In this case, it’s having the garbage and recycling bags in the box of the truck, rather than stuffed in the back of my mother’s car, behind my head as I drive.
I made sure to grab a long handled garden cultivator tool to grab the bags that got pushed further in. Most bags had drawstring ties I could grab with the teeth and pull forward. A couple smaller bags didn’t have the same ties. I could grab them and roll them forward, but had to be careful not to tear holes in the bags. It worked out very well.
Next, I drove into town to pick up some prescription refills my husband ordered yesterday, while I was in the city. Along the way, the check engine light turned on again. After I got the prescriptions, I hooked up the OBDII device and did a scan. Once I got the reading, I took a screen cap, then cleared the codes. While I was doing that, I started getting a warning that the battery was low, and to start the engine!!
So I swung by the garage before heading home. It’s Saturday, so our mechanic wasn’t in, but I talked to the guy that was there and showed him the codes. He couldn’t say for sure (there’s a long list of possible causes that comes up when I generate a report), but looking at the 3 different but related codes, he thinks it is electrical. It could be as simple as a loose wire.
Which is when I brought up the low battery warning. That seems to confirm its an electrical issue. Whatever is causing the codes to come up may also be draining the battery.
The truck is fine to drive, though. I’ll just have to talk to our mechanic next week about checking it out. Decisions can be made after he confirms a cause.
Once at home, I put the charger on the battery again! 😆
Meanwhile, on a more adorable note…
… I seem to have lost access to my office chair!
What a difference in sizes between Cheddar and the Littles!
Pom Pom is getting big enough we now let him out of the room. These two are still so tiny, they only get supervised tours. 😆
Overnight we got what I would call our first real snowfall. Enough snow is on the ground that it might actually stay. At least in the shadier spots. We shall see.
It doesn’t stop the outside cats from preferring to eat on the cat house roof!
Junk Pile has found the warm spot, above the terrarium bulb inside. 😄
Most of the cats have been using the sun room. At least the smaller ones. I’m seeing more cats peeking through the window of the cat house now, too. I counted possibly 33 or 34 cats this morning, including Sad Face.
I’ll be heading into the city within the hour. I’ve been keeping tabs on the local highway conditions groups and chats. The highway I’ll be taking has been described as icy and filled with packed snow. Not too bad, but enough for people to warn about driving carefully and taking it slow. As I write this, we are at -3C/27F, with a wind chill of -12C/10F. We’re pretty sheltered from the wind around the house, as it’s coming from the northwest. I just wore my light hooded jacket while doing my rounds and didn’t feel much chill at all. This afternoon we’re supposed to stay at 1C/34F for several hours, so I expect the roads will clear pretty quickly.
I am so glad we got the truck when we did. I would not be comfortable driving my mother’s car in this at all. It’s not even the tires, which checked out fine, or the road conditions, which aren’t that bad. It’s more that I keep expecting it to suddenly break down. It keeps checking out fine, but it makes so many noises and just feels wrong when I’m driving it. So going back to driving it only when I need to help my mother is a relief.
This will be my first time driving the truck in the city. I’m going to love having better visibility, but I’ll have to pay attention to those few extra inches in length! I don’t want to be “that” vehicle that parks with the back end sticking into the lane. 😄
I’ve had some sleepless nights, so the girls were kind enough to do my morning stuff for me and let me sleep in. I headed out in the afternoon to go to the mail, then into town to refill a couple of our big water jugs, and ended up picking up a lasagna for supper.
When I got home and went to open the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have cows again!
The renter has rotated his cows to our quarter section one last time before they bring them in for the winter.
Seeing his cows makes me smile, every time!
I drove into the yard to unload the water jugs, then took the time to try and figure out how to open up the cover over the truck’s box. I’d looked up online, but found instructions for a specific brand, and it turns out ours unlocks differently! It took using the flash on my phone to finally see the loop under one corner that released the cover. I rolled it up then climbed in with a broom.
