I’m happy to say that Beep Beep and Fenrir are now at home, recovering nicely. They did very well at the vet today.
Once I lifted Fenrir onto the bed to remove the bandage on her “wrist”, she settled right in, and is still sitting there as I write this.
Beep Beep, on the other hand, has been constantly in motion! I was told she had a bit of a panic when the IV was removed, and she was pretty vocal for the ride home. They are now isolated in the room with me, and she’s only just now settled down on the bed, though she is sitting and staring at the door with great intensity!
It took a while to get that bandage off of her!
We’ve got different instructions than with the outside cats. Water only for now, then a bit of food to see if they can handle solids yet, this evening. Starting tomorrow morning, we have a pain killer to give them. The dose is based on weight, which they highlighted on the package in different colours. Beep Beep is over 3kg, or about 7 pounds, while Fenrir is just barely over 2kg, or about 5 pounds. I did ask about her small size, and if it should be a concern, and was told no. She is just a small cat. As for the pain killer, we have a syringe to administer it – a much smaller one than was we used to feed Cabbages!
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 can put the medication on their food, but only if we’re sure they won’t eat each other’s food, which… ha! Not going to happen. So we will dose them directly into their mouths.
Beep Beep is not going to like that!
It should be interesting to see if she has a “catonality” change, like Butterscotch did, after this surgery.
Once I got the call telling me when to pick them up, I left early to run some errands first. One of them was to pick up the soft sided carrier used to transport Cabbages to the cat lady for medical car. This time, it did make it to the donation bin at the shelter – and I was happy to see actual donations in there, too. Last time, it was empty.
I was also able to connect with our mechanic and talk to him about our brakes on the van. I told him about what the garage in the city told me, and then the warning light turning on the next day. He thought there might be some water in the fluid, and asked me to drop it off so he can check it with his tester. Once he does that, he’ll be able to tell me more, and give me an estimate. The estimate will determine if we can get it fixed right away, or if it has to wait until the end of the month. February, at least, is a short month! :-)
I’ll also be able to give him the printout and we can talk about the other things they listed as needing to be checked out, and make any future appointments needed, as the budget allows.
I’ll be dropping the van off the day after tomorrow. He did suggest tomorrow, but the girls have their own shopping list for a city trip, so I’ll be driving in with one of them, using my mother’s car. It’s due for a highway run, anyhow.
Tomorrow, we still have a forecast of 1C/34F. Today, we warmed up to at least -8C/17C. The thermometer in the sun room reached 8C/46F, so that was quite nice for the kitties in there! And now, even my other weather apps are showing a high of 3C/37F, a few days from now. If we do get that warm, it’s going to feel downright tropical out there! :-D
This morning, a daughter and I took Beep Beep and Fenrir to the vet, which meant doing the morning rounds a bit earlier.
At least it’s light out, now.
The heated water bowl was empty again.
Because Beep Beep and Fenrir needed to fast, I had them closed up with me, overnight. Which meant I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I had cats trying to claw the door open from both sides! When I made the mistake of going to the bathroom before going to bed, I had Beep Beep escape, dashing down to the basement. I caught her before she ate anything, though. Then I tried to get her back into the bedroom, only to have Fenrir escape. I caught her, only to have Beep Beep escape again, and she was NOT going to let me catch her! I finally had to snag a daughter to catch her, then hang on to her while I dashed into the bedroom, grabbed Fenrir and held on while my daughter quickly tossed Beep Beep onto the bed before any other cats got in.
I had only one carrier in the room with me, but that was enough for me to be able to get out of the room long enough to grab the second one, this morning. I had both carriers on the bed, with Beep Beep in the hard sided one (where she was trying to claw her way out!) before doing the inside cat morning routine and warming water up for the outside cats. Before heading outside, I went to move the carriers closer to the old kitchen door for later.
When I walked into my room, I found Beep Beep and the carrier gone from the bed.
!!!
I found it on the side of the bed, sitting as if it had been placed there. :-D She had managed to roll the carrier completely off the bed, and it landed right side up!
