Okay, in between dealing with all sorts of other issues, I think we’ve found a way to set up the mini-greenhouse in a cat-proof way.
The frame is sitting on top of a very sturdy, heavy oak chair. It’s tied to the chair legs in a couple of places, and to the back, to stabilize it.
The patched up plastic cover is also over the back of the the chair, for further stability, though it’s tight enough to make zipping it closed a bit of a challenge.
For some reason, I got it in my head that it had 3 shelves, but it has 4. We have two plastic seed starting trays, one with pots, one just a base, that fit perfectly on the shelves. We also have two baking trays that can hold larger, heavier pots, if needed, and can still be used to water from below. They are shorter and wider than the shelves, but if we need to use them, they should fit on the top two shelves. With the cover going over the back of the chair, the bottom half is pulled too tight for them to fit there.
The bottom shelf is flat on the chair seat, so that cats should not be able to get through from below, and the cover is stretched snug enough at the bottom, they shouldn’t be able to get through there, either.
We’ll leave it for a day or two to let the cats get used to it, and see if they manage to knock it over or anything like that. There is the potential that they could knock the entire chair over, even as heavy as it is.
The mini-greenhouse is facing the window, but there is a shelf behind it, and we might be able to set up more light from the other side, too.
If it seems to work out with the cats, we’ll be starting shallots in there, first. And if it still remains cat proof, I’m hoping to be able to transplant the excess tomatoes out, next.
Oh, man. What a day this turned out to be. Talk about topsy turvy!
It started out normal enough.
The deer were visiting the feeding station before seed was even put out. Tissue was enjoying watching them. We had several come by today, including the piebald.
Nutmeg was waiting his turn in the cat path as I put the kibble out.
So many cats! I count 13 in the photo.
While outside, I shoveled out the last two paths that were left to do. One was the path to the feeding station. The other was the cat path from the kibble and cat house, to the storage house.
We had cleared around the cat’s house, since we needed to open the roof up to get inside, and had tried to maintain most of it. We’ve pretty much given up on the back, though. There’s no room for the snow anymore.
The cats have taken advantage of our being able to keep the side of it clear, and have managed to still access the space under the cat house. Only the smaller cats can fit into there!
This is the opening they’ve managed to keep clear to get under the storage house. With the lilac bush there, we can only shovel their path so far, but they’ve packed down their own trail to the opening.
I’m not happy with The Distinguished Guest. She went after Creamsicle Baby today. Hard. I had to break them apart. Poor Creamsicle Baby was bleeding at the neck a bit, though from all the black fur on the snow after they battled, he defended himself pretty well.
Since we no longer have cats convalescing in the sun room, I went ahead and cleared the frame for the mini-greenhouse and brought it inside. The cover had a couple of tears in the back, so that had to be fixed.
While trying to figure out how to secure the mini-greenhouse, I got a message from the cat lady. She was in town and we worked out that she would leave her carriers in the donation bin at the shelter, and I would pick them up later.
She also let me know that she’d left Cabbages behind, snoring with their 5 other cats. !!
As soon as I could, after it was confirmed the carriers were dropped off, I headed out to start my mother’s car to go get them.
I turned the key, there was a loud POP, and it died.
I have no clue what happened.
I opened the hood, but there was nothing visible that was out of the ordinary.
We now have zero transporation.
Crud. We’re hooped!
The first thing I did was send a message to the garage about our van. It’s booked for a new alternator on the 28th, which is when my husband’s disability payment comes in (last business day of the month. However, he does get a smaller CPP Disability payment 3 business days before the end of the month, which falls on the 24th. Normally, that would have been our day to do a big shop but, obviously, that’s not going to happen anymore! It is enough to cover the cost of the repair, though. I haven’t heard back from him yet, and just left a phone message, too. Hopefully, I’ll connect with him soon. I did mention in my message to him, that we now have no way to pick up the van anymore! I’ll also have to get my mother’s car towed to him, but I’ll arrange that after we get things worked out about the van. We moved my mother’s car into where we normally park the van, so we’ll have to get it out of the garage, anyhow.
*sigh*
My mother’s car may have the block heater, battery warmer and trickle charger, but there’s still a lot under the hood that can freeze. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the starter.
I then messaged the cat lady.
Not only could we no longer pick up her carriers, but there’s no way we’d have the van back early enough to bring the cats in to the vet.
