With all the stuff going on today, it was a while before I had a chance to check the trail cam files.
What a surprise I found!!
Here is a compilation of several of them.
So many deer!!!
What on earth where they all doing, hanging out at our driveway??
The Re-Farmer
I glanced out the bathroom window to see what cats were in the sun room, and …
…
Who is this??
The photo does not do justice to this massive brick of a cat.
I didn’t recognize him, but when the girls came down to see, they did. Apparently, he used to show up around the time Nicky the Nose used to, and would sometimes appear at their window. They remembered him partly because of he’s got the saddest expression ever.
I think we may be looking at Tissue’s daddy. :-D
Rolando Moon was in her spot in the window, while Potato Beetle was at the food bowls, and they were all quite chill with each other.
Huh.
I wonder if he will stick around?
The Re-Farmer
Counting today, we’re expected to have three cold days before the spring-like temperatures return.
Not that it’s particularly cold – until you step out into the wind!
The outside cats barely made an appearance this morning. They were far more interested in staying out of that wind!
The wind was mostly coming from the north, which meant stepping around the house to put seed out, was like walking into a wall.
A cold wall.
The path to the sign cam was pretty much blown in.
I paused this morning to check out the deer damage to the Chokecherry and Saskatoon bushes we uncovered while clearing out the invasive spirea at the edge of the spruce grove. Cleaning things up meant they got more sunlight and actually produced fruit during their first uncrowded summer, but now the deer can get at them. All the lower twigs are nibbled away, and there are many broken branches. And by “lower twigs”, I mean basically anything under about 7 feet. The deer can reach pretty high when they stand on their hind legs!
I wonder if these deer were among those causing damage?
I didn’t see any deer when I came out this morning. They’d already left. :-D
The winds are still high and it’s quite unpleasant out there.
Rolando Moon the Wise has staked out her spot in the sun room, where it’s much warmer and cozier! Not to mention, she has her own private food and water bowls. :-D
As for today, we’ve got a big project to work on. While doing the laundry last night, I came to the entry and found water all over the floor.
It wasn’t from the washing machine. At least not directly. It’s from the drain. I’ve long had concerns about it. When the water starts to drain, you can hear it flowing, but the tone changes until the sound stops. Basically, the water is draining out of the washing machine faster than the water is flowing through the pipes, and what I’ve been hearing is the water backing up until it reaches the end of the drain hose from the washing machine, and then you can no longer heard the water flowing. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, to see if it’s at risk of overflowing, but until now it’s been fine.
I did a larger “heavy duty” load last night, and it may have been just too much water this time.
So what I want to do is see if we can clear the drain a bit. Which means we have to move the washing machine.
The washer and dryer just fit between the built-in closet and the wall the taps are in. There are two steps from the entryway into the dining room, and the bottom step is several inches in front of the washing machine. Which is handy for short little me to stand on and reach the bottom of the washing machine, but it also means we can’t simply pull the washing machine straight out. In order to move the washing machine, we have to move out the dryer.
Since we have to move the machines out, anyhow, we’re going to clean up the mess we know is back there. The cats have been knocking things down off the shelves and, from the smell of it, they’ve been peeing back there, too. It’s just so difficult to get back there, we haven’t done it, yet. I would love to find some way to keep the cats from going back there, but no practical solution has come up yet.
I am not looking forward to this particular job. I’d almost rather be working outside, in the wind!
The Re-Farmer
I spotted these guys on the driveway cam!
They are looking to spritely!
Also, while doing my rounds this morning, I heard Canada geese for the first time this year. They’re back!
Yup. Spring is here.
The Re-Farmer
I got a phone call from the Cat Lady this morning.
Cabbages finally made it in to the special vet to be spayed this morning, and she is recovering nicely. So that is good news.
The other good news is that we have an appointment for Turmeric to be spayed, early next month.
Turmeric will be coming back to us for recovery, while also being added to the adoption list with the Cat Lady’s new rescue organization.
That’s the good news.
The not so good news is that the organization she left, with them wanting to send Saffron and Nicco to BC being the last straw for her, isn’t too happy with her. As a large organization, they have access to lots of resources – and they are making it difficult for her to access those resources!
Which is making things more difficult for her in general. As you can imagine, things are incredibly stressful for her right now!
You’d think they would be more interested in rescuing cats and be glad to work with other organizations with the same goals, but apparently not.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the things they did was stop accepting intakes through our local vet. The vet was taking in “too many” really sick cats, and the bills were really high, so they basically cut off that clinic temporarily.
Well, guess who is the vet that agreed to work with the Cat Lady?
Yup! Turmeric is going to the same local vet we’ve been using all this time!
They have become incredibly busy, though, so it’s hard to get an appointment in. I noticed a while ago that they have extended hours, and are even open on Sundays, which had been their one day off, a few months ago. Clearly, people are happy with this clinic!
