This morning, I was to cover for home care for my mother’s med assist, so I was up and about feeding the outside cats before it was light out.

They seem torn between famished for breakfast, and wanting to still be in their cozy spots!

Thankfully, it was light out by the time I started heading for my mother’s, as the first thing I saw when I got on the main road was a pair of deer on the road! The highway condition group I’m on has been reporting a lot of deer activity this year, with certain areas being particularly dangerous right now.

I got to my mother’s a bit early. She was still in bed, and I would have brought things to her, but she came out to join me. I made her a breakfast that she could have with her meds. I suspect it was a fuller breakfast, small as it was, than she would have been up to doing on her own. Hopefully, she will be willing to have the home care workers help her with that. The new assists aren’t part of her current schedule, but they would be informed by now, and her morning assist is 10 minutes to allow for extra help, even if it’s just to get the kettle going and doing some instant oatmeal.

When getting some milk out for her, I discovered she had issues with the carton. She had tried, and failed to open it from both sides and ended up making a hole with a knife! I was able to get the spout side open for her but, with the hole she made, had to be very careful pouring it into her cup. Last time, I’d got her a plastic jug of milk from another town. She had cleaned it out to use it as one of her water jugs for drinking and cooking, so I gave it an extra rinse and transferred her milk from the carton to the jug.

I wish her local grocery store still carried the smaller plastic jugs. They only have 4L in plastic, and my mom can’t handle jugs that size. My siblings and I will have to make a point of getting 2L milk in plastic jugs for her, when we know we can swing by to drop it off.

After that, I spent the next hour or so doing some of the things home care can do for her, like emptying her commode and rubbing the Voltaren on her back, and stuff they can’t, like changing her bedding and sweeping her entire apartment.

She told me that she’s been asking the ladies to do the Voltaren in the morning and before bed, and they have been quite willing to do it, but there’s one home care worker she has issues with. This is the same one that will come in, get her pills out, then leave without making sure my mother takes them. Last night, my mother has asked if she could rub the Voltaren on her back. Her response was to look at the sheet and say, that’s one listed on there. Which… of course it isn’t. This stuff doesn’t require a prescription. But they are supposed to be able to help with a number of things – her bed time visit has 15 minutes schedules for that. I don’t know if this worker refused to do it or not.

As we were chatting, my mother asked me if living here at the farm has been helpful for us, financially. I told her that yes, it was at first, but things are getting really expensive now. Especially when we have things like the door to replace. This is the first time I told her that we had to put it on credit. That’s when she started saying that my brother should be taking care of this stuff for me. I just laughed at that, because I know when she says that, she’s saying it’s because he’s male, and I shouldn’t be doing “man” stuff. However, she had also been teasing about helping pay for the door, so that would also have been her way to say he should have paid for it. Meanwhile, our deal is that we live here “rent free”, in exchange for maintaining the place and keeping it up as much as we can. I wasn’t going to go there, though.

Then she started saying that we should be communicating more. That confused me because she knows I’ve been talking to my brother about this (it’s his house, after all), and her. So I asked her, what did she mean? Oh, I should be talking to my brother about it and… don’t forget! He has access to her money.

…

???

Yeah, he has Power of Attorney, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to use her life’s savings!

I told her, she needs to talk to my brother about her money, not me. Then I added, I won’t ask her, like our vandal did. He was forever going to her for money. He even expected her to pay for a large building he wanted to build and was furious when she refused, and blamed her for having to take out a loan. She said, oh, that was a long time ago. He doesn’t ask for money. Not any more, I pointed out. I reminded him of how she’s given him a check for a substantial amount, only for him to come back asking for another one, saying his wife had accidentally burned the check with their garbage in the burn barrel. She gave him another, much smaller, amount (still a lot, though). When my brother found out, he checked her account and discovered the first check had already been cashed!

She remembered that. That was money she gave him to go towards the building he wanted to build.

*sigh*

That did give me a chance to tell her about our incident from a couple of days ago. When I told her how he’d opened up his shirt, took off the support strap and started waving his colostomy bag at me, she told me, he’s been showing that thing to everyone.

*shudder*

All in all, things went really well this visit. I was able to get quite a bit done for her, which was nice. I even remembered to ask her if she wanted me to make lunch for her before I left – and from her reaction, I could tell she had meant to ask me to do just that, but had forgotten! She told me what she wanted put together on a plate for her, then to set it in the microwave, so that all she needed to do was turn it on when she was ready to eat, after someone from church came over to give her communion.

After I was done there, I was going to swing by the grocery store to pick up a couple of things for home, but they were closed. So I made a side trip to the town closer to us and got a few things there before heading home.

By then, the winds had gotten even worse, so there was no way I was going to get anything done outside today. A forced day of rest!

The forecast now says we will be getting rain all day tomorrow (Monday), continuing on through half the next day. So that’s two more days of outside work lost. After that, it’ll be cooler, but at least the winds will have died down and the weather clear. The problem is, Wednesday is my first city stock up shopping trip. I’ll shoot to head out as early as I can and hopefully get back with enough daylight hours to get at least some work done outside. At this point, I think I’m going to start winter sowing, just to get things into the prepared beds while I still can! On the plus side, the long range forecast now suggests the first couple of weeks of November might still be warm enough to get more done out there.

When it was time to head out and feed the outside cats, I ended up spending quite a long time doing my evening rounds, checking for wind damage, picking up fallen branches, etc. I was finishing up when I spotted this cozy scene.

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In the first picture, you can see Pinky in the cat bed on the bottom. That is the cat bed that had been in the catio, where she and her little would cuddle together and sleep.

In the upper level Midnight is in the cat bed there, and in the second picture, you can see he is cuddling with a little grey tabby kitten! Which is amazing, because he usually growls and swipes at the kittens!

I’m glad to see kittens in there. Most hang out together in the sun room, but some just won’t stay there other than to grab some food. The winterized catio is being well used, too. So far, it’s been holding up to the wind all right. I did put the red bench I made against one side wall, to reduce how much it was fluttering in the wind, so that helps, too.

Technically, it’s warm today, but with that wind, it’s very unpleasant out there, so I’m very happy to see the cats using the shelters. Some, like Adam, Sprout and Sprout’s calico seem to have secret spots out in the outer yard somewhere that they hang out in. Sprout’s fluffy orange and white seems to have moved into the portable greenhouse!

Oh, I have news about the ones that have gone to the foster. The adult and Pinky’s two have been spayed and neutered. The adult is completely deaf and has a really bad ear infection, but there were no ear mites in any of them! The vet thinks the adult may have been born deaf. I fully expected to learn the infection was from a really bad ear mite infestation, and that that is what caused the deafness.

So the adult is going to be rehabilitated and socialized, so she can be adopted out rather than coming back to us, since she won’t survive long as an outside cat. If she really were dumped, as we suspect, I’m amazed she survived long enough to find our place at all!

We do the best we can for the outside cats, so they can be cozy, safe, well fed and warm, but nothing beats getting adopted and living the good life indoors!

Gotta work on socializing more kittens, and getting those ladies fixed!

The Re-Farmer