Also, just this morning, we had decided to make a change on which cats were going in. The cats have been after Nicco again, and my daughter asked if we could have her go, instead, for her own protection. So we decided on Nicco and Saffron, instead of Turmeric and Saffron.
The cat lady responded almost right away, asking if we could get them if she came over with the carriers.
!!!!
Yup. She just took it upon herself to take in two more cats for a couple of days, then bring them in to the vet herself on the 23rd.
What an amazing woman!
After giving directions on how to find us, a daughter and I started working on patching the cover for the mini-greenhouse. We didn’t get very far, when I got a call to confirm our location. She was at the intersection, but there was a misunderstanding in my instructions, and she turned the wrong way. She was already here!
So one of my daughters snagged Nicco while I grabbed Saffron, and we brought them to the sun room for her.
Not only did she come with her two carriers, but she also brought us some canned cat food! It was left over from Cabbages, who is now turning her nose up at Tuna.
!!!
We had a chance to talk for a while, and she updated us with some surprising information.
When the vet first saw Cabbages, he thought she had ingested the poison from something like a flea and tick collar. We don’t use those. All her bloodwork had come back healthy, yet she struggled to stay alive. She’d even had a seizure after the cat lady had picked her up from us. The eventual conclusion was the toxoplasmosis somehow getting into her brain. The treatment was the same, either way, for her condition.
Well, they’ve done another blood test. This time, a toxicology test at a different, specialized lab – a $400 test!
The test confirmed this compound was in her blood. She was poisoned. The vet thinks she got into fertilizer.
We don’t have fertilizer in the house.
Somehow, the vet thinks she was getting miniscule amounts of fertilizer over a long period of time, it built up in her brain until she finally became so very ill. Our force feeding her and keeping her hydrated with the syringe kept her alive long enough for the cat lady to get her to the vet.
We are absolutely flummoxed. The only thing we’ve got is Miracle Gro, it’s kept in the sun room, and the cats can’t get at it. Cabbages has never been in the sun room, anyhow.
While she was updating us on the mystery that is Cabbages, we also talked about Nicco and Saffron. She expects Saffron to be adopted out quickly; female orange tabbies get snapped up quickly right now. Calicos, however, are very hard to adopt out for some reason.
We also found out that she doesn’t like calico’s herself, nor female cats. However, her 5 yr old daughter has informed her that if they adopt out Cabbages, she’s moving out. :-D
I know they already have someone lined up to adopt her, but it’s starting to sound like they might be keeping her themselves. Now that Cabbages is healthy, she won’t have anything to do with the cat lady or the other adults, but she and their daughter are inseparable. She gets along with their other cats – and even their blind dog! Cabbages had never seen a dog before, but not only do they get along, she even went for a ride on him! She had climbed onto him while he was lying down, and when he got up and walked away, she stayed!
Cabbages may already be in her forever home!
Meanwhile, Saffron and Nicco will be staying with the cat lady for the next couple of days, make their trip to the vet, then stay with her for 2 more weeks. At that point, they will be ready for adoption and will stay with a foster until new, permanent homes are found.
We also talked about the next vet appointments in March. It will be worked out as we get closer to the date, but the vet is saying they would prefer to have one male and one female. We have no males indoors that need to be fixed, but we do have outdoor males that we can catch. So next time we may be bringing in one indoor female and one outdoor male.
It’s a shame we can’t catch any of the outdoor females. The only ones we could were Butterscotch and Nosencrantz who are now indoor cats, and Rolando Moon, who is already spayed and not going anywhere.
Oh, wow. As I was writing this, I just got sent a couple of photos. Saffron and Nicco have arrived at the cat lady’s home, safe and sound, and are now sharing the cat cage Cabbages had been recovering in. Saffron was comfortably eating already. Nicco has her usual stressed out expression. :-D
Cabbages, meanwhile, is helping the cat lady’s daughter colour, after giving the cat lady her “equivalent to the middle finger” then went on her way. :-D What an attitude!
I knew the cat lady had already spent $1200 of her own money on vet bills a while ago, while still having weekly vet visits. Now I found out they did that really expensive toxicology test. She has easily spent over $2000 on Cabbages! That’s just in vet bills. She’s also been feeding Cabbages a special, nutrient dense, high calorie diet as she recovers.
