My husband was able to feed the outside cats for me this morning, so when I came out to do the rest of my morning rounds later, most of them had already moved on. Junk Pile Jr. was by the door and aaaalllmost let me pet her, but not quite! She did sniff my hand, though.
Then I saw Rosencrantz and Toesencrantz at their private dining area under the shrine and had to take a closer look. What was Toesencrantz doing?
He was all sprawled out on the kibble tray, as if he was taking a nap!
Very unusual. Was he okay?
As I watched, he would sometimes lift his head and snuzzle his mother.
Awww… How sweet!
Using the zoom on my phone camera makes for some terrible photos, so I tried to slowly come closer, without disturbing them.
It didn’t work.
Seeing me come closer, Toesencrantz started to get up, then finally move away from where he was lying, to the other side of the tray, watching me to see if I’d come any closer.
His mother immediately moved over to start eating the kibble he had been lying on top of.
The little bugger! He had lying on top of the food, leaving only the little dregs around him for his mother to eat!
While doing my morning rounds, I decided to check the sunflowers and, sure enough, the bee I saw yesterday was still there!
I did confirm that it’s still alive; when I brushed a finger near it, a single, pollen covered back leg lifted up to warn me away!
It’s simply too cold and wet for the poor thing, it seems.
My daughter did some searching, and what I think we will do is cut off the sunflower head to bring it, and the bee, into the sun room to warm up. We’ll cover it with a large sieve we have, so it doesn’t fly off and get stuck in the sun room. If it does revive and warms up, we will release it back outside. Hopefully, it will then be able to get back to its hive before the chill gets to it again.
Here’s hoping it works!
The Re-Farmer
[Edit: I accidentally used a photo from yesterday, instead of the one I took this morning. After much fighting with our increasingly crappy internet, it has been fixed!]
For the past while, pain has been driving my husband out of bed quite early in the mornings, so he has been sweet enough to feed the outside cats as soon as it gets light. Which is great for the kitties, and for me, though it meant I didn’t get to see the morning crowd at all! :-D
Yesterday, I headed outside to see if I could work on the high raised bed garden. It was a no go, as it started to rain while I was out there. I did, however, get company…
The ever nomadic Rolando Moon had been away for a few days, but yesterday she came back. She was still with us this morning, too. :-)
There are nine kittens and three adults in this photo! Including Junk Pile and Junk Pile Jr. I can tell them apart because Jr. has more white on her back legs.
I had come out to top up their food in the kibble house last night, after it got dark. As the noise of dry kibble hitting metal pans started, there was a sudden scrambling from the cat’s house beside me, and kittens began flailing out of the doorway. It turned out to be full of cats, and I had scared them!
I then went to top up the tray under the shrine. As I came back to the sun room, I went wide around the kibble house, trying to be quiet. It was completely full of cats, eating! :-D
It’s good to know that, as the nights get cooler, they are using the cat house. I’m even seeing a kitten or two through the window during the day, too.
Nosencrantz has started to regularly come right up to me! Sometimes she lets me pet her, sometimes she just wants to be close by and watch. This morning, I got to give her skritches. :-)
Toesencrantz got to share breakfast with Grandma Butterscotch – but not for long!
When I had come out this morning, I found Stinky in the kibble house. He ended up going around and under the cat’s house, before finally running off. As you can see, he came back, and the cats know well enough to give him space! You can even see Ghost Baby disappearing off on the left. She had been under the shrine, eating with Butterscotch and Toesencrantz.
I was not happy that Ghost Baby was driven away, so I got out the hose to spray the skunk away.
He wouldn’t leave!
Yes, I was hitting him directly with water, but he just shook it off and kept coming back for the food! I finally gave up. I figure he must be really, really hungry to put up with being soaked like that.
Ghost Baby did come back later. Gosh, I want to snuggle that poor baby so much! The other cats tend to drive her off, and she’s so shy of us, we’ve had no opportunity to socialize her. I’m assuming that Mystery Kitten Eleven is hers, which means her own kitten is more socialized that she is, just because it’ll come up to the house, and eat while we are around. Hopefully, over time, she will get more used to us, and the current crop of kittens will be more welcoming of her than some of the adults have been!
We had not gotten any frost warnings the night before, but when it gets that cold, it’s going to be too much for some things, with our without frost.
