Critters

Brave babies

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It was a lovely evening to do my evening rounds last night, so I found myself sitting in the sunroom, Potato Beetle curled up on the swing bench beside me, fiddling with my phone and enjoying the quiet.

When I suddenly realized there was a tiny tabby in front of me!

One of Junk Pile’s kittens was exploring through the open door, saw me, saw Potato Beetle and ran off, before I could get a photo.

Alas!

With where the bench is set up, the open inner door blocks my view of where the cat food is set up, but I could hear some crunching – and an almost non-stop, low growl.

That would be Junk Pile. Even as she sometimes comes a bit closer to give us a sniff, she keeps up that growl.

I ended up moving to the steps of the storage house to see if I could lure some kitties closer – or at least get them more used to me.

The food bowl I’ve put there for them was empty, but the ones by the house still had kibble in them, so I didn’t add more. I wanted to encourage them to go to the house.

Little Braveheart and her tabby sibling were willing to come out and play nearby. More Braveheart than Tabby, who often ran back into the spirea.

Unfortunately, Rosencrantz was in there, too, and she does not like Junk Pile’s babies. Any time one of the kittens went in there, I could hear her growling at them.

In the end, I think they felt my presence was safer!

Little Braveheart was even almost-kinda-justabout-willing to play with the stick I was wiggling around.

After a while, the kittens took to ignoring me and just running around and playing – which, in itself, is progress – before going to the house to eat.

Junk Pile, however, has three kittens.

Eventually, I spotted the shy one, peeking at me from the spirea. It never came all the way out, so I left, so as not to stress it too much.

Instead, I went into the sun room and dug up a baggie with a few cat toys in it, tossing some outside for the babies. Potato Beetle was with me again, and he went running after the toys, too. I was pleased to see that he and the kittens would sometimes play with the same toy together, with no animosity between them!

As I was walking back and forth around the front of the house, the kittens stopped running away immediately, and would either just ignore me, or pause to watch.

More progress!

Meanwhile, I went over to the junk pile, and was happy to see and hear some of Butterscotch’s kittens. She came out for pets, too. Earlier in the day, though the living room window, I saw one of her orange babies playing in the collapsed wine barrel that I’d cleared beside. I had hoped they would find it a good place to play, and they have! Now, when they do, we can see them from the house. :-)

It will take time, but I am hoping we can socialize these babies better than we were able to with Junk Pile and Rosencrantz. The biggest problem with working on that, however, is mosquitoes. I was being eaten alive while out there! I didn’t want to put on bug spray, as I’m sure the smell would be unpleasant for the kittens. Unfortunately, the times when the kittens seem to come out the most are also the times when the mosquitoes come out, too!

We’re working on it, though! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Junk pile babies!

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I had a much more pleasant surprise this morning, besides finding myself face to face with a wasps nest.

While walking past the junk pile, I suddenly saw a white, orange and black face looking at me!

I quickly grabbed my phone to take a picture, but by the time I looked back…

There was an orange face staring at me.

A playful little orange baby that did not run and hide from me.

Then Butterscotch came over and let me pet her before jumping up on the junk pile herself. I got to pet her some more before she moved further away.

There is the little calico beauty!

So adorable!

Oh? Is that orange movement behind the calico?

Why, yes it is! Hello, orange baby!

The babies ignored me and started going for Butterscotch and climbing to the top of the pile.

I just switched to video when another orange baby showed up?

They are so big and fluffy!!! They would be quite a bit younger than the other kittens, and yet they’re not that much smaller!

Oh? Did I hear something scrabbling around in the junk pile?

Number four!

They just hung around at the top and played while I stood just a few feet away. I got closer to these guys than with any of the other kittens, except Little Braveheart.

Just look at the smug expression on Butterscotch’s face! She’s all like “see… I don’t kill ALL my babies. I’m a good mama… when I’m outside!”

Going past the junk pile later, I saw the calico and an orange baby playing at the top. With Mom not there, they ran off when they saw me.

