We woke to a light layer of snow on the ground, which had me concerned about the bitty kitties. When I started putting the kibble out, I couldn’t see them. I did notice the board I’d put as a ramp into the cat house was knocked over, so I put that back – and spotted one of them looking at me through the window!
It was as I was coming back from putting kibble under the shrine that I saw something that had me doing a double take.
A tiny ball of fluff! It was pushing around the other kittens. The face you see glaring in the corner of the photo is an adult, but I don’t think it’s the mother. She had no interest in the baby.
I was able to pick it up and put it into the kibble house, but when I came back to top up their water bowls with warm water, it was back on the ground.
Except… I wasn’t seeing the same kitten!
There are two almost identical bitty kitties, under the kibble house!
One came out and I was able to pick it up and put it in the kibble house. This one started hissing and spitting when I picked it up, so I’m guessing it wasn’t the same kitten I picked up before.
I found a brick to brace the bottom of the ramp, hoping the other one would come out, but I couldn’t see it anymore.
I did see the two kittens we found yesterday, wrestling in the corner by the window. They seemed alert and not at all distressed, which tells me the mama has been tending to them. I am guessing the other two were stuck outside because the ramp board had been knocked over.
I did the rest of my rounds, then looked for the kitten again. No sign of it. I am hoping it went up the ramp on its own, but more likely it went under the cat house, rather than in. I wasn’t going to poke around too much, because the last thing I want is for the mama to take the kittens away again.
So it looks like this is a litter of four. I did see several adults cats around, but none of them behaved like these were their own kittens. Who the mama is, is still a mystery.
Today and tomorrow are supposed to have highs just above freezing, then things will warm up again. Because the cat house was built to house two large dogs, it’s very open in there. We’ve been thinking of quickly popping the roof up when it’s warmer, and putting in some boxes or bins to make cozy little “rooms” inside, where little ones can curl up. Now that the kittens are in there, I’m afraid if we do, that will cause the mama to take them away, too.
One thing is encouraging. As tiny as the kittens are, they have really dense fur, with thick undercoats, for their ages. Which tells me they are developing their winter fur even faster than the bigger kittens.
Or they’re just really fluffy, fuzzy, kitties.
Either way, it’s their first layer of protection against the coming cold.
It’s windy and damp and chilly, but I headed outside anyway. I wanted to keep an eye on the sudden kitten, and used that as an excuse to clean up the trimmed willow branches for the burn pile, and see what I could do with the wattle weaving.
The wind was blowing bits of plastic packaging from the shingles, and the poor thing was hissing and spitting at every movement.
I was able to go up to it and pick it up. Unlike the earlier kitten, which seemed okay with that, if more interested in finding mama, but not this one! This one was a little fireball, hissing and spitting and showing me claws. So I quickly put it into the cat house, where it immediately quieted down.
I hung around to see what happened. Caramel showed up and seemed to be looking around. Could Caramel be their mama? I was sure I saw Caramel with slightly older kittens, and that a little grey tabby that we’ve been seeing by itself was hers. That one looks old enough to be newly weaned, though, and these ones are maybe 3 weeks old.
After a while, I saw the first on emerge from under the cat house, looking around. It came out when it saw me, so I was able to pick it up and put it in the cat house with what I assume is its sibling.
Caramel looked around for a while, then took off. Whether that means she’s gone to bring another kitten, or they’re not hers, I have no idea.
One thing I noticed since we set up the water bowl shelter is that the water is not being drunk as quickly. Usually, I’d find at least the metal bowls mostly empty, and half the big plastic bowl gone, too, by morning. Now, they’re still almost full. One reason may be that other critters had been drinking the water overnight, and the new water bowl shelter is preventing that somehow. The other is, the floor of the water bowl shelter is a lot higher. I think the smaller kittens are having a harder time getting into it. I see them drinking from other places now, where they usually wouldn’t.
So, I tried this.
It’s one of the leftover scrap boards we used for the walls and floor of the water bowl shelter. One end is split, so I tucked that end under the sledge the cat house rests on, so it won’t be easily knocked about. If nothing else, the kittens will be curious enough to go up it and into the water bowl shelter. Once its roof is done and the shelter is positioned close to the kibble house, I’ll see if it’s still needed. Depending on how they line up, cats should be able to go from inside the kibble house up into the water bowl house.
I have a shorter board that I’m thinking of putting in front of the cat house entry, so the bitty kitties can use it to get in without help. I just have to find a way to stabilize it while still keeping it temporary.