The plan was to do the critter part of my morning rounds first, then get my mother’s car started and warming up, so I made sure to hang my purse inside the sun room, so I could just grab and go.
It’s a good thing I did.
The old kitchen door into the house hadn’t latched properly behind me. Looking in from the sun room, I found it crawling with exploring cats!
Thankfully, my daughter was able to take care of that, while I went to my mother’s car – after scraping away more ice and snow, just to be able to open one of the doors wide enough – and getting everything ready so we just needed to grab the cats and go.
The drop off went well, with my daughter taking the time to warn them about some of their quirks. We just happen to be bringing two of our “meanest” cats this time. :-D
I still haven’t been able to connect with our mechanic, so we swung by the garage to see if I could talk to him about our van. Unfortunately, though it was supposed to be open, he wasn’t there. He’s on his own, so if he has to get anything, there’s no one to do it for him and he has to lock up. :-/ Hopefully, we’ll get another chance, later.
Once we got home, I was able to spend more time with our recovering kitties.
Nosencrantz doesn’t like to leave her favourite spot under the light bulb. It burnt out last night, but I found one last full spectrum bulb in our stash of incandescent bulbs – this light is meant for seedlings, not cats! :-D – but it’s brighter than the old one, so I wasn’t sure if she’s still like it. She clearly has no issues!
Butterscotch, meanwhile, has switched favourite beds! Usually, we find her in an enclosed box bed on the bottom shelf, but now she’s gone up a left and has been hanging out in the open bed. We’ve also been finding her loafed under the ceramic heat bulb more often, too.
She accepted pets, but had no interest in leaving her bed! :-D
Meanwhile, we have already heard back from the vet. They were checking details about our arrangement with the organization that’s helping us with all this, in regards to the shots and deworming and the like, as was arranged when we brought in Butterscotch and Nosencrantz.
Beep Beep had already been done and they were about to start on Fenrir. Since I had her on the phone, I brought up what they had found with Butterscotch, and how far gone her uterus was, and if there was anything similar with Beep Beep. It was quite a bit larger, and looking a bit worn out, just from having to many litters, but it was not so badly damaged as Butterscotch’s was. We don’t know how old either of them are, but I think we can now safely assume that Beep Beep is the younger one. For all we know, Butterscotch is her mother.
So we will get a call back later, to let us know when they can be picked up.
Meanwhile, the cat lady messaged me last night, with a reminder to have Beep Beep and Fenrir start their fast. While I had her, I asked about Cabbages.
Yesterday was her last day on antibiotics. Yay!! She’s eating quite a lot now, and today, she be moved out of the cage, to their “cat room.” In a few days, she will have a buddy joining her. That would be the more recent frozen cat they picked up, that lost its ears.
I’m just amazed by how quickly she’s bouncing back from being at death’s door the way she was!
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.
So now we are just waiting for the call from the vet, for when we can bring Beep Beep and Fenrir home. Since they are both inside cats, we won’t have to do any isolating, but we’ll be keeping a litter box, food and water in my office/bedroom for a while, so they don’t have to go far.
The next trip to the vet, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be taking cats in, and they won’t be coming back. The cat lady will be taking them to fosters for recovery, and then they will be adopted into forever homes. As she’s able to book dates with the vet, we’ll keep doing that for the rest of the adoptable cats (the males are already fixed, as is one female) through March and April. By then, we should be able to start snagging outside cats, starting with the ones we can catch easily (which all happen to be male). Then, once it’s warm enough to do so safely, she will lend us traps for the outside cats that we haven’t been able to socialize at all.
It’s going to be weird, to not have so many cats around!
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were doing very well, this morning. They both seem to be enjoying their recovery period in the sun room! Nosencrantz wants more attention than Butterscotch, but not enough that I can get a good look to see how the ear mite status is. Butterscotch is still so much calmer now. She’ll come over for pets and I was even able to pick her up this morning, but she will not let me check the surgical site. I’m not about to risk injuring it by forcing her; so as long as there aren’t any concerning warning signs, I figure she’s doing fine. Amazingly, she still has shown no interest in trying to escape the sun room, which is so totally different from the past. Granted, when we were trying to keep her in the sun room for lengths of time before, it was because she was about to have kittens. Once she had them, she was more than content to let Beep Beep parent both litters while she tore her way through the screen on the old door.
