Critters

Ginger and the orange boys

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I missed my morning ginger cuddles, but that’s okay. He got other cuddles!

That’s Keith on the left, and Cheddar at the top. Cheddar is the one that came indoors after we found him walking strangely, and could feel what we at first thought was a dislocated rib. It turned out he had somehow impaled himself with a stick, at about his armpit. It was surgically removed, and he never went back outside.

I still have the “cheese stick” in its vacuum sealed tube. And yes, the vet actually labelled it “cheese stick”. :-D

Keith came indoors some months after Cheddar, so all three of these guys are “rescued” yard cats.

Ginger is very close to Keith in size and shape, though Ginger isn’t even a year old yet – and Keith is not a small cat! You can see in this photo, a bit of why we would sometimes look at Ginger and think we’re seeing Keith!

There’s no mistaking Cheddar, though. He’s a big, hulking block of cheese, that boy!

I have a shelf against the wall next to me, when I am sitting in my office chair. The chair has a high back and rotates/tilts freely. Parts of the shelf are kept clear for the cats to use, including the very top, so they can take naps next to the ceiling. They’ll sometimes use my chair to get to the top of the shelf but mostly they get down from the top by jumping into the padded headrest of my office chair, then down to the floor.

I gotta say, when Cheddar is the one jumping down, and I’m sitting in the chair, I practically get whiplash! It’s amazing how much force that boy has when he lands, and the chair slams back as far as it can tilt!

Beep Beep even hopped up to check out the new boy.

She doesn’t like him very much, and ended up driving both Ginger and Cheddar away, so she could snuggle up to Keith and start grooming him. :-D

Also, this is why my bed is so hairy all the time. It’s constantly covered in cats!

Having brought Beep Beep indoors to have her babies last spring, this will be her first year of NOT getting pregnant. She seems quite content with that! She also seems quite content with her new life as an indoor cat. Even when she went into heat, she showed no desire to go outside to visit the (intact) boys in the yard. We don’t know how old she is, but I have pictures of her from when we made the drive out and stayed here with my dad, back in 2015, and she was definitely an adult cat at the time. That makes her a minimum of 7 years old. I would guess she’s closer to 10, and she would have had a litter of kittens every year of her adult life, until now. She is a wonderful mama, but I’m sure she’s more than done with the babies by now! :-D

Meanwhile…

Ginger’s surgical site is looking really good and healing well. He displays no sign of pain or discomfort, and it’s not slowing him down at all. Which is starting to be a problem, as he is exploring more and trying to get into things he shouldn’t be! We’ve been able to train most of the cats to stay away from/off of certain areas and, of course, he hasn’t learned that yet. :-D

There is some tension between him and some of the other cats, but not in any out of the ordinary way. Some of our cats are just more ornery than others, so it’s not just him.

He’s such a sweet boy!

The Re-Farmer

Ginger baby

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It is pure joy when the baby boy comes over for morning cuddles.

He doesn’t want to be picked up, and he doesn’t want to be held, but my goodness, he wants pets and scritches and snuggles, and he loves to roll and stretch and squirm on the soft, soft bed. :-)

If only we could get the outside cats even half that friendly!

This was the crowd that greeted me this morning. After I took the picture, I looked up and saw the sort-of-calico cat come running under the fence into the yard.

The Re-Farmer

Some Ginger beef

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Last night, we decided to close the other cats out for the night. Not because there were any issues with cats not getting along, the night before, though. The other cats are really liking access to Ginger’s food and water bowls (as well as his litter box). With the other cats around, he spent most of the night in his bed at the bottom of the closet, and by the time he came out in the morning, all the food and water was gone. He does the stairs to the basement really well, but I’d rather he didn’t have to do that because the other cats were too lazy to! :-D

The bonus was, morning cuddles with Ginger!

As soon as he realized all the other cats were out of the room and the door was closed, he jumped upon the bed and started roll and stretch and squirm, while demanding face skritches. :-D He did eventually go back to his “cave” in the closet for the rest of the night, but by morning, he was back for more cuddles.