As an aside, I shared a picture of our set up with the water bowl shelter added in. She asked if she could use the picture to show as an example of how to make cat shelters! She works with rural rescues only, so she sees a lot of farm cats that don’t get a lot of help. A lot of people say to let nature take its course, or to just shoot them. Well, with our outside cats, we know nature will take its course no matter what we do, but we can at least provide them with food, water and shelter by the house, and the closer they are to the house, the better their chances. She wants to use our set up to show people that they can still provide shelter for their feral and semi feral cats, using what’s on hand. Of course, I gave permission to use the photo, and gave more details about them that I hope are useful. Especially about adding heat in the cat house. Which I really hope will be enough for the newest babies!
I wonder if I’ll find another bitty kitty when I go outside again, later?
I was nearing the end of my morning rounds, walking past the kibble house, when I spotted something both adorable and heartbreaking.
A new kitten.
A tiny, cold, wet, alone kitten.
It was not there when I did their kibble. I did a head count and I think I counted 25 in total, with 3 or 4 of them being adults. Even Rolando Moon showed up for breakfast.
Because it’s so small, I was able to pick it up and try to warm it up. It is so young, its eyes are still blue! I put it near some kibble, and it completely ignored it.
Eventually, I put it in the cats’ house, which is the warmest, driest place for it. It stayed there for a while, but when I came back later and it saw me, it started coming out. Then more cats came around.
It kept going from kitten to kitten, looking for mama. I put it inside the kibble house – it’s so small, it can barely climb over the board that keeps the trays from being knocked to the ground.
Rosencrantz was the only mama around at the time. The little one was meowing for mama, and Rosencrantz did come over to give it some sniffs, but later on, she growled at it.
I eventually put it back into the cat house and quickly left, as seeing me (as well as it can see at this stage of life!), hoping it would stay. We will have to check frequently, to make sure it doesn’t end up stuck outside. I don’t think it can climb into the cats’ house on its own.
I am hoping that its mama – whichever cat that is! – has decided to move her litter into the cats’ house, and that this is the first one. If I’m right, I hope that means we’ll find a litter of babies tucked away safely in the warmth.
It’s the middle of October, and we’re getting snow.
We will monitor and see how things go. If necessary, I’ll contact the cat lady for advice. She’ll be giving us dates for two females (Tissue and Big Rig being the last indoor cats to get spayed) and one male (whichever of the male yard kittens we can grab this are old enough) soon. She’s also looking to get ahold of some donated cat food for us, too.
On top of all this, I checked my mother’s car. It took several days, but her tire is flat again. We won’t have room in the budget to get it fixed until the end of the month, so we’re going to have to use our van to drive my mother around. *sigh*
Now, excuse me while I have my lunch while worrying about a teeny, tiny kitten outside!
There are no adult cats in this picture, though the oldest kittens are very close to adult size. The tiniest unit is the little grey tabby on the far right.
I tried to do a head count this morning. The chimney liner at the bottom right corner has three white kittens on it. Including the ones that I spotted hiding in various places, waiting for me to be gone before coming out to eat, I counted 24 cats this morning. Only one, for sure, maybe two, were adult cats. Most of the mamas seem to just take off somewhere, coming back only briefly. They seem more than content to leave their babies for us to feed!
It’s shortly after noon as I write this, and we are at 4C/39F. The accumulated snow predicted did not happen here; the rain took care of that! We’re supposed to reach a high of 6C/43F this afternoon, with a mix of rain and snow. Still too wet to do some of the outdoor things I want, but there are other things we should be able to work on. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, followed by a couple of cold days, then one day where we are supposed to get a high of 10C/50F. That would be a good day to get to the marsh my mother wanted to go to, and see the migrating birds. It might be too cold to have the picnic outside she wanted to have, but there is a small cafe there, with an excellent view of the marsh.
Hmm… Looking at a different app, their 10 day forecast has us getting even warmer, reaching as high as 16C/61F, two Sundays from now! I hope that one is more accurate. We could use every nice day we can get to get work done outside!
We’ve had the odd snow flurries before now, but this morning is the first real snowfall, where some snow actually stayed on the ground.
Most of which is already got at the time of this writing, but we’re still supposed to get more tonight and tomorrow.
For most of the yard cats, this is the first time they’ve seen a real snowfall!
