While coming back to the sun room door after working in the garden, I spotted some unexpected movement.
Kittens, dashing under the cat’s house!
One of the mamas brought her babies to the kibble house, and they are not kittens I recognise.
It took some patience, some hiding behind the hand rail near the sun room door, and my phone zoomed in, to finally get some photos. This was the best I could get, and it’s cropped quite tightly.
As so often happens, I see more in photos than I could in the moment. In this case, it was finding that there is something wrong with the little calico’s eye. Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing when they’ll even be back at the kibble house again, never mind any chance of catching it to get a better look. That doesn’t look like the usual eye infections we sometimes see in the yard cats.
Hopefully, we will have more success socializing this year’s kittens than last year. Hopefully, whatever is wrong with it is something that will heal on its own.
Poor baby!
In the end, I think I saw a third, darker kitten, but I’m not certain.
Got awakened by cat shenanigans in the wee hours, repeatedly.
Don’t they look so innocent?
Actually, only Cheddar was responsible for some of the noises. David and Ginger are among those who can’t be in my room overnight. David is sometimes allowed in, but Nosencrantz and Butterscotch hide from him. Ginger actually becomes aggressive towards them! Cheddar, they are content with, but he has a terrible habit of scratching at the door to be let out – but when I get up to let him out, he runs over to the food bowls and starts begging, instead! Nosencrantz, meanwhile, has troubles getting to a spot on the shelf that she likes. Normally, she can go from my vanity to the window sill to the shelf, but the window sill now has a fan in it. What she hasn’t figured out is that she can still get to the spot on the shelf by using the office chair, but she won’t do it. The noise of her attempts to get at the shelf, and the things that get knocked about (including the fan, in spite of it being braced) is getting very tiresome.
And that’s just the start of the nightly interruptions – but it’s still better than all out cat fights!
I eventually gave up trying to sleep and headed out to do the morning rounds a bit early. Nice and cool, but my goodness, the mosquitoes were insane!
It looks like we have one, maybe two, losses among the sweet potatoes. They don’t look like they’ve been eaten by anything. One just looks withered away. The other still has a leaf trying to grow, while the rest has withered away. The rains might have something to do with it. I don’t know. We did have two extra slips in our package, though, and the grow bag is probably too small for 3 plants, so this is not necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t think we got more rain last night, though we are very humid, so everything was soaked by dew and there is still standing water in a few places. I’m hoping things will dry up enough to get some weed trimming done, if not actual mowing. We are supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F today, which shouldn’t be too bad to work in. People are getting a bit freaked out because we’re supposed to hit 31C/88F in a couple of days, as if this was some new thing. Which I don’t understand. The record high for today was 37C/99F, set back in 1995. The record high for the day we’re expected to hit 31C/88F is 32C/90F, also set in 1995. As far as I know, most of the people alarmed by the predicted highs are old enough to remember a much hotter June in 1995. As much as I dislike the heat, it’s still preferable to today’s record cold of 4C/39F, set in 2001.
Then, just to make my morning even more “fun”…
The enter key on my keyboard stopped working last night.
Which is when I discover just how constantly that key gets used. In some places, like on Discord, it’s not even possible to post comments, because there is no “post” button to click on. The family has a Discord channel we use to message each other, as it’s the one app we all have and use regularly.
So this morning, I went digging around for spare keyboards. We have some from upgrading computer systems. We never use the keyboards they come with, as they generally suck. My own keyboard is an old Microsoft ergonomic split keyboard. It’s painful for me to type on anything else. When I wore off the keys from my original one, my husband got me a split keyboard with letters that lit up, so that wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but I wasn’t able to use it. So my husband gave me his keyboard, which was identical except you could still read the keys. He tried the light up one but had issues with it, and ended up using my old one. He doesn’t use the alphabet keys as much as he uses the number pad and arrow keys, so not being able to read the keys wasn’t a problem for him.
Yes, I do touch type, but sometimes, I just need to see those keys.