If this behavioural change keeps up, Butterscotch may actually be willing to become an indoor cat!
We shall see. After all those years outdoors, it would be nice for her final years to be in comfort and safety.
By the time I’m done taking care of the sun room kitties, there’s usually a crowd outside the door, waiting for their kibble! Chadiccus, however, was much more polite about it and wanting attention before food. :-)
The water in the heated bowl was almost completely gone again, and it had been very full. It does make me wonder what other critters are coming around at night, to drink. The snow around the kibble house and water bowls is too hard packed for tracks. One of these days, it would be nice to have a spare camera set up on the area, just to see what’s going on! :-)
I’ve not been seeing quite as many cats, all at once, of late. I haven’t seen Potato Beetle in a while. Since he came back, he had been more aggressive about being the Alpha male – though he was tackling the females as much as the males. That seemed to end after I found him with that injury above one eye. It was pretty minor and healing up nicely, the last I saw, but it seems that battle lost him his status. I think I might have seen him this morning, but he slunk away before I could get a good look and be sure.
While putting the food and water out, I heard a loud yowling from the outer yard. I’ve heard it before, but when I when to check, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. This time, I saw Creamsicle Baby out by the pump shack. I’m still not sure it was him, as he’s developed a very squeaky little meow. I went to check closer and decided the pump shack door needed to be shoveled out.
This is where the cats usually get in and out of the pump shack. When the driveway was cleared, a pile of snow was made near the pump shack. While it does not block the door, there’s a ridge of snow in front that’s pretty high. With the winds we’ve been having, more snow has drifted in front of the door. The cats are still squeezing their way through, as you can see in the photo above, but I wanted to make it easier for them. It took breaking up a lot of snow with the ice chipper before I could dig a path, but I got it clear.
The door opens inward, so I didn’t have to worry about digging it out too much. Once I got it clear enough, I went in and cleared away some snow that had blown through the hole.
I had a bit of a surprise when I opened the door, though. One of the lights was on! I forgot to shut it off, the last time I was in there. It’s a CFL bulb, not very bright, and not near a window facing the house, so we never saw that it was on. :-D Ah, well. No harm done.
When repairing the south facing window of the pump shack a couple of summers ago, I deliberately left an opening that used to have the chimney from a wood burning stove running through it. The stove is long gone, but with a pile of tires on the outside, and various junk on the inside, it’s a way for the cats to get in and out. The shack itself is just a frame with cladding on the outside, and I noticed a new hole in the wall, where some cladding has broken. It’s not visible from the outside, as there are sheets of aluminum against the bottom of the wall on that side.
On our list of things to work on is to fix up the pump shack. The concrete floor is badly cracked up, and the old cladding – which would be quite a bit older than I am – is looking water damaged and has gaps. It would be awesome to turn this building into a little workshop and, of course, we want to get the old well repaired. There is a lot of stuff in there I just don’t know what to do with, including bags of ancient clothing and rolled up awnings stuffed into the rafters, broken furniture, an old fridge that I remember my parents using for cream cans, and even an old, tiny, two burner electric stove sitting in the corner where the wood burning cookstove used to be. That old cookstove was what we used to heat water for baths, before my dad had the well dug next to the house and got running water and an indoor bathroom. If we can fix the well and fix up the pump shack, we could turn it into a summer kitchen for canning.
That would be very handy.
After clearing a cat path to the door, I put feed out for the deer and birds – interrupting two deer that were at the feeding station! I had to interrupt them again, to go switch out the memory cards on the trail cam by the sign.
That location is a real pain to get to in the winter!!! At least I don’t have to switch the cards as often, there. Between the snow and the plow ridges, I’m not at all concerned that our vandal will fight his way over to the sign and try to steal it, like the old one, or damage it.
Not even the deer will go through the area in front of the sign! A nicely plowed road is so much easier. :-D
Coming back to the house, I found these two babies, bellies full and watching the world go by in warmth and comfort!
