I’m so glad I don’t need to go anywhere.
As I write this, we’re at -9C/16F, but the wind chill is at -25C/-13F
Around the house, we are sheltered from the wind direction for a change, so we’re not getting quite that wind chill effect in our immediate area. Which I am happy for, since we have to keep the isolation shelter closed, and there was only two cats in it.
These two.
The (Fluffy) Lady, and The Grink.
I’d given them their wet cat food this morning, and Fluffy stayed well away from me. Even when I was about go go inside the house, saw her sharing the food bowl with The Grink and paused to get my phone out to take a picture, she saw me stop and moved away.
Clearly, she has not forgiven us for her trip to the vet! There’s no way I can check her incision, but at least we can tell how she’s feeling by her behaviour, at least somewhat.
The Grink, meanwhile, seems quite happy to stay right where he is! We see them cuddling together in the cat bed pretty regularly now.
I also managed to get a picture of this dude.
At least I think he’s a dude. My daughters tell me he is, but I haven’t been able to see, myself, with all that long fur. He does not allow us near him. I had to zoom in to get this photo. He looks so much like Fluffy! She doesn’t have any white fur, other than inside her ears, so we can at least use that to tell them apart. This fluffer is one of this past summer’s kittens, so there’s almost a year between them. Fluffy is pretty small for her age, though, so there isn’t a lot of size difference between them.
The snow in our area started last night. It started coming down pretty hard at one point, but mostly it was light and constant, so there’s a few inches accumulated already. We’ve got a break in the snow right now, but it’s supposed to start up again tonight and keep snowing until about noon, with only a couple of hours break at about 7am. From what I’m hearing and seeing on the highway conditions group, the roads were getting pretty snow covered. The road between us and town was pretty bad, which is typical when the winds are blowing this way. The east-west roads are almost always the worst.
Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll have to break out Spewie and do the driveway.
Needless to say, I did NOT head to town to see my mother. I did phone to ask how she was doing. I’d called shortly after shift change, though, so the nurse had only been there for 15 minutes. She knew my mother was doing well, and was feeling better, but that’s about it.
Then she asked if I wanted to talk to her on the phone. They could bring a phone to her room and she could transfer me over.
Yes, please!
It was good to be able to talk to her directly. Not that she could tell me much; she doesn’t understand much of what they are saying or doing in regards to her treatment, but she could tell me how she felt and we could just chat for a bit. My cousin had visited her today, so she was happy about that.
Little by little, I’ve been remembering different places to call that needed to know about my mother. Home care. Meals on Wheels. Today, I remembered to call her pharmacy. They would normally have delivered her bubble packs for the month, yesterday. Now that they know she is in the hospital, they can suspend her prescriptions until either we let them know she’s home, or a doctor calls to tell them her prescriptions are cancelled with the pharmacy, which they would do if she goes into long term care or assisted living.
I think that’s the last place that needs to know about my mother! Her church would already know, since the guy that took her to her appointment is from the church and has been bringing her communion since she hasn’t been physically up to going to church lately, and the church next to the hospital knows, as the priest has already come to give her communion since she was admitted.
It will probably be a couple of days before I can go and visit her again. While the roads might be clear earlier, it’ll take us some time to get our own driveway clear. In particular, I need to get the end of the driveway done. With what’s already there, once the plows go by, we probably would get stuck trying to get through the plow ridge. It’s going to start getting cold again, though. Today and tomorrow are going to be relatively warm, and then we’re getting highs of -19C/-2F, with overnight lows of -27C/-17F
I worry about the outside cats, but they know how to take care of themselves. The cats that used to hang out in the isolation shelter now hang out in the cat house and the sun room. Usually in big cuddle puddles.
We did get a big stinky kitty visit the sun room last night. I didn’t try to chase it out, after watching it on the camera for a while. The big heated water bowl that stopped working is set to the side, near where the heat lamp is. It’s full of ice, but on less frigid days, the heat lamp is enough for it to start to melt, and the cats seem to really like the melted ice water.
So goes the skunk, apparently. On the camera, I could see it sitting on top of the ice, doing something. It looked almost as if it were chewing on the ice, where a gap forms between the ice and the wall of the bowl. When I headed out this morning, I made sure to look. I could see a deeper spot in the ice, with smooth sides. The skunk had been licking the ice enough to create a hole!
By the middle of the month, I’m hoping we’ll have a new critter cam in the sun room. I’ve just ordered a small security type camera. It can be rotated 360° remotely, while the one in there now is stationary. The cats regularly knock it out of position. The main thing, though, is that it does not require a subscription to record and save files. We can add a micro SD card to record locally. As long as it can connect to our WiFi, that should be good. The last camera I tried simply would not connect to our WiFi, and we could never figure out why. If this one works out, I might try to get a lightbulb camera again, for the basement, to monitor the septic pump.
If I had the funds, I’d be like my brother with their old place. He had cameras everywhere! The buyers actually paid extra to keep his camera system. 😄 In the summer, I expect he will start adding more cameras around the property, since he moved his farm equipment here.
I have no problem with more cameras around!
But that will wait for when things are much warmer, and the snow is all gone.
It’s only February, but I am so done with winter already!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
I saw these snowy days. Anita
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Oh, they certainly are pretty! I’m just glad I don’t have to drive in it. 😁
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