While digging around, I found the original keyboard for my husband’s desktop and tried that. It is way too tiny, and hard on my wrists. My husband found the split keyboard he’d bought me, so I tried that again. Typing on that was worse than the standard keyboard. All the keys are slightly off, but worse of all is that they split the space bar, so it’s under the hand instead of across the middle. I went back to the standard keyboard, and soon gave up trying to type on that.
I ended up going back to the one with the enter key that doesn’t work. I’d completely forgotten that there is an entre key with the number pad. That one still works.
I’m willing to put up with that, so I can finally type again!
I do find myself wondering how long I’ll be able to type at all. The arthritis in my fingers is getting worse. The pain isn’t as much of a problem as the reduced mobility. I’m slowly losing the use of my hands, and fine motor control is being lost even faster.
Frustrating.
Bah. Enough of the negative stuff. I have work to do. I can still do that!
We had thunderstorms pass over us during the night, and it was still raining when I headed out to do my morning rounds.
The girls heard cat’s arguing with each other last night. When they went out to check, Potato Beetle came into the sun room, where he got to spend a nice, dry night, with his own food and water. Thankfully, that meant he had no interest in the food when he went out in the morning, because there’s a very wet and bedraggled TDG looking back at me in the photo – and he’s the one Potato had been threatened by!
All the cats were looking so wet!
And you can certainly see why. All the areas that had finally been almost dry are wet again, including this spot the cats normally use to get under the storage house. Even though they can’t get under there right now, because of the water, they still run through here. So do the skunks. The grass is so tall, you can’t really see that the whole area is under water again.
That lilac bush is struggling so much! It’s basically drowning. It still managed to bloom, though!
The main garden area has got a lot of areas with standing water. If we are to loose anything we planted at this point, it’s going to be from being drowned!
Along the bean tunnel, however, I saw both types of beans have started coming up!
I didn’t look too closely at things because, even though it was raining, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. They don’t mind being out in the rain!
I was keeping a close eye on the forecasts and weather radar. They were predicting a series of thunderstorms throughout the morning and afternoon, including at times when I would expect to be on the road with my mother, to take her to her doctor’s appointment.
So I left early. I figured, I could fill up the tank on my mother’s car and find something to do before it was time to pick up my mother. I’m trying to spend as little time at her place as possible, right now.
Which reminds me… my brother used his Power of Attorney to speak on my mother’s behalf and get her place treated for bedbugs. It’s a good thing he did. She could never have navigated the calls or followed through on them. It was totally beyond her abilities.
Her building is owned by a the provincial government, but the department that administrates it was almost impossible to get to. He got numbers to call from the senior’s centre in my mother’s town, chased a few of them down, found that the contact person he normally would have talked to was away for the week, sent some emails (because he was doing this from work and couldn’t be on hold for 20 minutes, over and over!) and eventually found out that the province is aware there are bedbugs in her building. It’s a problem with quite a few buildings they run. So much so, that they are being treated on a schedule. The next time they are in my mother’s area, she will get a note slid under her door with date and time and instructions. Which my mother won’t understand. My brother was supposed to get a copy of that note and its instructions emailed to him, but he never got it. All he knows for sure is, she’s supposed to be out of her apartment for 6 hours while they take care of the rest. When he told my mother this, she said she would just hang out in the lobby.
For 6 hours.
While her apartment – and any others in the building – are getting sprayed.
My mother, who has respiratory issues…
Yeah…
No.
We’ll find other arrangements.
Once I got to my mother’s, we headed out again soon after. We got to the clinic quite early, but she ended up getting called in early, too!
Oh, the poor doctor.
We were there to talk about breathing issues she’s been having, but when he came in, instead of telling him about it, she started saying things like, “please help me with my breathing…” as if he already knew everything. She and I had been talking about it, and it was as if she thought he somehow heard and knew everything she had said to me!
Between the two of us, we managed to drag out enough information from her that he could figure out what sorts of tests to have done. Any tentative conclusions we both reached by the end of it may be correct, but other things need to be ruled out, first. It will take a few weeks, at least, before all the tests are done and he gets the results.
