Then there were the ones eating the kibble I left on the roof of the cats’ house, and the ones eating at the tray under the spirea by the storage house – including the one that was hiding in the background, waiting it’s turn.
Twenty five.
I counted twenty five cats and kittens this morning.
And that doesn’t count Rolando Moon and Potato Beetle, who have not been around for the past little while, or the two toms that show up. Plus, I’m pretty sure there are other, younger, kittens hidden away somewhere.
With the cooler nights, I finally closed my bedroom window yesterday.
This was more complex than normal.
The cats like to sit on the window ledge, but with the window open, they could attack anything that blew or flew by. Nosencrantz in particular was getting very destructive. Even when I got the window fan and set it up, she kept trying to get at the window, knocking the fan down. I had cord running through the handle, and more across the window, to keep the fan from being pushed off the ledge, but she would jam herself in behind. I finally had to grab some of the old window screens we used for drying mind leaves, needing 2 of them to cover the window and the fan, along with a cut-to-size piece of 2 inch Styrofoam between the top of the fan and the top of the window sill. She still kept clawing at the screens (which, thankfully, we metal mesh and stronger than the window’s screen). I had to come up with a rather elaborate barricade to block access to the window, and still allow air flow and use of the fan. That included creating a barricade around the shelf near the window she likes to curl up in, because she would actually pull one of the screens out of position.
I was able to take the fan down a while ago, but still had to keep the barricades. Nosencrantz was very, very determined!
To finally close the window, I had to remove cords, that piece of Styrofoam and the extra screens. Then, once the window could finally be closed, I had to remove its screen and tuck it behind the other ones to further protect it. Then I could finally move away the barricade around the shelf.
Which meant that Nosencrantz could now access the top of the shelf again.
This is what I get to see, now.
She has such and expression. Like she’s analyzing, and trying to figure things out.
I spent most of yesterday helping my mother run errands, so I didn’t get a lot done at home. It was a lovely evening, however, so I took advantage of it to do a burn.
I had company.
It took a few sprays of the hose for him to learn to stay away from the fire ring and burn barrel, but he quickly learned that if he was in my chair, I would let him stay.
It was just too funny to turn around and find him in the cup holder!
Keith passed away peacefully during the night. When I found him this morning, he looked like he was having a lovely little snooze.
My older daughter and I buried him this morning. At first, we were going to bury him under a willow, where there used to be a flower bed, but there were too many roots under the first few inches of soil. Knowing we could not be able to dig very deep, and not wanting critters to do damage, my daughter went looking for something to use as a cover while I decided to dig among the white lilacs.
We have horrible, rock hard, rock filled soil on top of hard clay and rocks. But we traded off and made progress, until we hit some much bigger roots. We took a hatchet to those, only to find a large rock under them. After much digging around it, we realized it was just too big and was not going to move.
We were able to bury Keith, though, and cover his grave.
It seems rather appropriate that as soon as everything was in place, a kitten decided to play on the spot.
The bench was returned and will add an extra level of protection. Once the ground is frozen, we won’t have to be concerned about it. In the spring, we will add soil and plant something over his grave.
Good bye, Keith.
How strange that we would suddenly lose Keith, when Leyendecker was the one who as so very ill. He has been active, has a good appetite and is overall looking so much better… but still doesn’t seem to be able to void properly. My daughter wants to have his blood tested again before making a final decision, to confirm one way or the other, whether his is recovering.
Right now, I just feel so tired.
And not because I just spent more than an hour fighting a losing battle with a big rock.
In between helping my daughter when she needed an extra pair of hands while building the cats’ water bowl shelter, I harvested most of our onions.
These are the yellow onions from sets – there was no variety name that came with them. The netting was very handy to hold the onions for me!
I also had a helper.
This little beast was traipsing through the Black Nebula carrots, like he was on a jungle safari. Every now and then, when I tossed an onion on the netting, he would leap up from below to try and catch it! Then just hang there until I unhooked his claws and set him aside, only for him to run back into the carrots and hunt down the next onion!
The little bugger even tried it from under the mosquito netting while I dug up the Red of Florence onions. Those were split between two beds, and both are on the netting now.
We aren’t expecting rain for several days, so I’m actually going to leave them on the netting to cure for a while. Quite a few of the yellow onions no longer had their greens, but of those that do, they’ll get braided and hung up to finish curing indoors.