These cats may be semi-feral, but they do get pampered as much as we can! :-D
Rolando Moon had claimed the prime real estate! She’s such a meany to the other cats, they don’t even try to fight her for this favourite spot.
Gosh, that expression! :-D
While still a bit chilly today, we’re supposed to warm up quite a bit tomorrow – perfect for taking Beep Beep and Fenrir in to the vet. My Weather Network app on my desktop has suddenly gone haywire, so I used the app that came with my computer.
Of course, all the apps are showing something different, since they all seem to be connected to different weather stations, even though they’re all supposed to be for our specific area. This is the only one that is showing us going above freezing, in the long range forecast. Above freezing in the middle of February? Yeah, I’ll take that, thanks. It’ll make things messy, but I’d rather have a nice, slow melt of all this snow, then for things to warm up all at once, later on. With the amount of snow we have this winter, as much as it’s needed, if it melts before the municipalities get a chance to clear the ditches, we’ll get flooding. Where we are doesn’t get too bad anymore. When I was a kid, there were a couple of sections of road that would get washed out every spring. Since then, a network of municipal drainage ditches have been dug through farmers’ fields that have been doing a good job of preventing that, as has taking trees out along the sides of the roads in strategic locations. There are still a couple of spots that are at risk of being washed out, if there is enough snowmelt all at once, but we are able to use alternative routes to avoid them.
If we have a wet enough spring, we might even be able to do a controlled burn in some sections of the outer yard this year. Wouldn’t that be nice!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Seeing those warmer temperatures in the forecast has me looking way too far ahead right now! :-D
The Re-Farmer
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 had another storm sweep through the area, but that climate bubble sitting over us resulted in our having a bit of snow and wind, but nothing that could possibly be called a storm.
The outside cats are quite good with that!
Especially since it’s also warming up a bit.
I even got to pet the Distinguished Guest this morning.
Their heated water bowl was almost completely empty this morning. That actually made it easier to clean. I could scrub the bottom with snow, then just scoop out the dirty snow.
The metal water bowls were, of course, filled with ice. These are all old stainless steel frying pans with their handles broken off. I’ve found they make the best water bowls, as they can handle a lot of abuse. Like being kicked and stomped until the break loose from the ice and snow.
I wasn’t able to get a photo, but after getting one of them loose, there was something strange and mirror-like under it.
The pan had split!
This pan had one of those multi-layer bases for even heat distribution. Between getting filled with warm water, then frozen to the ground, then kicked loose, repeatedly, the base layer finally just popped right off! I look forward to getting a better look at it, once the ground thaws. I’m not going to bother trying to dig it out, now. :-D
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are doing very well in the sun room. After moving the sheets of rigid insulation I had to reduce drafts from the window, Butterscotch now likes to sit there, under the ceramic heater bulb. Nosnecrantz, meanwhile, prefers sitting on the fixture! We’ve got the full spectrum light bulb hanging from the top of the mini-greenhouse frame we’re using to hold all this, with the board the ceramic heater bulb supported by the top shelf. I had some concerns about leaving the light on constantly, since I thought the cats might actually want full darkness at time, but Nosencrantz loves it. Though there are several soft beds in boxes she can choose from, she’s preferring to sleep on a board, under the light! I’m guessing the board itself is a bit warm, just from rising heat from the ceramic bulb.
Speaking of warm, check this out.
Not only are we still expected to reach 1C/34F in a couple of days, but now we’re supposed to reach 3C/37F a couple of days later!
With more snow.
Whatever. I’m loving this milder February we’re having this year!
Before heading outside to do my morning rounds, I could see we had a deer at the feeding station outside our living room window, digging around in the snow, looking for seeds. I could also see another deer through our kitchen window, just outside the chain link fence into the inner yard, nuzzling around the snow, looking for something.
I’m not sure what. It was standing were we unload the van, now that we can’t drive into the yard, but we didn’t drop anything there.
I expected to spook it away when I came out to feed the critters. Which I did – but not as much as usual!
The deer ran into the yard through the vehicle gate, then followed the shovelled path the back of the garage, then up to the compost pile.