So that worked out fairly well. Even as we left, though, the doctor commented to me that my mother’s symptoms are quite strange – and they certainly are! Hopefully, we’ll have some answers, or at least a direction to look, after the tests are done. The one that will take the most time will require a call from the city, then someone has to pick up some equipment for my mother to use at home, then the equipment, and the data collected, returned. It may take up to 3 weeks, before all that’s done.
The rain continued off and on, and there was still severe weather on the radar, so we didn’t do my mother’s usual stop at a restaurant (I made sure to ask if she’d had lunch before we left!), and I took her home, with only a stop at the grocery store first. Since I was there with her car, it allowed her to pick up and stock up on a lot more, so she took advantage of it.
I feel much better, knowing my mother has at least some food stocked up, even if it’s just for about a week or so.
It had stopped raining for most of my drive home, more or less, but I’m glad I didn’t linger. The gravel roads are being destroyed by all the rain again. My mother’s car handled it well so far, but we’re supposed to get more storms tomorrow, and that spot near our place is already only passable on one side again. The road past our driveway is still closed, too, for all that I regularly see traffic going by, including small cars. One of these days, I should make the walk to the washout to see how it looks.
On a completely different topic, I found a site before I left for my mother’s, and sent some links to my family to check out while I was away. It was one of those “is this too good to be true?” places. It’s a clearance site for Lowe’s, with various sheds at massive discounts. As in, insanely massive. They were all in the same price range, roughly between $85-$90 Cdn, regardless of original price. It seems that these are all abandoned orders – stuff people already bought and paid for, but never picked up.
After much discussion, we decided to take a chance.
They have a 30 day trial period, but it’s unlikely we’d put it together within that time. We’d open the box to check, but would need to make a foundation for it before we could assemble it.
I was sorely tempted by their largest shed. That one did not come with a floor, which I could live with, but also did not come with shingles. Which is not a big deal, but for something that large, we wouldn’t be able to get them for quite some time.
So we went with a plastic one that was the largest, complete shed available. At 20’x8′, it includes two sets of double doors, 2 windows, 2 skylights, some shelves, shutters and a “foundation”, among other things. We’re a bit confused about the included foundation, because it also says a foundation is needed. Looking at the diagram, I think they mean what looks like a 4″ sub floor as the included foundation. We’d have to find and prepare a spot for a foundation, somewhere in the inner yard, where it would be most useful.
The total cost, in Canadian dollars, came out to just over $133 after shipping. Which is insanely cheap. Hopefully, we will actually get what we ordered, and it’s as good as the specs describe it. If it is, it will be a big help. If not… well, hopefully, we’d be able to get our money back.
The thing is, I’ve looked at other sites with deeply discounted products, including things like chicken coops, sheds, garage kits, etc., that I could quickly spot as scam sites. Seeing images stolen from other sites was usually the first warning! This one, however, actually looks legitimate.
Well, we’ll know soon enough. And if it does turn out to be legitimate, we will certainly get more! One that is currently on the site is a 12’x8′ cedar Cabana, with a split door and 2 windows with window boxes. It’s pretty much exactly what my younger daughter wants as the focal point of the peony garden she wants to plant, well away from the house. There’s currently a branch pile that needs to be chipped where she wants to plant it, so it’s not like we’re in any hurry! Looking around at some of the other sheds, there are even some that could easily be converted to a chicken coop, and cost far less than if we build one ourselves, even using salvaged wood.
It’s been a while since I posted a picture of the yard cats. They’ve been really skittish, lately.
There are 6 in the kibble house, plus I saw Rosencrantz at the kibble tray under the shrine. Which, I believe, makes 7 mamas. I also saw Potato Beetle and, later on, TDG and Toesencrantz. I suspect their skittishness is related to the skunks that have been coming out for kibble, too! I’m starting to put less kibble out, more often, so the cats get a chance to finish most of the kibble off before the skunks show up.
While doing my morning rounds, I started bringing over what I needed to start working on what will be the squash patch. That meant moving the wheelbarrow almost the entire length of the lilac hedge.
They are opening up slightly later than the ones closer to the house, and there are SO MANY flower clusters! I just love this hedge. It took my mother decades to slowly plant them along the fence line, starting from a single lilac bush at this end. Which is pretty amazing!
