I was in a world of hurt this morning, after all the stuff done yesterday. The girls took care of feeding the outside cats. We gave eye baby her medication and a modified bottle feed last night, but then she went back outside. She’s getting too active to keep her in a cat carrier all night. Since we can’t wash her eye anymore – it’s not leaking, but is still insanely swollen – and no longer have eye drops, we didn’t take her in this morning. She seems to prefer kibble, anyhow. We’ll bring her in for her antibiotics in the evening, then let her back out again.
I tried to get more sleep, but got messages from my brother and couldn’t fall asleep after that. I’ll get to that part, later.
It was late morning before I got outside to check on the garden and see what could be harvested. We were supposed to get storms last night, but only got a brief rain. We were now being told to expect thunderstorms in the late morning, but very briefly. While I was in the garden, I could hear thunder in the distance.
That big G Star patty pan squash grew so much, just overnight! Yesterday, it wasn’t much bigger than the other one!
I finally picked our first yellow zucchini.
Those are all Forme de Couer tomatoes; no others were ready to pick. The beans are mostly the Royal Burgundy bush beans, which I did not pick at all, yesterday, with maybe a half dozen Carminat pole beans.
I do have to share about the enameled tub the harvest is in. It has been hanging on the wall behind the warming shelf of the wood cookstove for I don’t know now many decades. I brought it out and washed it, thinking we might need to use it for sponge baths, if we couldn’t get the septic going again.
I actually remember my mother bathing me in that, when I was a wee one. She had it on the table in the kitchen, close to the stove, with its reservoir of warm water handy. It was probably used for my late brother, too. Which would make it older than I am!
I hadn’t brought a container with me while going through the garden, and just used the bottom of my shirt to carry the produce. As I was transferring them to the tub, I could hear the thunder and figured I would top of the cat kibble outside, but just in the kibble house and sun room, so the cats would be sheltered next to food. I was in the process of putting the kibble out when the storm hit.
Hard.
We went from basically hot and muggy with no wind, to driving rain and winds strong enough for things started to get blown around, and I was half expecting branches to start breaking off! I got completely soaked in seconds!
Once back in the sun room, I made sure to tie off the outer door and partially close the inner door – normally, during the day, both are kept wide open. Cats where running all over the place, trying to find shelter. A number of kittens that normally run away from me ran into the sun room, saw me there, and panicked – but didn’t run back outside into that driving rain!
The storm has already passed, though. The system is continuing to the north east, and it looks like we got it pretty mild, compared to other places.
I’ll still be waiting a while before going back outside!
I need to go check out the expeller for the septic, out by the barn. I remembered that the septic guy had suggested that, if we still had problems, to take the cap and inner pipe of the expeller out completely, and leave it off for about a month. The grey water would build up in the outer pipe and overflow it, eventually, clearing out any collected gunk from inside the pipes that might be clogging the pipe. I was thinking of taking it out and seeing if there was any outflow.
My brother had had the same thought, and messaged me this morning about it. I’d told him about the septic guy suggesting leaving it out for a month, but my brother wasn’t too keen on that idea; that cap is there for a reason. But it might we worthwhile to do it for a few days, at least.
I was going to do that after topping up the cat kibble, thinking I had time before the storm hit.
I was wrong.
😂😂
So I will have to go out there later today, and see what there is to see!
As usual, our weather forecast has changed. We’re still expecting the heat, but now the storm warnings are back, too. Today, we’re expected to have a high of 30C/86F with a humidex of 38C/100F, and tomorrow is supposed to be much the same, temperature wise. At around 3am tonight, storms are supposed to reach us, continue all through tomorrow, and into Monday night.
Which means I was out in the garden early to give it a watering before things get too hot. Yes, we’re supposed to get rain tonight, but that won’t help the garden any during the day. With the soil we have, it’s almost impossible to over water – it drains very quickly through all that sand and gravel.
I have company when I do the watering.
Usually, it’s Syndol, following me around everywhere, wanting attention in between trying to catch frogs.
Today, I got to see this bit of cuteness overload.
Rolando Moon, the grand old lady, loves the grass clipping mulch. Apparently it makes an excellent bed!
Meanwhile, I got a message from my SIL. With the upcoming storms, they will be bringing more equipment to store here at the farm. My SIL will be driving the truck with the loaded trailer, but my brother will be driving the tractor with the rotary mower. They need to clear the overgrown areas they will be storing things on.
It’s going to take four hours to drive out here with the tractor.
My SIL will stick close to my brother on the tractor, just in case. Problems are unlikely, but you never know.
It’s past 10am as I write this, and they haven’t even left yet. They would still be loading the truck and trailer, most likely. My brother knows we have next to nothing out there, so he always makes sure to bring any tool he thinks he might possibly need.
Today, we were expecting another hot day. There was a small potential chance for rain in the morning, but not a lot.
It was also my day to help my mother with her groceries, so was outside, watering the garden, earlier than usual.
It was a rather strange thing to start hearing thunder, and find myself hoping I could finish watering the garden before the rain hit!
I did get the main garden area watered, then emptied the last of the rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden. I did have an adorable surprise with that, though!
I’ve got two watering cans that I fill and bring with me to whatever section I’m working on. As I was reaching down to pick the second watering can up, something was looking at me!
There, clutching the opening of the watering can, was a green tree frog – on the inside of the can!!!