It was a very casual sort of run.
I did find it amusing, how dedicated it was in following the shoveled paths, instead of running straight through the yard!
The shoveled path turns towards the house from the compost pile, but the deer just stopped and stayed there.
Watching me, as I took care of the cats’ food and water. Even when I walked across to the kibble tray under the shrine, it stayed, watching me!
It wasn’t until I came towards it, carrying the container of feed, that it and the other deer ran into the bushes.
Well. More like a fast walk than a run.
Then they watched from from the trees for a while, as I went around the house. They did take off before I reached the feeding station and scattered the feed, but I didn’t see them actually leave the yard. Usually, they take off running, jump the fence, then cross to my younger brother’s property, across the road.
These two are definitely getting used to my moving around the yard a lot more!
The cats were happy for a kibble top up. :-)
Butterscotch and Nozencrantz continue their recovery in the sun room. They got treated with a can of wet cat food for breakfast. They definitely like shredded better than pate! :-D
Both are more active, and Beep Beep even made like she was interested in going back outside which, of course, I discouraged! They seem to still be okay with staying in the sun room by themselves as they recover.
When I heard from the cat lady today, one of the things she mentioned was dropping off our cat carrier, that was used for Cabbages, at the shelter in town. When my husband also let me know that a package he was expecting was in, we took advantage of the situation and made the Chinese food order we meant to do a few days ago! You know. Since I was going to be in town, anyway… ;-)
As I started heading out with the van, just turning onto the road from our driveway, a warning light turned on that I’d never seen before. Then the onboard computer started showing a message to check our brakes system.
!!!
When I took the van to get the oil changes yesterday, they checked some other stuff and gave me a list of things to get looked at. One of them was the brake fluid. Apparently, it’s dirty.
Now, suddenly, I’m getting warning lights?
Hmm.
Thankfully, we have my mother’s car as a back up! I parked the van and used my mothers car to go into town.
We’ll be using my mother’s car until we can get the van looked at. Brakes is one thing I don’t want to mess with!
I was very happy not to have to cancel the food order we’d just made! It’s been probably a year since we’ve ordered take out, and my goodness we were craving food we haven’t cooked ourselves!
When I finally got there, the owner even commented, “long time no see!” :-D We have never ordered often, but when we do, it’s a large order. Enough to feed us for a few days, and almost all meat items. We can do rice, noodles or vegetables ourselves, but we can’t recreate their protein dishes at home! It’s enough for them to remember me, even after such a long time!
The nice thing about having to use my mother’s car is, it has butt warmers in the front seats. I was able to use it to help keep the food warm while I went hunting for the animal shelter. It’s in an industrial park, next to a small airport, that I haven’t driven around in for more than 20 years and, even then, I hadn’t gone to that particular area since I was an Air Cadet while in high school! I drove past it three times before I finally saw it. Mostly because the snow around the building was undisturbed. Clearly, no activity is happening around it. Around the back was a cleared parking area, next to the back door and a donation box, which is where the carrier was supposed to be left. The building itself was closed; a sign on the door said it was open by appointment only.
!!
The carrier wasn’t there, though, and there was no signs in the snow showing that anyone else had been there. It turned out the cat lady hadn’t made it yet, having had to make an unplanned trip to another town to pick up another frozen cat.
No complaints from me, that’s for sure!
It’ll be waiting for us at the vet clinic, when we bring Beep Beep and Fenrir in to get spayed.
So we didn’t get the carrier, but we did get Chinese food!
I’m happy with that. :-)
Thankfully, we don’t need to go anywhere else again, until we bring the cats in to the vet. It’s supposed to start snowing tonight, and keep snowing all through tomorrow, for a total of 6-10cm/2-4in. Then we’re supposed to warm right up, with a high of -4C/25F on Monday, when we bring the cats to the vet, then +1C/34F the day after!
We got some wonderful updates on how Cabbages is doing today, and I am beyond thrilled.
She has regained 2 pounds!
At her lowest, she weighed in at 1.65kg/3.63lb, and today she weighed in at 2.55kg/5.62lbs
I don’t think she ever weighed as much as 3kg/6.6lbs to being with.