There are at least two, maybe more, kittens hiding under the kibble house, where there is a sheet of rigid insulation to help keep their tootsies warm. It isn’t visible, but there is another sheet under the floor boards, so under the kibble house is a good little shelter for nervous babies.
A bit more work needs to be done on the water bowl house, but there will be no more coats of paint this year. I moved it to roughly where it will go to stay, and put the water bowls inside. Now the cats just need to figure out where the water is.
After the roof is done (you can see the piece of metal roofing for it, held down by stacks of rejected shingles to keep it from blowing away, behind it), I want to put hooks under the roof of the kibble house, and at least one under the water blow house. Once things are in place, we’ll run the extension cord that’s plugged into the cat’s house, up and under the roof edges, to power the heated water bowl in the water bowl house.
You can tell by where there is no snow on the roof of the cats’ house, that the heat bulb is doing its job! I am still putting kibble on the roof, usually on either side of the peak near the entry, but now I’m making a point of putting some over the warm spot.
I will no longer be putting kibble by the pump shack door. The kittens seem to have all moved closer to the house, so at this point, it will just attract things like skunks or raccoons. I brought over the kibble tray and will later tuck it just inside the entry into the cats’ house.
I’m seeing kittens inside the cats’ house through the windows, but they really seem to prefer the shelf shelter. I think they like the smaller, more enclosed spaces.
I’ve had to brace all three levels with some scrap fibre board, because they break the insulation when they get startled and rush out. I throw a handful of kibble into each opening, including the top shelf where one corner has been boxed off with insulation to form another little shelter. I’ve left us with about 2/3rds of 1 shelf for storage!
I’d like to find something sturdy to put at the top of this shelf. What I rigged up for last winter worked, but slowly broke apart over time. I want to put something more weather proof up there, that can also handle having cats jumping all over it. Every now and then, I’ll come out the door and startle a pile of 4 or 5 kittens all curled up and napping!
Who knew, when we took this shelf out of the house but found it too heavy and awkward to easily move to storage, that it would be used like this! It has come in incredibly handy.
The tuxedo was just loving playing in the snow on the water bowl house roof! Every now and then, he would start sliding down. 😂 I don’t think they’ll be playing up here as much once the scrap piece of metal roof is installed. The metal will be a lot colder in winter, and hotter in summer!
Looking at the security camera live feed right now, I can see we still have flurries, but I can no longer see any snow on the ground, anywhere. According to my phone’s app, we are at 2C/36F with a ReelFeel of -5C/23F. We’re still expected to get 3-6cm/1-2in of snow accumulation by tomorrow afternoon, before it turns to rain.
Hopefully, things will dry up enough that we can finish that water bowl house roof, and all the other little things that need to be finished up outside! I had hoped to continue working on that L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden yesterday, but it was just too wet and windy for the work. So I got my day off after all. Today will be another write off for the outside stuff, but we still have lots of tomatoes ripening faster than they can be eaten, so this morning, I started cooking them down for a tomato sauce. It’s mostly made with yellow pear tomatoes – it’s amazing how prolific those ones were! – but I used all four types of tomatoes we grew this year in it, including one last little Sophie’s Choice tomato.
Things were looking pretty good when I headed out to do my morning rounds.
I got a giggle when the tuxedo moved off the chimney liner and, instead of the one white kitten I thought was behind him, there were three! I had a head count of “only” seventeen this morning. I couldn’t tell if any cats had stayed in the cat house, with the heater bulb plugged in again, overnight or not.
It was clear we’d had some rain last night – and a fair bit of wind!
The joy of time stamps. The gate cam stand got blown over just before 6pm last night. My daughter and I were still outside, cleaning up after finishing the kibble house roof, at the time. The winds had certainly picked up by then!
As I write this, it’s 4C/39F out there, with a “reel feel” of -4C/25F. It started raining after I finished my rounds and was back inside. I might have a day “off” from working on the old kitchen garden today, though it is supposed to clear up this afternoon and warm up to 8C/46F. The more I can get done, the better, because tomorrow we’re either going to get more rain, or between 5-10cm/2-4in of snow, depending on which app I look at.
I’m happy to say that, while I did have pain issues last night – I had to get one of my daughters to open a can of wet cat food for me, because I couldn’t – I’m in a lot less pain today then I was expecting to be. I even got sleep last night.
Oh, that reminds me. I’d written before about some sleep issues I was having, unrelated to pain or even my usual “busy brain.” It was centered around a strange sort of pressure and almost a buzzing feeling in my head, as soon as I went to bed. A clue to the cause came when my husband and I traded phones, because my phone’s Bluetooth wouldn’t work with the new OBDII reader he got me. That turned out to be a known problem with my model of phone, but not with his, newer model.