After a leisurely breakfast from his still-full food and water bowls. :-D

I think he enjoyed the break from the other cats! He is certainly enjoying people time, too.

I was talking to my daughter about one of the things I noticed about him. He and his sister, Cabbages, are the youngest cats in the house. Yet he is bigger and burlier than her, and even his older sister (half-sister, I suppose), Nicco. The spice girls are both downright tiny compared to him, and even Tissue, who is about the same age as the older kittens, is smaller than he is. Our Ginger is a beefy boy! He’s about as big as his Aunt Beep Beep, who has been filling out since coming indoors. He hasn’t caught up to Big Rig, but then, Big Rig got her name because she was so much bigger than the other kittens. I don’t think he’ll get as big as Cheddar or Leyendecker, but I’m sure he’ll be at least as big as David and Keith, soon.

He was always a bit bigger than his brother, Nutmeg, but Nutmeg is definitely filling out, too.

So is their mother, Butterscotch (on the left).

Who is looking decidedly round in the belly.

*sigh*

Rosencrantz is another beefy one. If she’s pregnant, we might not even be able to tell until we start seeing kittens running around again.

Thankyou to Wolfsong for passing on the name of a vet that does a barn-cat spay day. It’s a long drive for the cats, but we’d be able to do 4 females for about the same price as the local vet doing only one, so it would be worth it. We will definitely be contacting them to find out when their next spay-day is. The only challenge will be to catch yard cats like Junk Pile (I haven’t actually seen her in a little while), and I’m sort of assuming Rosencrantz’s baby, the sort-of calico, is female. It’s not like we’ve been able to see her well enough to confirm, either way. Just like Junk Pile; we didn’t know for sure that she was female until she showed up with kittens following behind. In fact, because she never looked pregnant, I had thought she was a he!

At least we’ve been able to get the indoor males snipped for now, including Ginger. Can you imagine the poor boy being intact, recovering from an amputation, and surrounded by a house full of female cats in heat? LOL

The Re-Farmer

Slowing it down a bit

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We got some furry visitors last night. :-)

They tend to show up near the end of the day, when the light makes is hard to get good photos! You can still see, at least a little, the growing antler nubbins on the deer on the right.

If all goes well, this will be the last bag of feed for the deer that we buy until the fall. Looking at the long range forecast, we’re expected to dip below freezing again, with snow on Monday (three days from now). They’re predicting 3-6cm. After a couple more days, the temperatures will be back above freezing during the day, though we’ll have below freezing temperatures overnight for a while longer.

I’m hoping we actually get that snow, and that it slowly melts. The deer should have fresh growing things to eat after that. We were supposed to have rain over the past couple of days, but once again I watched on the weather radar, as the system moved right past us. We didn’t even get a sprinkle.

Yesterday was a very lazy day for me. There is something about it being overcast that leaves me feeling like I’m ready to fall asleep, all day. Plus, with the cooler temperatures and hopes of rain, I didn’t want to be working outside with power tools. ;-) I did make a trip into town, though. Our darling daughter treated us to pizza for our anniversary. My husband and I celebrated 33 years together this month. :-) While driving into town to pick it up, there actually was a bit of rain, but it was nothing but a tease!

Today, I finally made the trip to the smaller city to pick up the last few things I wasn’t able to get during my Costco trip. They were actually sold out of cat litter, of all things! While there, I started chatting with another customer, who is also feeding a lot of cats. Mostly outside cats. He estimates he spends about $3000 a year on cat food – and spent another $5000 to get 40 cats fixed. !! That’s through some sort of program, where getting a female done is only about $80-$100, instead of the $350 we’re paying. I’ve had all sorts of organizations recommended to us, but either we can’t get through to them, or they don’t operate as far out as we are. :-(

(Oh, just got a phone call. The people who are adopting Two Face are on their way to pick her up. :-) )

