It’s about 10:30am as I start this and, according to the weather apps, we’re at 6C/42F right now, with a “feels like” of 1C/34F
Which means it was probably a couple of degrees colder, at least, while I did my morning rounds, which I finished a couple of hours ago.
I didn’t even need a jacket while I was out there. Sweats and a sweatshirt had me more than warm enough!
Still, it’s rather chilly for the kitties – especially the littles – so I took the time this morning to set their kibble to soak in hot water until completely softened, and also had warm water to top up their water bowls.
The cats that prefer to eat on the cat shelter roof aren’t too happy when I just walk past them – some even reach out to grab my arm as I go by! – but they do eventually go to the trays.
I’d say the warm food is worth it for them!
As I was doing my rounds, I had quite a few branches to pick up. Mostly smaller branches around the yard. Then I found this in the maple grove, out by the fire pit.
When I first saw it, I was a bit confused. How could we lose a tree, but all the trees are still standing? Where did it come from?
Click through to the next photo, and you’ll see.
We just lost half a tree! 😄
Clearly, it had been dead for some time. As I was cleaning it up, I left the biggest piece of trunk for last. The smaller pieces and branches went to the two branch piles we have – one in the yard as fuel for the fire pit, one just on the other side of the fence that will eventually need a commercial wood chipper to get rid of.
The trunk turned out to be so dry and partially rotted that, when I went to pick up the larger end to drag it out, it broke in half!
Those pieces got dragged over next to the pile of cut logs we have for the fire pit, to be broken down more, later.
We haven’t used the fire pit even once this year. It’s usually been too windy for a fire, and when it wasn’t windy, there were too many mosquitoes. Now that it’s getting cooler and the bugs are mostly gone, I’m hoping to get it going at least once or twice – if the wind allows!
Another reason I want to get our outdoor kitchen built. We’ll move the fire pit into the shelter. It won’t keep the bugs out, but it’ll have at least some shelter from the wind and rain.
Until then, we won’t be getting much use out of the fire pit where it is now. Not only is wind a concern, but there are too many dead branches around that the sparks could ignite, as well as a nearby spruce. Spruce is basically a big torch waiting to happen.
After finishing cleaning up the wind damage around the yard – mostly very minor stuff, thankfully – I started heading inside, and found all sorts of adorableness in the sun room!
Poor judgement, trying to squeeze his way into the cat bed with the kittens and… I believe that is Not-Junk-Pile in with them.
If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see a kitten cuddle puddle. The “bed” they’re on is an old feed bag, from when we could still afford to buy deer feed and bird seed, we found, stuffed with… I can’t remember what. It was stored on the shelf and the cats knocked it flat to make a bed out of it! 😄
We will be rearranging the sun room as we clean it up for the winter, bringing in another shelf from the old kitchen that isn’t being used as intended. We’ll set up this side of the sun room for the cats, so they will have more places like this to stay warm in the winter.
Well, it’s time to go help my daughter in the bathroom. There is much to do to fix things up!
I’ve been trying something different with the outside cats, as the temperatures drop. Along with heating water for their water bowls, I’ve started boiling water to soak their kibble, with the lysine powder added, until it’s very soft. Not quite cat soup, but no longer crunchy.
I experimented with it last night and was shocked by just how much water kibble can absorb. No wonder cats with dry diets can get blocked so easily!
Anyhow; this gives them warm food, and we’re not wasting lysine on the bottom of the food trays.
They seem to like it.
It does mean no kibble on the roof of the cat house, which some of the cats prefer. We’ll still give them a top of during the day of dry kibble, but this morning, they had to go to the liquid proof trays to eat.
As I was putting the food out, I kept hearing a meow from… where? The cats I could see were all busy eating.
Eventually, I traced it to the shelf shelter. Each shelf has its own food bow for those shier cats.
I was able to pet her yesterday, but she would still run off at times when I reached for her.
This morning, she was right in there with all the usual adults that fight for attention when I first come out. When I opened the doors from the old kitchen into the sun room, she actually made a run for the door and tried to get inside!
As I was putting the food out, she eagerly accepted pets. When she got in the way of closing the storm door to the old kitchen, I picked her up and she let me cuddle her. Even outside, where tolerance for pets usually disappears, she even came up to me for pets.