Also, we seriously need to mow in here, but finishing the transplanting is priority right now! Unfortunately, the tall grass hides more mosquitoes, and we’re already running out of bug spray again! :-D
I haven’t been able to get photos of the outside cats lately. I have been going out earlier, to avoid the heat (ha! Yeah; I know. “Heat” is relative), and few are around. Today, I allowed myself to sleep in a bit, so there was a whole crowd waiting for me at the door.
I spotted 10 in total this morning, including Potato Beetle who had his private breakfast in the sun room, and Sad Face, sneaking in to the tray under the shrine, being very careful around Rosencrantz.
It’s entirely possible all the cats in the above photo are female, which means they might all have kittens somewhere. For sure, there’s 5 that are female, now that we realize that Bradiccus is a dude.
I didn’t do all my rounds this morning, wanting to go into town to run some errands. I even switched out the trail cam memory cards on the way out, since the sign cam can be reached from the road side of the fence.
The grader went through again yesterday. The road looked pretty ugly, but was much better to drive on, including the bad patch near our place. The road is still really soft there, but at least it doesn’t have massive ruts and mud anymore.
I was just coming up on the highway when I noticed a bunch of cars parked on the road, near someone’s driveway. I figured there was a garage sale happening, and my mother had given me cash to pay for gas, so I decided to stop.
I’m glad I did.
One of the first things I spotted was a hybrid mountain bike. I asked about it, and the guy told me a gear skipped and the brakes weren’t very good. Both things my husband knows how to fix. He was asking $10 for it, so I bought it. There are several bikes in the garage, but they aren’t in good shape, and not as high end as the bike I just got, and we don’t have the time to dig them out and see what work needs to be done on them, so getting this one for $10 for now is fine. It’s a tall bike; something that might be good for my 6′ tall husband, but that’s not a problem.
After paying for the bike, I wandered around to look at other stuff before going back to the bike to load it up. I was walking around a display on the ground when I suddenly noticed just what it was I was walking around.
A miter saw.
!!!
So I moved the bike over to the saw and went back to ask about it. There wasn’t much to tell, really. It works. He said I could plug it in and test it if I wanted, but I took his word for it. It’s an older saw, and pretty basic. He was asking $30 for it.
I bought it.
There used to be a miter saw here, in the shed that used to be my late brother’s workshop, but is now a storage warehouse. I’ve seen pictures of it, and it was higher end than this one, but since that one grew legs and walked away, I don’t care. An older miter saw is better than none at all!
Between this and the table saw we dragged out of a shed, it will make things much easier when we can start building our chicken coop, or any other projects we are talking about.
Now we just have to learn how to use it. :-D We’ve never had one before.
Little by little, we’re replacing some of the tools that disappeared while this place was empty. I’m very glad I decided to stop. I don’t normally do garage sales – they were all over the place! – but not only did I find a couple of good deals, but I finally got to meet our neighbour. It was funny when I asked if he could bring the miter saw to the van while I loaded the bike while he got my change. He recognised it from our driving by so regularly. :-D He joked about how having the garage sale was the only time he got to meet his neighbours! I know what he means, that’s for sure. :-)
So I’m all excited for when we are able to start working on some larger projects.
Which won’t be until after we’re done getting the garden in!
Now to figure out where to keep it. There’s no more room in the sun room. Maybe we can find a space in the garage.
Cheddar is the one cat that Butterscotch and Nosencrantz will tolerate. He knows he can go in and out of my office/bedroom pretty much any time he wants, if he sits by the door. I let him in while walking by. When I came into the room later, I found him like this.
He seemed very perplexed as he walked around my bed, with the neck pillow on his shoulders!
Best guess: he tried to burrow under my covers and burrowed into the neck pillow, instead. :-D
Before I get into what took up most of my day, here are some kitty pictures.
While the mama burst out of the shelf and hid behind the kibble house again, I put some food in both shelves of the shelf shelter, then stuck my phone in and managed to get a decent picture of the babies.
They are SO mashed into that corner!
Today was a warmer day with no rain, so I started taking the transplants outside.
Mama did not like that.
After the transplants were out and I continued my morning rounds, I came around and found the little calico in the grass by the kibble house.
I can’t tell if it’s eyes are shut because of its age, or because it has gooby eyes like David and Keith did, when they were little.
I put it back in the shelf, then found it in the grass a few minutes later.
I put it back in the shelf, then found it in the grass again.
I put it in the shelf, then found a different one in the grass!
That is one ticked off looking kitten. :-D
Sadly, the mama kept trying to take the kittens out, even while I was around. I kept putting them back after she would eventually drop them, hoping she would stop.
She just waited until I was gone.
After I was back inside, I went into the sun room several times to check. Which is when I had a surprise.
That white tail tip. There’s only one grey tabby with a white tail tip.
The mama is Bradiccus!
We were sure Bradiccus was male!
I suppose the first hint should have been that we still saw Bradiccus around, even after Chadiccus, Agnoos and Tuxedo Mask all disappeared. The young males all tend to take off shortly after the snow is gone. Sometimes they come back for the winter. Sometimes we never see them again.
I guess that means the other ‘iccuses that are still around are female, too. They run around too much for us to really see, one way or the other.
I had another surprise later on. While puttering in the kitchen, I could see the two mamas that are co-parenting, hovering around the big branch pile, near where the entrance into the pile is. The last time I did a burn, I had heard a kitten in there, but haven’t heard any since, so I was sure they’d moved it. So it was quite unexpected to see the little tuxedo emerge with one of the moms. Then all three of them went across to my late father’s car before disappearing around it.
When I came out later on, I took a quick peak, and sure enough, the shelf shelter was empty. Bradiccus had moved her kittens out. I figured it would happen, but I still hoped they wouldn’t be dragged off again to some unknown nest.
Last night, my daughters heard the sounds of a kitten meowing outside. It was dark and raining, so we went out to check.
What we found, barely visible in the shadows, was a kitten on the patio blocks in front of the shelf shelter. It appeared that a cat was moving her kittens into the shelf! By the time I got out, there was no sign of the mother, but I saw the kibble trays were all empty. After topping those up, I quickly scooped up the cold, wet kitten – it was even smaller than the last kitten we found in the lawn! – and tucked it into the bottom shelf shelter. I just wanted to get it out of the rain, and it would be easy for the mama to find.
When I came out of the sun room to do my morning rounds, one of the ‘iccuses exploded out of the shelf shelter. I came prepared, though. I grabbed a scoop of kibble, along with my usual container full, and quickly poured some into both shelves that are insulated and enclosed, then filled the rest of the kibble trays. Potato Beetle emerged from the cats’ house while I did, but he preferred to follow me into the sun room to eat there. Aside from him, I saw only 3 other yard cats, and I think they were all mamas.
While going past the shelf after setting out some bird seed (we have no feeders out right now, because of the racoons, so it’s a daily toss onto the ground), I quickly stuck my phone into the openings and got pictures.
There were kittens in the higher shelf. It was terribly out of focus, but I could see three kittens.
Just a little while ago, I went out to chase a pair of skunks out of the kibble house. The mama ran out of the shelter shelf and hid around the back of the kibble house, so I quickly tried to take another picture.
I was wrong! There are four kittens. :-)
I hope the mama is willing to let her litter stay here. We will try to avoid using the sun room door as much as we can, since it’s right next to the shelf. Good thing my brother did a quick fix on the main entry door! It’s still a high traffic area, though. Not only is the kibble and bird seed store in there, so are many of our yard and garden tools and supplies and, of course, the transplants in the sun room, with the outside platform we put them next to it, too. The fact that she actually brought her kittens so this shelf anyway suggests maybe her previous location got rained out or something.
I believe this is now the third litter we’ve seen kittens from, though the other two have been moved twice now. Broccoli has her litter around somewhere, too, and I’m sure Ghost Baby must have a litter. How many will survive long enough to start coming to the kibble house with their moms, we won’t know for probably at least another month, maybe two. The shyer mothers tend to keep their babies away longer, but after a while, they start coming over on their own.
Hopefully, these ones will do well in their new home.
The Re-Farmer 