The other news is with Saffron and Nicco. Using what resources she still has access to, she has worked something out with another rescue in the city. They have adoption facilities in a non-franchise pet store that is very busy. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s still better than being sent half way across the country! She’s known the woman who runs it for 20 years, so she knows they are a good place. The fur-girls will be going there, now that they are recovered from being spayed. With how successful and busy this place is, she’s expecting them to be homed within a week.
I found out something else when she contacted me about the appointment for Turmeric.
While her new rescue organization has lots of support and is getting donations, most of this is being bankrolled by her husband right now. Thankfully, he owns a business that didn’t get destroyed by government restrictions over the past two years, and can afford it for now. So all the out-of-pocket stuff they’ve been doing has really been out of his pocket! So when we bring Turmeric in to be spayed, and will not be getting any bill for it, it’s because HE is paying for it!
What an amazing man. Her whole family has really been all in with her cat rescue operations!
All the more reason I want to help out with the fundraiser I’ve got through Ko-fi.
The only problem is, as with the rescues, not a lot of people are donating. I’ll keep the fundraiser going for a while longer, but if people aren’t interested, I’ll just shut it down and refund the (much appreciated!) donations currently made. Everyone is going through hard times right now, and I understand that they have priorities that are higher on the list than cats! We shall see how it works out.
As for myself, I’m just in awe of the Cat Lady, and all she is going through right now, trying to do right for the kitties.
She’s awesome!
The Re-Farmer
How many can you see in this photo?
(I’ll show where they all are, below.)
Once again, the kibble was all gone from the food trays, and I don’t think we can blame that piebald deer this time.
We did get some rain and a light snow last night, so we could see tracks all over the place.
These are kitty paw prints.
With their pretty little toe beans, well defined in the snow.
These are NOT kitty paw prints.
Check out those claws!!! Aside from the claws the paw prints are about the same size as most of the kitty prints.
These are from a skunk, and I found some tracks around the kibble house, too. I know for sure it was a skunk, because I saw it running around our driveway last night, on the garage cam’s live feed.
Skunks don’t go into total hibernation. It’s more of a “lethargic sleep” than full hibernation, and they do come out now and again, throughout the winter. February and March are their mating season, so not only would they be out in full, we’d have pregnant females by now, looking for food.
Speaking of food…
Did you find all twelve hungry kitties in the kibble house?
Tuxedo Mask is almost completely hidden by Creamsicle Jr, in the far right corner of the kibble house. I love that you can juuuust see the tips of his ears above Creamsicle’s back.
Then there’s one of the ‘iccuses peaking from behind the kibble house, at the tray on the ground.
Along with these twelve, there were three more in the sun room. Not quite all of the yard cats, but close!
The Re-Farmer
I spotted a strange bird in the trees, yesterday…
It seems to be a weird species of owl. :-D
Things continue to remain mild; I think last night was the first time we didn’t go below freezing, overnight.
This morning, there was no kibble at all left outside, and even the sun room bowls were empty, and the room was slightly ransacked. The outside heated water bowl was overturned, the there was still liquid water in the other bowls – and the hole in the ice left by the heated water bowl is full of water! That cats even seem to prefer drinking out of the ice bowl instead of the actual bowls. :-D
As expected, when I did my rounds, I found the new path dug to the fire pit had lots of new hoof and paw prints going back and forth. :-D
No digging today, though. Too wet. Supposedly, we’ve had rain today, though it seems to be one of those things that showed up on the weather radar, but not outside our window.
So today, I got some work done on an indoor project, which I will post about next. :-)
The Re-Farmer
Today is turning out a bit cooler than yesterday.
The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.
When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.
Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.
Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.
While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.
They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.
They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.
While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.
This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!
The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.
To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.
This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. ;-)
Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.
We have a fire pit again! Yay!
Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.
I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.
The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.
There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.
Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.
Critters have already made their own path to the pile!
There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.
Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.
There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!
I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. :-D
Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.
Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL
The Re-Farmer
Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!
Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.
It’s awesome out there!
The outside cats are loving it.
I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.
We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.
In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.
If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!
Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!
The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.
Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.
I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! :-D
Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!
I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.
This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.
One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.
This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.
The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.
I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!
The Re-Farmer
Butterscotch, in her favourite hidey hole.
She has been coming out more often, even with other cats around, though she wants nothing to do with them, and is more likely to growl and hiss, even if they’re just going by, than anything else.
Interestingly – and not necessarily in a good way – she and Beep Beep are not getting along at all. I’m sure they remember each other, but Beep Beep has been pretty aggressive towards Butterscotch. Mind you, Beep Beep bullies the other cats a fair bit, too, but she seems to be unhappy to be reunited with Butterscotch!
The main thing is the Butterscotch actually does seem to be happier now that she’s indoors, which was so totally unexpected based on her past behaviour. She would just rather be with people (not me, though! LOL) instead of other cats.
I can totally understand that feeling. :-D
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 