That was NOT fun. I could get onto the tailgate easy enough, but my knees are so shot, it was a real struggle to get up again. I would get one knee up, which would cause massive pain on the other knee. I’m going to take a page from my brother’s book and get some high density foam pieces that can be slid onto the tail gate and make it less painful. We’ve already been talking about keeping a folding step stool to make getting into the back easier, too. We wanted a taller vehicle for important reasons, but … well, I’m short!
Tomorrow we will be making our first stock up shopping trip to the city, and I’m planning to hit Costco on this trip. I will be able to load an entire month’s worth of cat kibble in the back! I might actually run out of room on the flat cart in the store, and should still have space in the truck! With temperatures the way they are right now, we can even skip the ice packs and load the insulated bags in the back with the kibble bags, while things that don’t need to stay cold can be loaded into the cab.
If all goes to plan, I’ll only have to do the one Costco trip, then do a second trip a few days to a different areas of the city, where there are several stores all along one street that we go to. I might even go check out the liquidation place we found but rarely go to.
That should be all the necessary trips to the city after that – two trips instead of 3 or 4. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it goes!
Oh, I was just reminded as I wrote about the kibble; with how much we get every month, I did some searches to see if I could buy the kibble from a wholesale supplier, instead of at retail. I did find some Canadian “wholesale” outlets, but the prices were often more expensive than what we’re paying at Costco! Which makes these the retail store for wholesale outlets.
I should try that livestock supply store again. Their huge bags of cat food were cheaper, but the cats didn’t like it, but they did have other brands and higher quality cat food. If they have better prices than Costco, for kibble that cats will actually eat, that would be awesome. They don’t have any products listed online, though.
We shall see.
Anyhow.
Aside from the trip to town, we got a bit more progress done outside. The last of the garden hoses are put away, the septic tank covered, and a few more garden supports and stakes bundled and stored. Over the next few days, it will be getting cold enough to do the winter mulching before the ground freezes. We’re still expected to get temperatures hovering around the freezing mark for most of November, so it’ll be a while before more than the surface freezes.
It is amusing to start the truck and get a warning on the display saying “ice possible, drive with care”. 😃 We’ve only been getting a light dusting of snow that’s mostly gone by the afternoon, but the south end of our province has been getting a mix of snow and rain, so there are plenty of warnings about road conditions going out.
It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so I hope to finally get a good night’s sleep, tonight!
Gosh, this guy reminds me of Decimus so much! That permanently stunned expression is what does it. The white arrow on his head reminds me of Pointy Baby.
We’ve passed on photos in hopes someone will adopt him, but he does have lung issues. We can hear his lungs rattling as he breaths. Unfortunately, we’re out of Lysine, and our Amazon subscription supplier seems to be either out of stock, or no longer carries it? I’m not quite sure which it is, based on the very brief notification. I’ve looked at alternatives, but those in the bulk size I’m after that’s meant for humans seem to all have other vitamins mixed in, while the ones marketed for cats cost almost twice as much, for 1/3rd the quantity! I hope our usual supplier starts shipping again. Winter is always the hardest when it comes to respiratory issues in the cats.
Yesterday, my daughter and I finally lifted the roof on the cat house to give it a cleaning. I’d hoped to be able to brace it somehow, but there’s a large ridge beam down the centre; it’s the beam that extends out the back that the counter weight is attached to, so it’s very substantial. Unfortunately, the roof has such a low slope, it means I can’t attach cross pieces (collar beams, I believe they’re called) to the rafters. The ridge beam it in the way.
Once open, we took out all the bedding and threw away the sheet-wrapped pillow that had been in a box, because it got damp on the bottom and started to mold. The litter box was simply switched out for another with clean litter pellets in it. The smoke detector battery was tested, the heat shield put back around the light fixture, then we plugged in the electrical and tested the terrarium heat bulb. My daughter also found a way to secure the timer so that the light sensor should stay upright and facing the window. It will turn the bulb on when it gets dark, then off when it gets light.