While talking to the other customer, he mentioned using wood pellets instead of litter. I’ve heard of people using them, and talking about how much better it is, so I asked him more about it. It turns out that these are just the wood pellets sold as fuel for pellet stoves. He told me that when the cats use the pellets, they absorb all the moisture and break apart into sawdust. They also absorb the odor, so the only thing you smell is wood. When cleaning the litter pans, you simply dump out all the pellets in the pan and replace it with fresh – and the old pellets can still be burned. !! I don’t know that I’d want to do that. At least not in the fire pit (or a pellet stove, if we had one!), but we do still have a burn barrel. Or compost them, while burn bans are in effect. That would save us from having to haul those heavy bags to the dump. He told me the pellets are a lot cheaper, too, and they come in 40 pound bags, so they last a long time, too.

I think it’ll be worth trying it out. Maybe start with just a few litter pans, first, and see how the cats like it.

The conversation got me thinking about just how much we spend on critters. With the cats, it’s about $350-$400 a month in wet and dry cat food, plus litter. So, about $4,800 a year, on the high end. Plus the deer, which we do only for about 6 months, which works out to about $300 a year. Then there’s the bird seed, which we do all year, and works out to about $1000 a year.

Which we’re doing my husband’s disability payments.

Thank God for private health insurance!!

There are a lot of things we are doing without, to keep the critters fed. We include it all in our grocery budget. If, however, we were just setting that money aside, we’d have been able to save enough to replace the roof in only 2 years.

Now, we’re not going to stop feeding the animals, but we really need to find a way to address that expense. This is not sustainable. The problem goes back to my not simply being able to go out and get a job, since any income I would make would get deducted from my husband’s disability payments. If I ever made enough to bring that replace my husband’s disability payments, he would lose his insurance entirely (since he would no longer “need” it) – and he’d no longer have coverage for his prescriptions. So it’s a lose-lose situation. That’s why we had to be so careful when fund raising for Ginger’s vet care. We can accept gifts. We can’t have additional income.

*sigh*

Reducing the costs will help, which is why I want to try the wood pellets instead of cat litter. Cat food isn’t going to get any cheaper, though. It’s another reason why we want to grow and preserve as much food for ourselves, as well.

Slight interruption in writing this, as the people adopting Two Face arrived. As a thank you for Two Face, we were gifted with a bag full of brand new, still in their wrappers, Tupperware! Looks like the lady is a distributor. :-)

I hope Two Face is happy in her new home. We’re going to miss her!

Well, with the weather getting colder again for the next while, we’ll be slowing things down as well. At least, outside. Not so much, inside. The tray of bulb onions are now in the sun room. It’s warmer in there, but with the cooler temperatures coming, we’ve got them heated from below. By the time things warm up again, we should be ready to move more seedlings from the aquarium greenhouses to the sun room, then use the aquariums to start the summer and winter squash.

If all goes to plan, we should be ready to start direct sowing some things near the end of May, then do the final direct sowing and transplanting after our last frost date of June 2.

We’ll have a lot of work to do in between!

The Re-Farmer

Ginger bliss!

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I think Ginger is getting a bit spoiled.

After what he’s been through, I think he deserves it! :-D

I only saw four members of his outside family this morning.

Nutmeg has a habit of body slamming the kibble container as I’m filling the bowls, sending kibble flying everywhere! :-D Such a silly boy! I even got to pet him and Rosencrantz this morning.

Now if we could just get Creamsicle Baby and his cousin to let us come close. :-)

Oh, we got a call from the people who came to look at Two Face and Susan a while back. They’ll be coming over this evening to pick up Two Face and bring her home. They were originally going to pick her up on the way to an appointment for their dog, but had plans to do some visiting after and didn’t think she would like being in the vehicle for so long. So they’ll get her on the way home, and take her to a vet in a town closer to where they live.

Which means that, tonight, we’ll be back down to 16 cats in the house.

Time to update the posters to adopt some of the others. We still have another seven available for adoption.