I am so happy!
I believe this makes her the third female kitten – maybe the fourth – that we’ve been able to socialize. It’s been so hard to get the females friendly, without having to basically catch them and bring them inside.
Once the cat isolation shelter is finished and set up with a heat lamp, we’ll be able to work with the rescue to start getting the little ladies spayed over the winter.
Kohl’s brother, Rabi, meanwhile, stays well away from us, even at feeding time.
Well, it finally happened. We had our first frost this year, on the night of October 3 – well past our average first frost date of September 10.
It’s still earlier than last year. A year ago today, which was our Thanksgiving day (this year, it’s next week), we had just had a lot of rain the day before, and were still harvesting from the garden, and not needing to cover anything.
We have nothing to complain about. We still have a couple of beds in the garden we could cover that, if the forecasts are at all accurate, can continue to be covered at night and kept going for a few more weeks, if we want.
Also, no snow. We might get rain tomorrow, but the earliest we’re currently expecting snow is a little bit overnight, more than two weeks from how.
Last night, we did go below freezing, and had our first morning of using warm water from the house to give to the cats, instead of filling their water bowls from the hose.
The cold was enough to finally do in the mighty, mighty Crespo squash!
I’m still amazed by how huge those plants got!
This morning, the septic guy came to empty the tank for the winter. After he did that, he adjusted the weight next to the float/pill switch he replaced for us this summer. He tried adjusting the line from the basement first, but had to do it from inside the tank.
What a guy. He was actually on the ground, his upper body leaning right into the tank to reach.
As if that weren’t enough, he showed up with an eye patch and sunglasses over his regular glasses! He somehow detached a retina and, while it is healing well, without the eye patch, he was seeing double. I can barely even lean over the open tank to see inside without feeling like my glasses will fall off, and there he was, hanging head first right into the tank. He did take off the sunglasses for that, but yikes!
He got it done, though, and now the weight will no longer get hung up on the inside of the grey water side of the tank.
I’m really glad he was able to do it. It had gotten caught again this morning. I’d brought the hose from the garden to the house. The tap is in the wall next to the septic tank. I’d shut off the tap and left the nozzle open, so water could drain out rather than freeze. Not much drained out, though! When I turned the tap on so I could use the hose on the weight inside the tank, it was barely a trickle. There was too much ice in the hose. Still, it was enough to get the weight free hanging again, and I could hear the pump shutting itself off in the basement, as soon as it did. The hoses will be put away, soon, so we wouldn’t have been able to keep this up for long.
Now that the tank has been emptied, we can start preparing to cover it for the winter – but we still need to have the company come in and repair the expeller out by the barn. I’ve called and left another message, and still no call back!
After the septic guy was done, my daughter and I went into the root cellar. After wiping down the shelves and covering most with paper, we brought in the onions and garlic, then assembly lined it to bring the winter squash down. They had all been sitting on the washing machine, and we need to use that today!
While my daughter finished in the basement (there was no way my knees could handle going up and down those stairs!), I got the drainage hose for the washing machine set out the storm door window again. We’d been leaving it set up for at least the past month, but with temperatures dropping below freezing, we wanted to be able to close the inner door.
It won’t be long before we’re going to have to start using the drain to the septic tank again. Between the expeller needing to be fixed, and the state or our pipes, we’re hoping to delay that as long as we can.
Last night, I did the first treatment with the Free-Flow Drain and Line Maintenance stuff.
The instructions say to start at the drain closest to the tank, so that anything loosened in the pipes doesn’t end up clogging things further down. The closest is the access pipe in the floor of the basement. Based on the diameter of the pipe, that took 4 tablespoons of product in a cup of warm water. A cup of water isn’t enough to get the stuff to where things get hung up in the pipe, so I had to chase it down with more water.
We can do the next treatment tonight. That will be the bathroom sink, toilet and tub. The main drain pipe from under the bathroom is as large as the floor drain, but the product has to go through much smaller pipes, first, so we’ll do a smaller amount, but do all three at the same time.
Depending on how this works out, we might do these drains more than once, before moving on to the next furthest drain.
Once we’ve done the treatment with this stuff, we’ll start using the Septic Remedy stuff for regular tank maintenance.