My habit when going to bed was to put my phone on the charger, then set it up on a phone stand on my nightstand, or on a wireless charger in the wall shelf where a headboard would be, if my bed had one. I preferred not to use the wireless charger, as I kept having to take my phone out of its case for it to work properly. My phone serves as my clock and alarm, but I also do my nightly devotions on a Bible app at my bedside, and often set it to play relaxing music for several hours to help me sleep.
I’d already suspected my phone when the discomfort in my head was slightly worse if the phone was in the shelf near my pillow, rather than on the night stand. When it got so much worse after switching to a newer phone that sleep was increasingly difficult, I tried an experiment. I can’t just shut my phone off for the night since, as I mentioned, I use it as my alarm clock, etc. So I just set my phone up on the charger, further away from my bed. Just a few feet, really.
The strange pressure/buzzing in my head went away, and my sleep has improved.
Well. As much as possible with cats in my room. 😁
I have no idea what the phone is doing that is causing the problem. It only seems to be an issue when I’ve got it on a charger, not while using it normally, throughout the day.
When I put kibble out for the yard cats, I make a point of putting some in a lot of different places, so that more cats have a chance to eat. It gets pretty crowded in the kibble house, and some of the smaller, shier ones end up not getting as much food. Since I want them to get used to the idea of using the cat’s house in the winter, I’ve been putting food just inside the entry, and on the block I have in front.
I spotted one of the pump shack kittens, eating from the block. It is so small, it could barely reach! Of course, I had to try for a picture.
It was just at that moment, that one of the older kittens decided to jump down from the roof and photo bombed the shot!
Today’s high was supposed to be 19C/66F. I don’t know if we reached it, but with the blustery winds, it never felt that warm. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather, and my app on my desktop includes historical data for each day, including 30 year record highs and lows for various data. I noticed that today had a record high for snow of 14cm/5.5in in 2019. In fact, we set record highs for snow on the 10th, 11th and 12th, all in 2019. We were just coming to the end of our second year here, so I went looking at my blog posts for those dates.
Ah, yes. I remember that blizzard!
The amazing thing is that, just days later, all that snow was gone, and while we were still cleaning up storm damage, everything was back to green and sunny!
Depending on which app I look at, however, we might be getting a mix of snow and rain starting tomorrow night, and by Friday afternoon, we’re expected to get between 3-6cm (roughly 1-2 inches) of snow.
That meant my focus was preparing to build up walls around the L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden.
I went through the maple pieces I’d cut yesterday and started cutting them to size, cutting points on them, and debarking some of them.
I had lots of furry help. So much help, one of the kitties got plumb tuckered out!
From the longest, straightest pieces of maple, I cut three into 4 foot lengths. Then I went through some of the strongest pieces to cut four 3 foot lengths, then four 2 1/2 foot lengths. After that, I just cut as many 2 1/2 foot lengths from the thinner straight pieces as I could get out of them.
I used a hatchet to cut the points on all of them. That was probably the most unpleasant part of the job. Not so much for the thinner pieces, but for all the thicker ones. I’m ambidextrous for most things, left handed when it comes to fine motor control, but for some things, I am completely right handed.
Using a hatchet is one of those things, and my right hand has been in terrible shape lately. I had difficulty gripping the hatchet, and had to stop frequently to give my hand a break.
The draw knife was awesome for debarking the wood. It’s still quite green and came off easily. I don’t have a way to secure the pieces I’m working on well, so there were quite a few times when I was pushing instead of drawing the blade – and it works just as well that was, too. For some of the thinner pieces, though, it was easier to just use a knife to debark them.
Also, no, that is not rust on the blade of the draw knife. It’s stained with tree sap.
The stack of the thinnest pieces did not get debarked. It would have taken forever and, at their sizes, it would have been awkward. The pieces that will be taking the most stress, however, have been debarked.
That all took a few hours.
Then it was time to get to the garden bed. I pulled the lettuce I’d left to go to seed (it looks like we’ll get seed from just one of them) and got ready to prep the bed. Without walls, soil was falling into the path and the inside of the L shape, and I don’t like wasting good soil!
I used a hoe to draw some of that soil back into the bed, and level off the edge, where the uprights will be going.