That makes 3 litters of yard cats. I’ve only seen one of Rosencrantz’s 3 babies lately, so that makes a total of 8, for sure. Possibly 10.

It’s a good thing Beep Beep is content to stay indoors. Otherwise, there would probably be another litter on the way!

The Re-Farmer

Yikes!

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This morning I went to get a meter reading to submit to the electric company.

Being rather short, I tend to see more glare on the cover than the numbers themselves. My solution has been to hold my phone up and take several pictures. The display cycles, with a short blank period in between, but after taking 3 or 4 shots, I can be pretty sure at least one of them has the reading in it.

What this means is that I’m fiddling with my phone to open the camera as I walk up to the power pole.

I really should pay more attention.

After I took the pictures, I looked down and found myself staring at this, maybe a foot and a half away from my face.

There were no wasps flying around, so I took pictures.

Because I’m like that. :-D

But why were no wasps flying around?

I think this is part of my answer. These are not the aggressive yellow and black wasps. I couldn’t see much, but they look a lot like the docile bald faced hornets in the Chinese elm trees.

From what I could see, they wasps were not so much “docile” as “sluggish”. It was a bit cooler this morning, so maybe they just weren’t warmed up yet.

We are actually going to leave this nest. We go to the post once a month to get a reading, and since I’m using a camera to see the numbers anyhow, we don’t disturb them in the process. In the winter, after they die off, we can carefully remove the nest. Who knows. We might Ebay it or something. There is apparently quite the demand for the nests!

I just wish I’d noticed it before I took the meter reading. It would have been much easier on my heart! :-D

The Re-Farmer

So many kitties!

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While I was outside this evening, I found Junk Pile and all three of her kittens, playing in front of the storage house.

When I had the chance, I tried to see if I could get one of them to come close.

It almost worked.

Almost, but not quite! This was as close as little Braveheart would get!

It’s hard to see, but there’s a kitten behind the grapevines in the background. :-)

They love playing on those stairs!

I’ve been keeping that insulator on the steps filled with water lately. Junk Pile and her kittens seem to prefer drinking out of that, over the wider, shallower container by the food dish.

I would love to have stayed longer to try and play with them, but I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes!

Meanwhile, I had this on my bed…

At first, it was David, Cheddar and Big Rig, but then Keith pushed his way in between and settled in, too!

Gosh, they’re funny.

The Re-Farmer

A little friend, and change of (medical) plans

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While picking cucalmelons this morning, I found a little friend!

We’ve been seeing LOTS of frogs about this size, every time we to go through the garden beds. Usually, they hop off too quickly for me to get photos, but this one didn’t move!

He was even okay with the cucamelon leaves being pulled aside.

I am very happy to see so many frogs in our garden beds. I’m sure they’re doing a great job of eating up things that would be eating our vegetables!

On a less cheerful note, the original plan for today had to change. This was the day I was supposed to bring my husband into the city for an appointment at the cardiac clinic. They want to discuss the possibility of implanting a defibrillator in him.

Unfortunately, about a week ago, my husband discovered cats had peed under his hospital bed, and under the small table with the mini fridge he keeps some of his medications in. He cleaned it up himself, rather than asking any of us to do it.

He still hasn’t completely recovered.

When his pain levels didn’t improve by Monday, he called the cardiac clinic about his appointment. The letter he received said to expect to be there for at least 2 hours. He explained his situation. The choices were to either cancel the appointment, or they could find some way to accommodate his pain levels and disability.

The appointment got cancelled.

They way he put it, the response was along the lines of, how dare he mess with their system.

They will send another letter with a new appointment (I find it interesting that they make these appointments with zero input from patients), and after he gets the new letter, he can talk to them about accommodations. Of course, he has no way of knowing if he’ll have a good day or a bad day – or even a good week or a bad week – that far in advance. That’s why he was stuck phoning them only about 48 hours before today’s appointment. No matter; even if he’s having a good day, being able to lie down on a stretcher of something would probably be needed, just after such a long drive.