None of which will make much difference at all, if that ejector pipe doesn’t get repaired!
In other things, I finally got a call back from the place that does Meals on Wheels in my mother’s town. After a bit of back and forth conversation, my mother is now set up to get meals delivered, instead of having homecare come in to do batch cooking. They only deliver three days a week, though. They no longer have enough volunteers to do five days a week. If I were living in the same town as my mother, I could have arranged to pick up meals on the other days myself and bring them to her, but it’s just not possible to do from where we are. The cost of gas would be higher than the cost of the meals!
One of my follow up calls to my mother, while arranging this, happened to be just after my sister left. She had come by for a visit, and to drop off some vegetables from her garden for my mother.
Including tomatoes.
My mother isn’t supposed to eat tomatoes.
*sigh*
It does mean I won’t be going over there to help her with her grocery shopping until after the weekend, though, which is helpful.
As for today, I’m going to have to make it a day of rest. It seems all the stuff my daughter and I were able to get done yesterday was pushing it for me. Last night, I rolled over in bed and got hit with a Charlie horse. Thankfully, I was able to message my older daughter and she was able to come help me. It was several hours before I could get back to sleep. My attempt at napping after my daughter and I finished with putting stuff in the root cellar, then setting up the laundry, was a failure. Being aggressively cuddled by cats was something I could get used to, but that’s when the Meals on Wheels lady called. By the time I was done all the phone calls, sleep was just not going to happen.
My every joint still and sore, though. The temperature fluctuations are not helping! Neither is the brain fog from lack of sleep.
Hopefully, we’ll get caught up over the weekend, but we do have warmer weather coming, so hopefully we’ll be able to get quite a bit more done.
I need to reign in my expectations, though. I keep forgetting how broken I am.
I think it’s time to make an appointment with the doctor and see about applying for disability. My last doctor said he felt I wasn’t at that point, yet, but that was a few years ago, and he’s moved on to another clinic. We’ll see what this other doctor has to say about it.
Something to do next week, though. The clinic doesn’t take calls on Fridays.
As for right now, it’s all I can do to stay awake, so if this post sounds disjointed and rambling, that is why!
The last time I did a head count, the highest number I got was 40, which is insane enough.
I know at least two, maybe three, are winter returns, but at least one of them, probably two, was part of the headcount of 40. Judgement is the most recent return.
Which means we’ve got perhaps another 9 extra cats from… somewhere.
Whatever cats these are, there is nothing unique about them to set them apart from our regular adults, and I’m pretty sure none of the “extras” are kittens. I did spot a tabby yesterday that I thought looked unfamiliar, but I couldn’t get a good enough look at it before it disappeared behind a cat shelter. We have quite a few grey and brown tabbies. Then there are the “printer babies”. The white ones with grey or black patches on them. Adults and kittens. Very few of them are friendly enough to be individually identifiable. There are some tuxedos, including one that showed up I’m not sure about. One of the returns is the mostly black cat that had an infected eye. If I can see his face, I can identify him by his one eye that’s half discoloured.
We have got to reduce this population!
I messaged the rescue about it, just out of shock. There’s nothing they can do at this point. None of the shelters are accepting intakes right now. They’re too full, and not enough people are willing to adopt a rescue. That doesn’t even take into account the people that either back out at the last minute, or return cats they decided they’re not up to caring for.
The Cat Lady said, ideally, we’d want to get down to a maximum of 15, which would be great, but if cats are just showing up from elsewhere, there’s not much we can do about it.
At this point, we need to seriously look at getting a cull done. It’s not sustainable. Not to mention expensive. I just bought 160 pounds of kibble, just for the outside cats from the feed store, today. That was well over $200 – and with this many cats, unless we find ways to supplement with other food, which I’m looking into, will not last the month. Maybe 3 weeks.
I keep forgetting I have a donation button. If anyone is able to help out – and I certainly understand that most of us are really hurting with the cost of living increases right now – you can click on the button at the top of the page, or below.
Feel free to share the donation link, too. 100% of donations go toward the care and feeding of the yard cats, and anything at all is greatly appreciated.
Judgement has always been great with the kittens, so it was no surprise to find him snuggled up with a couple.