Ginger, of course, is staying with us, and we’ve decided to keep his sister, Cabbages, and Beep Beep. Beep Beep was my dad’s cat, and I just can’t bring myself to adopt her out! :-)

The Re-Farmer

So much Ginger!

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Ginger was playful this morning, and I was able to get a lot of pictures.

Some of them even turned out okay. ;-)

Last night was the first night we did not close the outer cats out, and I’m happy to say there were no issues. I think he spent the night in his favorite spot in my closet. :-D

In the morning, though, he came out and demanded attention!

I was not the only source of that attention.

Turmeric decided to check out her cousin, and yes – grooming happened! Yay!

Turmeric is a couple of months older than him, yet he is so much bigger! Her sister, Saffron, is even smaller. At only about 9 or 10 months old, he’s already looking like he’s going to be a big, burly boy! Maybe not the big slab of meat Cheddar grew up to be, but certainly as big as Keith. We’ve already had times when we’ll look over to see an orange cat curled up and thinking, “Aw, Keith is so cute! … Hold on. That’s not Keith!”

His aunt came over to give him a sniff, but he was far more interested in tackling my hand and chewing on my thumb.

He’s actually quite good at “chewing” without actually biting.

He was quite enjoying the comfort of a bed for humans, rolling around all over the place while his Aunt Beep Beep watched over him. He’s already heavier than she is, but Beep Beep has always been a tiny one.

Ginger has been busy, claiming the house. He’s been going into the basement, where he has discovered the fantasy land of food bowls and litter boxes. :-D He even joined the crowd when the girls gave them their wet cat food. He’d pretty much ignored the wet cat food we gave him when we first brought him into the sun room to await his surgery, but this time, he actually ate it. So far, I think the only place he hasn’t explored yet is the second floor.

The down side of his exploring is that he decided to jump up onto the dining table this morning. My daughter and I were nearby and managed to get him off without startling him too much, only for him to jump out of my daughter’s arms, back onto the table, skittering about, knocking over and breaking a large glass mug, before jumping down to the floor.

*sigh*

Ah, well. He’s still getting used to things.

We’re pretty blown away by how active and mobile he is. He has adjusted very well to the loss of the leg, and is doing pretty well adjusting to the indoor life, and all the new cats around him, too.

It’s very encouraging.

The Re-Farmer

Ginger: mighty hunter!

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It’s a lot hard to get pictures of Ginger, now that he’s joined the inside clan!

I was able to get this one, last night.

The other cats had been lured away, leaving Ginger and his new mouse on my very, very hairy bed.

He loves that mouse! I didn’t realize when I bought it, that it has a pull string to make it vibrate. :-D

Once again, we kept the other cats closed out overnight, to avoid any potential hassles while we were asleep.

Ginger has discovered the comfort of those things the crazy humans sleep on. :-D Several times, I woke in the night to find him cuddled up against me. He can jump up onto the bed himself, which is good. Later this morning, I found him going to explore in the basement, so stairs aren’t a problem for him, either.

I almost got to pet his brother and aunt this morning, but they were much more interested in the kibble!

His other brother photo bombed me, while I was trying to get a picture of his cousin! I am so tickled that I caught him while airborne! :-D

I’m happy to say that all the kitties seem to be doing quite well. :-)

The Re-Farmer

So many deer!

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The deer are out in full force!

We’re actually seeing a lot more than usual, for this time of year. Particularly at our main gate. With how dry this winter had been, I suspect they are hunting for water sources.

These ones were caught on the trail cam a couple of evenings ago.

Can you spot all six of them?

There was a seventh one, but it jumped the fence on the far side of the gate before the last three reached the road. They won’t jump the gate, though they are clearly curious about it. They much prefer going through, or over, the barbed wire fence.

This next image was captured just this morning.

