Today, I was heading out to the nearest Walmart area to run some errands and meet up with the Cat Lady.
Of course, before I left, I did my morning rounds. While going about in the yard, I was hearing some surprisingly loud crackling noises.
It was the cats.
Or, more accurately, the sound of ice crackling under their weight as they walked across it!
They were very curious about it, too.
While giving the yard cats their morning feeding, I kept and eye out for Caramel – and saw her. Quite a bit, in fact. She was dashing from kibble tray to kibble tray, both in the sun room and out. I looked all over, including with Brussel, through the cat house windows, and even the two old dog houses by the outhouse, with straw bedding inside. No sign of her kitten, yet there was mom, hanging around the house!
Still looking pregnant, too.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
I headed out early enough to do the Walmart part of my shopping before I was supposed to meet with the Cat Lady. I got a couple of big bags of cat food, which were the most expensive items of the day. I also picked up a couple of 2kg (about 4 1/2 pounds) bags of Yukon Gold seed potatoes. Maybe I’m jumping the gun, but I didn’t want to wait too long with those. We’re already almost half way through April! I got a few other little things, but didn’t want to stay in the store for long. Once the truck was loaded, I moved it to where the Cat Lady and I were to meet, next to the Dollarama, and waited.
Along with some wet cat food and treat donations, she had three lovely cat beds to pass on. These were their own cat beds that none of their cats use anymore. !!! I was more than happy to accept their rejects. 😄
While going through a big bag of canned cat food to sort out the stuff for us, we got to talking about The Wolfman and his allergy to poultry. She scored canned cat food without any chicken in it, which is remarkably hard to find. She was telling me how, before they knew he was allergic to chicken, he was basically going bald. Which is so strange, because he showed no signs of an allergy until after he’d lived with them for some time. He even lost the fur on his magnificent flag of a tail. It’s all grown back now, but they have to be super careful about keeping him away from chicken. He’s a thief and would eat an entire roasted chicken before it had time to cool off!
As we were chatting about him, she told me about some vet visits they’d had with him, trying to figure out what was going on, and that at one point, she’d requested X-rays. The only reason we were able to catch The Wolfman and bring him indoors was because one of his front legs was wildly dislocated, flipped over backwards. She remembered when it happened, as we had asked her for advice. It was a long weekend and all the vet clinics were closed. She told us of two that she knew of that were open, in our entire province, and they were all hours away.
Then his leg popped back into place on its own. It happened some time during the night, so we have no idea how that happened.
Well, it turns out there is some permanent damage to that shoulder, including arthritis. The Cat Lady said they do see him sometimes favouring that shoulder. The vet, on looking at the X-rays, was apparently shocked, saying that leg had to have been flipped right around (it was), and couldn’t believe that it was able to pop back into place on its own. It never did completely return into its proper position, though. The vet, however, said that when a dislocation is this bad, the usual result is amputation! There’s a blood vessel that gets pinched, cutting off the blood supply to the leg completely and basically killing it. How that didn’t happen, they couldn’t figure out. As The Wolfman gets older, the shoulder will probably bother him more but, right now, his recovery from that injury a mystery to them.
They have a few cats from us that are like that. Button surviving is a mystery. The kitten we never named that turned out to be Down’s is another mystery survivor. Then there’s Cabbages, of course. The very first sick kitty they took from us and ended up keeping permanently!
Once we were done transferring stuff between vehicles, we headed into the Dollarama. I was specifically looking for a new dial-type thermometer to put into the portable greenhouse. The only one I could find was more of a decor item and not a dial type. I was also going to pick some some cat deterrent strips that are meant for garden beds. I was planning to use them in areas in the house that cats keep insisting in getting into, no matter how we try to stop them. There are none of those to be had at all.
I did pick up a few other small items, then headed back to the Walmart. It took some searching, but I did find the type of thermometer I was looking for. Next to the extension cords, of all things!
From there, it was time to head home. By the time everything was unloaded, it was pretty much time to feed the yard cats again; hopefully, it was early enough for the cats to finish eating before the skunks and racoons showed up!
I saw Caramel again, and even Brussel was outside, though she was quick to dash back into the cat cave with her babies. When Caramel jumped into it with them, it got knocked onto its side, and Brussel hasn’t been out of it long enough for me to fix it. She is still quite aggressive towards me, even as I give her her wet cat food, or her morning squeeze treat.