I understand why the province has a single cardiac clinic in a central location. It is probably much more efficient, and allows for things like better access to equipment. The problem is, like almost all Canadian provinces, we are geographically huge, and not everyone lives in or near this particular city. We’re just an hour away from the city (though it can take another half hour to reach the clinic, depending on traffic), and it’s difficult enough. I can’t imagine living in one of the fly-in communities and needing cardiac care. Sure, the small communities don’t have the population base to warrant their own cardiac clinics, but there are large towns and other cities that could serve these more remote communities.

The fact that it’s such and inconvenience for them to accommodate my husband’s disability is also frustrating. They’re in a hospital, for crying out loud. And with so many hospitals cancelling care to make room for all the pandemic hospitalizations that never materialized, there are plenty of stretchers and beds available that could be used for someone like my husband, without having to prearrange it weeks in advance.

Another unfortunate thing with my husband is that his pain levels have forced him to cancel a number of appointments. He has also done things like walked out after being forced to wait well past his appointment time, due to pain caused by the wait itself, and basically has stood up for himself. He is likely now considered a “problem” patient. I don’t think they realize that, when it comes to his list of health problems, his recently developed heart condition is actually not at the top of the list. Not even close. With everything else going on, this new development doesn’t even phase him, and certainly doesn’t frighten him, as it probably more typical. His pain needs to be gotten under control first. Some of his other health problems are caused by the pain itself, and will improve on their own, accordingly. They have not been able to figure out why his heart failure developed in the first place, and we’re pretty sure it has more to do with the large number of medications he is on, and has been for such a long time, than anything else. We already know that there is no surgery or treatment that can “fix” the physical source of his disability, and it will continue to cause further degradation of his spine. The only real thing that can be done is treat the pain. That’s the foundational thing. Without that being addressed, treating his other problems are little more than stop-gap motions.

This has been explained at heart clinic appointments a few times. I’ve watched notes get taken for his file, that the whole team looks at. There is no reason for them to not be aware of his disability, and what that means for his appointments. Even the fact that we have to drive so far and the affect that has on his pain levels has been duly noted.

Yet when he tries to address this with them, he’s made to feel like he’s inconveniencing them somehow?

Not impressed.

Well, next week he has his first appointment with the pain clinic. Hopefully, that will get the ball rolling on more effective treatment.

The Re-Farmer

I found a little friend! So exciting. :-)

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Okay, before I show you what I found while picking chokecherries, I’ll share with you why I am so super excited about it.

When I was quite young, I spotted a caterpillar on the leaves of a crabapple tree. It was unlike any I had seen before. Not only that, but I found three more!

I don’t know how long I spent, examining them while they worked on spinning silk around them. Their green colour, almost exactly like the leaves they were on. The yellow stripe around the body, with the row of spots along it. The way it’s real head was tucked and hidden below with – most fascinating of all – “eyes” that made it look almost like a fish head, with a very distinctive line next to the “pupils”! With another stripe around the real head, it looked like a fish holding something in its mouth. :-D Then there was the fact that, if I poked one (gently, I must add), two little orange “horns” would emerge from its body.

I was absolutely thrilled by them.

So it was with great excitement that I went running to my mother and brought her over to see them. She seemed very interested in the one I showed her, and even asked me to show her the others as well. I enthusiastically obliged, pointing out each leaf that had one of these caterpillars.

Then, to my shock and dismay, my mother proceeded to bash at the leaves, sending the caterpillars flying. After making sure she got rid of all 4 of them, she left. I searched in the grass for them, hoping to put them back on the tree, but never found them.

As you can imagine, that was the last time I shared my excitement over a critter with my mother. In retrospect, my mother probably assumed it was something that would eat and harm the apple tree. She certainly never took the time to explain it to me.

For years, every summer, I would find myself searching among the leaves of the apple trees, hoping to see this caterpillar again. It took me even more years (in the years before internet! LOL), but I eventually was able to identify them as the caterpillars of Tiger Swallowtails. The butterflies are rather common out here, but finding the caterpillars, not so much!

You can probably imagine my childlike thrill and excitement when I finally saw one, today!