The arrow points out the second deer going through the ditch. In the video file, taken after this still shot, a third deer is seen in the trees in the background, jumping the fence from inside the old hay yard. Not far from there is where there is an old dugout that would normally have water in it, this time of year. Which is why I think we’re seeing more deer because they’re searching for water. There isn’t even mud there right now. :-( There is an old dugout on my brother’s property, across the road, not far from his gate. I suspect there isn’t much water there, either.

An interesting thing I’m noticing about the new trail camera. The camera’s internal temperature readings can be very different from the ambient temperature. For example, in the second photo, it reads -8C/18F Our overnight temperatures did not get that low last night.

The Re-Farmer

There’s Ginger spice in the house!

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Ginger has had his first day in the house, and it’s been interesting!

The first thing he did was claim the cat bed on the bottom of my closet. It’s a favorite spot for quite a few cats, but it’s now all his!

Which seems to work out, since the other cats are far more interested in his box nest than him!

For the night, we closed him up with me and kept the other cats out. Which meant being awakened several times during the night, by cats scratching at my door! Usually, I’ve got at least half a dozen on the bed with me. ;-)

Ginger has been boldly curious about the rest of the house, though definitely cautious around other cats. Being a yard cat, this translated to him being the aggressive one, growling at the other cats if they come too close. Which could be on the other side of the room, at times! Since he has only one front leg to defend himself, he’s taken to flinging himself onto the ground rolling onto his back, and using his one front leg to bat vaguely at any cat in reach. The other cats, meanwhile, are just curious and want to sniff him. So far, there hasn’t been any aggression from them, though some are certainly more laid back about him than others. I suspect it won’t be long before he joins the daily cat pile on my bed. :-D

I’m happy to see him already trying to explore the house. We’ve transitioned other yard cats that too far longer to get to that point! He was able to take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house without any problem. He has yet to discover the stairs to the second level or the basement, yet.

When he isn’t curled up in his new favorite corner, he is remarkably active and agile.

And yes, we did get him his own catnip mouse today. Which he did play with enthusiastically, until his sister, Cabbages, stole it from him! :-D

The loss of the leg is hardly slowing him down at all!

The Re-Farmer

Ginger update: stitches are out!

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Ginger had his trip to the vet to have the sutures removed. My daughter ended up holding him in her arms so the vet could do it, as he did NOT want to get out of the carrier!

He didn’t want to get out at home, either. :-D

It was not easy to get pictures of him!

The stitch removal went well, though the vet lamented that she’d tied them so tight, making it harder to take them out! :-D There was only one slightly raw spot that got a dab of Polysporin on it. Aside from that one spot, the redness that can be seen in the picture is from the stitch removal. He is recovering very well.

We brought him into the house, and into my bedroom/office/craft room.

It’s a big room, and has a door that closes, so we were able to move in his litter box, food and water bowls, and even his box nest, along with the warming pad.

The other cats were quite curious and milling about, so it was quite understandable that Ginger wanted to stay in the carrier! The cats were actually more curious about the other stuff brought in. Like the food bowl. You’d think they were starving and didn’t have food anywhere else in the house! They were circling the food bowl like hungry sharks, pushing each other aside to eat. Silly kitties!

After a while, we shooed them out of the room, leaving Ginger with my younger daughter to watch over him for a while. We’ve since allowed the other cats in. Ginger found the laundry basket converted to a cat bed I have in my closet, and that’s where he’s hanging out.

We’ll shut the other cats out again for the night and give him more time to get used to his new surroundings, a little at a time. We’ll keep food and water for him in here for a while. For the other cats, that’s all set up in the basement, but I think it will be a while before Ginger can navigate stairs!

So far, none have been aggressive towards him. The only hissing has been from cats that sometimes hiss at other cats, too, so it’s not a new thing.

It should be interesting to see how he adapts to his new surroundings, and his extended feline family! Cabbages is his litter mate, brought in before she could go into heat and get pregnant, while Nicco is his big sister and only survivor from Butterscotch’s litter born indoors, earlier that year.

I think he’ll do just fine. :-)

The Re-Farmer