The Red of Florence onions, with their long shape, were a lot easier to harvest.
There are still the Tropena Lunga onions in the high raised bed, but they haven’t started to fall over yet, so I’m leaving them to grow some more.
We don’t have as many onions as I would have liked. The ones planted in the bed by the chain link fence might have one or two worth harvesting, but that’s it, and the red onions from sets planted with the yellow pear tomatoes are really small. I’m not sure if there will be much out of those.
Note for future reference. Plant a LOT more onions. These will only last us a few months, and certainly not the whole winter.
The yellow onions from sets were not any bigger than the ones we started from seed, though we don’t have other yellow onions to compare to, since they didn’t survive after transplanting. Nor did the shallots, both from seeds and from sets, planted in the same bed. At this point, we’re not seeing any advantage between starting from sets or from seed in the final product. Which means that next year, we will likely do both, again. We seriously need a better set up for starting seeds indoors. One that keeps the cats away! We’re actually looking at making a removable hardware cloth door between the living and dining rooms, as well as similar barrier over a shelf that is open on both sides. If we can keep the cats out of the living room, we can dedicate the room to starting seeds and not have to be constantly protect them from the cats. Having to keep the seedlings in the aquarium greenhouses, and under the plastic cover in the mini greenhouse, didn’t allow adequate air circulation, even with fans, and made it more difficult to provide adequate lighting.
We will have the winter to figure that out how to do that, though. 😊
Yesterday I got a call back from the third roofing company we want to get an estimate from for my brother, and arranged for him to come by today. With the gate having to be unlocked and open anyway, I took advantage of it to mow the driveway.
And then keep mowing.
And mowing.
And mowing some more!
As for the roof, we will get the estimate tomorrow. While chatting with him, I mentioned getting estimates several years ago, and what a difference it is, now. He told me that some things have gone up in price by 100% since then!
Once I get the numbers, I’ll pass them on to my brother and after that, it’s in the hands of him and my mother. Hopefully, she won’t decide to string us along again and back out of her promise to pay for it again. Prices will only keep going up. The north side of the roof, where the ice and snow melts away last, is looking really bad right now. If would be really good if we could get a new roof before winter.
I asked my daughters to switch from sleeping during the day and being up at night, so we can get more things done faster during the day. As I write this, my younger daughter is outside building a mini-kibble house for the water bowls. It’ll be nice for the cats to not have water bowls buried in snow in the winter!
That gave me the time to finish mowing the outer yard.
“Finish” being a relative term. Basically, I’ve just been chipping away at the overgrown areas, little by little. Whenever I started working on a area that hadn’t been mowed or scythed before, I’d have to go back and forth with the mower at least three time, to actually get the grass cut properly.
I got the area in front of the shed with the collapsed roof done, expanding from what I’d been able to do when I used the scythe. We need space to get in, but also to set aside the lumber we will be salvaging. There is an old metal garage door leaning against a wall in there. Once the roof pieces over it are clear, I want to set it on the ground nearby. Salvaged wood can go on top of it, and be kept off the ground. We can then cover it with a tarp or something for the winter.
I was also able to widen the area along the driveway and to where the branch pile used to be. I want to mow around that area more, as we will be doing scrap wood burns there.
What I really need to do is get a path mown to the barn. I went into there to grab some stuff I thought my daughter could use in building the kibble house. Dragging it through the tall grass – even the area I’d scythed earlier – is not easy! There are things under the collapsed shed roof that need to be moved to the barn to protect them, and there’s no way I’m going to drag those though the tall grass.
I also started to push further beyond the pump shack. Normally, there would be a lane wide enough to drive in, all the way to the back gate from here. Last year, all I managed was a walking path. At some point, I want to get at least a path mowed. I still need to do some repairs on the back gate. One side of it got ripped away from the gate post, likely by a startled deer, in the winter. It’s up again, but not repaired.
I also got good progress getting a path cleared to the storage shed. I wasn’t up to fighting that tall grass all the way, when there were higher traffic areas that I needed to finish, first. Still, it’s going to make a big difference.
We’ll give the grass clippings a day or two to dry in the sun, the rake it up for eventual use in the garden.
I so wish we could use that shed as a workshop, which is what it used to be. With my parents’ belongings stored in there, there is just no space. We can’t even get at the back of it. It’s all blocked by bags and boxes and furniture.
My sister had been digging around in there, trying to find boxes with photos to take, so I tried looking around a bit. The boxes are stacked on top of each other, and the stacks are starting to collapse. We’re going to have to get in there and figure out what to do. Part of the problem is, when it started to be used as storage for my parents’ stuff, no one had a grasp of just how much there would be, so the first things put in there were not done with any sort of plan in mind. They were just sort of stacked wherever. Soft things, like the bags of clothes (so many clothes!!!) are filling spaces that should have been left open as paths – and would have been if we’d known about all the large items that would have to be squeezed in among the boxes and bags. Even as we were moving things over there, the girls did try to rearrange things to fit more efficiently, but there was only so much they could do.
The one shed that has a good roof and isn’t rotting away, and we can’t use it.
Frustrating.
Meanwhile, my mother still gets these moments of urgency, asking me if the door is locked (we don’t have a key), and worried that someone is going to steal all her stuff. As if anyone wants her bags of old clothes that she doesn’t even want herself, or dozens of (mostly salvaged) mirrors we kept finding all over the place! For all that she left the farm years before we moved here, leaving so much stuff behind for others to deal with, she is still so attached to her belongings. Which means we’re stuck hanging on to them.
*sigh*
On a less pleasant note, I called the vet clinic this morning, asking to talk to one of the doctors. I got a call back shortly after I got back inside from mowing.
We are in a very frustrating situation.
Leyendecker seems to be doing better. His appetite is improving. He’s more active. He seems like he’s better in so many ways, but one.
He’s still not voiding.
Every time we see him try and use the litter, at best, there are just a few damp spots. The girls have seen him trying to pee in other places, too, and not succeeding. There has been nothing to clean up.
After describing this to the vet, she said the only option left would be the surgery to make him a “girl”, but there is no way we’re doing that to him. It would just leave him with other problems, and he’d still have a short life, and a much less pleasant one. The longer he can’t pee, though, the more the potassium levels will be building up again – and he was already at “potassium levels of death”, to quote the vet, when they first saw him.
There is only one option left.
The added problem?
Keith has suddenly started having problems, too.
Yesterday, my younger daughter and I watched him try and use the litter, unsuccessfully, and start yowling in distress. My poor daughter was so upset, she started crying.
One of the things Keith likes to do is run in front of us into the bathroom, then fling himself onto the mat in front of the toilet, so we can pay attention to him. Last night, I came in and found him lying on the mat and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure he was still alive until I pet him for a while and he started purring a bit and eventually shifting position. I checked him again during the night, and found him loafed around the side of the toilet, looking miserable.
I haven’t seen him yet during the day, but my husband has been keeping an eye on him, and says he is looking in really bad shape.
I brought this up with the doctor, and we’re looking at the same situation as Leyendecker – and my daughter already used up almost all her savings to pay for his treatment. Right now, she might have enough left for them both to have one final appointment with the vet.
It’s been decided, though. We’ll keep monitoring Keith. If he starts voiding again on his own, it should work out, but if not, tomorrow, I’m making an appointment for them both.
Talk about brutal.
Which really, really sucks. They are the sweetest boys. But the more time goes by, the more internal damage is happening, and the worse it will be for them.
There is no real choice.
F***
Meanwhile, we’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on. We even looked up to see if there were any recalls on cat food we didn’t know about (there is only one brand so far this year, and it’s a brand I’ve never heard of before). We make sure they have a variety of both wet and dry cat foods, and they have access to water at various points around the house. Most of the litter boxes are downstairs, but there are some upstairs, too. We did not allow the cats access to the basement until we cleaned it out, disposing of all sorts of potentially dangerous substances in the process. And yet, somehow, Cabbages was getting into something none of the other cats was getting into, that slowly poisoned her over a long period of time before she finally became sick (and is now thriving, thanks to the Cat Lady’s efforts). The vet said the toxin was either from anti-flea chemicals (which we don’t have) or fertilizers (which we don’t have in the house). So how did it happen?
Leyendecker did not have crystals in his urine, so the vet says muscle spasms, but if that were it the muscle relaxants – and he’s on two of them! – would be working.
And now Keith is having problems?
What the heck? These are all younger cats, too. Keith is the oldest of the sick kitties, and he’s only about four years old!
The Re-Farmer 