We also cleaned the windows, inside and out! Gosh, they get greasy on the inside. All those cat faces rubbing on them. 😄
We had cats in and out the whole time we worked on it! Once the bedding was returned and it was time to drop the roof, we had to be extra careful to make sure no cats decided to jump in from the top! That roof is really heavy, and even with the counter weight, it drops hard if we’re not careful. With how much the roof has been wiggling around, we’re being extra careful, anyhow. We’ll have to plan ahead for building a new cat house, because this one is just getting too old and the wood too rotten. That and the cats are using the inside walls as scratching posts, and WOW are they tearing it apart!!
That done, we’re also starting to do things like put away the hoses for the winter. We haven’t shut the taps off in the basement, yet, so we do still have access to water for a while longer, but mostly we’ll be bringing warm water out from inside, instead.
We ran out of kibble for the outside cats already! When I got another bag, I didn’t realize we were so low for the inside cats, too. By the time the bin for the inside cats was refilled, plus the one I keep in my room for the kittens, there wasn’t much left. Rather than take from the inside bin, I took advantage of delivering Nosencrantz to her new home by arranging to meet near a Walmart, then picked up another 10kg bag. I’ll be doing our first stock up shopping trip to Costco in a couple of days. Now that we have the truck, I should be able to get the entire month’s worth of kibble in one trip!
While I was driving, I started to get some messages that turned out to be from the Cat Lady. I’d brought up about bringing the 5 kittens to get fixed during the clinic’s cheap day. She came back to tell me she has us booked for 6 slots – all females! We don’t even have 6 females to bring in. There are the 3 older kittens (Tiny is just too tiny), Toni and Tissue. We have had no progress in getting at any of the outside females. It would probably be easier if the males weren’t so aggressively friendly and pushing their way past the ladies and spooking them. But this clinic wants to do only females for their cheap day. The rescue would pay for 4, and she was asking if we could pay for the other two. We were already expecting to pay for one (Toni).
Bringing Tissue, though… Tissue: Destroyer of Cars. That’s a risk!
I’ve messaged the Cat Lady about how many we can do, but haven’t heard back. She’s in the middle of getting her house ready for sale, and to start moving next month, if things go to plan. Thankfully, the new house is very close, but moving is always very stressful. The hardest move we ever had was only half a block. It took us a week and we all were sick with colds. At one point, I just collapsed and was bed ridden for a couple of days. And we had only 4 kids and two cats at the time, too! So she has a lot to focus on that are a higher priority. All that, and she’s still hoping to come out here this weekend to drop off a donated cat carrier for us to keep! With the move, she’s not positive she’ll be able to take Ghosty after the spay. It might be better for her to come back with us for a bit longer, instead.
With us now having car payments, starting next month, finding the money to do spays – even super cheap ones (only $75, instead of $350!!) – is going to take a bit more juggling of the budget than usual. We’ll manage. Especially if we are able to adopt out more cats, and not be spending so much on cat food every month!
This was an unexcepted thing. I was connected with someone last night, we got together this morning, and it’s done.
Nosencrantz no longer has to be constantly stressed out being around so many other cats. She has a new forever home, and she’s already settling in nicely. When feeding the cats this morning, she came out of her hiding places as usual, and I was able to get her into the carrier. She got treated to some wet cat food while I finished my morning rounds, then off we went to meet her new family.
I am feeling really good about the family she went to. You know how, when you sometimes meet someone and there is this automatic connection? That’s how it was when I was introduced to someone who was looking for a new cats. Nosencrantz checked all her boxes, and she checked all of ours!
This is a hard one for me. Of all the cats, Nosencrantz is the one I connected with the most. She, however, was so stressed out. There’s a reason we also called her Anxiety Bear! Too many other cats. Both inside and out, she had specific cats that targeted her, too.
Now, she has a safe, warm “suite” to stay in for a couple of weeks as she gets used to her new home, before they let her out to explore. She’ll have one other sweet and friendly cat to get used to, and cat loving children to dote on her. They also have other cats that are completely indoors, including a rescued tripod. I have been promised lots of pictures, and look forward to getting to know the family more!
