I got a call to pick up the cats shortly before 11:30am. I was told they’d be in the room I dropped them off in, with post op care instructions. When I got there, I didn’t even see anyone! They had several other cats waiting for pick up, too, so they were really going through them, assembly-line style!
Normally, the cats would have stayed at the clinic for observation for several hours first, but that part was to be done at home. Today was just grab and go!
In the instructions, it was recommended to keep them in the carriers for a few hours, though the risk was from possible injury if they jumped down from somewhere. Since we are keeping them isolated in my room, we let them out right away, and will let them out into the rest of the house later on.
The carriers fit very well in the truck, and I didn’t even have to remove our emergency supplies or collection of hard sided grocery bags.
Once at home, Toni didn’t really want to leave her carrier at all! Even with kittens came in with her. In the end, she didn’t leave until David was allowed in the room, and he decided to go in. Not into the biggest carrier next to her that he could fit comfortably in. Nooo… He went into one of the smaller carriers and squeezed her right out!
She is now curled up on the heat vent.
They seem to be recovering very well! I’ve had to stop Mitzy and Clarence from licking their surgical site too much, but not often enough for it to be an issue. Most are being very playful right now. Oh!!! I just had to stop Shadow, who was on top of one of the soft sided carriers, clawing away at it. It turns out Tin Whistle is inside, jammed against the back where the door is still zipped closed and holding it up. These carriers collapse if their doors – one at each end – are zipped up. So basically, he had her trapped in there and was trying to get at her from outside, and she’s just staying hunkered down in the carrier, contentedly ignoring him. 😄
The good thing is, I am home to see my brother. My SIL has already let me know he has stopped at a hardware store along the way, and then coming over to see why we have a leak in the bathroom ceiling.
I have no idea what he would be picking up, if he hasn’t found the cause of the problem. Unless… Oh! I see him on the security camera. I’ll have to follow up on that later!
All six carriers fit nicely in the back of the truck’s cab.
I took it slower for the first part of the drive. The roads are good, but I was watching the ditches as much as the road. At one point, I saw what I first thought was a dog or coyote on the road, but it turned out to be a small deer, with another already crossed and in the opposite ditch. It was starting to get lighter, which has a lot to do with why I didn’t see what I think were grouse, until they burst into flight in all directions.
I was one of those directions. One of them flew right into me! I have no idea how badly hurt the bird was.
Once I was parked, I checked my grill. A tuft of downy feathers was the only sign.
I got to the clinic just before 7:30. They open at 8, so I had time to check the front of the truck and message the Cat Lady. Then I saw a light on in the clinic. They have a side door next to the main doors, that opens directly into an examination room. That was the drop off location for today, as the clinic itself is otherwise closed. This is all a volunteer thing, so that’s why it’s so cheap.
After the cats were processed and I paid for 2, I went to wait for the Cat Lady. In that time, at least another dozen cats were dropped off! I had a chance to talk to the vet, and she said they were booked for about 50. Hopefully, there will be no no-shows!
I found out from the Cat Lady that this clinic is the only one that still does days like this for cats. Two big clinics in the city stopped. Vets aren’t willing to volunteer for them!
Our cats were going to be done first, after I mentioned where I drive in from, so I am staying in town until they call. Today is Remembrance Day, though, so most places are closed, or don’t open until 1pm. I’m sitting in a Tim Hortons right now, after getting breakfast.
My brother is coming to our place after Remembrance Day services to check on a drip in our bathroom ceiling. I will probably miss seeing him.
Meanwhile, I am quite happy with the truck. The gravel roads are not plowed, and it handled it well. The van probably would have been okay, but I would not want to take my mother’s car through it. The snow would be dragging against the undercarriage.
If all goes well, my next post will be about cats recovering at home!
When the last of our Red of Florence onions got processed, I set up three 9×13 baking sheets in the oven to dehydrate some. When those were done, I took the one bag of onions I kept out of the freezer, because it had a pinhole in it somewhere, and filled another baking sheet to dehydrate.
This is what those 4 trays of onions got us.
When level on the counter, the top is almost exactly between the 350ml and 450ml marks on the containers. This is after I crunched them up quite a bit, too.
This represents about 7 or 8 of the largest onions.
I’m considering processing them into a powder to use as is, or make onion salt. I figure I might get about a quarter cup if I put it through our spice grinder. I haven’t decided, yet.