She is still on medication and is not allowed out of the cat cage she’s kept in, unless she’s being held. She should soon be allowed out to wander around, though.
Next month, she will be getting spayed by a special vet, due to her neurological history. She will then spend 2 weeks with the cat lady and her family, before moving on to her forever home. She will be living with someone who has been in the animal care industry for 44 years!
Which means Cabbages will be with the cat lady and her family for at least another month. I’m just blown away that they took her – and her unexpected expenses! – on without hesitation, and fought so hard to keep her alive. The costs must be well over the $1200 she last mentioned to me, and not a penny of it is from the organization she is associated with. They would have contributed to the euthanasia cost, though. :-( Cabbages was such a very sick kitty, it’s amazing she was able to pull through!
The cat lady has never asked for anything in return, but she and her family have been so amazing. Even her 5 yr old spends time with Cabbages, every day, making sure she eats and massaging her legs.
*melt*
I do want to do something for her and her family, though. That is why we started the fundraiser, which is to be a surprise to reimburse her for most of the costs. I’m sure the final total she’ll be spending on Cabbages will be more than the $1500 goal we have set. We’ll be contributing as much as we can ourselves, too, of course.
If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser for the awesome cat lady that saved Cabbages, you can go to our Ko-fi donation page.
(There is supposed to be a donation panel under this paragraph. I see it in preview, but not when I publish. Please let me know in the comments below, if you see a donation panel. Thanks!
Update: trying a button this time. Do you see it?)
This fundraiser is intended to be a thank you surprise, so she knows nothing about it or this blog. Since it’s a surprise, I’ve carefully cropped these photos she shared with me today, to remove any identifying features.
Just look at her! She’s looking almost like she did, before she got sick!
The poor little thing has been through so much, in such a short time. It just amazes me, how quickly she is bouncing back. Care is still being taken, of course, and I do wonder what sort of permanent damage she may have sustained. Particularly since it was her brain that was affected.
She may have some company with her, soon. The cat lady mentioned she’d picked up another frozen cat today. It has lost its ears, but will be fine. Once the results of the blood work is in, and they get the all clear, it will be joining Cabbages. She will have a recovery buddy. :-)
Butterscotch finally let me take her picture this evening.
I’m still blown away by how calm she is. I don’t now how much of that I can attribute to her recovering from surgery, or how much to having something removed that was likely causing her discomfort. It could well be both.
They need to stay indoors for at least 10-14 days. We’ll see how she does over time. We were thinking of bringing Nosencrantz into the house, after she’s been isolated a few days to make sure there are no ear mite or flea issues. The problem with that is, it would leave Butterscotch without feline company, and she got along with Nosencrantz more than a lot of the other cats.
We shall see how they progress, before we make any decisions.
So the blizzard has passed, and has been replaced with extreme cold warnings. As I write this, we have warmed up to -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -34C/-29F
In our own little front yard microclimate, however, it felt a lot warmer, and the outside cats were out in full force!
A few were holding out for the warm water before coming out, though! :-D
The sun spot at that window must be very pleasant in there. :-)
As for Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, they would not let me take photos! Nosencrantz wouldn’t stop wiggling around, and Butterscotch just moves away. They are eating and drinking just fine, though unfortunately, from the smell I walked into, they are finding somewhere other than the litter box to do their business. *sigh* I’m sure we’ll find all sorts of “surprises” when the sun room gets its spring clean up. The litter box is being used … by one of them, at least.
Once the critters were fed, I headed out to dig us out. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it might be, though. We didn’t have a lot of new snow, which helped. The high winds were mostly moving around existing snow which, with our garage, meant blowing the snow off the roof and dumping it into a drift in front. The van might have been able to go through the drift, if we really had to, but we could not open the doors to the addition my mother’s car is parked in. It has swing doors that need to be replaced. One of them drags on the ground, so that area needs to be cleared a lot more thoroughly, just to open it wide enough for the car to drive through.
The other side of the garage, where the snow blower, lawn mowers and wood chipper is stored, also has swing doors.
We can’t get into there right now.