It feels like this family was put in our path at just the right time, too. I am going to miss Nosencrantz, but this was the right thing to do for her.
It occurred to me that these guys are coming up on 6 months old. The Cat Lady was looking into getting 5 slots for the cheap spay and neuter day, including Toni, Ghosty and a couple of outdoor males, but I just asked if her if we could get the 5 oldest kittens done, instead. She still wants to get Toni done, too, so she’ll see if she can get 6 slots. She might be moving next month, though, and things are really hectic for her and her family right now (and their 27 or so cats!!), so she’ll get back to me on that one. I told her I’m less concerned about Toni than I am about having 5 kittens old enough for their first heat (well… three female kittens going into heat with intact males around!). Ghosty, depending on how things go with the move, would not be coming back, as she’s found a home for her.
Speaking of large numbers of cats, I did a head count outside this morning. Including Shop Towel/Sad Face, I counted 38.
As much as we’d like to reduce that population, we really need to reduce the indoor population first. It’s just not healthy for them, mentally or physically. The Cat Lady, once they move to their new home, will be able to convert a heated shed into a place just for cats. That’s something I wouldn’t mind finding a way to do. Too bad we can’t use the storage house for that! We need more sheds, anyhow. The ones we have are either fallen apart, falling apart, or jammed full of junk. Or, in the case of the warehouse that used to be my late brother’s workshop, filled with my parents’ stuff my mother insists we keep. Not that we’d use that for cats. We need a workshop more!
Ah, well. All in good time.
With the temperatures dropping below freezing consistently over night from now on, I pulled the bed of Red of Florence onions, yesterday.
There was enough to half fill the wheel barrow, plus there were a few too small to bother keeping.
Their necks are still too “fleshy”, so we won’t be able to cure them like we did with the other onions we harvested already. We’d had a night and morning of consistent rain, so these were also pretty damp. We have the hardware cloth “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement when we keep the door open in the summer. It does double duty for laying out vegetables. I was able to set it up in the old kitchen and laid the onions out to dry a bit. From there, we will need to process them; some for freezing, some for dehydrating. This is on top of the onions we’ve been able to cure and braid for casual use. We got a very decent haul of onions this year, but only the yellow onions, plus these ones. Oh, and the shallots. We also had the Red Wethersfield onions, but not one of them survived transplanting! I’ve no idea what happened to them, but I want to try that variety again before we conclude that they just won’t grow here.
The high for today, and the next couple of days, is expected to be 3C/37F. After that, the highs will be lower, and reach just above or below freezing. So far, the overnight lows are not expected to drop very far, and remain just a few degrees below freezing, but we will no longer be seeing overnight lows above freezing from here on. It’s still not too bad, though. Nothing severe or extreme. Also, we don’t have the snow that other parts of the country got yesterday, including the city we lived in before moving out here!
There was a thin layer of ice on the outside cats’ water bowls. It’s starting to be time to bring warm water out for them when we feed them. It’s time to put the hoses away and cover the taps, anyhow. The electrical in the cat house needs to be plugged in and tested, so we can plug in the huge heated water bowl in the water bowl shelter, plus the terrarium heat bulb inside, with its timer set to turn it on at dusk. I’ve already set up the smaller water bowl in the sun room and plugged it in.
Still lots to be done, but as long as we get the essentials taken care of, the rest can wait until spring, if necessary.
I counted 37 or 38 this morning. Plus Shop Towel. He came over to the kibble house and seemed okay at first -I was even just starting to be able to touch him – but then one of our friendly males came by and he attacked. I chased him off and he actually stopped to attack another cat that had been startled by the commotion and happened to be running in the same direction.
*sigh*
Also, yes. That tuxedo has a messed up eye. That’s the one that had a badly infected eye, but we could never catch him to clean it up. Not the tuxedo that lost its eye entirely. I haven’t seen that one in a long time.