The three longest pieces will form a triangle at the inside of the bend. When we start weaving branches through the posts, these will be taking the most stress. Working out from there, one 3 ft piece will go along the short end, and three down the long end. If I have enough materials to do it, I plan to build up the wall higher at these posts, as much to wall around the lilac as to create a wall for the bed.
The four 2 1/2 ft pieces are for the corners at the ends of the bed.
To install the posts, I used the pencil point bar and hammered it into the ground.
Unfortunately, that old hammer doesn’t have the right handle on it, and the head fell off again. I had to switch to a sledge hammer.
I really didn’t want to switch to the sledge hammer.
Ah, well. It worked better. I’m just going to be in a world of hurt, tonight!
I started by placing three posts in, then tied twine between them as guides for the rest of the posts. Then I laid out the spacing for the remaining two 4 ft posts, and the four 3 ft posts.
At this point my daughter, who had been working on putting salvaged shingles on the kibble house, ran out of roofing tar. I’d only picked up a small can for patch jobs, never expecting to need more.
So I left my daughter to continue pounding in the posts while I went into town to pick up more tar, and a few other things while I was there. When I came back, I found my daughter lying on a tarp on the ground surrounded by kittens. She is having much more success at socializing than I am!
She had even pounded the other two corner posts at the ends of the L shape.
The weather was starting to get worse, so I quickly filled in the gaps with the smaller 2 1/2 ft posts.
The long end of the L shape will be only 2 feet wide, so the end posts needed just one more added in between them, plus three more along the north side. The short end of the L shape needed only 2 more to fill the gap. Since this end can be accessed from three sides, we’re okay with it being wider than 2 feet, so the end posts there got two more in between. The rest of the posts will be for the outside of the L shape.
From the looks of it, I’m going to need to find more pieces to be able to finish the outside of the bed, but I’m not concerned about that right now. It’s the inside of the L shape that I need to get done first.
By this time, however, dark clouds were rolling in and it was starting to look like rain, so I left the job at this point and focused on cleaning up and putting away anything that might blow away. My daughter, meanwhile, finished the roof of the kibble house.
The green shingles are almost 50 years old and are in pretty rough shape. The brown ones are better, but they’re almost 30 years old.
The water bowl house roof is thinner plywood, so we’ll be using pieces of metal roofing that we’ve been scavenging for various things since we’ve moved here. If we used shingles, the nails we have would go right through by nearly half an inch, and that would be a problem! I dragged a piece of metal roofing out from the barn that we can cut in half and lay side by side to cover the roof of the water bowl house, but I also spotted a stack of corner pieces. I brought one over, and helped my daughter put it on the edge of the shingles on the kibble house. I found a bin of metal roofing screws in the warehouse, so I grabbed a bunch for when the water bowl house is done, and my daughter used a few of those to install the metal cap on the edge of the roof, using the screw holes that were already in the metal – after making sure to put some tar under each hole, first.
Almost everything about the kibble and water bowl houses has been done using scavenged bits and pieces we’ve found around the property, and a lot of it is pretty old and starting to rot. We don’t expect these to last long, but using paint and even decades old shingles will help them last longer. At some point, it’ll be nice to be able to build versions using new materials, all well measured and cut and leveled, etc. But this will do for now.
Once this was done, I set up a longer extension cord I found that was in good shape, and was able to plug in the cat’s house. We lifted the roof and put in the high density rubber mats I’d dragged out of the barn, which will help insulate the floor. There’s a thick scrap yarn crocheted blanket that is laid out on top of the mats, too. We will not be using straw this year. As much care as we have taken with the terrarium heater bulb, I would much rather not have straw in there! The heat bulb is working fine, with the heat shield still in place, and the timer is set to light sensor, so it will turn on when it gets dark, then off again when it gets light. The smoke detector was tested, too, and it’s working fine.
Once the water bowl house is done and set up where it will go, we’ll be able to plug in the heated water bowl through the cat’s house entry, too.
Tonight, the cats will have a warm and cozy place to stay if they start feeling too chilly. I especially hope the tiniest kittens will start using it!
As for me, I’ve pain killered up and hope I’ll be able to continue in the old kitchen garden tomorrow. For the weaving, I plan to cut the willow branches and use them right away, while they are still very green and flexible.
I really hope this works out. Otherwise, that’s a lot of work for nothing! Well. Not for nothing. Now that those posts are in, even if wattle weaving doesn’t work, I could still use them to hold whatever we find to use instead. It’s all fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants work, anyhow!
The Re-Farmer 