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 cats were very hungry, so I made sure they got their food and warm water, first. I actually had to knock snow out of the kibble bowls, first! Somehow, at least some snow always manages to get in, but when the wind comes whipping around the West side of the house, it really gets into that kibble house.
I messaged my daughters for a refill of the water jug while I started shoveling. I wasn’t sure if I’d need one, but I set the kettle going after I filled the first jug (half cold water from the sink, half water heated in the kettle), just in case! The cats really, really appreciated that warm water!
I didn’t want to scare away the cats with shoveling, so I cleared the stairs in front of the main entry, then the sidewalk to the chain link fence, before digging my way back to the sun room. From there, I cleared in between and around the shelters, then a path to the shrine. I actually had to take the ice scraper to the concrete in front of the sun room. I even cleared the snow on the hand rail. From the last photo in the series above, you can see that even the birds appreciated that!
After that, I continued my morning rounds, including switching out the trail cam memory cards. The snow is really light and fluffy, bit it’s also quite warm – we’re already above freezing as I write this, and warmer than the expected high still listed. Which meant that, at first, the snow was very easy to push down the path, but when I paused to shovel it to the side, the bottom was heavy with wet snow. The ground is not frozen yet, and even the grass is green, so the snow as basically being melted from below.
When I was done and starting to head inside, I realized that there was no kibble left in the sun room at all. Not a crumb! Nor was there anything left in the two levels of the shelf shelter I drop handfuls into. There was still a bit left in the kibble house, at least, but before I headed inside, I topped up their food a bit. They need those extra calories, this time of year!
I’ve asked my daughters to clear other needed paths to the garage, the compost pile and the area we dump the litter sawdust as its own compost pile. Burning it would be preferable, but in the summer we rarely had days with low enough winds – we only did one burn all summer! Other paths I would normally shovel can wait. With how much snow there is on the ground now, and the long range forecast changing downward, I no longer expect all the snow to melt away next week. The next couple of days are supposed to be a bit warmer, and the main paths we shovel today will clear faster, which is what we need.
I’m hoping that, this winter, we’ll be able to keep enough of the south yard clear that we can drive right up to the house to load and unload the truck. We’ve only got the little electric snow blower, but it can do that job. The snow we have right now, though, is too wet and would clog up even the gas powered snow blower, if that thing still worked.
In the near future, we need to invest in a variety of straps. With the truck, we can now take the snow blower in to be checked out and, hopefully, repaired, but right now we don’t have what’s needed to secure anything back there, properly.
I’m keeping tabs on the local highway information group, and a lot of people were saying, stay home if you can! Even the local school division closed the schools in our region, because road conditions were too dangerous. The plows and sanding trucks are out, though, and I’m already hearing about some of the highways being clear.
Yesterday, my phone gave me a notification for an appointment I had today. !! I completely forgot about it. It was for a 6 month follow up, with a field of vision test and dilation, so I’d have to make sure my daughter came along to drive me home.
I’m glad I always set my phone to remind me of appointments 1 day ahead! I called and rescheduled to next month. When I told the receptionist I had an appointment for today, which she confirmed, then asked to reschedule, she just laughed! She was not at all surprised, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few out of towners were rescheduling their appointments!
Unfortunately, as I write this, I’m realizing I think my neck and one shoulder is having rather painful issues. Not from the shoveling, though. I think I slept in a bad position or something, because it was already a problem when I woke up. It’s just worse now, after the shoveling.
So… I injured myself by sleeping.
*sigh*
I was hoping to avoid taking pain killers for at least one day!
Yes, all this time, the Red of Florence onions we harvested awhile back have been sitting on a screen in the old kitchen. With how cold it gets in there, they’ve been fine, and we’ve been using them as needed, but it’s starting to get too cold. Today, I was finally able to finish processing the last of them.
You should be able to go through the slide show of images above.
The first step was to cut away the shriveling green parts and the roots. When I was done, the bulbs filled my giant colander in a heap!
While I was working, the cats in the sun room were going nuts, trying to see what I was doing, so I opened the door and let them in with me. Quite a few came in to explore! One of the males is aggressively friendly. I was using the top of the chest freezer as a table. He jumped up onto it and was eager for pets. Thankfully, he was okay with head boops and arm rubs, because my hands were busy. If, however, I reached for the kitchen shears beside him instead of petting him, he would attack my arm! He even started biting, so I had to take him off the freezer repeatedly before he finally stopped.