Today looks like a day where not much is going to get done outside. It looks like it’s been raining for most of the night, judging by how much water is pooling in our driveway, and is still raining now. It’s expected to continue raining until the evening.
Which I’m okay with. It’ll be good for the ground to get a lot of moisture before the snow hits and the ground starts to freeze. That will benefit any young trees, like the apple we planted in the spring, and the Korean Pine in the outer yard, as well as the garlic and saffron crocuses that were planted not long ago. A good, deep watering before winter is a good thing.
Oh, I need to remember to contact Veseys about those purple raspberries. I double checked and yes, I was remembering correctly. They are regular cane raspberries, not primal cane. Primal cane raspberries produce berries on new canes every year, so you can literally mow the whole patch down in the fall, and they will produce new shoots in the spring. With regular cane, berries are produced on second year canes, which then die off, leaving the fresh first year canes to survive the winter and produce the following year. What we should have gotten in our order was first year canes, and we should not have had any berries this year at all. Instead, the canes planted this year would have produced berries next year, while also having new canes come up that would produce berries the year after. There were no new canes that came up. Just the ones we planted, that produced berries, instead. It seems highly unlikely, but we either got second year canes in stead of first year canes, or conditions somehow “tricked” the raspberries into acting as though they’d gone through a winter. This can sometimes happen with biannuals like onions or carrots. For example, the year we had groundhogs eating our carrot greens, quite a few went to seed after their greens started growing back. I can’t think of anything that happened with the raspberries that could have simulated that sort of annual pattern, though.
Anyhow…
Days like today – rainy and overcast – always make me feel really, really sleepy. I’m resisting the urge to crawl back into bed!
My husband had his medical appointment this morning, so we got to give the truck its first real test.
I did end up having to fold up both bench seats in the back to fit his walker. With just the seat behind the passenger seat folded up, the walker fits at a angle, which makes one wheel just an inch or two too far for the door to close. The part of the bench seat behind the driver’s seat that folds is 2/3rds of the seat, so it would fit just fine, there, but that’s not where my husband is, when it comes time to load and unload it. If we are ever driving with all 4 of us, the walker would just have to be laid down in the box and secured. With the cover on the box, that would work out just fine, too.
As for getting in and out, he has an easier time of it than I do, being considerably taller than I am! Not having to fold himself down into a tiny seat in a tiny car, all on its own, makes a world of difference!
The appointment went as well as such things go with him. He’s going to be tried on a new medication to try and get his blood sugars down and, hopefully, allow him to reduce his insulin. Part of the problem with insulin is that it causes weight gain, and that’s sure as heck not helping his injured back any. He hasn’t had his Ozempic for a while, now. Because of how high his dose is, he gets it in special ordered pens with a lot more in them; with the “regular” dose versions, he’d be going through a pen a day, and it’s a lot more expensive, even with coverage. The pens he needs, though, are not available. He opted to skip it for now, rather than go for the more expensive smaller dose pens he’d have to buy twice as much of.
So he’ll be taking this new medication for 3 months, then get some bloodwork done to see if it helped any, or if the dose needs to be changed, etc. This medication is supposed to also be good for his heart, though he hasn’t had his heart tested in a very long time, what with the heart clinic in the city being unwilling to accommodate his disability.
Armed with a new prescription, our next stop was at the pharmacy. The new medication needs special “permission” for coverage, though, and that involves some paperwork between the doctor and the insurance company. It was expensive enough that I couldn’t just get it without coverage, unfortunately. Since he’s going to have to really keep on on monitoring his sugars while on this medication, I got more test strips and lancets and, since it’s been more than a year, he qualified for a free glucometer with the purchase of test strips. I don’t think we’ve every had to pay for an actual glucometer with that particular deal.