All the more reason we started the fund raiser to help cover the costs. At $1500, it won’t cover everything, but it’ll at least cover a substantial amount!
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
Now we’ve got to figure out what Cabbages got into that caused this. We don’t have flea or tick collars. We don’t have fertilizer. I asked what else might have this compound, and she didn’t know.
Whatever it is, none of the other cats are showing signs of being sick, which makes it even more confusing. What was she getting into, that none of the other cats are getting into?
I’m at such a loss.
Meanwhile, we are now down two more indoor cats. Since we’ve brought in Nosencrantz and Butterscotch, that brings us back to 15.
The cat lady not only brought us the canned cat food Cabbages will no longer eat, but has promised to bring us more donated dry cat food, too.
What an amazing woman!
This takes a weight off our shoulders, as we can now focus on getting transportation again. I’ve let my mother know about the status of her car – reassuring her that all I was doing was keeping her informed, and not expecting her to do anything about it. She started telling me my brother will come out and fix it. No. I’m not expecting my brother to drive all the way out here to try and fix her car. Even if we did know what happened to it! But men always know more about cars than women, so I should at least talk to him.
*sigh*
Well, whatever we end up doing will depend on what the mechanic finds, after we get it towed out to him. Hopefully, it’ll be something we can afford to fix out of April’s budget. The van is already taking up every bit of wiggle room in March’s budget. :-/
Not having a vehicle is just not a good thing out here. Yes, we’re okay as far as basic necessities. It’s more about if there’s some sort of emergency, like if my husband suddenly has to go to the hospital.
Nosencrantz is adapting rather well to being an indoor cat!
We’re still keeping her mostly in my office/bedroom, while letting some of the other cats in. Not any of the inside cats that are up for adoption, though. My daughters have been carrying her around the house every now and then, so she’s at least seen them around.
Butterscotch, meanwhile, has been quite content to stay in her nest in my closet, coming out every now and then for attention. She has zero interest in leaving the room, so far! Maybe she’s catching up on some much needed rest, after all those years outdoors.
I’m not sure when Nosencrantz is going to be taken by the cat lady for adopting out. She and Butterscotch were supposed to be outdoors by now. The outdoor cats weren’t going to be adopted out until after the indoor cats were all taken in to be spayed, then taken home by the cat lady to recover before going to the fosters and getting adopted out. Which means Nosencrantz may be staying with us indoors until about May, since the other indoor cats should be all tended to by the end of April, if all goes as planned.
I haven’t heard from the cat lady about Cabbages recently, which means all is well. I expect to hear from her on Monday, when we work out getting her cat carriers to use, instead of our own, when we drop Saffron and Turmeric off at the vet on Wednesday.
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
We’re going to miss Rosencrantz. She’s a sweet, gentle cat!
After seeing my weather apps flashing warnings for the blizzard that, thankfully, missed us, now I’m seeing new alerts.
This time, for extreme cold.
Which is NOT missing us!
The -23C/-9F is one thing. The -36C/-34F wind chill is something else. And look at those overnight temperatures! Yikes. Thankfully, the wind is mostly from the north. One of my daughters and I were out there for an hour or so, shoveling out the paths, so we were mostly sheltered. Not so much when my daughter was clearing the paths to the compost pile, back of the garage, and the outhouse. I had to use the wheelbarrow to clear away snow closer to the house, since the surrounding piles are too high, and the snow just falls back into the paths in that area, but at least I was out of the wind!
The temperature has actually dropped in the short time since I took this screen cap, and I’m now seeing -25C/-13F with a wind chill of -37C/-34F.
Previous long range forecasts had us warming up again right now, which clearly isn’t happening… but then, they never included another blizzard, either. Now we’re seeing the cold staying for four more days, before things are supposed to start warming up, and keep slowly warming up into March.
We’ll see how accurate that turns out to be!
Having a bit of garden therapy after shoveling snow was nice, even if it was just a tiny bit. It’s not like the seedlings need much tending.
The onion trays are starting to look a bit hairy – and not just from all the cat hair all over the top of the soil (and everywhere else in the house… LOL). With this tank being a bit cooler, and not having a heat mat under it, today was the first time they needed a top up of the water in the aluminum tray underneath them.
As for the big aquarium greenhouse, I decided to switch things around.