I’ve cropped the photos, but did not resize them, so you can click on them for full size.

With its little bed of silk on the chokecherry leaf, it almost looks like it is floating in mid air!

Doesn’t that look almost like a fish head? A bit like the local catfish.

In this photo, you can see just a little bit of the real head, tucked underneath.

This little guy is, of course, different from the ones I saw as a kid. It’s a darker green and more mottled looking. The spots along the yellow stripe around the body are harder to see. This one also has a spot of purple in the black “pupil” of the false eyes. It is still, however, the same kind of caterpillar, and I couldn’t be happier!

I did, of course, call the girls over to see it, too! I had told them the story about finding the caterpillars – and what my mom did to them – years ago, so it was fantastic to be able to share this with them.

I then took great care not to disturb it, while picking berries. Alas, I did not see any others, but I did look! :-)

I am so excited!!!!

The Re-Farmer

More deer damage, and a medical update

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We had a really hot day today, so when things cooled down enough, I went out to water the garden plots and sunflowers.

Which is when I found this.

All the leaves on one side of this one have been eaten!

This is the first of the large sunflowers that has had this kind of damage. :-( At least the top didn’t get chomped off.

One of the more recently chomped smaller ones is showing signs of recovery.

It also had a friend!

We’ve got a lot of grasshoppers and locusts this year, but this is the first green one like this that I’ve seen. :-)

When I was done and dragging the hose back to the house, I found Creamsicle napping on top of the straw bale. :-) My coming close for a picture woke him up…

I caught him mid stretch. :-D

Meanwhile…

Today, my husband and I had our doctor appointments that we should have had back in March. They were supposed to be physicals, but the doctor wasn’t expecting that. Which is when I found out he does physicals in the mornings, when, as he put it, his mind it still fresh. Which was not a problem, since we had lots to catch up on. He hasn’t seen my husband since December, and has seen me only while I was accompanying my mother.

Us all having the same doctor is coming in handy.

Before doing a full physical, he wanted us both to get fasting bloodwork done. For my husband’s part of the appointment, we updated the doctor on his upcoming visit with the pain clinic. Even though he hasn’t seen my husband in more than 6 months, he remembered that we’d already been waiting for almost 2 years, so he was a bit shocked that this was going to be a first visit. We also told him about the appointment at the cardiac clinic to discuss my husband getting a defibrillator implanted. He had questions about that. Mostly, why does my husband suddenly have such a low ejection fraction? It turns out that the cardiac clinic has not been sending any files to our doctor, so he had nothing. He still has nothing, really, because the cardiac clinic has not been able to find why my husband’s ejection fraction is so low, and are openly perplexed by him. The doctor has requested for us to remind the clinic to send the files to him, so he can see what’s going on. Same with the pain clinic, when the time comes.

In our previous province, all medical files were electronic, and could be accessed by any authorized doctor. So my husband could go from his GP to the specialists at the pain clinic (all 4 or 5 of them that were assigned to his case), to any other specialist, and they would all have access to the same information. Here, there is no connectivity. When our previous doctor suddenly moved out of province, we had to pay to have our files sent to the new clinic. A GP can access the electronic files at their own clinic, but not the files at the heart clinic or the pain clinic. They all have to send their files to each other, as needed. All of the specialty clinics should be sending everything back to the primary caregiver every time, so that at least that one person has all the information. Why that isn’t happening for my husband, we don’t know, but the doctor was not happy with having so much information missing.

We spent some time talking about my husband’s medications, and the problems he’s been having getting refills for the painkillers. So that’s been updated but, after we get the bloodwork done, he wants to look at switching my husband to morphine, and focus on pain management a lot more. There’s one medication in particular that he was wondering why my husband is on at all, and he just didn’t know anymore. I suspect the total number of prescriptions my husband is on will be reduced.

I’m happy to see him being pro-active about it. The previous doctor didn’t want to change anything until after my husband was seen by the pain clinic, but that took so long, the doctor moved out of province before that could happen!