The last few days, morning and evening, we have been hearing a cacophony of geese in the surrounding fields. Something must have disturbed them this morning, because they were not only louder than usual, but I even got to see them flying overhead.
Going north, for some reason! :-D
Last night, my daughters had picked more tomatoes and a few summer squash, and this morning I was going to pick beans.
It looks like we’re now done for beans.
They may not have gotten an actual frost, but the foliage was clearly damaged. The purple beans have a lot more foliage, which protected the pods, but I could see cold damage on the green and yellow beans.
I had taken some photos yesterday, which ended up giving me comparison photos with today. Here is the Crespo squash.
This was taken yesterday afternoon.
This is the smaller of the two squash in the previous photo.
This is the larger one, yesterday (on the left) and this morning (on the right). :-(
This is one of our biggest squash. Yesterday’s photo is on the left, and this morning is on the right. This squash is shaded for longer in the morning, and you can see there is actual frost on it!
These next ones are photos from yesterday and, from what I could see, they were okay this morning.
The one that’s hanging is in a spot where it gets hit with morning sun earlier than others. The large one on the ground has foliage around it that may have protected it. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see, so I can’t actually say for sure if it was damaged or not. It’ll take a bit more time before we’ll know if they got cold damaged or not.
Then there are the Ozark Nest Egg gourds. I took these photos last night, but didn’t bother to take more this morning.
We will have a better idea as the day goes on, but as of this morning, they seemed to have no real damage at all. There are still so many little gourds all over, there are still flowers that look like they are opening, and there was no signs of cold damage, like on the Crespo squash. These gourds are in the south yard and get that morning sunlight nice and early, which may have made the difference.
The tomatoes on the south fence also looked untouched by the cold, but the one that had seeded itself in the lettuce bed looked like it was hit by frost. That bed gets shaded more, longer, this time of year. If we’d gotten a frost warning, I would have put the wire mesh cover back on and covered the bed with cloth. The lettuce is fine; it can handle temperatures even colder than this. The chard was also just fine.
It will be good when these beds all get converted to high raised beds. They get full sun in the summer, but when the sun is lower in the sky, several of them get more shade from the trees to the south. Once they are higher, they will be out of the shade, just a little bit sooner. Still, it is something to keep in mind for when we garden here in the future. It’s also another reason why I want to build permanent garden beds on the south side of the house, in the outer yard, where we don’t have so many tall trees to deal with.
As it is, we’re in the middle of October, and these have lasted far longer than we normally would have expected in our climate zone! So really, I can’t complain!
He really wanted to get on my shoulders! I’d already been painfully climbed while switching the memory card out from the other camera. I wasn’t going to let him do it again, so he did this, instead. I had to back right off to avoid being pounced on! :-D
One of the most fun things about heading outside in the mornings has become seeing all the cats waiting for me, outside the sun room door.
Most were moving around too much to try and get photos through to door, but Nosencrantz was willing to post for me!
Gosh, she looks so much like Nicky the Nose!!! I wonder if she will get big like him, too?
Junk Pile Jr. was patiently waiting for me to move on, so she could get back to the kibble!
As was her brother (sister?), Tuxedo Mask, and her cousin, Caramel. :-D
Nosencrantz is getting so comfortable with me! I could walk right up to her, pet her and take photos, without her even looking like she was about to run off.
Caramel was perched and watching me from the old tire planter, but when I moved to take her picture, that was a bit too much for her!
Meanwhile, four other kittens were prowling in the nearby white lilacs!
Two of them are completely hidden by the leaves in this photo, but if you look closely, you’ll find part of a little orange face – just one eye and one ear – peaking through the leaves.
Last night, I did something we haven’t been able to do in almost two years – and the last time I did it, I probably shouldn’t have!
I did a burn.
The burn barrel has been full for some time, but with the conditions we’ve had for the past two summers, we had full burn bans, including burn barrels and fire pits. I suppose we could have done burns in the winter, but we had such a bitterly cold winter in between, we just didn’t.
While I was outside, tending the fire, I had cats and kittens, circling around me the whole time! The kittens were curious enough to play around me, but not enough to come close. :-D
Speaking of kittens…
I did a head count will feeding the outside cats this morning. For two areas, it’s easy. Rosencrantz and her babies were at their private dining area (and what is Toesencrantz doing, the way he’s all stretched out and flattened like that?? LOL), while Butterscotch and Tuxedo Mask were at the kibble tray on the ground. So we’ve got three kittens accounted for.