The black and white is another one we can’t get close to. I think the other one is Magda. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, with so many similar kittens!
So many adorables out there!
The outside cats got their version of cat soup this evening. I adjusted the ingredients, using more dry kibble and letting it soak longer in hot water before blitzing it with the immersion blender. There was also a couple of cans of wet cat food, lysine and powdered pumpkin seed.
They absolutely loved it, and licked the food trays clean. The skunks and racoons will have nothing to steal tonight!
I first spotted him yesterday evening, though my daughters saw him earlier. It’s been weeks since I saw him last, just once, and more weeks before then.
Wow, is he ever hungry, too! He doesn’t seem too thin this time, though. Sometimes, when they come back in the fall, they look like they’ve been starved for some time.
Hopefully, he will be staying this time, at least for the winter.
I’ve started to do something different for the outside cats. Just for a few nights now. When I make the cat soup for the inside cats, I’m not making an extra soupy soup for the outside cats. It’s mostly warm water with only a couple of cans of wet can food (we can’t afford to do more), some lysine and pumpkin seed powder. I also add some dry kibble to the water to soften up a bit, then divide it out among all the liquid proof trays.
The outside cats absolutely love it.
Best of all, if there is any kibble left in the feeding trays, it all gets eaten up. They literally lick the trays clean, so any lysine that didn’t stick to the kibble from the morning feed and settled on the bottom gets eaten up, too.
There isn’t any kibble at all left for the skunks and racoons to steal, by the time they’re done!
Things are getting chilly out there. It’s time to get the sun room set up for the winter, open up and clean out the cat house – and get that isolation shelter finished! Hopefully, I’ll finally be able to work on that again, today.
Then there’s all the stuff to get done around the house and garden, too.
I believe this is the one the girls have named Magda. Such a sweety! She doesn’t like to be carried, but I discovered that if I use the bottom of my shirt to make a pouch, she will happily go for a ride in it. 😊
While checking the garden beds, I was happy to see this, in the high raised bed.
Click through for a second image. These are the peppers that are supposed to be more of an orangey yellow, and they are finally turning colour!
I hadn’t planned to harvest anything this morning, as I decided to go into the city for our Costco shopping trip. I did end up gathering a couple of melons that had fallen off their vines. One of them looked like a mouse had tried to chewing through it. It didn’t get very far, though. I’m sure one of our yard cats had something to do with the limited damage!
Meanwhile, we figured out why my husband’s disability pay came in earlier than expected. It turns out we have a new statutory holiday. National Truth and Reconciliation Day. I hadn’t seen anything about it anywhere, including the usual places I would have expected to. I don’t see it as being a particularly popular holiday, since it’s basically just a pander to activist types pushing the residential school/mass graves hoax. They have no interest in truth, and certainly don’t want reconciliation, and if their agenda end up hurting their own people, they don’t particularly care about that, either. Oh, I’d better watch myself, though. If our Prime Dictator has any say in the matter, being a “residential school denier” will be an arrestable offence.
But I digress.
As lovely as it was out there this morning, today has worked out to be another very windy day! We’re going to have a lot of clean up in the yard of small branches – not large ones, thankfully, nor any fallen trees this time.
We’re supposed to get a bit of rain in about an hour, and our overnight temperatures are supposed to drop to 7C/45F tonight. When I go my evening rounds, I’ll have to remember to drop the sides of the plastic “greenhouse” we put around the eggplant and pepper bed. Hopefully, the winds will have died down by then, and the box frame won’t become a sail! It’s tied down really well, with means the wood would probably break before it came loose from the stakes. !!
While tonight and tomorrow night are supposed to be pretty mild, our forecast has changed once again. We’re now looking at 3C/37F in a couple of night, and 0C/32F the night after.
We’ll have to make sure to harvest all the green tomatoes before then! It’s a shame we have no way to cover them, because overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up again after that.
Or… the forecast could change again, and we won’t be getting any frost yet at all!
With last night’s chill, the yard cats were most definitely feeling it! A whole lot of kittens are hanging out in the sun room, curled up on various beds and blankets, in piles.
It’s getting time to open up the cat house to clean it up, as well as setting up one side of the sun room, for the winter.
They are also seem extra enthusiastic at feeding time, with this new kibble!