The two rows of gourds had been next to the end of the tank. Yes, there’s insulation against the glass, but it still gets pretty cool, with that end of the tank next to an outside wall. The heat mat below was also a bit off centre, so the canteen gourds would have been getting ever so slightly less warmth from below. I decided to move the gourd end of the tray to the middle, away from the colder side of the tank, making sure they were completely over the heat mat as well.
There is still just the one luffa growing. There are more Cup of Moldova tomatoes coming up than expected! My daughter had issues with seeds sticking to each other, while she was trying to plant just 4 or 5 per pot. I’d like to simply transplant the extras, while they are still tiny, as demonstrated in this video.
The problem is, we don’t have any more cat-proof space for more pots. We could bring in the mini-greenhouse from the sun room; that would give us space for 3 trays of the size the current pots are in, but we still haven’t figured out how to keep the cats from clawing their way under the plastic cover again. At least not without making it just as impossible for us to get in, as needed. I hate the idea of “wasting” thinned seedlings, if we don’t have to! Especially since the Cup of Moldova tomatoes are the ones we want lots of, for preservation purposes.
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out! Thinking about such things is great garden therapy, when it’s so frickin’ cold outside. :-D
The predicted blizzard conditions we were getting warnings about, passed well to the south of us. Once it swept down from the mountains and across Alberta, the system made its way mostly along the Canada/US border.
I guess there are some advantages to being further north!
What we did get was wind.
And deer.
Five of them!
The two in front are our usual visitors. The three in back are new ones. As least, that we’ve seen. For all I know, they visit when we’re not around to see them.
Unfortunately, the three visitors decided the chokecherry and saskatoon twigs were delicious!
After I took the video, I turned the living room light on, so they could see me, then waved my arms around like a fool. The two regulars ignored me, but the ones eating the twigs went away. And that’s all I wanted!
The two regulars came back later.
They were digging down really deep into the snow, to try and find more seeds!
This is what the area looked like this morning, after I put more seeds out.
That deep hole is almost completely filled in, and the snow is hard packed, from the high winds.
This wasn’t the only area blown over. I actually had to push my way through a drift, just to get outside!
It even drifted into the kibble house, though the cats did a good job of flattening it.
Check out the heated water bowl!
After knocking the snow out of the kibble trays and putting food out, I dug out the water bowls, knocking a thick layer off the top of the heated bowl. There was still water in it, though it was lot enough the cats would have had difficulty reaching it through that hole.
I ended up letting Potato Beetle out of the sun room this morning. He’d trashed a few things, trying to get out. He’s not injured anymore, and the only reason we were keeping him in was to prevent other cats from attacking him again. He was happy to be out, and hopefully, he will manage to keep away from whichever cats have been aggressive towards him.
Once the sun room door was open, though, Agnoos, Tuxedo Mask and Chadiccus were right in there! So I left the power bar on, for the light, heat bulb and the other heated water bowl, and left the doors open. When I was done and ready to come inside, I left the doors open just a little bit, so the cats can go in and out. I think there might have been four in there, at the time. We’ve since spotted Tuxedo Mask through the bathroom window, in his favourite spot on top of the board the heat bulb’s fixture is attached to, and under the light. The plan is to close the sun room all up again, after we go out and shovel out at least some of the paths – the wind chill is still pretty extreme right now – but we might have difficulties getting the cats out when we do! :-D
The Re-Farmer
ps: Just for fun, I compiled some short videos I got of the piebald deer, a few days ago. Turn your sound up, and you’ll hear the purring and chomping noises from Susan, who kept trying to eat my phone while I was taking video!!
There are so many people posting video and live streaming what’s going on in Ottawa right now, it’s hard to keep up.
One of the most insane things is that Parliament got shut down yesterday. The irony of using the Emergency Act to shut down Parliament, when they are supposed to be debating about invoking the Emergency Act, is off the charts. This video explains a lot of the Parliamentary process, with questions answered.
This is Andrew Scheer, who used to be the leader of the Conservative Party, and was Leader of the Opposition until 2020. Personally, I think the Conservatives have seriously dropped the ball on things, and have done a terrible job as Opposition, contributing to the state we are in now, but there is a lot of good information in this video.