When our neighbour cleared our driveway, he pushed aside a snow ridge that was creeping in front of the middle section of the garage, where the van needs to get through. Unfortunately, he pushed it too close to the double doors to that side of the garage. There is enough space that we could clear one of the doors, which would allow us to at least get in, but not with our usual snow shovels. They are a strong plastic, but not that strong. We’ll have to tackle the pile with the ice chipper and a steel shovel before the snow can be moved and really, we don’t need to get into there that badly!
Once the front of the garage was clear, I checked out the driveway and was pleasantly surprised. The road itself remained clear enough that it won’t even need to be plowed. The main road would have drifted over, but I’m sure that’s been cleared by now.
The drifting over the end of the driveway wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I could see the tracks of a vehicle using our driveway to turn around. With the walls of snow left by the plows, our driveway is the only one nearby that’s open enough to do that. All the other driveways for about a mile in either direction are into fields, or empty properties, so no one’s keeping them clear.
I did have to dig out the gate. I’d opened it before the blizzard hit, just in case. They weren’t drifted in place too deeply, but the snow was packed so hard, I had to use the ice chipper to break it up, first.
The bottom of the gate is normally about 6-8 inches above the ground, when open.
I was mostly concerned with this side. While swinging it open and closed, we noticed it started to shudder and vibrate. When our vandal busted up the hinge pins, my brother replaced them with pairs of J pins, so that no one could simply use a jack to take the gate off anymore. My concern was that a pin had snapped in the cold. I was able to check the top ones before, but couldn’t see the bottom ones. So this morning, I used the ice chipper and shovel to clear it away to check, and they were fine.
The shudder was also gone when I swung the gate back and forth, so it looks like it was the build up of ice and snow that was causing it.
On this side, I had to dig things out a bit more, just so we could swing it open further – and dig out the little path to the mini solar panel powering some decorative lights we have on the fence. We used to have several strings of white LED Christmas lights all along that fence, but they got very weathered and I finally just took them off. At some point, we want to have lights along the fence line again, but until then, the mini string of solar powered LED lights will go. The solar panel just needs to be kept clear of snow, and it’s resting on the hub of that wagon wheel in the fence.
Interestingly, the hardest area to dig out was the path to the trail cam. Talk about hard packed! I had to use the ice chipper on almost the entire path. But I got to it, and was able to switch out the memory card – and got to see the vehicle that used our driveway to turn around it! :-D I don’t know who it is, but it’s a truck I see regularly, and I am jealous of the plow attachment. ;-)
On my “when we win the lottery” shopping list is either a RAM 1500 or an F150 (the top two highest rated trucks for winter driving, last I looked) with a plow attachment.
I should probably buy a ticket… ;-)
So we are now cleared out enough to get the van out of the garage and drive. We’re expecting a delivery from the pharmacy today, so the gates are being left open. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of our vandal in the trail cam files, so it looks like he’s actually avoiding using the roads past us entirely. Which is not something I intended as a condition, as that’s just not realistic in our area, but who knows what the judge or his lawyer managed to drum into him! Anyhow, between the court order, and the weather conditions, I think we’re okay to leave the gate open for a while, though I’d rather never have to close it at all.
The paths around the yard are pretty filled in. I’m leaving that job for my daughters to do, later!
For now, I’m going to call our mechanic back and book that oil change again!
Okay, I just had to do it. I had to include a picture of Cabbages.
The cat lady messaged me with a picture, and I’ve cropped out anything remotely identifying.
Just look at that face!!! Those eyes!!
Apparently, she is very chatty. She’s never been particularly vocal, but with so many other cats around, she probably had no reason to be.
She was like this, when the cat lady took her. Losing weight. Increasingly lethargic. Needing to be fed with a syringe. We had no idea how close to death she was. Thanks to the cat lady, Cabbages is still with us, doing SO much better, and has a forever home waiting for her.
What an amazing woman.
If you would like to read more about Cabbages and our fundraiser to surprise-reimburse her vet expenses, click here. Or, you can go straight to the fundraiser page here.