I tried to carefully get it out, but it let go and dropped into the water, instead. So I emptied the can on the wattle weave bed as quickly as I could. I ended up having to turn the can upside down and shaking it to get the frog out! Thankfully, it was none the worse for it, and soon hopped away.
Gosh, tree frogs are so adorable!
The girls, meanwhile, took care of eye baby. Now that we are out of eye drops, and the antibiotics are given in the evening, this just making sure she got fed supplemented cat soup with the modified bottle, then an eye washing before setting her outside.
The bottle feeding can get a bit messy.
We’re using a nipple that is cut back for a wider opening, but the cat soup sometimes still has chunky bits just big enough to block the opening. Which means, every now and then, it spontaneously plugs, then unplugs – all over the kitten! On top of that, once she’s done, she just closes her mouth and turns her face away, and ends up with cat soup all over her face.
When it started raining harder and I had to come inside, I discovered one of the other kittens, cleaning eye baby up!
The other kitten was very enthusiastically grooming that cat soup, out of her fur!
She seemed to be quite content with the attention.
In the other slideshow photos, there’s that little fluffy cat. She is, if I remember correctly, one of the late litter of eight kittens from last year. She is also the one that dropped her litter of kittens all over the yard and abandoned them. I’m really working on trying to get her socialized at least a bit. If we can catch her to get her fixed next month, that would be awesome! So far, she has started to allow me to pet her after I’ve set food out in the kibble house. She prefers to eat there over the other areas we scatter kibble. Outside the kibble house and no food around, though, she still won’t let me near her.
As for the others, I tried to do a head count this morning, counting both adults and kittens. I think I counted 31, but when I counted again, I got 29. Broccoli and her two were not there; I saw them later at the old garden shed. There were a couple of regular adults that weren’t there, either, including Brussel. There is at least one kitten that has gone “missing”. The fluffy orange one that showed up with Baby Hypotenose – the two kittens that Sprout finally brought to the house. I have been seeing Baby Hypotenose a fair bit, but its orange sibling just disappeared. If this is another loss, that would be the last of the orange kittens gone. We have one orange tabby and one orange and white among the younger adult males, plus the Grand Old Lady, Rolando Moon, and that’s it for orange cats. Quite the change from when we first moved here, and almost all the outside cats were orange tabbies!
Since I was out so early this morning, I actually had time for breakfast before I had to leave for my mother’s. I timed it so that I could pick up lunch for us. She likes the dinners that the grocery store sometimes has available, but there were none today. Which I didn’t mind. I was really looking forward to some Chinese food.
They were closed.
They weren’t supposed to be closed. All the signs said they should have been open, and I could see lights on inside, but the door was locked. I ended up going around the back of the motel the restaurant is in and went in through the bar. The lights were on in the dining room, but the kitchen and back areas were all dark. I asked the woman working the bar before leaving, and she had no idea why they weren’t open.
I ended up going to the gas station to get some of their fried chicken and wedges, getting there just as they were bringing out the first batch of chicken for the day.
Which was good – theirs is the best fried chicken! – but I really was looking forward to Chinese food! 😄
Then I had the problem of getting into my mother’s building.
It was locked!
This has happened only once before. The main doors are usually never locked, even overnight. These are also the accessible doors, with the automatic door openers; another reason for those doors to never be locked!
I do have keys but, for some reason, the outside door key have never worked. It almost works – the lock did start to turn, but towards the “lock” position, not the “unlock” position. I have no idea why it doesn’t work. My mother’s own key does sometimes stick, too, but nothing like this! I ended up having to phone my mother to let her know I was at the door closer to her apartment, but couldn’t get in.
So my mother had to toodle over with her walker to let me in. These doors have a tiny vestibule between an unlockable inner door and the always locked from the outside outer door. My mother was able to open the inside door, then had to use her walker to block it open so she could push the bar on the outside door top open it for me. (When coming in from the outside, there is barely enough room in the vestibule for her walker, and for the door to swing open. It still ended up hitting one of her wheels, but she prefers it over using the main doors.)
The alternative would have been to make her walk down the hall and through the lobby to reach the main doors, and still have to fight to open two doors. The inside one, at least, would have opened with the push of a button, but the walk would have been harder on my mother than opening the doors closer to her apartment.
What a pain!
Once inside, I set things up and we had our lunch. While moving things aside, I saw she had a notice of inspection for bedbugs again. She told me, it was just slid under her door this morning. It looks like they will be back on the 28th. I looked up the calendar on my phone to confirm what day that falls on, while she quickly tucked the letter away before I could read the rest!
It falls on the day I’ll be making my first stock up shopping trip to the city.
My mother is not happy about them coming by again. The last time they did, she didn’t get up to let them in because she wasn’t feeling well. She did yell out verbal permission for them to come in, but they would not. She doesn’t quite understand that she risks eviction by constantly finding ways to avoid them! She doesn’t appear to have bedbugs, but if her neighbours do, that can change very quickly, and they are required to check a certain number of times since the last time they sprayed.
Once we had our lunch, we went over her shopping list. There were a few things I needed to clear up. She writes her list in a sort of mix of Polish and English, and her English words are spelled phonetically – in Polish! She then makes little drawings of the things she has on the list, but sometimes that doesn’t make it any clearer! I mean, a sour cream container and a yogurt container are basically the same. 😄
This time, she had flour on her list – it was even spelled correctly in English! – but the doodle was quite clearly and ear of corn. Corn flour? My mother doesn’t use corn flour, but that’s what she called it.