With Caramel hanging around, it seemed to me she wasn’t quite so … round, anymore. More saggy and floppy than round. She also kept going in and out of the cat house.
So I checked.
That first picture is the best I could get through the glare and dirt of the window, but there are two kittens in that cat bed! This is the cat bed that’s closer to the smaller window, not the one we found the dead kitten in, yesterday. There’s the dark kitten we saw before, now with an orange tabby, and they were very squirmy!
When I looked in again later, Caramel was there, and she was not happy to see me! She even hissed at me through the window.
The floor in the cat house currently has some high density foam mats on it that I found in the barn; with the heat bulb in there, I didn’t want to use straw. There were just a couple of cat beds at the windows, and a blanket, though the blanket was all bunched up by the wall opposite the windows.
I decided that two of the donated cat beds would go into the cat house. Later on, while Caramel out of the cat house, one of my daughters helped me lift the roof just long enough to lay down the two beds and close it again. Hopefully, some of the other mamas might decide to have their babies in there, too, which will make it easier to socialize, or at least trap them, later.
Speaking of which…
The Cat Lady confirmed our getting three females done on Tuesday. The vet specifically asked us to bring in any pregnant ones. She then suggesting doing a group of males next month, then younger females. I told her we could do that – the males are the friendly ones, so getting several males will be easy – but said I was afraid that if we waited too long with the younger females, they’ll end up either pregnant, or they’re already pregnant and would have babies by then. In the end, the vet will do whatever we can catch and bring in.
Getting the cats spayed is one thing. This clinic is giving her amazing prices for that. The problem is, these being yard cats, they tend to have other problems. Ear mites are pretty much expected, but if the ear mites are really bad, the ears get infected. Then there’s infections for injuries, etc. The last batch of cats she helped get done, from the town my mother is in, had infections so bad, the clinic said they ethically couldn’t release one cat without treatment. These were yard cats, though, not pets. The person who has been feeding them said she wasn’t going to pay for extra treatment, since this was basically a trap, spay/neuter, release. They’re going to get ear mites again, get infections again, and are just as likely to simply disappear. So the Cat Lady was in a pickle and had to pay for the antibiotics – which, it turns out, costs more than a spay! – just to be able to get the cat released from the vet!
Dealing with stuff like this is why she was having a hard time booking our yard cats in, but with mamas starting to give birth, she talked to the vet and they were willing to fit some in.
Needless to say, we’re going to try extra hard to get the cats we’ve been asked to get, but when it comes to the females, we don’t have much control of the situation. As for the two mamas, they will be booked in 10 weeks, when their babies are weaned and their milk has dried up.
Here are some random kitties.
The first image is little Magda. She’s one of the ones that is so small, she hasn’t gone into heat yet, probably because she’s not healthy enough. But if she does get pregnant, I doubt she would survive. She is, however, very socialized and would be easy to get to a vet.
The next image is Rolando Moon, enjoying a nap. This Grand Old Lady was fixed by one of my brothers, as we were in the process of moving here. We were told she was the last of the females that needed to be fixed. Which turned out to be wrong, and here we are…
In the next photo is an incredibly scraggly cat that’s been showing up. I’m not sure if she’s one of ours (she’s not at all socialized, so I’m assuming it’s a she. 😄). I don’t know what’s going on with her neck fur, but it looks like it’s been worn right off!
Next is a very pregnant Slick, aka: Octomom. She had a litter of 8 kittens, two summers ago. She has been allowing me to pet her while eating on the cat house roof, which is a HUGE improvement – normally, we couldn’t get close to her, never mind pet her – so I’m really hoping we can catch her for the vet on Tuesday – and that she doesn’t have her kittens before then!! She is so very round.
The last photo is of a big boy that’s been hanging around off and on. I’m not sure if he’s one of ours returned, or if he’s from a neighbouring farm. I’m assuming it’s a male based on his size, more than anything else. We haven’t been able to get close enough to see.
I am so thankful for the Cat Lady and her rescue. They have been helping us with the cats, too much! It’s not easy for them at all, with so few people willing to adopt these days, full shelters everywhere, and donations trying up. We are certainly not the only ones trying to care for colonies this large, or even larger. Cats being dumped being a huge part of the problem, too.
We just do the best we can, I guess.
What else can we do?
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 