I had a bit of a surprise among the cats swirling around my feet as I tried to get out of the old kitchen, closing the inner door behind me to keep cats from running into the old kitchen, and not step on any cats while stepping down from the doorway.
An adorable little face I don’t usually see this close to me!
Baby Hypotenose was in the crowd. I got this picture of her, later.
The irony is, I’m less sure of who the mother is! I’m about 95% sure it’s Sprout, as I saw her with Hypotenose Jr and an orange kitten. Then the orange kitten disappeared.
Sprout quite a bit more feral, and is one of the mamas that isn’t very motherly.
As for Baby Hypotenose, as I was setting kibble out in the sun room, she was right in there with the other cats, milling around under my feet.
So I tried to pet her.
She let me!!!
She started to run off, but stopped and let me rub her neck and shoulders. I’m so happy! We’ve been able to identify her as female, only because she’s a bit of a show off when she runs around with her tail up. We have one female kitten that’s a lot more socialized. If we can get Baby Hypotenose socialized, too, that’ll make at least 2 female kittens we’ll be able to get to a vet over the winter!
Here’s hoping!
There was another rare visitor in the sun room, though not one I was able to touch. I got this photo later on, too.
They’re going to miss this tree when we finally have it cut down. The cats love to climb all over it.
I’m thinking we leave a fair bit of the trunk standing. My usual thought is that we could use the stump to support a table or a bench. Actually, it’s thick enough it could probably support both.
If we leave more of the trunk, though, we could also add cat shelves or small shelters onto it.
That’s not going to happen for a while, though. We need to get it done, though. It’s roots are cracking the basement all, and the branches are overhanging the roof. My daughters were able to trim some away, but the bulk of it will need a professional tree company to remove, without risking damage to the roof.
Unless my brother decides to do it himself. Which I wouldn’t want, as it would be a pretty dangerous job. It’s just too close to the house.
For now, though, the cats love it. They also use it to get onto the roof, where they can then go to the second floor windows and check out what my daughters are doing! 😁
Like this little one was checking me out from the branch above me.
I completely forgot today was the first day of autumn!
It certainly felt like it, this morning.
We got rather chilly night. A light rain started during the night and continued through the morning. At about 7:30am (sunrise was at 7:14am today), I quickly went to feed the cats outside, and could hear thunder in the distance as I did it. I wanted to make sure they got fed before any potential storms hit us.
We were at about 12C/54F at the time, but the humidex made it feel like only 7C/45F, which I think was our overnight low. Our long range forecast has changed and changed again. We went from not expecting frost until the end of October to now expecting overnight temperatures below freezing about 10 days in, with colder nights and potential frost before then.
I’m really hoping that holds off longer!
The thunderstorms didn’t hit us, but since we were getting some rain, I didn’t do my morning rounds until the afternoon. The fluctuating temperatures and humidity was really messing with my body. Lots of pain and stiffness. Add in the overcast skies and rainy weather, which always makes me feel sleepy, my morning was completely unproductive.
The fluctuating conditions have been very hard on my husband. He describes himself as “crunchy” these days. Every time he moves, he can feel things crunching in his lower spine, where the damage is worse.
By the afternoon, though, the sun came out and it warmed up a bit. We’re at 15C/59F as I write this, and are supposed to reach 16C/61F eventually. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 7C/45F. We’re still supposed to warm up again for the rest of September, particularly with the overnight temperatures, but even one colder night like last night will slow down ripening in the garden.
I am quite happy we got the vinyl wrapped around the eggplant and hot pepper bed. It’s held up so far, and I think it is making a difference in keeping the plants warmer during the night.
When I headed out to do my morning rounds in the afternoon, I spotted this big guy, enjoying the catio.
He’s got that permanently sad expression on his face!!
I’m happy to say that horrible wound he had on his face seems to be healing really well. He never let us get a good look at it, but it seemed like the skin of his entire cheek was torn open, with a flap of skin hanging down. Over the weeks, we could see it was healing, and the skin flap dried up. It hung on for a very long time, though, so we’d see him walking around with this black, dried up thing hanging off his face, and could do nothing about it. While I did sometimes manage to touch him while he was eating, he would not let me see that side of his face. We just got glances of it from a distance.