One of the black marks of yesterday involved an elderly woman being knocked over and trampled by police horses. There are a lot of histrionics about what happened, with many claiming she died of her injuries. She did not. Family has spoken out. She did suffer a dislocated shoulder and, of course, it hurts, but she is otherwise fine.
The really insane thing is that the Ottawa Police are lying, repeatedly. They have claimed that the protesters were being aggressive to the police. They were not. They tried to claim a bicycle was thrown at one of the horses – complete with an aerial image with an arrow pointing to the walker on the ground, as if it was the “bicycle” in question – which did not happen. As the video above shows, there was a bicycle in the crowd, but it wasn’t near the horses, and the guy had complete control over the bike the entire time.
The Ottawa Police chief resigned not long ago, and his replacement resigned after only 2 days. I don’t know who they have now, but they seem to have found someone who is completely on board with police brutality.
While I’ve been able to confirm that the woman is all right, I have not been able to find out anything about the guy. From different angles of video I’ve seen, he tried to shield her with his body before they both got pulled under the horses. It didn’t look like they were together, but just happened to be next to each other. Of course, there are people saying that he’s dead, or critically injured, but usually from the same sources still trying to claim the woman had died.
What was interesting to find out is that she is Mohawk. Strangely, when it comes to protests right now, even though all peaceful protests are still allowed if the Act is invoked, certain “classes” or protesters are exempted from our Prime Dictator’s list, including the Indigenous, refugees and illegal immigrants.
Which kind of shows just how our current federal government views our First Nations people.
Pissing off the Mohawk is not a good thing. Just look up the Oka Crisis of 1990. Which, even though it involved the police, the military, a whole lot of guns, and the death of a soldier, did not result in the invocation of the 2 yr old Emergency Measures Act.
Oh, and while the police in Ottawa were going after peaceful protesters, there was an actual eco-terrorist attack.
It was reported approximately 20 people, some armed with axes, were attacking security guards and smashing their vehicle windows. It was initially reported that some CGL employees were trapped, but all had managed to safely leave the area.
Upon police attendance at the 41 km mark, the roadway had been blocked with downed trees, tar covered stumps, wire, boards with spikes in them, and fires had been lit throughout the debris. As police worked their way through the debris and traps, several people threw smoke bombs and fire lit sticks at the police, injuring one officer.
Amazingly, while looking up a link to the story, I actually saw a headline claiming the attack was done by “Anti-Vax protesters”.
Insane.
The Ottawa Police are not the only police branch that’s openly and brazenly lying.
I remember seeing the first story when it came out – complete with the photo – and how it was confirmed by the RCMP that the incident was unrelated to the Coutts border protest. Then suddenly, the same photo was being posted with a story about the Coutts protest being raided. Except I’m pretty sure the protesters had already cleared the area before the story “broke”.
The problem with the Federal government, legacy media and the police lying so much is that everyone is busily recording everything and posting it online for all to see. Like this one.
You can see that the police moved in all at once, on an order, not due to any aggression on the part of the protesters. The woman that was injured (not seriously, thankfully) is a reporter for Rebel News, which is funded mostly by donations. No government money. Our current federal government has been trying for years to shut them down, or at least prevent them from being part of the Press Gallery, but the courts ruled against the government on that one.
I didn’t see any tear gas in the above video. People are saying pepper spray has also been used. The Ottawa Police have claimed no pepper spray has been used. They may not have been using pepper spray, but from videos I’ve seen, they were definitely spraying something onto the protesters.
Another thing that’s been happening is a whole lot of arrests. Apparently, over a hundred. However, there are many videos out there of people who had been cuffed, taken away… then released soon after. They were arrested for “mischief”, but never told what they had done that they were being arrested for (one video I saw, a guy was arrested for flying a Canadian flag on the side of the road!). They were driven anywhere from 15 minutes away, to 1 1/2 hours away, before being released. Many described being “dropped off in the middle of nowhere”.
They all made their way back to the protest site.
Of the violence that has happened, it has ONLY happened at the instigation of the police.
In reality, there is a lot more of this.
While the government continues their action, and organizers are being arrested, they’re not succeeding. As I write this, there is a back-up convoy on the way, and I know many people who are either already on their way in their own personal vehicles, on their way.
This is far from over.
Which reminds me; the police themselves are creating their own blockade, unlike the protesters. Word is, they will be preventing food from entering the city, which will then be blamed on the truckers, as an attempt to turn support against them. Divide and conquer. This is as much a psychological battle as an ideological one.