She meant corn meal, which she uses all the time.
I did explain to her that corn meal and corn flour are different things. I don’t think she’ll remember, though, as she’s never seen corn flour, so she doesn’t have any sort of connection to make to help her remember. Not that it’s a problem, but I did want to clarify, based on what she had on her list!
Her list was very short, so I asked a few questions and a few more things were added to it. She had the newest flier, too, so we went over some of the sale items, and talked about possibly substitutions. There was no meat on the list, and the only thing that could be considered a protein was the cheese I ended up adding to her list after going through the flier with her. She insisted that she still had plenty. I am suspicious, though, as she has increasingly tried to blame eating meat or “heavy foods” (she has her own definition of what that is!) on her not feeling well.
At one point, she started telling me that she feels like she’s dying, every night, and had considered getting me to take her to the clinic in the nearby hospital. She’s also becoming obsessed with an appointment with the “new doctor” that’s there, because it conflicted with a home visit appointment she had on the same day. I was the one who cancelled the appointment for her, so I knew that it was not with the new doctor. It was with a nurse practitioner. It was my sister that had taken her in to the clinic, but no one was available to see my mother, so they made this appointment – and forgot about the date. Neither of them seemed to realize that the appointment was with whoever was available, not the new doctor.
I suggested that if she wanted to see a doctor, I could make an appointment with her current one for her. She actually yelled angrily at me, NO! I told her, you’ve got a good doctor, and she laughed and made a comment about the doctor talking to the computer instead of to her. I told her, the doctor was reading what she was looking up on her file. Some people tend to think out loud, or read out loud, as they do that. I was with my mother during her last appointment, and could see that’s what she was doing; as she read through my mother’s file, she would sometimes say parts of it out loud, very quickly. It’s entirely possible the doctor doesn’t even notice that she’s doing it.
When I explained that to her, my mother finally just said, “I’m scared of black people.”
*sigh*
With how hard it is to find a doctor these days – especially when living outside the city – it’s aggravating that she’s allowing her racism to deny herself the health care she’s demanding!
As we talked, I brought up again, she needs a hospital bed, so she can sleep upright.
Which is when she started saying it was her stomach – her digestive system (she literally does not understand what is or isn’t part of her digestive system, or where the organs are located in her body) – that she now thinks is the cause of her troubles, then tried to make connections with eating “heavy food”, like the chicken we just ate…
I asked her, what does that have to do with her breathing? She’s been complaining that she can’t breathe at night, and that’s why she feels like she’s dying. Now, she says it’s her stomach?
I tried to ask more questions, but she changed the subject.
*sigh*
It’s frustrating that she is so all over the place with how she feels, and latch onto things as the “cause” of all her problems, usually because of something she heard on TV, or one of the people in her building saying. But when solutions are offered – like having a hospital bed so she can sleep more upright – she refuses.
Other than this, though, things went smoothly. I worked out what she needed on her list, then did the shopping for her.
Once everything was put away, I stayed a bit longer, but was feeling incredibly sleepy. The overcast skies and rainy weather has that effect on me. I still had to go back to the grocery store for a water jug refill – just one, for now – before going home, too.
Once that was done and I got home, I went for a nap almost right away. It seems I really needed that sleep, too!
As for right now, the skies are clear again and it’s sunny out there, so I’m looking forward to my evening rounds. Meanwhile, as I was writing this, my younger daughter came in to let me know that she was able to harvest the last of the garlic for me! They were getting a bit over due!
For now, they’re laid out on the freezer in the old kitchen. Once the dirt has dried out a bit more, we’ll brush them off, trim them and string them up to hang with the others in the garage.
As for the cat isolation shelter build in the garage, I won’t be doing anything on it today. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow. Mostly, though, I think I’ll have to go through the sheds and garage again, so see what materials I can find to continue the build, until I have the budget to buy the materials I need to finish it.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find what I need and get this finished soon. I will have to double check with the Cat Lady to see what date she has booked for us, for a spay or neuter (depending on what cat we can catch!). If we end up with a male, we won’t need the isolation shelter, but if we can get that fluffy little cat, or one of the other mamas, that would be idea.
While I was out tending and harvesting the garden, the girls took care of eye baby.
We’re still having to feed her with the modified bottled, and she eats from it voraciously – and if we’re not fast enough, she’ll try to eat our fingers!
Then her eyes get washed and treated, and she gets set out in the sunroom for the day.
By the time I was heading back inside, that was all done, so of course I was keeping an eye out for her.
I have no idea which litter that black and white kitten is part of, or who its mama is, but it’s one of the ones that is a bit less skittish, and likes to hang out in the sun room.
After I finished with the morning routine, I headed out early to meet with the Cat Lady, so I could do some shopping – and window shopping – in advance. This time, I took the route through my mother’s town, as I wanted to get gas, then stop at the feed store to pick up cat food – and pay the difference from the last time I was there. That was when I bought a 20 pound bag of cat food, not noticing that the stitching on the top had come loose, and ended up spilling it all over the floor when I hoisted the bag on my shoulder!
I’m glad I left early. The highway is still being resurfaced; right now they’re at the stage of adding fresh oil over the new chips that were laid down. It’s looking fantastic! However, I did end up getting stopped on the highway to wait for the pilot truck, which ensures traffic doesn’t go above 60kph/37mph over the newest section.