As it healed, though, he got less skittish again and, recently, he actually let me briefly see the injured side of his face. There’s a bald spot of fresh, pink skin. No sign of infection. What a survivor!
If he’s getting comfortable in the catio, I wonder if we’ll finally be able to get him into a carrier and get him fixed? I hope so.
After sneaking a picture of Sad Face (aka: Shop Towel), I was going to continue my rounds, but was followed by a herd of cats and kittens, getting under my feet! I had intended to feed them when I was done, but they convinced me otherwise.
One more melon was ready to pick, plus a couple of tomatoes, and I found a couple of G Star squash – including a mutant one! It’s two stuck together, but there’s only one stem.
I made sure to check on the winter squash I harvested yesterday. Mostly to make sure no cats knocked them off their makeshift shelf in the garage. All was fine! They are drying up nicely. I grabbed a smaller one with a bit of moisture damaged skin, where it had contact with the board or brick it was on. I figure we can try it with supper tonight.
Today, I finally remembered to change a headlight bulb on the truck. I bought the replacement bulb more than a month ago!
With our van, changing a bulb required removing the entire headlight fixture. They were designed to be easily popped off and on. The truck is very different.
I checked the User’s Manual, which wasn’t as helpful as I expected. It’s generic, and not for specific models like the one we have. It said you can just reach the bulb through the engine compartment to remove it, except on the passenger side, which had something in front that would need to be removed first.
I took a closer look under the hood – not particularly easy for me, as the truck is taller than our van was, and I’m short! I could see where the low beam bulb that needed replacing was, but couldn’t see how to reach it. The neck of the washer fluid reservoir was in the way, as was a wire and part of the frame.
After much fiddling around, and even trying to see if the fixture could be removed (it couldn’t), I finally just fought with it. Maybe if I had smaller hands, it would have been easier, but not by much! I could just barely reach it with my fingertips. Certainly not enough to grip it and turn it so it could be pulled out. I ended up having to use a pair of pliers to turn it. To top it off, there were so many things in the way, it was hard to see what I was doing. I also had to bring out the stool we keep in the truck, so I could reach and see better.
Once it was out, getting the old bulb off was a pain, partly because of reach, partly because it just wouldn’t unclip the way it’s supposed to, and I really didn’t want to risk snapping something. I got it off, though, and putting the new bulb in was not at all an issue.
It did, however, have to get put back at just the right angle, or it wouldn’t go in. I had to resort to using the pliers again, trying to get it positioned just right while having to move my head back and forth so I could see around part of the frame, a wire an the neck of the washer fluid container.
What a pain in the butt!
But, it’s done and tested. With the days getting so much shorter, this was not something to keep forgetting about!
That done, I decided to see what I could do with that clear plastic I hope to use on the cat isolation shelter. The frame around it came off easily, which was nice. I was afraid it might have been glued in place, but it was held in place by just friction.
I made sure to find a place to store the pieces, as they are quite reusable.
I laid the sheet over a couple of large wooden crates my brother gave me, then took some measurements of the areas on the isolation shelter it needs to cover. The front will be the biggest piece, at 2′ x 46″ The side pieces need to be about 16″ wide, and at least 21.5″ long.
After measuring and marking the sheet for the large piece, there rest of the length will just need to be cut in half, and I’ll have pieces large enough to fit over the side openings.
I still haven’t figure out the best way to hinge them as doors.
Or maybe I can still find a way to turn them into sliding panels, which is still my preference.
Either way, I’ll be able to get the three pieces I need, and still have a small strip left over.
The question now it, how to cut it. I was thinking to use the jigsaw, like I did with the roof panels, but it’s flexible like the roof panels, too, and that means lots of vibration. I don’t want to do that again!
We don’t have the right kind of blade to use the circular saw.
We might be able to set up the table saw in the sun room and use that, though.
I’ll need a daughter to help out with that, though.
So for now, it will wait. I’d rather delay getting it done, then risk damaging it by using the wrong tools.
At this point, though, I think we can start putting on the wire around the rest of the bottom half, and install the door/ramp. There is nothing else inside that needs to be done. We could probably even attach the hinged roof support pieces. The roof panels will wait until the upper level is enclosed, though, as any overhang would get in the way.
The Re-Farmer 