On Monday – two days from now – there is supposed to be a vote in the House of Commons. The NDP are siding with the Liberals, so unless there are enough Liberal MPs that break ranks, the invocation of the Emergency Act will be approved by the House. However, it still needs to be voted on by the Senate, and they have stopped Trudeau in his tracks before. This is not the first time he’s made a power grab. Just the most blatant.
Assuming our Prime Dictator doesn’t decide to just suspend Parliament entirely.
This morning was another contradictory one, where the temperature was pretty decent and warming up, but the winds made it insanely bitter outside!
I got some photos yesterday, of the piebald deer visiting again. Her face was packed with snow, from digging under to find the seeds that had been blown over.
Check out where she is, in relation to the bird bath! For the snow to be that high – and hard backed enough to hold her weight – is really something!
The piebald chases these two away if they come around.
I got this photo before heading outside this morning. They’re really digging into the snow to find seeds! When I came around with my little bucket of feed, they ran off, but watched me from the trees. When I next looked through the living room window shortly after finishing up outdoors, they were already back.
The outside cats were quite enjoying breakfast, sheltered from the bitterly cold wind that was coming from the south.
We are still getting blizzard warnings. One patch of snow has already passed us by, and we did not get much snow, compared to areas to the south of us. There is more visible on the weather radar I can see is on its way. The forecasted high has dropped, while the expected amount of snow has increased.
Thankfully, we can hunker down and wait it out. I feel for the people who have to drive in this!
While tending the seed trays last night, I spotted a new first sprout. This morning, it was big enough to get a photo of.
Barely!
There in the middle, you can just see our very first Purple Beauty pepper sprouting!
Which means that, at this point, the only thing in the tray that has not had any sprouts at all are the canteen gourds. The luffa still has just the 1 sprout. It looks like all the tomato seeds have germinated by now, and there are more eggplant and onions sprouting, too.
Oh, there are no Wonderberry yet, either. They are the ones planted in the double cups next to, but not on, the heat mat, so that might be why.
I am very happy with what looks to be a very high germination rate, so far!
We had some concerns about a red spot on the incision showing up, but it seems to be almost gone now.
Beep Beep is one of the cats we’ve been allowing in to “meet” Nosencrantz and Butterscotch, even though she tends to be one of the meaner cats. Butterscotch has snarled at her just like any other cat that goes by, but Beep Beep has been pretty laid back about the whole thing.
Doing the morning rounds today was surprisingly painful. Yesterday was colder, but there was pretty much no wind and bright sunshine. I did the shoveling without even wearing gloves. This morning, though we were at a much milder -19C/2F, the wind chill was -32C/-26F. It still is the same as I write this, several hours later. That wind burns!!!! My fingers got colder in the time it took to set out kibble and water this morning, than in all the time it took me to shovel, yesterday.
We had snow all night, but not a lot of it. Mostly lots of wind. The bulk of the system passed to the south of us. We still have blizzard warnings, which is supposed to hit us tonight and through tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get 10-15cm/4-6in of snow and high winds. They’re not saying we’re supposed to get a high of -9C/16F, but with 42km/h winds (26mph), it’s going to feel a LOT colder!
Looks like we’ll be digging all the paths out again.
Potato Beetle is still in the sun room. My husband spent some time cuddling with him, because he was lonely. Potato Beetle, I mean. Not my husband. ;-) That gave me the chance to get a good look at the wound on his neck.
I got a better look at the older wound on his forehead, and that’s healing up quite nicely. He’s managed to clean himself up, so there was no longer a big dark patch of dried blood on his neck and ear. I also could not find the wound! I could feel a small lump on his neck, but not see anything but a bit of matter fur. Potato Beetle let my husband skritch his neck in the area, so it’s clearly not hurting him. This is encouraging. From the size of the blood patch, I thought he might need stitches, but it looks like he lucked out again. The last time we thought he might need stitches and took him into the vet, he had several puncture wounds on his back leg – likely from a coyote – but did not need stitches.
This boy has probably used up a few of his nine lives!
Still, we’ll see about keeping him in the shelter and safety of the sun room for a bit longer.
Well, I’m happy to say that I did make it into town today, and was able to pick up some more wet and dry cat food.
