I’d say it’s a good thing I changed my mind about going into town! I was keeping up with the chatter on a local highways conditions group, and things were getting really dangerous out there!
It’s still warm enough that the pools of water collected under our gate aren’t completely frozen. Those sections of ice on the main gravel road near us would be much like this, still. Thankfully, we don’t need to go anywhere for a couple of days.
While our current temperatures are still mild – we are at -5C/25F right now – the winds were absolutely brutal while I was doing my rounds. From what I can see in the trees outside my window, they haven’t died down, either. The wind chill is currently at -18C/1F
The outside cats were not enjoying it!
I counted 33 this morning, and 18 of them were in the sun room. Some pretty much never go into the sun room, no matter how cold it gets. As I was finishing up my rounds, the some of the ones outside were taking shelter under the kibble house.
We tried to arrange the shelters in such a way that they, and the house, would cut the wind, but somehow the wind always gets into there, blowing snow into the kibble house and their food trays. It doesn’t seem to get under the kibble house as much, and with that sheet of insulation on the ground, and more insulation under the floor of the kibble house, forming a ceiling under there, it is a favourite spot for them to hang out.
The water bowl shelter’s floor is quite a bit higher off the ground, and we’ve got another kibble tray under it, as well as pieces of insulation on the ground. At some point, I want to use some scrap carpet – we might have some usable pieces in the barn – and make a sort of wind break. I want to cut a piece long enough to go around three sides of the water bowl house, then cut it into strips, except for a solid band that will be attached to the base of the water bowl house. The cats would be able to easily push their way through the strips of carpet, and the carpet would shelter from the bulk of the wind and snow. My brother put something like that over the door of the dog house they gave us, except he added two layers of carpet, and the strips were cut so that they overlapped, cutting the wind even more. Unfortunately, the cats have been scratching at it, so it needs to be replaced.
Today is going to be a good day to stay inside and catch up on things!
While feeding the outside cats this morning, I spotted the kitten with the cloudy eye.
At least, I thought I did.
It ended up under the kibble house, but I managed to get a picture.
Which is when I discovered there was another cat already under there! The kitten had been right at the edge and backed up as I tried to take the photo, which is the only reason I saw the other one, hidden under there!
You can see the cloudiness in the kitten’s left eye in this photo.
However…
This is a photo I posted recently.
I thought we had two almost identical kittens from this litter – yet now that I can compare photos, I can see they are the same kitten.
There is no cloudy eye in this photo from a few days ago!
There is another tabby from that litter that’s seen even less frequently than I thought, now that I know I’ve been mistaking this one for it!
Yes, that left eye looks a bit darker in the photo, but that’s because of how the daylight is hitting it.
Very strange! I’ve never heard of cloudiness in the eyes coming and going like that!
What I’m finding amusing is that angry looking face. More so because, these are its siblings.
They all have matching angry faces!
While the black and white kitten is getting quite used to pets, and the tortie is… more tolerant, shall we say, of being pet and picked up, that little tabby just won’t allow it, even though I’ve managed to sneak a touch now and then, while it’s eating.
Which suggests to me that the tabby is female, given how the socialization of yard cats has been for us over the years! 😄😄
I so want to pet this baby! I can’t get near it, though. Which makes me think it’s a female, since it’s almost always the females that have been making strange!
This kitten looks so much like the one with the cloudy eye. I can’t tell if I’ve seen that one recently. I counted “only” 34 this cats this morning.
Including this one.
I’ve been feeding the outside cats earlier in the afternoons, rather than the evenings, because sunset is now earlier than 4:30pm, and I want them to have a chance to eat before the racoons come after dark and eat all the kibble that’s left. As I was finishing up, this little fur ball was eating in the sun room. I stopped to pet some of the friendlier cats, and not only did he let me pet him, but he actually stopped eating and came over for me to pick him up and cuddle him!!!!
These two, plus the fuzzy tortie and the tabby with the cloudy eye, are all part of the same late litter of 8 as Pom Pom, The Beast (aka: Tiny), Soot Sprite, and the sadly missed Snorri. They’re among the few we can still remember are siblings, because they’re all so much smaller!
Weather wise, today has been gorgeous. We hit 7C/45F today! The original forecast was for 3C/37F. Even our overnight low is supposed to drop to only -1C/30F.
Unfortunately, I’ve basically wasted the day. Oh, I was productive this morning, but ended up having to lie down because my back was giving out and fell asleep.
Surrounded by cats.
Now that I keep my door open all the time again, my bed is consistently covered with a dozen cats.
We need to take more “glamour shots” of the kittens and send them to the Cat Lady for posting among her contacts. She and her family are still dealing with house sale issues. They haven’t been able to sell their current home, and were just resigning themselves to giving up the one they wanted to buy. They even brought the 25 cats that were being boarded back home. Then a last minute dream offer came in, pending a house inspection. Which should have happened a couple of days ago. If that goes through, they are going to be insanely busy over the next month, so I’m not expecting her to be able to get back to working the rescue until that’s done. I don’t want to be bugging her about it when she’s got all this to deal with – on top of her own health issues! She’s a dynamo! I don’t know how she does it, at times!
Anyhow.
I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done on the next garden analysis post tonight, so I might not have one ready to be posted tomorrow. It’s just been one of those days, and my head space it not where I need it to be for that type of writing.
I did, however, try something this morning that I’ll cover in my next post. I just wish it wasn’t what caused issues with my back!
It wasn’t until I was cropping the picture that I saw it.
That face.
No, that one.
The other one.
The one in the back.
!!!
I was cropping the photo on my phone, right after taking it, so I looked again. From the same angle, I could just see a dark shadow behind the fuzzy kitten. The box has a side opening, but when I tried to see it through there, there was nothing visible. It was jammed way into the back corner.
Creepy stalker kitty! 🤣🤣
Also, I counted 34 this morning, then spotted number 35, hiding behind a tree trunk, as I did my rounds.
Ah, it feels so good to be using a keyboard again! I really don’t like using my phone to tap out blog posts. 😄
Would you look at this bunch?
There’s always quite the rush of cats in the sun room when I first come out with my little bin and scoop to feed them. They’ve usually tossed things about over night (or the racoons have!), so I now put the bin down in the ground and let them have at it, while I pick things up and put them back where they belong. Then take scoops of kibble from around usually 3 or 4 cats eating out of the bin to fill the feeding areas in the sun room. Even after that’s done, I usually still have one or two I need to bodily remove from the bin so I can take it outside. There is a black cat that now lets me pet it and even move it around while it’s eating. I think it’s the one I posted a picture of recently. I’m not 100% sure, though.
This morning, every time I tried to do a head count, I got a different number. However, my first head count, done while they were all still voraciously eating, rather than running around all over the place, I got 38, and I’m almost positive I did not double count any of them. Once they’ve had at least some food, though, they start running around and then some start disappearing.
Then there are the ones that don’t disappear. They instead settle down in the sun room, with full little bellies, and settle in for a nap!
I’ve managed to touch the back of that fluffy grey tabby in the top right a few times while eating. He (she?) would run off, but not as quickly as usual. When not eating, I can’t get close enough to touch.
I think my daughter and I will need to head out earlier for my eye appointment today. I can see on the security camera live feed that the fog is getting thicker. We had fog alerts starting last night. After my mother was done at the hospital, we were hitting fog on the drive to her place. In one stretch, I turned off the main highway to cross over to her town and immediately drove into a wall of fog. We kept driving in and out of fog banks the whole way, but it did seem to clear up as we reached her town.
When I was driving home, I started driving through fog banks again. In some places, the ground was clear, but the fog hung like a ceiling, above.
When I came out to do my rounds this morning, there was a light fog. The trees are covered in light hoarfrost. I expected it to get lighter as the day went on, but nope. It’s getting denser!
So glad we’ll be taking the truck, and not my mother’s car!
This morning was pretty routine. As I was finishing up my morning rounds, I was able to get a picture of this handsome fella. Or lady. We don’t know!
One of quite a few black and tuxedo kittens for this year.
Yes. That’s a kitten!
We can’t get near most of them. Unless they have very distinctive and easily seen markings, we can’t tell them apart enough to give them names. I counted 34 cats outside this morning.
This afternoon, my daughter and I headed into town so that she could get used to driving the truck. For all that we saw the grader making passes down the gravel roads twice yesterday, the main road was still sheer ice! You could see snow ridges on the sides of the road and parallel scrapes in the ice in a few places, but for the most part, it looked untouched. WTF? Thankfully, the truck handled it much better than my mother’s car did.
With gravel roads, everyone typically drives down the middle of the road, unless there is oncoming traffic. Most of the roads are just barely wide enough for two vehicles, but we’re next to the “main” gravel road, which is wider and gets more maintenance, due to the higher amounts of traffic it gets. As we were going down that last half mile to our place on the way home, where the ice is the worst, my daughter moved aside as far as she could to let an oncoming car by. She had traction, but we could see the car start to fishtail, while trying to move to one side!
Once in town, we parked and walked to a few different places. I am still trying to find craft materials for the Christmas decorations I’m crocheting this year. I’m almost out of fibre fill, and I hoped to find tiny decorative items I could add to them as finishing touches. At the very least, I hoped to find some Styrofoam balls to use, if I couldn’t find fibre fill. So one of the places we tried was a dollar store. I found a bag of “snow” that I could have used as fibre fill, but it was insanely expensive for what was in the bag. I did find some packages of foam balls, but only needed one. I’ve been using cash lately, so I didn’t even have enough change to buy it. They have a minimum purchase to use debit, and I wasn’t going to buy something I didn’t need, just to use debit, so I didn’t get anything. My daughter found some knitting supplies she wanted, though. With that done, we went to a local store that has the only other supply of yarn in town. While the dollar store has the big name brand yarns, this place has a section of high end, imported wool yarn in remarkable range of colours. Expensive, of course, but worth it for my daughter. I can barely touch the stuff, as it’s a type of wool I react to. I had no idea I was allergic to wool until I tried a high end brand of 100% virgin one time, years ago. I was working on a scarf and had the length draped over my arm as I worked. I developed red welts where the wool touched me that were so defined, you could actually make out the stitch pattern in my flesh! My daughter was able to get a couple of skeins, and then we tried another store. No Christmas crafty stuff there, either. It’s been so strange. I’m looking for stuff I used to be able to find easily, every Christmas, for years. Now, it’s basically just finished decorations, jingle bells, or ornament and craft kits for kids. I might have to go to a Michaels the next time we’re in the city. They are the only dedicated craft store franchise choice we’ve got. I should be able to find at least something I can use, there!
While we were out, I discovered my daughter hadn’t even had breakfast yet, so after dropping her purchases off at the truck, we walked over to one of the restaurants in town that doesn’t close for the winter. We went to a Greek place and ate in, then grabbed a couple extra meals for take out for my husband and other daughter at home.
My daughter, meanwhile, LOVED driving the truck, after we’ve had to use my mother’s car for so long. Excellent visibility, better traction and handling, and no weird noises from the back all the times. Plus, she’s figured out where everything is, so she’ll not have to worry about that when it’s time for her to drive me home after my eye appointment, when my eyes will still be dilated.
While all that was going on, I was keeping in touch with my brother. When I was with my mother yesterday, one of her errands was to talk to the pharmacist. After asking her some questions, he told her she would need to go to a doctor before he could help her. She balked, because the doctor that took her on after our previous doctor moved to another clinic, is not someone she likes. My mother’s racism aside, she has a very strong accent, speaks very quickly, and tends to talk over people instead of listening. My mother mentioned not being able to understand what she was saying. The pharmacist started nodding along. It turns out quite a few of his clients are having troubles understanding this doctor. I had troubles, too, but that’s normal for me, with my auditory processing issues. I’ve only seen her a couple of times; once with my husband and I think only once with my mother. She might be a good medical doctor, I can’t say, but it doesn’t do much good if her patients can’t understand what she’s saying.
So I was going to start making calls on Monday, since I still need a new doctor, too, and see if the closer clinic has the new doctors they were expecting, and if any were open to two new patients. If I couldn’t have made an appointment then, I would have gone back to the other clinic and made an appointment for my mother.
Then I updated my brother on this. He and his wife were quite concerned. A family member had a similar issue that was left untreated for too long and developed sepsis, which is insanely dangerous. They survived, but I believe they were permanently damaged by it. My brother was planning on visiting my mother anyhow, so they looked up a quick care clinic that would be open, and my brother was going to take her there. After calling her first and she agreed, he was on the way when my SIL called the quick care clinic. She was told they had no room to fit her in !!! So my brother decided to take her to the emergency, instead.
They are still there, and it’s been about 4 hours. Another patient there was complaining because they’d been there since 4am and still hadn’t been seen, which means they were in the ER for something like 12 hours before they were seen! Other patients were triaged and rated more urgent and treated first.
My brother has been keeping us updated as much as he can, but he’s basically on baby sitting duty. My mother has said they should just leave a couple of times already, on top of her usual snarky comments, nasty assumptions and insulting behaviour towards others. There’s nowhere they can get food or drink while waiting, without leaving the ER entirely, and then they’d probably have to start all over again, so that’s a problem, too. My brother is going to be completely worn out by the time he gets home! Meanwhile, she’ll probably just get the prescription that the pharmacist couldn’t give her on his own and be sent home. Something the quick care/walk in clinic could have done, too, if they’d been willing to take her.
Hopefully, they will get in soon and be on their way, though it’ll mean my brother will be driving home in full dark, and there are a lot of deer crossing the highways of late! *sigh*
The worst of it is, I know my mother won’t appreciate what my brother is doing for her at all.
Oh, dear. I just found out she got away from my brother, stormed over to the nurses desk and made a scene. The nurse ended up going to the waiting room to make an announcement to everyone to explain their waiting times. It’s at 6 hours now, but had been at 12 hours overnight. To be fair, they’re making a 92 year old woman wait for… going on 5 hours now. You’d think their triage would take that into account, though my mother is easily mistaken as being decades younger.
Welcome to “healthcare” in Canada.
*sigh*
Okay, time to get off the computer for a bit and get some work done, while keeping my phone glued to my pocket as my brother updates us!
The cats are quite enjoying the box I found to better stabilize the platform I rigged up for them as a way to store the wire mesh door we made to keep cats out of the old basement in the summer. The one that reminds me of Nosencrantz so much especially likes to just be a loaf in it! I’m constantly seeing cats milling around under there, though, and they do like that rigid insulation!
Also… I’m not 100% sure I recognize the cat on the left. It’s getting so hard to tell some of them apart!
I counted “only” 34 outside cats this morning.
As for the inside cats, Tiny, aka: The Beast, is now big enough that it’s safe to let her out of isolation. With the loss of Snorri, we no longer have to keep the door to my bedroom/office closed, even overnight. Tiny has been thrilled with her new freedom to explore the rest of the house.
The rest of the cats are thrilled to be able to go into my room again. As I write this, there are currently 8 of them asleep on my bed, with all but one of them in a single, huge pile of fur!
Gotta get more adoptions done!!!
Anyhow…
The plan for today was to help my mother with errands so, while doing my rounds, I took the time to open the doors to where her car is parked and give it a quick check.
I almost immediately noticed the back tire on the driver’s side looked awfully low. The tire that had gone flat before was the front driver’s side tire, so this was not expected at all.
The car barely fits in this addition to the garage, so I backed it out, then checked the tire pressure.
It was only 10psi!!
So I pumped it up, but saw no sign of a leak anywhere. I checked the front driver’s side tire, and it was really low, too, though not enough to be noticeably flat.
Of course, I checked the other two, and they were slightly on the slow side, too.
The bizarre thing is, when I took the car in to get that tire checked, the employee that worked on it thought it was the passenger side tire that was leaking and was done checking it when I returned to the garage. I told him it was the driver’s side tire, so he took that one off. He could not find a leak in either of them. All the tires, however, were topped up with air, just in case. I was there to see it done.
So why would all four tires be low, with one practically flat? We even used the car a few days ago, when we had to pick the truck up from getting its new battery.
I’m so glad I took the time to check on her car, so far in advance of needing it! With all the driving around I did with my mother, the tires have held their psi. No evidence of leaks, anywhere.
Very strange.
If it weren’t for the fact that we have snow on the ground that would have given evidence, I would be concerned that a certain “someone” made their way into the garage and let the air out. As it is, the only foot prints in the snow have been our own.
Another reason I am glad I checked the tires.
Road conditions sucked.
But only the gravel roads, and only those sections shaded by trees. They were sheer ice! Even though I was driving slowly and cautiously, ever now and then, the car would suddenly start fishtailing. Not much, thankfully, and not for long, but enough to be a concern. The last thing I’d want is to hit either ditch on the sides of these roads. They are very deep and very steep! The chances of being able to drive out, even with 4 wheel drive, are very low.
We got a light and fluffy snowfall overnight, which didn’t help matters.
Even on the highway, for the first while, I was not confident driving at the speed limit for quite some time.
Oh, how I wished to be driving the truck, instead!!!
Thankfully, today turned out to be warmer than forecast – again – and the paved roads melted clear by the time I was heading home.
Except the gravel roads, where were even slipperier!
As I was reaching the intersection by our place, though, I saw the grader coming through. Our section of the road had just been done. He had to move aside for me to be able to turn in, so at least the last 200 ft or so was good!
This should have been done long ago. People are really upset with our current municipal counsel. For some reason, they didn’t go with the usual company for road maintenance – a local company that has all the equipment and storage facilities on hand, and had done an excellent job of keeping our roads cleared and safe as quickly as possible, every year we’ve been here. Instead, they’ve decided to lease a grader, rent someone’s space to store it, for a ludicrous monthly fee – and a 125 hour limit. Oh, and they’d have to hire a driver each time, too. They only got the grader today, which means for the past while, roads like ours have been just left as they were. It got so bad in areas that the school division would not allow buses to drive on them, for safety reasons.
Which means parents on these dangerous roads had to drive their kids, however many miles, to meet the bus at the highway, instead.
Hopefully, it will no longer be an issue for the rest of the winter.
Anyhow.
Since I was there with the car, my mother wanted to do as many errands as she could, so we stopped at quite a few places. For all that my mother is 92, uses a walker, frequently complains about how bad her knees are (but won’t wear her brace), and is clearly struggling at times, once she gets going, she is really hard to keep up with! At the grocery store, we’ve switched from her using the shopping cart as a walker, to her using her walker and me pushing the cart, so that she has the option of sitting down if she needs to. Once she gets going, though, she just races off! Unfortunately, she’s one of those people who doesn’t really watch out for others or, if she does see them, all but barrels right through them. Yikes!!
We got it all done, though, and she was quite glad to get home and finally rest!
For me, it was just a stop at the gas station, then home, and I was sure glad to be home, too!
I thought I could look forward to taking it easy for the next while, but…
There was an answering machine message when I got home. A reminded for my eye appointment on Monday. I was very glad to get it! I have my phone set to send me a reminder 1 day in advance, so I wouldn’t have forgotten or missed the appointment. However, my eyes will be dilated for a field of vision test, which means I have to get my daughter to drive me home.
Other than parking in the garage, she has yet to drive the truck.
So tomorrow, we’ll be heading out for her to do some practise driving. Pretty much everything is in different places from any other vehicle we’ve driven. It’s also just a few inches wider and longer than the van – just enough to really affect getting in and out of parking spaces, or taking turns. It won’t take long for her to get used to it, but better to do that in advance, then when I need her to drive me home because I’ll essentially be blinded.
I just checked my calendar and see I have a reminder to get my bloodwork done on the same day my husband’s CPP Disability comes in, before Christmas instead of after. That, at least, is not an appointment. I just need to show up at the clinic and ask for the requisition for that should be on file, then step across the hall to the lab to do the tests. Since I will likely be doing our first January stock up shopping that day, and don’t usually have breakfast until I’ve reached the city, I can swing by on the way and get the bloodwork done while still technically fasting.
Then there’s the extra city trip that my daughters will need next week.
Good grief. I try to keep the winter months as close to home as possible, but this year it looks like our December is going to be filled with outings!
It was absolutely surreal. I left my room to have supper. He was in the little cat bed, snuggling with other kittens. When I came back, I found him passed away.
While I was in the city, my younger daughter spent a lot of time cuddling with him. Nothing seemed out of place. After I got home and came into my room, he was being butt cuddled by one of the tabbies. I pet him, and he responded normally.
Then he was gone.
Yes, he was a sick kitty. That’s why we brought him inside. But he seemed to be getting better! He certainly wasn’t getting worse.
We’ve lost so many to that horrible strain of herpes this year.
What a change a day makes! Yesterday, we had a high of -9C/16F, and an overnight low of -14C/7F (that I saw; it might have gone lower). That doesn’t count the windchill, and we had high winds yesterday. Today, we’ve reached a high of 2C/36F and our overnight low is expected to be only -3C/27F
[Edit: while I was still working on this post, we reached a high of 3C/37F, which is higher than was forecast for the day, by as much as 3°, depending on which app I got by.]
Which will make life much easier on the kitties.
I did a head count this morning, and again when I fed them after unloading the truck, so I could safely drive it out of the yard to park it. I counted 33, each time. Which means, taking into account the one I know we’ve lost, we’re “missing” three cats. Just as I couldn’t tell which ones were “new”, I can’t tell which ones are missing. There are some cats that are distinctive and we see regularly, but others look so much alike, and won’t let us near them, we just can’t keep track.
I did get a good action shot this morning, though!
I so want to be able to get Brussel and the other calicos socialized!!! They just won’t let it happen, though.
Today was my day for the Costco stock up shopping. This is what $956.06 looks like.
I did not get everything on my list. Some just wasn’t there. No sugar, for example, except for things like super expensive raw cane sugar or fake sugar. Rogers is on strike right now, so I wasn’t expecting to see that brand, but I was sure Costco also carried other brands. Ah, well. Our next stock up trip will include a Walmart, and they carry Redpath sugar, and they’re not on strike.
I asked to have all the cat food on a separate bill. When they were doing the rest, the cashier motioned to the flat cart, which still had the other heavy stuff on it the other staff member was scanning. I couldn’t make out what he said, but was able to figure out that he was asking about the separate bill, so I repeated that I wanted all the cat food on a separate bill.
Apparently, canned cat food is not cat food, because he included that in the main bill with the groceries! 😄😄
I usually get the 9kg Kirkland brand of kibble, which is cheaper per kg, but there was none. Not even an empty space where they would have been. So instead of a dozen 9kg bags, I got ten 11.6kg bags of Whiskas. They were $37.99 each and, after taxes, came to $425.49
pork blade roast: regular $20.44, -$5 at the till pork chops: $24.05 chicken 3pk: $28.59 bacon, 5pk: $23.99 rotisserie chickens, two at $7.99 each double cream Brie: regular $10.99, -$2.50 at the till cream cheese, 4pk: $9.49 goat cheese, 2pk: $10.99 Old Cheddar: $14.99 mozzarella: $14.99 butter, 5 at $5.45 each: $27.25 whipping cream, two 1L at $4.79 each 10kg bag of flour: $9.99 pasta, 9pk: $13.99 flat of ramen noodles: $13.99 raspberry jam: $8.99 Kirkland brand mayo, 2 at $8.99 each (usually we get Hellman’s, but I couldn’t find any) avocado oil: $16.99 Kirkland brand EVOO: $23.99 lemon juice, 2pk: 4.99 5 dozen pack eggs: $16.49 rye bread, two 2 pks: $5.99 each tortilla wraps, 4 packs at $9.99 each for $39.96, – $8 at the till
Subtotal: $512.21 taxes: $18.39 Total: $530.57
Some of the things on my list were more paper products, like facial tissues and paper towels, but the packages are so big, I would have run out of room on my flat cart. As it is, the packages of bread and wraps kept vibrating off as I tried to maneuver the flat cart. 🤨
Also, it blows me away how many people don’t think twice about cutting off a loaded flat cart. Do they really think I can stop on a dime?? Then there are the people that stop to look at products, parking their carts right where there’s a pillar or something, leaving no room for anyone to get through. I get the need to park your cart. Heck, with my flat cart, I often have to park it and walk over to various displays to get something, simply because it’s not worth the effort to wrestle the flat cart through the aisles. Especially for cold rooms, like the dairy and eggs room, or where the soft fruits, salad kits and mushrooms are kept. However, I also make sure people can still get around the cart when I do!
Costco has changed brands of butter since I was last there, but the price is still under $6, making it the best price for butter I’ve seen, still. The whipping cream, at under $5 for 1L is also the best price I’ve seen. Since a 1L carton can make about a pound of butter, it’s the only place where it would be economical to make our own butter. Everywhere else I’ve seen, a 1L carton of whipping cream costs more than the house brand butters. Not that we’ll use the cream for that. If that were the plan, I’d buy a lot more than 2 cartons!
For this trip, adding the canned cat food to the kibble bill (about $43.66 after taxes), we spent about $469.15 on just cat food.
Taking the canned cat food off the rest of the bill, we spent $473.22 on stuff for us. Of that, we spent $375.17 on food. The rest was non-food items and taxes.
We are literally spending more money to feed the cats, than to feed ourselves.
Yes, we still have other stock up shopping trip to do, which will include more food items for ourselves, but those 10 bags of kibble won’t last the month. Last month, we bought 12 bags of Kirkland 9kg kibble, or 108kg. I’ve lost track, but we ended up buying another 7 or 8 bags, ranging in size from 7kg to 11kg, depending on what was in stock. If we use an average range of 9kg for 7 bags, that brings it up to 171kg. Right now, we have 116kg on hand, which means we might need to buy another 55kg in kibble before the end of the month.
And this is why we have to seriously consider starting to euthanize some of the yard cats. We just can’t keep this up. Not when we now have a car payment, even with the girls helping out when they can.
At least the inside kittens will go up for adoption again, once the Cat Lady’s housing situation settles, so the number of indoor cats will drop. We are also hoping to adopt out Toni and Ginger. We adore Ginger, but some of the other cats are starting to really bully him, and he deserves a better home situation than ours. But who would be willing to adopt three legged cats? Even if they don’t have other health issues?
I suppose this is a good time to point out the donation button at the top right, but I know things are tight for everyone right now.
*sigh*
Oh, I almost forgot. There was also the cost of gas and meals, spent today.
On the way out, I stopped to put $30 of regular gas into the truck, at 150.9¢/L I filled the tank once I reached Costco. The price for regular gas there was 135.9¢/L It cost me $66.41 to fill the tank. So, in total, it cost $96.41 to fill the tank from just below half. I also bought breakfast and lunch, for maybe another $20-$25 in total.
Also, the truck has a trip counter that I reset before heading home from Costco. With a short side trip to pick up the mail, it read just over 108km, so about double that for the entire trip.
I must say, I’m going to be very happy in January, when we get our quarter beef order in! With the hung weight being the highest we’ve had yet, I’ve doubled the last two monthly payments, which means in January, we’ll have only about $40 left to cover the balance. I don’t know that we’ll be able to do this again, though. It’s been great to be able to make monthly payments towards a quarter beef at the end of the year (or, in this case, beginning of the year), but with having truck payments now, we need to put some wiggle room back into our budget.
Well, it is what it is. We’ll deal. Somehow, we always manage to make it through.
So, I ended up having to make a trip into town this morning.
This bugger is part of the reason why.
If she would only let us near her, Brussel could be adopted out right away! She’s such a beauty, too, even if she does look ready to bite off my face. 😂
It’s interesting how the different cats have their preferred eating spaces. I try to spread things out, both inside the sun room and outside. I started putting kibble on the well cap, and the calicos – especially Brussel, here – prefer to eat there over the kibble house or the cat house roof. They almost never go into the sun room, or even the cat house. I don’t know where they hide out during the day, but I think it’s somewhere in the outer yard. Brussel will at least come to the well cap and closer to the house, regularly. Her sister, Sprout, barely even does that, and prefers to eat under the shrine – and even then, only after I am well away!
It’s chillier out, so the yard cats need more food than in the summer, which means we were running out of kibble again. Even with giving them lighter feedings, the bin would have been emptied this evening. I could have taken from the bin for the inside cats, but that one was getting low, and I didn’t want to empty it, too. The problem is, my husband’s CPP Disability payment doesn’t come in until tomorrow, which is when I will be doing our Costco shopping trip. His SunLife payment comes in on the last business day of the month, so that’s when I’ll go into the city again to do the other stock up shopping. I could have juggled some numbers; when I worked out the budget for the month, I always round up, so that there is wiggle room. Unfortunately. At least there would be, if there weren’t some odd purchases coming out. For example, for the second month in a row now, we got two Audible payments processed. One appears to be from a Canadian account, and one from a US account. My husband has an Audible subscription, but only one, so why are we being billed twice, with one clearly being converted from US dollars? I’ll have to call the bank about that and see what’s going on.
Anyhow.
My daughter was a sweetheart and was able to send an e-transfer that was enough to get some more kibble. We also just switched out one of our 18.9L/5 gallon drinking water jugs, so we had two empties that I refilled as well.
After I was done at the grocery store, I started the truck and the check engine line was on again. So I turned it off and set up the OBDII scanner. I didn’t do a full scan, though. The one we have now allows other options, including scanning just the check engine light. It took maybe a minute or two, and I got the same codes as before, that I already talked to our mechanic about. This is a “too rich fuel” reading that turns itself on and off. When it was on before and I got him to check it, he said it should clear itself. Which it did, after I filled the tank. Then it turned on again after another top up, only to be off the next time I used the truck. It’s been off ever since, until today. This time, when I cleared the codes, it turned off and it stayed off.
While doing a scan, the engine is off, but the key is in the half way position, where you can use the electrical system and see the displays on the console. Which is why I got a surprise warning on the onboard computer.
“Battery is low. Please start the engine.”
!!!???
Again????
Of course, this battery is brand new and was fully charged when it was installed. I started the engine, and the battery gauge showed me it was charging just fine. The alternator is not the problem.
Since it was just across the road, I drove over to the garage to talk to our mechanic – leaving the engine running while I went in!
He is perplexed. He’s gone over the truck a few times, now, and he can’t think of anything that would be draining the battery. I know we didn’t have any lights left on or anything like that. It’s not the first vehicle he’s encountered that would have these warnings come up, for no reason he could find. The last one he had it happen on was an Escalade. After talking to him for a while, it basically came down to, watch and see, and if it happens again, call him.
As we were talking, he remembered a gadget he now carries that he thinks we might want to pick up. A portable booster. We have booster cables, but they’re not much good if you don’t have another vehicle to connect with. Especially living in the boonies like we do. The one he showed me was a power pack with booster cables as well as other things, like the ability to charge devices with USB. Something like that would definitely be good to have in our vehicle emergency kit! I’ve since had a chance to look some of these up, and found a larger portable device that included an air compressor as well. The price was good, too, though it’s not something we can get any time soon with our current budget.
The truck seemed just fine in all other respects. For all I know, it could be a sensor issue.
While there, I remembered to ask about my seatbelt problem. He remembered I’d asked him about it in a text, but wasn’t sure what I was talking about. I described to him how the driver’s side seatbelt just doesn’t want to click into place. I keep having to push and wiggle and push again until the buckle finally latches – though I’ve had it come undone a couple of times, even then. Never while driving, though, but immediately after it latched and I was adjusting the seatbelt tension around my body.
This is not something he normally fixes at all. He did have a suggestion I didn’t even think of. Use a flashlight and see if something had fallen into where the latch is. Yeah, that could cause the problem! Then, if we didn’t find anything obvious, try a bit of WD40. Something to do tomorrow, before I head into the city.
Meanwhile, once I got home and things were brought inside, I was able to give the cats another light feeding, so I could safely drive the truck out of the yard and park it in the garage!
We need to do something about these cats. I counted 34 or 35 this morning. We’re spending more on cat food now than we are on truck payments. It may even be more than we are spending on actual food for ourselves. Our trips to the grocery store usually includes non-food items, like household products, persona hygiene products and the like. With how much food prices are going up, we haven’t been able to get the extra stock up items of the pantry the way we used to. I’ve even tried looking up Canadian wholesale pet food suppliers, and the few places I found that had online sales, the prices were no better than retail prices in the stores, so there’s no point. Even Amazon prices are higher than what I can get at Costco. I suppose I could go to that livestock feed store again and get the 16kg bags they carry that’s cheap, but the quality is so low, even the outside cats didn’t like to eat it. It’s much the same with the economy bags of kibble at Walmart. Sure, it’s cheaper per kg, but that doesn’t mean much if the quality sucks so much, the cats don’t want to eat it unless they’re practically starving. Which means it’s also likely to be quite unhealthy for them, too.
But what can we do? This year, we actually have people wanting to adopt some of our outdoor female cats as mousers on their own property, and they’ve have a better living situation than we can give them, but we have been unsuccessful in socializing them – and no one wants male yard cats, who are more likely to roam, no matter how friendly they are, it seems. It’s gotten to the point where we are going to have to seriously consider looking at how to humanely euthanize them. We could contact the municipality, and they’d send someone over with a rifle. Which can be humane, but only if they are a really good shot! Even then, no matter how good a shot they are, these are small, moving targets.
I can’t believe I’m even considering this, but the situation is getting untenable. It’s not just a matter of the cost of feeding them. It’s not healthy for them, either. The more there are, the more sick cats there will be – and we’ve lost so many more this year, than any year before! Without those losses – the ones we know of! – we’d probably have more like 50 yard cats right now.
*sigh*
I hope to be able to talk to the Cat Lady about it before any decisions are made. They’re moving to a new home seems to be falling through. They got financing for the new house, but have not been able to sell the old one. They’ve had many offers, and every one has fallen through. People just have not been able to get financing. They have until the end of the month. If they don’t get a buyer before then, they have to give up the new place and stay where they are. Meanwhile, they are still paying to board almost all their own cats, too!
Which reminds me. One of the sick kittens they took from us, got vet care for, then adopted out, came back. This is the white and grey one. While it was recovered, it was going to have a lifetime of relapses, which would have required antibiotics probably a couple of times a year. Which turned out to be too much for the woman who adopted him. So, the Cat Lady said she’d take him back. !!! Their dog is very happy about this, it seems. They had really bonded, and he was clearly missing him. This was a kitten that they fell in love with and really struggled to say good bye to. This does however, make the 5th cat from us, if I remember correctly, that they are keeping permanently! I’m afraid to tell her about any other cats or kittens we have to adopt out! By the time they get the cats fixed and get vet care, too many of them are turning out to have invisible health problems, and no one wants to adopt them. They also have pair of bonded kittens from us that they tried to adopt out together, but one of them turned out to have heart problems, so they’re keeping both.
*sigh*
Once their situation settles down, I’ll talk to the Cat Lady again about borrowing a trap and trying to get some of the female yard cats. This has been a mild enough winter, we could risk it. We could even rig up shelter around the trap somehow, but we really need to try and get them caught and spayed before they go into heat again.
It’s either that, or we start looking into more permanent actions, and I really don’t want to go that route.
The Re-Farmer 