Inside the kibble house, however…
So we have Potato Beetle in front and Rolando Moon in the roasting pan. That leaves… nine kittens?
Do we have twelve, this morning?
Then I realized I was seeing double.
There are two Junk Piles in the kibble house. Junk Pile Cat and her mini-me, Junk Pile Baby! Who is almost as big as her mother.
So now I’m thinking that on the one day that I counted a dozen kittens, I may have accidentally counted Junk Pile as as kitten.
Once again, we have nine kittens and three adults in there. Junk Pile cat is even there, tucked into the corner on the right. Potato Beetle is barely visible at the tray on the ground, and Nutmeg is in the middle of all the kittens. Rosencrantz, Toesencrantz and Nosencrantz were at the tray under the shrine, with Ghost Baby nervously prowling back and forth, wanting to go to the food, but nervous with so many other cats. I had to chase off Potato Beetle, because he decided he wanted to eat at the tray under the shrine, too, but when he saw Rosencrantz and Ghost Baby, he went into hunting mode.
Nasty boy!
Rolando Moon was also around, but she preferred to wait well away from the other cats before she went to eat.
Little Nosencrantz has taken to following me around at a distance, as I work around the yard. This morning, she came over while I was picking tomatoes. I was able to step over to her and pet her, without her running away! Perhaps she was more distracted by Rolando Moon on the other side of me, growling a warning for her to stay back. :-D
The outside cats were out in full force, eager for breakfast, but first I wanted to share some indoor adorableness!
Cabbages and Cheddar, all snuggled together for a nap!
The size difference just blows me away. Cabbages is more than a year old now, so she is pretty much her full adult size. Cheddar… he’s just huge.
Yesterday evening, I decided to use our Roku device and watch some TV. We’ve got the Great Courses on Amazon Prime, and I’m watching Cooking Through the Ages right now. Cheddar decided to join me and trap my hand under his head as a pillow!
He eventually got driven out, though, when Tissue came over and started bugging him. After he left…
… she took his spot!
She would not stop squirming, though, and when I brought my phone over to take pictures…
… she went for it, and tried to eat it!
Gosh, she has the strangest facial structure! Like a little alien.
Meanwhile, her younger siblings outside were joining the breakfast buffet.
While I was pouring the kibble out, Broccoli jumped into the kibble house, and I actually got to pet her! She was torn between startled and wanting to go at the food. The confused expression she gave me as I pet her back was hilarious. She seemed to like the pets, though, and tolerated them for a little while.
There are nine kittens in the above photo. Potato Beetle is one of the adults, and he’s at the tray on the ground. Butterscotch is inside the kibble house. Nutmeg was around, too, but on the other side of the kibble house, out of view.
Rosencrantz, Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz, enjoying breakfast together!
More progress; while walking back from pouring kibble onto the tray under the shrine, Nosencrantz came running right up to me, and let me pet her, before continuing on to the food!
I really, really like Nosencrantz.
I guess this is a good time to promote our Ko-fi page. If you are interested in helping with the feeding and care for the kitties, you can click here, or on the donation button on the side bar. All donations go towards the cats, either for their food, to get them fixed, or for any needed vet care, and are gratefully appreciated.
I got to pet Nosencrantz this morning, but had to move away before Toesencrantz would come to eat.
I am NOT happy with Potato Beetle. He attacked Rosencrantz this morning. Again. Drove her off. She did get a chance to come by and eat with her babies, later, but he is really nasty towards her!
We had nine kittens in the kibble house again (the two orange cats are the adults). I was looking at the photos with my daughter and talking about the five grey tabbies. There’s Bradicous, Chadicous, Sadicous and Tadicous. What would number five be called? Why not Gaticous? (a play on the movie title, Gattaca)
Gaticous, it is! :-D
Ghost Baby made an appearance, too, dashing by in the background. :-)
You know what else made an appearance?
Toe pints. Itty, bitty kittie toe prints!
Dirty little toe prints!
At least the paint was dry before it got walked on. :-D
Odd that the camera in my phone turned the mint green paint into white!
The Re-Farmer 