But, before I get into how that went, I have Cabbages news!
The cat lady contacted me about her wanting to drop off her own carriers in town for me to pick up and use, since the next cats that go to the vet for their spay and vaccinations will not be coming home with us. This way, we won’t be trying to figure out when/how to get our carriers back for the next pair of cats.
She also let me know that Cabbages is doing very well right now. In fact, her husband is saying she’s starting to get too fat! She’s still on a special diet, and getting weekly vet checks to make sure her brain is okay, and that there is no relapse.
Now that she’s better, she has no time for the cat lady anymore! She only has time for her 5 yr old daughter, who dresses her up and has tea parties with her, every day.
*melt*
As we were talking, I found out something surprising. I had understood that, after the adoptable cats had their visit with the vet, they would be going to fosters for recovery, then adoption. No! They will be spending 2 weeks with the cat lady to recover, then going to the fosters while they await adoption!
As the intake person, she is not allowed to adopt any of the cats, as that would be a conflict (the organization she’s with pays for all the food, etc. for the fosters, who are volunteers, not employees). She mentioned saying goodbye to a tuxedo they had for 30 days that just went to a new home this week, and how the entire house was in tears over it. She sent a picture, and he looks SO much like a tuxedo we had years ago, it was disorienting. This was something the family and I have been talking about; how hard it must be to spend to much time caring for cats, then having to say goodbye to them, over and over.
Cabbages is a different situation. They took her in without the usual process, because Cabbages was sick, then took on all the expenses themselves. Cabbages will have been with them for a lot longer than 30 days by the time she’s ready to go to the forever home the cat lady found for her. This is not through the organizations normal adoption process, either.
Which just blows me away, because they spent a LOT of money out of their own pocket to save Cabbages’ life!
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
What an amazing family. I am just so happy we connected with them when we did!!
Meanwhile…
Before heading out this afternoon, we set up the sun room for Potato Beetle, who is being beat up by other cats and getting injured. My daughter had gone out a few times to find him, but it wasn’t until I headed out to the garage that I spotted him in the outer yard and was able to grab him. I left him to my daughter’s care and headed into town.
I had been afraid of this. The big bags of kibble have been out of stock a lot for months, now. As you can see, they had a sale on, too. At Walmart, I can get big bags of dry kibble – if they’re in stock – at an better price, but driving to a city was not an option today. The big bags are typically 7kg (about15lbs) in size, which is why I like to get the Kirkland brand at Costco; they are 9kg (almost 20lbs) and a better price. The remaining smaller bags that you can see at the top of the photo are 4kg (almost 9lbs), and their full price is the same as the sale price for the big bags! I didn’t have a choice, though, and had to get 2 of them. At least I was able to get some wet cat food at a sale price, though not in a case, as I normally would have gotten, or even the types I wanted to get. The cats prefer the shredded or chunky cat food, but there was just one type of shredded left, so I got some pate as well. Enough to last us until next week, when hopefully there will be more inventory and we can get more.
After picking up a few other things while I had the chance, I sent a quick message to let the family know I was on the way – and that I’d forgotten to grab the wagon before I left. So when I got home, one of my daughters was waiting for me at the garage with the wage, to help me bring things in. I tried to quickly get into the sun room to tend to Potato Beetle so she could bring the wagon in for unloading, but he was right at the door when I opened it, and got out. It took a while, but I was finally able to get him and bring him back. At least that gave my daughter time to unload the wagon, and even refill the kibble bin. Fresh kibble was enough to distract Potato Beetle enough that he didn’t try escaping again.
I still couldn’t get too close a look at his wound; I just see a dark patch of dried blood on his neck fur. Which hopefully means there is no gaping wound hidden by his fur. Hopefully, he will be content in the sun room, with his very own food and water, litter box, cozy beds and even a heat lamp – and no other cats trying to beat him up!
When Potato Beetle came back after being missing for months, he had been the aggressive one, attacking other cats, but never to the point of injury like this. We don’t know which cat did this to him, but I have my suspicions it was The Distinguished Guest. My daughter thought it might be Agnoos.
Well, at least he’s safe in the sun room for now.
It will be good when he is finally brought in to the vet, then adopted out. He can be such a sweet, snuggly box, and I think he’ll make an awesome house cat. Plus, no more injuries from other critters!!