After doing my morning rounds, I contacted the garage to let him know I wasn’t going to make my appointment with the van today. We are under blizzard conditions right now, which are expected to continue until this evening.
There actually isn’t a lot of snow, but the winds are insane. There is a drift in front of the garage door we will have to dig out before we can go anywhere though, at the moment, the driveway is still mostly clear.
There is supposed to be a path around the back of the kibble house, and a kibble tray at the end. Under the drift. The cat path to under the storage house was also filling in.
Temperature wise, we are at only -17C/1F, but with 50km/31m per hour winds, the wind chill is at -31C/-24F. The winds are coming from the northwest, which we are normally protected from, but at these speeds, it’s just swirling around the house and all the outbuildings.
The path to the compost pile is, once again, mostly gone.
Even right up against the house, the path to the feeding station is mostly filled in.
I opened the gate to check the road, then left it open so that it would not be drifted over in the closed position. Right now, the only thing keeping the end of our driveway from drifting over completely, are the walls of snow made by the front end loader when it was being cleared. They’re acting a bit like a snow fence, for the moment. The road past our place is actually looking quite clear, but it runs from north to south, and the winds are just blowing the snow along. The main gravel road, and the highway I would be taking to get that oil change done, would be drifted over, and the winds would be hitting our van broadsided. I checked the Facebook group for local highway conditions, and some people were reporting that they were in the ditch – and the roads they were on were mostly clear! It was the winds that did them in.
Smart kitties. They came out when I put food and warm water out, ate and drank quickly, then disappeared into their various hidey holes. One is visible in the window, but I think there’s about 5 or 6 in there.
I saw Rolando Moon emerge from the junk pile. She’s a tough one, and has seen many cold winters. She knows how to handle it. She stayed out to eat longer than the other cats, then went into the insulated shelf shelter to get out of the wind. Which, as you can see, is even managing to blow snow into the opening!
We need to build more little shelters like this. Especially when we finally get that junk pile hauled away. They use it for shelter, a lot.
Before heading outside, I treated Butterscotch and Nosencrantz with some wet cat food. Nosencrantz has been staying on the top shelf of the frame the heat bulb is in, which means sitting on top of the board the fixture is attached to. That puts her under the light we’ve got, hanging under the peak. It’s got a full spectrum bulb that we were using for seed starts. It’s incandescent, so it’s also warm, so we’ve been leaving it on. She was there when I came in, and I helped her down so she wouldn’t have to jump and jar her body.
Butterscotch has been using one of the box beds we have set up, and very languidly emerged when I brought the food out. I can see some things knocked about a bit, so I know at least one of them is trying to jump onto shelves and explore a bit, but it’s not too bad.
When I was done my rounds, I paused to spend time with them before going into the house. Nosencrantz quite enjoyed being held and snuggled.
When I put her on the swing bench, she was comfortable enough to roll around and let me see her roly poly belly!
She is such a big sausage!
I was able to pick up Butterscotch and cuddle her a bit, too. She even purred at me!
After hearing from the vet, what the condition of her uterus was when they removed it, I have a suspicion that Butterscotch is going to undergo a catonality change. She’s always had a bit of a mean streak at times. I now wonder if it was due to physical discomfort. Right now, she’s moving around more slowly (or course!), but while I was holding Nosencrantz, she still came over and wound around my feet. When I picked her up, she was a lot calmer than I normally expect her to be. Even as I was going in and out of the sun room, she made no attempt to escape, though that might have more to do with having just had surgery, yesterday. Perhaps, once she’s healed up more from the surgery, she’ll go back to her more ornery self. However, I have a suspicion she’s going to be a happier and more pleasant cat to be around.
It should be interesting to see how it goes for Beep Beep, next week. We don’t know if she is older or younger than Butterscotch.
So today is a day to stay indoors. We shall see if we can make the trip to the city tomorrow or not. The winds are supposed to die down, but the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit.
Times like this are exactly why we’ve been working so hard to stay stocked up!!
Having said that, one of the things I was hoping to do while in town getting the oil change, was to come home with some Chinese take-out. Now that it’s no longer an option, I am craving Chinese food like crazy! :-D
The Re-Farmer 