My own part of the appointment was short. I have only one prescription, and I’ll see him again after my bloodwork is done. We ended up chatting a bit about my mother, since I’ll be bringing her back to see him tomorrow.

As for our follow up appointments, he started to ask if we could book them in the mornings when I mentioned I’d asked for the afternoon, because of the drive. When he realized how far away we live, he completely back tracked and said to make the appointment for whenever works best for us, and to book another “joint” appointment, and he will accommodate us. Since our bloodwork requires fasting, we will book the appointment after we get it done, which likely won’t be until Monday.

So we’ll have at least one more medical appointment this month, on top of the others.

With this doctor wanting to work proactively on managing my husband’s pain, I suspect we’ll be back fairly regularly.

By the time we were done, my husband was at his limit – and we still had the drive home to do. He was worried about his appointment at the cardiac clinic next week. The letter said that there have been a lot of delays, and to expect to be there for as long as 2 hours. That’s after a 1 1/2 hour drive. We’ll have to make sure to call in advance so they can have a stretcher available for him to lie down on; something they were able to arrange to do for him before, after a previous appointment was so late, he ended up walking out because he was in just too much pain. They’re a cardiac clinic. They don’t take into account any other issues a person might have, unrelated to the heart, unless it’s brought up directly.

Another reason why not having central files is a problem. When he goes to any specialist, he has to explain everything else to them. At the cardiac clinic, he could see any one of a team of 5 that works together, so he has to explain his disability, and why he uses a walker, all over again with each one. Otherwise, they assume that his use of a walker is related to his heart condition.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

At least now we’re able to actually get appointments and treatment. The months of delays because of the pandemic shut downs have really messed things up for him. Our province has once again had more people testing positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus, and people are freaking out and demanding things shut down again. What the media isn’t including in their reports (though it’s on the provincial government website, for all to see), those new cases are from 5 days of testing, and represent only .9% testing positive. The total number of positive and presumptive positive cases for the province since March is .03% of the entire population. A person is more likely to get hit by a car than test positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus. People don’t seem to understand risk factors at all anymore, and the panic means people like my husband are having a hard time getting medical care. During our appointment, the only time it came up at all was when I mentioned we were supposed to have today’s appointments back in March, when everything got shut down. My husband’s appointment at the cardiac clinic got cancelled. While my husband did get one appointment rescheduled at the cardiac clinic, for a test in nuclear medicine, next week will be the first time the cardiac team will be seeing him. He’s had a couple of telephone appointments, but that’s it. He had also finally gotten contacted by the pain clinic just before the shut down, which that added a few more months to his wait.

If things shut down again, lack of treatment would certainly mean his condition degenerating further. Lack of treatment is more likely to kill him, than any of us coming in contact with the Wuhan strain of coronavirus.

He is certainly not the only person in this position.

Frustrating is really quite an understatement.

The Re-Farmer

Fur baby progress!

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It had been a while since I’d seen the outside kittens, so I was happy when they showed up this evening. Little Braveheart had follow Junk Pile to the food bowls by the house, but ran off when I came out. They hung out by the steps into the storage house, before hiding in the grape vines, so I decided to sit on the steps and see if I could tempt them to play.

Braveheart was immediately curious!

Just look at that intense gaze! :-)

And who’s that back there?

Another baby, chewing on a grape vine! :-D

Junk Pile, meanwhile, came over and lay on the mulch, growling at me the whole time! That seems to be her default attitude these days. :-D

I broke off the spent flowers of a spirea growing under the stairs to wiggle around on the step. It worked a bit!

Braveheart pounced at it! :-)

Her sibling even came a bit closer.

I saw no sign of the third kitten, though. I hope it’s all right.

After this, they ran off with Junk Pile into the spirea, so I let them be.

Once indoors, I got entertained by more kittens.

The cats love the base of the washing machine packaging so much, we don’t have the heart to get rid of it, yet! :-D

Layendecker had been napping on it when Turmeric crawled on and woke him up. :-D

They are so sweet. :-)

The Re-Farmer