Once I got through that area and into town, I was very happy to see that the gas prices had dropped. The last time I saw them in the town closest to us, it was $149.9/L, while the town my mother is in is always a penny higher – but now it was $140.9/L (On my way home, I took the alternate route to avoid construction, and the gas station I would have gone to otherwise was still at $149.9/L.) So that was a nice surprise.
When I stopped at the feed store, asked to get a 40lb bag of cat food, then asked about paying the difference between the 20 and 40 pound bags, explaining what happened. That’s when I heard a voice coming from the office behind him saying, nope! It was the same guy from last time that said to give me a 40lb bag when the 20lb bag spilled! He would not hear of my paying the difference, and said that it was not an uncommon problem.
As we were talking, I asked if they had any lysine. I explained a bit about trying to find bulk quantities, like for horses – I know they come in 2lb and 4lb buckets. I said I haven’t found a local supplier, and my attempts to buy some online failed at the border for some reason. He didn’t have any, but they made a note and will look into it. He might be able to get some for me.
After I paid for the kibble, the guy behind the desk came out to grab a bag for me from the adjoining building and loaded it in the truck for me. He made a comment about how that will last me a while. I said, about a week. He was shocked to hear that, so I told him we are caring for a colony. I don’t know how many we have right now, but in the winter, we’ve had a high of 33 (at least, that’s what I can remember right now). His jaw literally dropped!
I didn’t even mention the 22 we currently have inside! They need more variety in kibble than the outside cats, since they can’t supplement with hunting, so they won’t be getting feed store kibble.
Oh, while I was paying for the kibble, the guy behind the counter wondered out loud if I had a card.
Card?
It turns out the feed supplier has a deal where, if you buy a dozen bags of feed, you get one free. So they keep a Rolodex type organizer of cards for people, and made up a new one for me.
All the more reason to stock up on kibble for the outside cats from here! A 40lb bag is $60, and it won’t take us long to reach a dozen, if we buy there regularly. I’ll still be getting some from Costco, etc. for the inside cats, but I’d much rather get four 40lb bags at a time here, than eight 20lb bags at Costco.
That done, I headed to the smaller city and had time to do some shopping (more on that later) before meeting the Cat Lady, and three of her daughters. She had the antibiotics for eye baby – and a cat carrier! She got it as a donation. It’s an unusual one, triangular in shape, that folds down flat. Not something that can hold any of the heavier cats, but perfect for kittens and light cats.
(David has already claimed it.)
As we talked, she told me that Button is doing very well on the antibiotics, even though it’s only been a couple of days. She said they flushed his ears while at the vet, and there was a lot of black coming out of there, then treated him for eat mites. Now his hearing is back! So that is more good news, as they thought the hearing loss might be permanent. His appetite picked up as well, which is very encouraging.
As we were talking, I found out more about The Wolfman’s eye injury. It is fully recovered, but all I’d heard until now was that they figured the injury was some sort of blunt force trauma. Either he ran into something, fell onto something, or something fell onto his eye. My only guess is that he fell off of something. We can’t think of anything else.
Well, it seems that, even after the eye was healing and the swelling was gone, it was still leaking a lot. Then, about a week or two later, while getting checked, they found something had been pushed out of his eye as it healed! The vet said it looked like a nail (as in, from a cat’s claw), but she thinks it looked more like a sliver of wood. Either way, once that was removed, the eye stopped leaking.
Go figure!
That makes the cause of his injury even more of a mystery. A piece of claw I can understand, though that wouldn’t cause the blunt force trauma injury, but a sliver of wood? From what? With that one, unfortunately, there are too many possibilities, but not with blunt force trauma, too!
The Wolfman, meanwhile, has asserted his dominance over the other cats in the household! This is very different from our place, but he was brought in as a tiny ball of fluff with a dislocated shoulder, so he was too young to assert any sort of dominance in the pecking order here. Once in a new home, I guess that changed things for him!
He is also terrible for stealing drumsticks off of roasted chickens and turkeys!
The Cat Lady has gotten very familiar with the butcher at a particular grocery store, and they let her know when, for example, whole chickens are available for about $4 a bird. Normally, a whole chicken is about $16-$18, at least! When they’re super cheap like that, it becomes less expensive to feed the cats freshly roasted chicken than cat food. It’s the same with other types of meat and seafood; typically, when things are very close to their best-by date, they mark them down dramatically, and put on an “enjoy tonight” sticker to let people know they need to be cooked right away. Ideal for feeding the cats – but something we can’t take advantage of, because we live too far from the city.
Meanwhile, along with the medication, the cat carrier, and a couple of rings of turkey garlic sausage she got for just pennies a ring, so she bought over 30 of them (they had a cash back deal that allowed her to buy more cat food. 😄), she gave us a small bag of kibble. It hadn’t been opened yet, except that The Wolfman and chewed his way through the side of the bag, so it was taped up. 😄
It was great to get together with the Cat Lady. She is so awesome!
I’m also glad I brought an extra ice pack, and was able to split things up a bit to make sure the medication was kept cold. The fridge and freezer stuff I had were in the cab of the truck, so I could keep the AC going, too. It was way too hot to have anything like that in the box of the truck!
I just checked the weather again. When I started writing this, we had cooled down to 25C/77F. We’re now back up to 27C/81F! At least we’re now expecting some light showers this evening. That will give the garden some relief!
I’m not complaining, though. As unpleasant as I’m finding the heat and humidity, I’ll take this as long as we can get it, and be thankful for it, just for the garden!
I don’t know that the outside cats would agree with me, though. When I head outside, I find them splayed out in any shade they can get, all over the place!
Speaking of which, it’s almost time for my evening rounds, and I’ve got one more post to write…
I’ve been outside most of today, and am finally able to sit at the computer to blog.
Of course, I’ve been constantly interrupted by one thing or another, since I’ve come inside! 😄
Before I get into things, which will be in separate posts, I figured I should write about the important things.
Updates on kitties!
A daughter and I got eye baby’s eyes washed and treated.
Actually, we had to feed her first. When I woke her up by picking her up, she almost immediately went for my fingers. Once the modified kitten bottle was close to her mouth, she practically attacked it! She got a good feeding in, and then she was calm enough for us to do her eyes.
The one, less swollen eye is looking clearer, though we can still only open it half way. The other eye still looks rather horrific. She clearly can see something, though. After trying her off, I took her to the sun room and put her near a bowl of kibble. She ignored it and went right for a small carrier next to the cat cage and used it to climb up and through the cat cage wall to her favourite napping spot.
I had been wondering how she got up to the second level of the cat cage! I didn’t think that she’s still small enough to fit through the wire on the second level.
I guess she wasn’t happy with her cuddle buddy up there, so she went to the bottom level to her other favourite napping spot.
There were two cuddle buddies in there. When she crawled in with them, one of them immediately started grooming her!
As I was going back and forth from the house while working in the garage today, I found her in different spots, including another spot that required climbing to get to. So she is managed remarkably well, considering the state of her eyes!
Then, as I was getting things together to go inside, I realized I couldn’t see her anywhere.
I had checked on the garden and the old kitchen garden was looking parched, so I decided to water it from the rain barrel while keeping an eye out for the baby.
I finally spotted her while refilling a watering can. Adam was lying in the grass with a whole bunch of kittens trying to nurse, and eye baby was trying to fight her way past bigger kittens to get some nip!
Adam didn’t like that I stopped to take a picture, though, so I caught her as she was standing up, with eye baby still half draped across her back!
As I finished the watering, I saw eye baby in the kibble house, searching through the kibble trays for something to eat. So I did the evening cat feeding, and she dove right in! She definitely has appetite!
Sadly, another sick kitty does not. I got messages from the Cat Lady about Button. He’s still sick, completely stuffed up and having to mouth breath. They’ve been having to force feed him. She was able to find the antibiotics, though, and he’s had his first doses, and she says he does already seem to be a bit better. Then, just a little while ago, she sent a photo of him, eating off of a plate! Hopefully, this means they don’t have to force feed him anymore.
I’m still amazed that he got so sick after they took him. The changes must have really stressed that tiny body out, and with him already having upper respiratory problems it just kicked right in.
She was able to get extra antibiotics, though, and I’m meeting her tomorrow afternoon to get some for eye baby. We’ll have to weigh her to confirm the dose. It’ll be once a day for 7 days. Between that and the eye drops, I hope that gives her the boost she needs to recover.
I’m honestly still amazed that we lost the orange and white kitten, but not eye baby. I still would not be surprised to find her gone, yet she does actually seem to be getting stronger!
We’ll keep on bringing her in for the night to treat her eyes and keep her in the carrier until the morning, then she’ll go back outside after treatment. This seems to be working out, and I think she’s getting used to this as a routine. The eye drops are supposed to be for 14 days, and now the oral antibiotics will be for 7 days, so we’ll be doing this for at least another 10 nights.
I’d better get busy with the other blog posts I need to write, because we’ll be bringing her inside again, in about an hour!
We’re expecting heat but no rain for the next while, so it looks like I’m going to be back at watering the garden every morning again. I worked on that while the girls took care of eyes baby, cleaning and treating her eyes, then feeding her cat soup with the modified kitten baby bottle. That made a mess, of course, so she was looking really bedrabbled when I finally saw her outside!
While I was watering, I saw a little green friend on the grape leaves.
While watering the G Star pattypan squash, I found a squash I’d somehow managed to miss seeing before. It’s a bit bigger than I would normally let it get, but it’s still in the tender stage. I got a pretty good handful of Carminat beans and a few Dalvay shelling peas.
There was one Yukon Chief corn stalk that didn’t survive being broken by the wind, and it had a tiny little cob on it. I went ahead and shucked it and, small as it was, it was ripe. I ate it raw, and it was quite tasty. So I took a chance and harvested the ripest looking cobs I could find. Only one probably could have used a few more days on the stalk. I decided to harvest some of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and even found a few Seychelles beans in the bed with the Crespo squash. I’m happy with the carrots I picked this morning. There isn’t much left in the bed, including the two that have gone to seed. I really hope we’ll have the space to plant more carrots next year.
I was happy to see that we FINALLY have ripening chocolate cherry tomato. Just two, really, and one looked almost ready to pick, but I left it for now.
With having such small harvests for the past while, most have not had enough to make it worth including in a meal, so we’ve been setting some things aside. We had enough that, with this morning’s harvest, I decided to use it all up. I was inspired by A Jeanne in the Kitchen’s Low Country Boil. We had no seafood, and I just used what we had. Except the peppers, since I can’t eat those without gagging for some reason, but we did have a couple of little San Marzano peppers I could use. I can’t eat fresh tomatoes, either, but I can eat them when they are cooked or processed.
I ended up using half a package of bacon, half a package of fresh sausages, frozen onions from our garden last year, carrots, beans, shelled and sugar snap peas, the patty pan squash, the corn chopped into chunks (not a way I would normally cook corn on the cob), some Russet potatoes we bought that need to be used up, and several cloves of fresh garlic that couldn’t be hung for curing with the others. I think that’s everything. Some of this was browned before adding water.
For seasoning, I used some of the truffle salt we still have left, freshly ground pepper, ground thyme, dried parsley, a couple of vegetable bouillon cubes and a touch of turmeric. I was digging through the fridge and spotted some jars of seafood sauce and oyster sauce, so I went ahead and added some of that to the liquid, too.
I’m quite happy with out it turned out, and it made an excellent brunch.
It will now make an excellent… supper, I guess. I got busy working in the garage and am now realizing I haven’t eaten in way too long.
I’ll post about the progress on the isolation shelter next, but first, I need to eat!
As has been usual for the past few days, we planned to bring eye baby in for the night, along with the orange and white kitten that she’s been cuddling with so often.
When I walked into the sunroom, much to my shock, I spotted eye baby – on top of the table saw! I have no idea how she managed to climb up there. Thankfully, I was able to grab her before she walked off the edge!
I’d already prepared her very own cat soup in a bottle to feed her with, and had the bathroom ready to wash the eyes of both kittens. After carefully washing her eyes – gosh, they look so awful, and are still swollen shut – I held her while my daughter added the eye drops. Then I went and got the bottle to try and feed her.
She was very hungry! She kept trying to eat the top of the bottle while I was trying to be gentle about squeezing food into her mouth. I think she even bit the tip off the nipple, and almost pulled it out of the cap a couple of times! It all got very messy. After a while, my husband came out to hold her while I tried to feed her some more.
If she gets hungry later, all she’ll need to do is groom herself! 😄
My husband was going to put her into the carrier to give her a chance to settle before we brought in the orange and white kitten, and then added the food and water bowls. If the bowls are already in the carrier before she is, she ends up walking through them and knocking them over. He ended up settling in my desk chair, just holding her, while I put what was left of the bottle in with the rest of the prepared food, then washed up before heading out to bring in the orange and white kitten.
Instead, I found myself burying him under the honeysuckle and rose bushes, with the many other kittens we’ve buried under there this year.
Between the two of them, I honestly did not expect to be burying him, first.
Earlier this evening, I got messages from the Cat Lady. Because the clinic had been so busy when she brought Button in, she ended up not getting any antibiotics for him right away. Well, all the changes happening to him right now are pretty rough on that tiny body, and today his upper respiratory issues kicked into high gear. He’s so stuffed up, he’s mouth breathing. She called the clinic and they’ll have antibiotics ready for her when she’s back in the city. I told her that eye ball kitten and the orange and white kitten seemed to be getting worse, not better, and she told me she would have extra antibiotics that she can pass on for them, too.
Well, it’s going to be just for one kitten, now.
I’ve since messaged her to tell her about the orange and white kitten.
Eye ball kitten, meanwhile, may be essentially blind right now, but feisty as heck! For the first time, as I was washing her eyes and before I started feeding her, she was fussing to get free and actually started to bite at me! Once in the carrier, she started clawing to get out. I ended up taking her out to cuddle her for a bit, but she wanted down – something we can’t allow her to do – and she tried to bite me again! So, back into the carrier she went! I’ve got purring cat sounds playing again, and she settled soon after. She may not have her orange and white friend to cuddle tonight, but she does have her plushy, so she will at least have something soft and fluffy to sleep against.
What a way to end the day.
It was most definitely not the good bye I was expecting to make.
So far, we still have just one developing eggplant right now – a Little Finger Eggplant, and it is getting noticeably bigger. Still very small, but at this stage, growth should be quick. This variety grows long and thin.
I also spotted a couple of lady Crespo squash blossoms! Which, of course, got hand pollinated. There are so few of them, I won’t take a chance and leave it to the bugs to pollinate!
Before I headed out this morning, we tended to the sick kitties. The orange and white one spent the night indoors in the carrier with eyes baby. He likes to use her as a pillow. They could keep each other company – and keep each other warm!
While my daughter was in the shower, I brought the orange and white kitten into the bathroom to enjoy the steam while I washed his eyes, then just held him. He nose is as leaky as his eyes, poor thing.
After a while, I set him in the sun room, in baby jail, then got eyes baby. Her eyes are still so very swollen, and one of them looks like it’s popping out of her skull. They don’t seem to be leaking, but I don’t know if that means much. She got her eyes washed and a feeding. Since she can’t seem to see to eat, and we don’t have a feeding syringe, we took the kitten baby bottle and put very thin cat soup in it – with supplements mixed in – and chopped the tip off of one of the bottle nipples. The opening is large enough for the more solid food to get through. Eyes baby was definitely hungry, and even tried chomping on the bottle, but was also finished very quickly.
Around when my daughter started running out of hot water, we did the eye drops. The kitten was very wet and messy, so I’d washed her fur a bit, so I spent some time sitting with her in my arms, rubbing her down with paper towel, until she stopped shivering. Then I put here in baby jail with the orange and white kitten, before I did my morning rounds. When I came back, I found the two kittens, still snuggling.
Unfortunately, neither of them is getting better. In fact, later this afternoon, the orange and white kittens eyes were oozing and stuck shut. I washed them, which he really didn’t like, but at least he could see again! Eyes baby likes to sleep in the sun, but a few times I went past her, I stopped to see if she was breathing. She really looks bad. I have no doubt that if we took them to a vet, they’d recommend putting both of them down. I keep expecting to find them gone, but they manage to keep going!
How is it that these obviously sick kittens are managing to hang in there, while I buried so many kittens this year that never looked sick at all?
We do the best we can for them. Unfortunately, it isn’t much. When the Cat Lady took Button to the vet, it cost her almost $700. I don’t even want to think how much it would cost to treat these two!
Some of the other kittens have leaky eyes that are looking messy, but nothing like these two. Hopefully, they will recover on their own, because we can’t catch any of them.
If all goes well, we should have the cat isolation shelter ready, and will be able to use it to house any of the more feral cats for treatment or convalescence.
Which is what I’ve been working on today. More on that in my next post!
We had eyeball baby inside for the night again, and she got her eye drops in the evening, after and eye wash. This morning, another eye wash and more drops. This time, I was able to get the eyelids open more, and she didn’t seem to be too bothered by the drops, which is good. I’m pretty sure she’s going to loose one eye, though. It’s hard to say, since the lids are still so swollen. On the plus side – I think – there is no oozing infection like before. The eyes are still leaking, for sure, but not the gunk like she had before.
After her eye drops, she went back into the carrier to hopefully eat and drink some more, before letting her outside again. I put her in the cage in the sunroom, as far onto their favourite cat bed on the bottom as I could reach. She went right onto the bed, and settled into a corner. I set a plushie beside her, but she didn’t go near it. The outside cats had already been fed, and the orange and white kitten had gotten his eyes washed, too. He was loafed in front of the sunroom door, so I picked him up, cuddled him a bit, then set him into the cat cage, too. He went straight for eyeball baby and snuggled with her!
The photo above was taken just a little while ago. Eyeball baby may not be able to see, but she can still find her way out of the cat cage and make her way around, so she must be able to at least see something.
Meanwhile, I got an update on how Button is doing.
When the folks at the clinic first saw him, they were convinces he was only three weeks old. The Cat Lady said, no way – I would have told her if he was born just three weeks ago! They ended up aging him at 11 weeks, but he weighed only half a kilogram – about a pound. Also:
Panleuk test: negative feline leukemia test: negative He has URD (upper respiratory), but I expected that. Grade 3 heart murmur Earmites are so bad, they believe his hearing is permanently damaged, but he was definitely born hearing.
To quote the Cat Lady “they have seen a lot of tiny kittens but this takes the cake.” She sent me a picture of her youngest daughter as she took Button outside for some exercise, and he looked even smaller than ever – barely the size of her foot!
The vet was saying they think he has failure to thrive.
Uhm… yeah. That’s really obvious.
One visit, and they’re already saying that this kitten has already really beaten the odds. My thought it, there was probably a reason he was abandoned by the mother, whoever it was. He’s a feisty little one, though.
They’ll be seeing him in two weeks, and hope to be able to vaccinate him then.
Which means, I guess, that he won’t be going to his forever home in one week, as originally planned!
I hope the woman that said she would adopt him doesn’t back out.
Since the folks at the vet clinic had been so sure Button was much younger, I went looking up my posts and photos to confirm when we found him. It was on July 4, and it’s August 16, now. So we’ve been tending him for 6 weeks, as of yesterday. When I found him, I was pretty sure he was close to weaning age, based on his behaviour and eating habits, which would typically be 6-8 weeks old. So them aging him at 11 weeks adds up.
Well, he is in excellent hands now. I just hate that we ended up passing another sicker-than-expected cat to the rescue!
I have to admit, I’m honestly starting to think seriously of culling the outside cats. Maybe not all of them – we did manage to get some of the dudes neutered – but most. They seem to have way too many health problems. We seem to have an unusually bad strain of feline herpes that seems to be resulting in life long URD, even after they’ve been taken indoors or adopted out. Cats from other colonies around us that got adopted out have been recovering, then never having problems again, so this is unusual. However, we’ve found several of them have had heart problems, several of the ladies that got spayed turned out to have uterine abnormalities. These are things that can’t be treated by simply getting them fixed, vaccinated or adding immune boosting supplements to their foods. We do the best we can for them, but it may be that our good intentions are actually causing more problems.
It’s an unpleasant line of thinking, but we just may not have a choice. Not just about the ongoing health problems, but the sheer cost of taking care of them – and that’s with help from the rescue and donations! We’ll never be completely without yard cats. They earn their keep and keep the rodent population down. But to have so many is something else entirely. We don’t even know how many we have right now, since they come and go, this time of year.
Meanwhile, we’re doing things like bringing in a sick kitty to tend to and medicate it that nature probably would have taken care of some time ago, if we weren’t such sucks for the cats!
Speaking of which, I got more progress on the isolation shelter. I will write about that in my next post.
Poor little guy passed right out, during the drive. For a while, there, he was really trying to get out of the carrier, and almost got the door open!
The exchange has been done, though. He is now with the Cat Lady. He’ll stay at the rescue for a week for standard vet care, then – if all goes well – be on his way to his forever home.
Even the Cat Lady commented on how tiny he is. He has definitely grown since we found him in the junk pile, but not by much!
One of the Cat Lady’s daughters was in the vehicle with her. She ended up holding Button rather than putting him in their carrier, and he actually started to fall asleep in her arms within minutes!
The Cat Lady also gave us a donation of cat food. There was a couple of cases of cat food – the kind that comes in pairs of packets with individual meal portions – plus a small bag of “immunity boosting” kibble.
She also found her bottle of the antibiotic drops for the eye baby. We are to give one drop in each eye, every 12 hours, for at least 14 days. She also warned that this stuff does does tend to burn, but to make sure not to wipe it off.
The hard part is going to be opening the eyes enough to get the drops in there!
I’ve got the kitten inside and in the carrier for the night. I’d gone out for my evening routine and found her in the outer yard, heading for the driveway, giving out her squeaky meow! The poor thing can’t open her eyes at all, even after we wash them. The eyelids are just too swoleen.
The girls and I will be doing the first dose of drops, soon. The kitten has already eaten and settled down in the carrier. Thanks to the individual portion cat food donation, it was easy to mix up some cat soup, just for the eye kitten, with the same supplements we use for the big batch we made for all the cats. When we added the food and water bowls to the carrier, I got some of the soup onto her mouth a few times before she figured it out and started lapping it up.
She asked us to keep her up to date on how things go. After Button has gone on to his forever home, they might be able to take this one for care. I appreciate that, but fear they’ll be stuck with another one of our sick cats – to go with the 6 cats from us they already have, all of which have had some sort of health problem! At least with The Wolfman, it was an injury that healed, rather than things like viral infections or heart problems.
She has us booked for the beginning of September for a spay or neuter. She’ll send me the exact date when she has a chance. This will be whichever cat we can catch, so I really want to get that isolation shelter finished before then. I was able to do the last of the painting this afternoon, which means assembling the frame can start tomorrow!
Several minutes later…
Wow. So much just happened in just a short time!
First, I started getting updates from the Cat Lady. Button has been eating well and sleeping well.
From his teeth, he looks like an 11 week old kitten, but he’s the size of a 6 week old kitten!
His eyes are weepy, which we could see, but he also had ulcerations in the back of his mouth, which we did not know about! Classic calicivirus, she says, and expects him to be put on antibiotics when he sees the vet tomorrow. Which likely means other kittens have it, too.
She also warned us that there is a severe panleukopenia outbreak in the province right now, and what symptoms to watch out for, and recommending to use bleach to clean even the outside bowls, if possible.
As we were chatting, my daughter came down and we took the eyes baby into the washroom to try and get those drops in. I don’t know that we managed to open the eyes enough, but at least it’s a start.
While that was happening, the phone started ringing. When I got to it, I found a message from my mother to call her.
*sigh*
My mother just heard geese flying by, and that reminded her that she wanted to take me and the girls to a nearby migratory reserve.
She has no idea what a problem this request is.
I told her, I would talk to the girls.
She didn’t like that, and then offered me a choice. We could go to the reserve and have a picnic there, or we could share a meal at the one local restaurant, then go to the cemetery where my father, brother and other family members are buried. That, I definitely don’t want to do, because then she’ll want to come here, and that’s never pleasant.
She could tell I wasn’t enthused, and I tried to explain.
First, there’s the fact that we all keep different hours, so my daughters would have to mess up their schedules. Which they wouldn’t mind doing, if it was for something pleasant, but my mother is never pleasant with them, but rather always testing and prodding and judging.
The other thing is, it would leave my husband here at the farm on his own – and no one to be on watch in case our vandal has another mental break and decides to burn the house down or something. A concern she dismissed.
What I couldn’t figure out how to explain was that, because of her own behaviour towards them – and how she treats me – the girls just don’t want to be around her.
It didn’t matter, though. She instead went on a rant about how I keep the girls basically imprisoned upstairs, and they should be free to go places.
I told her, just because she doesn’t see something, and it doesn’t involve her, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. The girls can go where they want (frankly, I wish they did want to go out more, but they don’t). They are adults and free to do so.
She instead started ranting that no, they aren’t free, and now she can see why the government takes children away from their parents, because they don’t know how to parent…
Which is when I said goodbye and hung up.
I think she has forgotten that the girls are 28 and 31 years old, not the 9 and 12 year old’s they were when we left this province because of her. She did not approve of our homeschooling and kept reporting us to different levels, making up lies about what was going on in our household (which she knew nothing about, but thought she did). Each time, we got “investigated” and they recognized that this was a problem with her, not us – but at that point, the next place left for her to report us would be children’s services, and she would have been perfectly willing to do that, and have the girls taken from us, simply because she did not approve of how we were raising our kids.
*sigh*
Well, that’s it. I’m done for now. I need to update my family and siblings on what just happened, because she’s going to cause problems for us over this.
*sigh*
I would really love to have a boring life right now.
The Re-Farmer
Update: Well, I talked to my daughters, and they really do want to go to the nature reserve. With my daughter’s work schedule, though, she had deadlines she needs to meet before the end of August, so we looked into September. My mother’s 93rd birthday is in September, so that fits, too. So we picked an open day, I called my mother back, and now she’s all happy – though she really tried to get it to be sooner! September will be too cold, she says… 😄
The Re-Farmer 