I counted 35 this morning. I didn’t see Shop Towel this morning. Broccoli showed up later, so… 36?

I got some pictures after the feeding frenzy had died down. 😄

I’ve decided to call the black and white cat, Hypotenose. Actually, I was going to call him Hypotenuse, but then my husband made the pun and I just had to run with that.

I think the white with grey tabby spots has a name my daughters gave it, but I can’t remember for sure.
(Update: I have had a wonderful name suggestion for this cat. Purrthagoras. )

We haven’t given this sweet boy a name yet. He is pretty well socialize, and I can usually walk right up to pet him, and even pick him up and cuddle him. He’s so incredibly soft! He’s also got a permanently stunned expression that reminds me of Decimus (who now has a new name in her new home). Unfortunately, he also reminds me of Pointy Baby, and my heart kind of breaks a little bit every time I see him.

*sniffle*

He’s such a sweet little thing.

He needs a name!

(Update: I got an awesome name suggested for him! Syndod (sun-dod). Welsh for “surprised.”)

In other things…

We are hovering just below freezing today, though we might warm up a bit. Yesterday turned out to be warmer than predicted, so that might happen again today. It’s cloudy and has stopped snowing, but it actually looks like we have snow or fog, off in the distance.

Tonight, we have to isolate the 6 cats that will be going to the vet tomorrow morning, to fast overnight. The rain that had been predicted for tomorrow morning kept getting pushed back, and is now supposed to start on Sunday afternoon. Temperatures are supposed to continue to reach highs above freezing for at least another 10 – 14 days. By Tuesday, they are now saying we will reach a high of 7C/45F. After that, it’s expect to be colder, but still above freezing, for the highs. At this point it looks like the day we are planning to visit my husband’s family in the city will have good driving weather.

The weather app that came with my desktop includes monthly forecasts. For what that’s worth, it’s predicting mostly sunny days and relatively mild temperatures; all highs warmer than -15C/5F, and even the lows are expect to mostly be warmer than -20C/-4F, with only a few nights dipping just under that, all winter. We don’t even plug in the vehicles unless temperatures are expected to go below -20C/4F. With the strong El Niño we’re getting this year, that should mean we won’t be getting those dangerous, bone chilling, polar vortexes for a change. Between that and the new truck’s higher clearance, we should actually have a winter where we aren’t stuck at home for weeks at a time!

Not that we’ll stop stocking up, just in case. With all our spare funds going towards getting the truck, we won’t have the 2 – 3 months of supplies we normally try to have on hand for the winter, but we will at least have enough for 1 – 2 months. Especially once we pick up our quarter beef in January, which will be quite a bit larger than previous years. We’ve been paying $100 a month towards it since spring, but for November and December, we’re paying $200 a month, for a total of $1400. In January, the final balance should be about $35. The price is by hung weight, and the first quarter beef we got was about $800 at $6/pound. The next year was over $1000. This year, they had to increase their price by just under 50¢/pound, on top of the weight being quite a bit higher.

We’ll have to make more room in the chest freezer! 😁 Christmas is going to be tight, but we’ll have plenty of food! We don’t really do much for gift giving anymore, unless it’s hand made, and our Christmas and New Years are spent quietly at home. Gone are the days when we would do Christmas dinner with my family on Christmas day, here at the farm, then Réveillon with my husband’s parents after Midnight Mass, and finally a Christmas dinner on Boxing Day with his brother’s family. We’ve lost so many members of our families over the years, we couldn’t do those gatherings anymore, anyhow. We’re planning to just have our usual quiet, non-traditional Wigilia dinner on Christmas Eve.

When I was a kid, we butchered our own cows and chickens. We sometimes had pigs and geese, too. One year, my parents tried turkeys, and they had ducks for a couple of years, too. Between that and the garden, they kept two freezers; one just for meat, and the other for everything else. I look forward to a day when we can have that set up again! Though if we ever have meat in such quantities, I will most likely can, quite a bit of it. I’d hate to lose a freezer full of meat if the power ever went out for an extended period.

But I digress!

We’ll have to adopt out and fix a lot more cats before we can afford that, anyhow! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer