also try to adopt the spayed cats out, but even if they end up coming back here, at least it will help reduce the number of kittens next year!
So that is done for now. I hope the kittens recover well for her. She’d be so heart broken if they don’t make it.
One of the things I asked the girls to do while I was gone was a bit of harvesting in the garden, mentioning what likely needed to be harvested. Which made it a surprise when I got a picture of these guys.
These are squash from the compost pile! I had intended to just leave them until the end of the season, but my daughter wanted to see how they are. She didn’t pick all of them, but I’m still a bit perplexed about it! I guess we’ll be cracking them open to see how they look.
Along with more bush beans, a few summer squash and some Spoon tomatoes, she also picked the largest, ripest Sweet Chocolate pepper. They had it with their supper. I’ll have to ask them how it tasted, since I can’t eat peppers without gagging, no matter how wonderful they look and smell.
I had my own accidental harvest.
While doing my evening rounds, I was checking the squash patch and found a couple of female flowers to hand pollinate. I’m amazed, every time I look at the candy roaster and pink banana squash. They are growing so fast, and there are so many of them! I also took a closer look at our one Honeyboat Delicata. It hasn’t been getting any bigger, but the colours were changing, showing that it was ripening. I moved it to look around and…
… the stem snapped.
It’s so tiny! Ah, well. I guess we can eat is like a summer squash, still. Plus, I spotted a couple more little Delicatas forming on another vine. Hopefully, these will reach the full size they are supposed to get!
So that was most of my day. I know I’m forgetting things, but my brain is pretty fried right now. Especially after I called my mother later on. Oh, right! After dropping her off, I had time to swing by her pharmacy to ask about when her prescriptions needed a renewal from a doctor. I’m so glad I did! It turns out the pharmacist had been trying to fax the paperwork to the doctor’s new office, not knowing that my mother is no longer his patient. He had extended her prescriptions himself, already, but he could only do it for 4 weeks, and only once. Then he gave me a copy of the forms they faxed to the doctor’s new clinic. When I take my mother to see the interim doctor, I can bring them along for her to sign, so there should be no hassle trying to look up what my mother needs renewed.
I waited until I knew my mother would be up from the nap she was going to take after I left before calling to let her know. I talked again about how this is going to be just about the prescriptions. This doctor isn’t taking new patients, so there’s no point bringing up any of the other things my mother wants to talk about. She always brings up the same things, but she’s convinced the doctors are hiding what’s “really” wrong with her and not telling her everything.
Then she started saying my brother should be taking her to the doctor. Because he’s so smart and knows English so well. Nice sideways insult thrown at me with that one. I pointed out that taking her to appointments is part of my “job” in living here. My brother not only has a much longer drive, but he would have to take time off work to do it.
Then she started complaining that my brother hardly ever calls her or visits her. I know full well he calls her, even though she treats him like crap when he does, and he is incredibly busy. I eventually got out of her that she was talking about how he used to visit almost weekly. This was before we moved onto the property. He would drive out here after work on Fridays, do more work around the property, trying to fix things, and since my mother’s place was along the route, he would stop and visit her, too. Part of our living here was to take that burden off of my brother, so he wouldn’t have to make the long drive out all the time. She didn’t care. She thinks he needed to keep right on making the drive out, just to visit her. She even said he needs to come out more often, because she’s getting older and he has to take care of her. I told her there’s three of us to take care of her, and it was wrong to put the entire burden on my brother, when he is the one least able to do it! He’s got his full time job, his own property to take care of and lives the furthest away. She pretty much told me flat out, she didn’t care.
*sigh*
This, after she betrayed him so badly not long ago. She still can’t understand that there was anything wrong with what she did and has essentially forgotten about it.
So… that phone call wrung me out even more than the drive with her today!
My poor brother. He’s such a good man.
For all the stuff going on, it was good to at least see him and his amazing wife today!
The Re-Farmer
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We got her!
Just taking a moment to share the good news!
TTT showed up when I did the morning feed. Her IV bandage was gone, but she still had her coat. Which is good, because I was able to use it to catch her and carry her, without any chance of injuring the incision site.
I got her into the cage and the girls took over while I got ready to head out. They mixed her meds with a small amount of wet cat food. She ate it all. That should make her sleepy, and reduce her attempts to escape.
The sun room doors will be left propped open enough for the kittens to come in and out. Hopefully, her babies find her soon, and find the opening into the cage we made for them.
I’m so happy she made it through the night okay!
The Re-Farmer
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This is not good
*sigh*
What a day!
Things went as good as they could, for the most part. Everything from the car’s oil change being under budget, and not needing any other work, to news that the cat’s amputation went well, to being able to getting the shopping we needed to do (especially stocking up on kibble!), and finally picking up prescription refills on the way home, things went well. Once things were put away, the girls and I separated the baby jail cage in my room into two pieces so we could get it out the door. We even managed to do it without the kittens getting out!
My younger daughter and I put the cage together again in a corner I prepped in the sun room. Since we wanted her kittens to be able to get to mama, we made sure the 2″ square wire sections were at floor level. We also made sure the “door” was facing the half with the cubes, so we could more easily access the bottom cubes for the new litter pan and food/water bowl that I picked up today.
We had it assembled, but I had to leave before it was done, to pick up the cat. One of the things my daughter did was cut one wire out in a section under the “door”, so there could be no chance of a kitten getting stuck. We’re rather paranoid about that, after what happened to Pointy Baby. She added towels, blankets and a mat for bedding, as well as the prepared litter pan and added food and water to the new bowl.
Meanwhile, I headed off to the vet. My daughter had already made a $400 down payment towards the surgery; they won’t do surgery without one. The total bill was $1140. I had to go into our vehicle down payment fund to cover it. Thankfully, my older daughter will be able to cover it. It will just take a few days for the transfer to go through. At least she’s getting steady commissions.
After paying the bill, someone came over to explain the medications and which ones we could be giving tonight, etc. Knowing she was a yard cat, they also gave her a slow release antibiotic. I asked about the meds and nursing. That should be find, but they had a coat on her that completely covers her belly, so we’d have to take that off. Without it, we’d have be keep a close eye on whether she scratches or licks at the incision.
That done, she took the carrier and loaded Two Toes up. She was complaining a bit, but was generally quiet for the trip home.
I got her into the cage, and she was not at all happy. She kept going around and even jumped up into the second level cubes, then back down again. She did find the food and water and ate hungrily – her eating is something else we need to keep an eye on, in case she starts throwing up. I did get to pet her a bit, but she was really wanting out of the cage.
Then, much to my shock, she managed to shove her head through the 2″ openings!
The last thing we want is for her head to get stuck, so I popped into the old kitchen to grab a carboard box to line the walls with.
Which was when I heard a suspicious noise.
I came into the sun room and found the cage door closed, but the cage was empty.
Then I saw her outside the sun room doors!
For a post opp cat that’s down a leg, she’s fast!
She also would NOT go back towards the sun room, no matter how much I tried to circle around to get her go that way.
She was twisting around to bight at the ties on the coat, and later she was trying to get the IV bandage off. Then she went through the window to under the storage house.
There’s just no way to get her there.
So I went back to the sun room and lined the lower half of the cage, with the larger openings, with cardboard on the inside. I did cut away the opening intended for the kittens to get in and out. One low enough to the floor that I would hope mama couldn’t get through.
Once that was secure (I hope!) I put fresh kibble out for the yard cats, making sure to make lots of noise as I dropped the food onto the metal kibble trays. Some of the yard cats came around – I even saw Junk Pile at the food bowl by the grape vines – but no Two Toes.
I went inside for a while, then headed back out, and there she was, on the cat house. When she saw me, she jumped down, then went inside the cat house. I’ve left her there for now, since it is a far better place for her to hide than under the storage house.
At this point, I’m not sure what to do. I’m hoping we can catch her tonight and give her her meds. If not, the girls will have to keep trying, tomorrow, while I’m taking my mother to visit my brother. At the very least, we need to get that bandage and coat off. The bandage, because it’s quite tight. At least it’s one of those types that stick to themselves, so she had a chance of getting it off herself. The coat, because she needs to nurse. While other mothers might be willing to nurse her babies, if she doesn’t nurse herself, she might get mastitis.
I never in my wildest dreams though she could get out of that cage.
Oh, and on top of all this, it’s been raining steadily all day. The cats are all sheltering from the rain, which will make it even harder to get a hold of her. It seems to have finally stopped, now, so when I’m done this, I’ll pop outside and see if I can catch her.
Meanwhile, the Cat Lady is coming by tomorrow to pick up the sick outside kitty. I won’t be there, but the girls will take care of things. Hopefully, she’ll remember to drop off the trap, too. She’s had a really terrible day today, in several areas, so the fact that she’s going to be able to come out here at all is something I appreciate so much.
On top of all this, I forgot to call my mother’s pharmacy. I’ll have to do that tomorrow morning.
Here’s hoping tomorrow will be a better day!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 