Once the screen was clear, I had to figure out what to do with it. We made this as a barrier for the old basement door, so we could keep it open and allow cool air to circulate, while also keeping the cats out. It’s made with 1 inch wire mesh. I took it into the sun room and figured out a way to use it for the cats. It is now resting on one level of the shelf in front of the window on one side, and the cat cage on the other – though it did need propping up on the cat cage to make it level. Hopefully, it’ll stay. I then took a spare sheet of rigid insulation and cut it slightly longer than the screen. With how the frame and centre support is, I was able to fit the insulation under the screen, in between the long sides. The sheet was just narrow enough for that. Without support, of course, it started to sag, but this sheet had been used for something else and already had some holes in it. I was able to use one near the side and zip tie it to the screen, then made a couple more holes as far as I could reach on the other side and added another zip tie. Not that the cats’ weight would be on it, as the screen would hold them. It was just to keep it from sagging. The cats can walk on the wire, but there was another chunk of the insulation that I put on top, so it would be more comfortable. They’re probably scratch the heck out of it. They just love scratching at that insulation!
Before I set that up, though, I put the remains of another sheet against the window that’s missing the inner pane. It doesn’t fill it – we tried cutting pieces to fit before, but the insulation kept wanting to fall away, no matter how we tried to secure it – but it’s enough to reduce the chill from that window where it counts.
So now the cats have a sort of “cave” against that wall, covering the space we set up for them. It gives them another level to climb on that is under the shop lights. I have those set to turn on with the motion sensors, after dusk, and the insulation under the screen will help keep some of their own body heat in, underneath. Also, they won’t get blinded every time one of them moves. Yes, I have the lights set at their lowest level of brightness, but when it’s night, it still seems really bright!
Hopefully, the racoons won’t knock it off or something.
Once that was done, it was back to the onions.
The first batch of onions I cleaned up was for dehydrating in the oven. I have four baking sheets, but they are too big to fit side by side in my oven. This oven does not have an element on the bottom, though, so I was able to put a baking dish on the bottom for elevation, and that allowed me to fit three trays in.
For the first tray, I tried slicing the onions long ways and laying them out on a cooling rack in the baking tray. I could only fit about 1 1/2 larger onions on the tray that way. For the second one, I tried cutting them on the round and laying them out on another cooling rack, but they just fell through the openings. I ended up putting parchment paper down instead, the laid out the slices. The rings didn’t want to separate, so I cut the rest in half lengthwise, first, then sliced them. They still needed to be broken apart aggressively before the pieces could be spread out evenly. Still, I was able to fit about 3 larger onions on, that way. For the third tray (I didn’t bother taking a picture of that one), I just chopped the onions and spread them out. That was another 3 or 4 larger onions.
Those will take a while to dry, so the rest of the onions got chopped up for freezing. I would have wanted to dehydrate more, but chopping and freezing is a lot faster!
For that part, I tried out a trick I think I saw on Pinterest. Loading into freezer bags is a real pain. I’ve tried several different ways to support the bag, but the best I could come up with was to put it in a large measuring cup. It would still be floppy, but not as much.
This time, I got out our canning jar lifter. The slide lock part of the bags gets turned inside out, as I usually do to keep the locking parts clean. This lip then fits over the curved jar lifting end, while the flat handles act as a stand. The lifter can be opened as wide as the folded over part of the bag allows, and holds it tight. After filling the bag with the chopped onions – I fit 2 1/2 cups per size medium bag – the lifter can be squeezed together to free the top. After the flipped over part is flipped back again, the lifter can be opened wide, allowing plenty of room for the filled bag to be removed.
My goodness, I wish I’d known about this trick long ago! This was the easiest, fastest filling of freezer bags I’ve ever done!
I had to stop chopping part way through, as my back was starting to give out (yes, I even used a stool to raised one leg while I worked), which was a good time to have the supper my daughter made for me. Then it was back at it.
In the end, there were 14 freezer bags filled. All but one of them went into the big freezer. Before sealing the bags, I would close it most of the way, then stick in the short end of an elbow straw in the last gap and suck out the air to vacuum seal it. One of the bags lost its vacuum. I couldn’t see a hole, but there had to be one, somewhere. So that bag went into the fridge to use right away.
I’m quite happy with our onion haul this year. Even though one variety failed completely for some reason, we still have plenty of cured and braided onions, both yellow and red, to use throughout the winter, as well as some shallots, and now we have 13 bags of chopped onions in the freezer, 1 in the fridge, plus more dehydrating in the oven. It should be interesting to see how long this supply lasts us through the winter.
One thing about these Red of Florence onions; their shape makes them SO much easier to cut up! Plus, they taste good, so win-win!
It’s been a long time since I posted anything recipe and cooking related!
Not long ago, I took advantage of an excellent sale, and picked up a whole bunch of fresh strawberries. A couple of clamshells needed to be used up quickly, as they were starting to get past their prime, so I decided to experiment.
I took our basic cast iron skillet corn bread recipe and modified it to make an upside down strawberry cornbread.
It turned out rather well!
First, I’ll give our basic recipe, then explain the modifications. We rarely make it without some sort of modification, so I’ll include those as well.
Basic Cast Iron Skillet Corn Bread
Ingredients:
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1Tbsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup milk
4 Tbsp butter, melted, plus extra for the pan
Optional:
add seasonings to the dry ingredients, such as paprika, garlic granules or whatever herbs you feel like, to taste.
there is no salt in this recipe, but I sometimes like to add a small amount of course or rock salt that would normally go into our salt grinder, which leaves some nice little crunchy chunks to discover while eating it!
add savoury ingredients like a semi-soft or semi-hard cheese (mozza, cheddar, gouda, havarti, feta, etc.) cut into small cubes (shredded cheese will just disappear), or leftover ham cut into cubes, to the dry ingredients.
instead of butter, you can use oil or melted ghee. We like using ghee quite a bit!
substitute part of the milk for an equal amount of cream, sour cream or yoghurt. You could also try using buttermilk instead of milk, or even use reconstituted powdered milk.
Instructions:
preheat oven to 425F
place cast iron pan with some butter in it into the oven until the butter is melted. Spread the melted butter evenly around the pan, including the sides.
combine dry ingredients into a medium bowl, including any optional ingredients
add the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
pour the batter into the pan
bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and pulling away from the sides, or a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean
flip onto a rack to cool. Can be served warm with melted butter.
Modification: We start the oven preheating, prepare the cast iron pan, mix the batter, pour it into the pan, place it into the still preheating oven, then set the timer for 25-30 minutes. Basically, it’s because it takes a long time for our oven to preheat to 425F and we’re impatient. It has always worked just fine.
Upside Down Strawberry Corn Bread modifications
Extra Ingredients:
fresh strawberries, cleaned and hulled
butter
brown sugar
Place the clean cast iron pan on the stove and melt a generous amount of butter into it. I used a couple of tablespoons, maybe a bit more, for our 10 inch pan.
After the butter is melted, use some to oil the sides of the pan
Add enough brown sugar to cover the bottom of the pan evenly
Cut the strawberries into enough slices to cover the bottom of the pan; lay them on top of the brown sugar
Chop more strawberries into small cubes and add them to the dry ingredients of the corn bread batter.
Once the batter is ready, gently pour it over the strawberry slices, so as not to disturb them. If there is a chance that the butter and brown sugar might bubble up the sides of your pan, place it on a baking sheet in the oven, or have a baking sheet on the rack below.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the cornbread is golden brown and starting to pull away from the sides
When done, turn off the oven and let it rest in the oven for a few minutes, then remove and cool, still in the pan, outside the oven for a few minutes more. The heat from the cast iron pan will continue to crisp up the edges and caramelize the brown sugar base.
slide a knife around the edges of the pan to make sure it’s not sticking. Take a plate larger than the top of your pan and put it upside down over the cornbread. Carefully flip the pan upside down and remove the pan.
can be served served warm with a touch of cream poured over the top, or completely cooled – if you’re willing to wait that long!
As I wrote this post, my daughters made another batch. It’s out of the oven now, and I can’t wait to have some!
We have been getting both snow and rain for the past while. Yesterday, while I was feeding the outside cats, we had this.
This morning, we had this!
It was snowing again when I started this post, but stopped by the time I started this sentence! Depending on what app I look at, we are either at 0C/32F or 2C/36F When we cleaned out the cat house, we took out the thermometer that was in there – the cats kept knocking it off the holder – and I’ve got it in the tiny shelf shelter section that I use for storing things. It was reading 1C/34F.
We are expected to have a “storm total” of 3-6 cm/1-2 inches, by tonight, according to one app. I didn’t realize we were supposed to get a storm until I read that! In fact, the other two apps I check, and even the website I check, don’t say anything about a storm. Of course, on the weather radar, I could see those climate bubble gaps in the clouds heading towards us, so while we’re certainly getting some heavy snow at times, we’ll also be getting nothing at all, while snow continues around us.
The only thing I’m concerned about right now is what the road conditions will be like on Saturday morning. From Thursday afternoon through Friday, we’re supposed to be clear, and Friday is supposed to be sunny, which means that the roads should be free of ice, even at 6:30am Saturday, which is when I plan to be on the road with the cats. I still plan on having to take some parts of the route much slower, as they are much more prone to icing over and staying icy. Depending on what I hear on the highway conditions group I’m on, I might even take a slightly different route to avoid those cross roads, though it simply means taking one crossroad instead of two different ones.
This morning, while feeding the outside cats, I tried to do a head count.
Then I counted again.
Then again.
I kept getting 38, including Sad Face.
Usually I count about 33. With Nosencrantz still here, plus Butterscotch still outside, plus Sad Face, I would get 37, maybe 38, at most, and that would be with the possibility of double counting some cats as they milled around. With Butterscotch now indoors again and Nosencrantz adopted out, I would expect to count 35 or 36, at most.
Which means we have some new cats, and I have no idea which ones they are!
I do think one might be a grey tabby. Recently, while doing my rounds, I saw a grey tabby, then did a double take because I wasn’t sure if I’d seen it before. We have quite a few grey tabbies, though, so I couldn’t say one way or the other.
No matter. If we have some stray cats that have found a safe haven here, I am more than happy to have them – as long as they don’t attack the other cats.
Sad Face (aka: Shop Towel) seems to have stopped attacking the other cats. Right now, one of the moms is acting way more aggressive than he is! She’ll walk past other cats and just start batting at them for no reason. But Sad Face? Not anymore. I’ve even seen him sharing food bowls with other cats he’s been fighting with before.
Also somewhat cat related…
I got some rather shocking news from the Cat Lady last night. They are dealing with a lot right now, with moving into a new home while trying to sell their current home, and all the normal activities that comes from having a large family and her husband running his business from a home office, on top of her health issues. Life is chaos right now.
Well, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with, during a 20 minute window when no one was home, they got robbed.
Seventeen years of zero crime, and then this.
Thankfully – and thanks to their dog – the thief didn’t get past the outside entryway, but there was a lot of stuff out there. She had asked people with cat carriers to bring them back, with two of them slated for us. We don’t need them anymore, so she had them all waiting for fosters to pick up, along with both canned and dry cat food. There was even a bag of crocheted cat blankets someone had made and donated. All gone. The Amazon delivery driver had come by and sent a photo of the boxes at the door as proof of delivery. All gone. The kids’ band uniforms. All gone. The shoe drying rack, with her kids’ boots and her husband’s boots for visiting job sites, all gone. An old, rusted, cat shaped cast iron shoe cleaner that had only sentimental value. Gone. The thief even took the light bulb and shade, and “happy holidays” mat! They didn’t take the new snow blower that was getting its battery charged, but probably only because they ran out of room. About the only “good” thing is that they also grabbed a garbage bag that was filled with used cat litter.
Best guess; someone with a truck or, more likely, an inobtrusive minivan was following the Amazon truck and took advantage of the situation. Since they have so many people coming by, either connected with the rescue, or the house being shown, etc., the neighbours wouldn’t have thought twice to see someone taking the cat carriers, for example, and loading them into their vehicle. They would have seen that before, and it would have been perfectly legitimate.
Oh! There was also a box, clearly labelled as a donation for the Children’s Hospital, of new, unwrapped toys that was taken.
What a sick, sick person. It’s one thing to take stuff that could be resold, like the cat carriers and cat food, and possibly whatever was in the Amazon boxes, but to take the kids’ band uniforms? Their shoes? Toy donations? Things like the uniforms can’t even be sold, since they all have customized embroidered names on them. And a light bulb??? Seriously?? The floor mat? WTF?
Her poor kids are already stressed out with the chaos going on, and then someone goes and steals their uniforms, boots and shoes!
When talking to the police, who knew they had lots of cats, they were told to check their animals. It seems there’s been a rash of theft in their area this year, and in some cases, only pets were stolen. So the Cat Lady was all in a panic because she couldn’t find the cats, forgetting that they were all boarded. One cat that isn’t was with her husband, and the other was with her and her daughter, I think. I can imagine how surreal it must have felt. We’ve come out to find our car stolen one time, and it felt so bizarre. I remember just standing there, looking at the empty space, second guessing my own mind that this is where it should have been. Maybe we actually parked somewhere else?? To have that empty space, but having so many things that should have been in it, just gone… in their own home! What a sense of violation, too.
And yet, as she was telling me all this, she was assuring me that she will meet me at the clinic on Saturday, before she goes for another MRI.
What an amazing, big hearted woman.
A plague on the thief that did this!!! I hope the police catch them soon, they get all their stuff returned, and the thief is appropriately dealt with by the law!
Who am I kidding. This is Canada. Even if they caught the thief, he or she will probably be back on the streets within the hour.
We’ve got some quiet days ahead of us, so there won’t be much to write about. There is never a shortage of adorableness to share, though!
Like this cuddle pile on my bed, from last night. How cute is this??? 🧡🖤🧡
Cheddar is so good with the babies, and they love him right back! But to see Cheddar hugging Sprite like that is just too precious for words!
The outside cats do their fair share of cuddling, too – mostly because they’re all in the bigger cat bed, under the heat bulb!
There is at least six cats in the window; one is mashed in the middle, under the orange and white, and moved while I was taking the picture. I’m pretty sure there was at least one more I saw through that top left corner of the window.
I didn’t get a chance to do a head count while I was feeding them this morning. They were running around too much.
Last night, I went to chase three massive racoons out of the sun room. When I turned around, I saw a Sad Face, looking at me from my storage shelf in the corner, his head level with the bathroom window. There’s a case to store the market tent in there, and he was using it as a bed. He was watching me, ready to run away, but clearly didn’t want to leave his spot. I made sure to not make any moves to make him think I was going to chase him out.
Now that things are colder, and the cat house is plugged in again, the cats have almost abandoned the sun room in favour of the cat house, overnight. By morning, though, there’s quite the crowd milling around, crying for kibble!
I’ve been tossing the new lysine powder that is more granular than the other brand, into the kibble. It does seem to be sticking, but I find myself thinking more of the granules are falling off before the cats are eating it. I can’t say for sure, since the fine powder also came off. There’s no way to measure. However, with winter coming, they are going to need more reliable doses. I looked it up and found that yes, lysine can be dissolved in water! The sites that talked about it gave warning that this might affect how well it works when used topically, but we’re not using is topically. So I’ve now started to put a bit of lysine into their water, as well as onto their kibble. Between the two, it should make a difference! There are a couple of smaller kittens with gummed up eyes, but I’m also starting to hear more sneezing and raspy breathing among the cats in general.
I think they’re going to appreciate the warmer temperatures we’re expecting next week! We’re supposed to have highs above freezing through this week, too, but we’re also supposed to get up to 10cm/4in of snow in total, starting this evening, through tomorrow night. Given that we’re also supposed to get highs of 2C/36F – at least, that’s what one app is telling me – I would expect it to be melting almost as fast as it hits the ground! Another app says to expect heavy snow this evening – but rain, overnight! Thursday night, into Friday morning, is also expected to have potentially heavy snow, but not rain. At least Friday and Friday night are expected to be clear. Friday evening is when we have to isolate the kittens and Toni for overnight fasting before their trip to the vet. The roads should be clear of ice and snow by then. I am planning to leave much earlier than necessary, just in case. The trip is about 45 minutes, and the drop off time is 8am, but I’m considering leaving at 6:30, so I have time to take it slow, if the conditions warrant.
It should be interesting, fitting the 6 carriers into the truck! I’ve got my emergency kit and a bin with extra winter hats, gloves, etc, tucked in along with our collection of hard sided, reusable grocery bags, so half the space in the back is already taken up. Thankfully, the hard sided carriers can be stacked and secured, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
Until then, I’m going to enjoy some boring, uneventful days at home!
I am so glad we don’t need to go anywhere for the next while!
When I headed out yesterday evening to feed the outside cats, we had freezing rain on top of the snow.
We also had company.
Looks like the big, fluffy beast hunkered down as soon as I came out. I stayed where I was long enough to take the picture. As soon as I moved closer, he ran off.
I love how casual Driver is, sitting next to the racoon!
When I saw him this morning, he was still favouring that front paw. I still can’t see any obvious signs of injury, but I’m not able to get a closer look, either.
We got snow again, after the rain, so things were pretty crunchy, crispy out there! We’re supposed to both get more snow, and warm up, over the next few days. I’m sure the cats will enjoy the warmer temperatures, and the snow melting away. Of course, the long range forecast of up to 8C/46F have changed, but it’s still saying we’ll have several days of 6C/43F next week. My main concern right now is for the 11th. I’ll be bringing the cats in to the clinic quite early in the morning, and the forecast currently calls for sleet. More on that later!
This morning, my older daughter was planning on making a soup today. Using these…
That’s one of the big Pink Banana squash, a Red of Florence onion and garlic. The Sweet Chocolate and Cheyenne peppers were all green when we harvested them, but have been ripening up quite nicely! They’re also dehydrating a bit, too.
I don’t know what else went into the soup, besides shrimp, but my goodness, the house smells amazing. I’m told it’s not very spicy hot, which means I should even be able to do more than have a taste! 😁 I don’t handle spices very well, unfortunately.
I popped outside again not long ago, to get a meter reading, when this strange noise started coming out of my pocket. It always startles me when my cell phone rings! 😄 It was the Cat Lady. She’d been hearing from the clinic about our bookings. They are quite concerned that we might not show up. With all their no-shows last time, and with us having 6 slots, I can’t blame them! She said she assured them that we will be there. I told her to go ahead and tell them we went out and bought 2 more carriers, just to make sure we could bring them all in! If we don’t make it, it’ll be because we’ve gotten into an accident along the way, or the house has caught fire or some sort of emergency like that.
The Cat Lady is going to be in town that day anyhow, and will be meeting me. She’ll be going in for another MRI at the hospital just across the road from the vet clinic. All the kittens will be coming home with us. Currently, all her own cats, except 2, are being boarded as they prepare to move. Unfortunately, every offer made for their house fell through because the potential buyers couldn’t get financing. It’s adding an insane amount of stress to their lives! Meanwhile, the two cats that are not being boarded are also the two calicos from us, that both hate her for some reason! Cabbages came back because she refused to eat. I don’t think Muffin (who now has a different name) ever left. She is wildly attached to the Cat Lady’s husband, and goes off to job sites and coffee runs all the time. She’s good with the kids, too, but the Cat Lady has never even been able to pet her. She walks by and gets swiped and growled at! She’s never had a cat act like this before! Still, with only the two cats in the house, and one of them gone out for coffee with her husband, the house is amazingly quiet! At this point, I would not be surprised if Muffin has become a de facto sales cat! I can easily imagine potential clients and contractors being happy to see the guy with the cat come around. It is strange that she is so nice to everyone else, but not to the Cat Lady!!
Anyhow. I hope the next offer they get actually finally pans out, and they can finish moving to the new house they bought – a house with a whole other heated building that will be dedicated to cats! It would be awesome for them to be able to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s in their new home, without the added burden of two mortgages!
Oh! There was something else she told me that just blew me away. The last time we got a female done at the nearest vet clinic, it was $350. That included getting a tattoo and… something else I can’t remember right now. Things like vaccinations, etc, are extra. Males were half that. The Cat Lady was talking to the clinic with the cheap spay day about the possibility of bringing in a stray cat in their area and get her spayed. The vet told her that they’d be able to do it at the discounted price, since she is a rescue.
$408
!!!
She asked what the regular price was.
$497
That includes a wellness check, vaccinations, etc, right?
Nope. Just the spay. The other stuff she mentioned would be extra.
Good grief!!!
She did find a place that would give her a much better discounted price, but it involves a much longer drive. At under $200, though, that’s what she’ll be going!
One more reason to really appreciate the cheap day we’re booked for. It just blows me away that anyone would simply not show up when it’s only $75. I found out that the large animal rescue that moved in just a mile away from us had similar issues. They arranged for a mobile spay and neuter unit to come in. They would have been $175, male or female. We never booked, as we didn’t have it in the budget, but it turns out they had a lot of no-shows, too. Which really chokes me, because I saw all the excited responses and people asking to be booked for that day, when they announced it on Facebook. I figured they would have run out of slots and had to turn people away. Instead, they had people book and not show up!
Well, that won’t be us.
Less than a week, and we’ll have 5 kittens and 1 cat recovering from spays and neuters, all at the same time!
The Re-Farmer 