We had some bitterly cold temperatures last night – dropping to -24C/-11F, when I was awake to check. There was no wind chill, though. In fact, the “real feel” was slightly warmer than the actual temperature.
When heading outside to feed the yard cats, I found a whole crowd of them inside the isolation shelter – all in the top level, too!
Including the isolation babies. Both Kohl and her fluffy partner were in there.
With so many cats and one bowl in a corner, the littles weren’t able to get at the food as well, so I dropped a handful beside the fluffy boi.
In return, he even let me pet him.
Sort of. 😄
With the cold, a lot of the food trays still had a lot of food in them. None of the cats, understandably, want to be outside eating, and even in the sun room, they prefer to huddle together in their various shelves and beds and under the heat lamp. I saw several through the cat house window, near the heat lamp in there, too.
The food bowl in the isolation shelter, however, didn’t have a single crumb left in it, and even the water bowl was mostly empty. At this point, I think the top of the isolation shelter may be the warmest place around!
The insulated box nest, however, seems to be in the way. I am considering taking it out and putting it in the lower level, where the little box is. We had to take the cat bed out from there, since they were using it as a litter box. Since this box nest is insulated, it would probably get used more in the bottom level than it is in the top level. The food bowl can then be put in the middle where the box is now, and more cats can eat out of it at the same time.
Moving the box nest will require moving the entry box shelter away, so I’ll save doing all this for when I have a daughter available to help out.
Meanwhile…
My husband and I had plans today. We were going to head to the nearer city, where he can go in to exchange his cell phone, as the 2 year plan is up. He doesn’t use it much, but if he simply kept it, we’d be charged almost $700 for the balance on the phone. Or, he can return it and get a credit, but would have no phone. Alternatively, he can exchange it, have another phone on a new plan, and still get a credit.
So that’s what we were going to do and, thanks to a generous monetary Christmas gift from my mother, we were planning to have an actual sit-down dinner date, too. It might just have been to Subway or something, in the same shopping commons as the phone place, but it still would be a fun and rare treat for my husband.
With the cold, we waited until things warmed up in the afternoon before we started heading out. It was -19C/-2F and the time we left. I went ahead to take out the shopping bags in the back of the cab to make room for his walker while warming up the engine a bit. Since we haven’t been able to get the block heater cord repaired, I made sure to run the engine a bit while I was doing the morning rounds, too.
Soon we were loaded up and on our way.
We got maybe 5 or 10 minutes out, when it happened.
The console started dinging, and the “oil pressure low, shut of engine” light started flashing. The oil pressure gauge had suddenly dropped right down.
We already had the oil sensor replaced from the last time it happened.
So I popped on the hazards and pulled over.
Of course, the first thing I did was check the oil level. We had an oil change done when the sensor was replaced, so it should have been full.
It was. Looked pretty clean, too.
I still added a small amount. It was a fight to get the oil cap off (thank goodness we keep a stool in the truck, or I couldn’t have reached it!), and one of the first things I noticed was the interior. It looked almost as if the black plastic was blistered.
It wasn’t.
It was ice.
So I added a bit of oil, then cleaned out the inside of the cap as thoroughly as I could before putting it back and running the engine for a bit before checking the oil again.
Definitely plenty of oil.
Well, we weren’t going to take a chance. Once everything was put away, we turned around and went home, while my husband messaged our daughters to open the gate for us.
The warning light did not turn on again, and the gauge stayed within the range it was supposed to.
The gate was ready and open for us, so I pulled straight in to the garage, stopping only to get the walker out for my husband before pulling the rest of the way in.
As soon as we were inside and settled, I called the garage and left a message describing what happened. Our mechanic called back within minutes.
He asked a few more questions, and he basically confirmed what I already suspected. Most likely, there was a bit of ice from condensation getting into the sensor and triggering that warning. Basically, the engine needed to warm up longer. He has seen this before, but only with GM vehicles.
Hmmm.
Since we know there is plenty of oil, he basically said, if it happens again, it’s not a panic. That was the main thing. The last time it happened, the truck turned out to be almost completely out of oil, even though there were no visible signs of a leak, nor were we burning blue. There is a separate warning light for low oil, and that never turned on. Replacing the sensor also took care of the leak, and the oil level has been steady, since.
Well, I’ll take this as a sign we weren’t meant to go to the smaller city today.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be meeting with my brother at our mother’s for a visit. It’ll be earlier than usual, since he has to leave by noon, but this is his Christmas visit to my mother, as they’ll be visiting the grand kids for Christmas and New Year’s.
If the cold we got hit with last night is why this happened with the truck, though, it should be fine, tomorrow. We’re expected to dip below -20C/-4F for a few hours this evening, but start warming up throughout the night. By the time I should be leaving in the morning, we are expected to be warmer than we are right now. Long range forecast no longer says we’re supposed to get as warm as 6C/43F around Christmas, but it does still say we’ll be hovering around the freezing mark on those days. We will be doing our dinner on Christmas Eve. I will be setting aside a couple of meals and plan to go to my mother’s to have lunch with her on Christmas day.
Hopefully, the truck sensors will behave!
For the rest of today, though, it’s another home day, after all! I’ll be working on more garden analysis posts, instead. 😄
On a semi related note, a while back I wrote about how I was suddenly seeing ads on YouTube again. I ended up getting an updated version of Firefox and installing their adblocker, as it was the only one that still worked. I was still getting them on my phone’s app, to the point I could no longer play YouTube videos at all, they were so intrusive. Which meant, no playing background playlists to help me sleep.
Well, that has stopped as suddenly as it started. I no longer see YouTube ads on any browser I use, nor on my phone app. None of them had gotten updates, either.
Very strange, but I’ll take it!
Oh, this is too funny! I just got a message from the Cat Lady.
One of the cats they took from us was a muted calico we called Muffin. She was an outside cat friendly enough that we could get her into a carrier. She went to them to be spayed, get the usual vet checks, then go up for adoption. Instead, she bonded with the Cat Lady’s husband, and they are still inseperable.
Today, she is out with him, delivering Christmas bonuses and drinking Starbucks.
Muffin still hates the Cat Lady, for some reason – she’s never had any other cat behave like this towards here before. Muffin still tries to bite her, every day, even though she doesn’t have teeth anymore. But she adores the Cat Lady’s husband, attended Zoom calls with him, goes out to job sites, and when she has to stay home, sits at the window, crying for him all day. It’s got to the point that all these hardened contractors now look forward to seeing Muffin. Too funny!
Well, time to adjust my plans and see what I can get done, now that it’s turned out to be a home day.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 