After his stuff was done, I had my own prescription to refill, which is extremely simple compared to my husband’s convoluted medications. While I was waiting, I remember to ask about the Ozempic. Still nothing, and no estimate as to when they will be able to provide more. The problem, of course, is that Ozempic is being used by people who are not diabetic as a weight loss gimmick. Which is disturbing enough on its own, but that enough people are getting this super high dose for it to run out completely is quite alarming. This stuff has some pretty terrible side effects, and you can’t just take it, loose weight, then stop taking it. It’s basically Ozempic for life. She said she expected the fad to fade away in about 5 years, like previous weight loss drug fads. I sure hope it takes less than 5 years! I just can’t imagine deliberately taking something that can cause such incredible problems with the digestive system, including losing control of the bowels, just to lose a few pounds. For some diabetics, it can work very well. It doesn’t seem to be doing much for my husband, other then add to the long list of side effects he’s already dealing with. It certainly isn’t resulting in weight loss, but he’s also been on at least two medications that cause weight gain for much longer than he’s been on the Ozempic.
As you can see, everyone has pretty much given up on any treatment for his back injury. There really isn’t a fix for that, and pain control has never been very successful on any of the different medications they’ve maxed him out on. With his current medication (two versions of the same drug; one fast acting and one slow release), it seems he’s actually been a sort of test case on just how high they can safely increase the dosages to. And he’s already been told, right from the first diabetic nurse he saw after he became officially disabled from it, he won’t be able to control the blood sugars until he can control the pain.
Not much quality of life in his situation.
Having said that, while we were driving around and talking about the truck, he actually brought up wanting to make a trip into the city to visit family. !!! Which is really amazing because, even with the van, he always balked at taking longer trips.
By the time we were done with everything, it was past lunch time, and neither of us had had breakfast, so we decided to go to the new DQ for a sit down lunch. That sure hit the spot! He also got more to bring home as a surprise for our daughters.
It was late enough when we were finally heading home that the post office was open after its mid day break, so we stopped by. I was hoping our lysine for the cats had come in, but apparently it’s backordered right now. There were, however, other packages waiting, including two surprises!
M, you are amazing!
That hose will be for the garden tap we will be installing. As we are able, we will get pipes that hose can be run through and buried, and a few other fittings. The plan is to have everything ready for next spring, when we can dig up the rest of the existing pipe and set up a nice tap and vegetable washing station at the garden. I had been looking at heavy duty hoses at Walmart and Canadian Tire. It never occurred to me to look for metal contractor grade hoses online.
As for the other box…
Just look at those beautiful clear eyes!
… Tiny: The Beast, got to be the first to test it out! This is for the outside cats, in the winter. It works by “reflecting” body heat back. No electricity required. I’m sure the outside cats will love it!
In other things, this was a highly interrupted post. I got a call from the roofing company that did our roof last year. My brother had gone up this year and noticed some shingles lifting, which will be fixed under warranty. However, we had that one driving rain that resulted in rain dripping around the chimney to the old cook stove in the kitchen, which has never leaked before. My brother talked to the roofing guy about it, and he said that chimney doesn’t have a proper collar on it. Which apparently it never has, but it also has never leaked before. Either way, my brother made arrangements, and the guy went searching for a collar that would work. the problem is, the roof over the old kitchen is a lot steeper than anywhere else on the house, which, I’m told, is why there was never a collar on the chimney. The angle is wrong.
Well, it seems the guy found something that will work, and he’s now on his way over to fix it, and fix the loose shingles my brother spotted. It’s awfully late in the day for this – it gets dark so fast, this time of year! – but we’re glad that he’s going to get it done.
Aside from all this, there is also more delays in regards to the financing for the truck, if you can believe it!
Oh… time to pause. The roofing guy is almost here.
Well, that’s done.
The collar he found was clearly too small for the chimney, but he went up and did the other warranty covered work, which included sealing around the chimney. He found a gap where he could see water would have gotten in, in a driving rain. He even sealed around the top of the chimney, under the cap, and around a join near the bottom, which had been sealed long ago and was starting to crumble. He even added sealant under some shingles that were over lapping the sort of collar at the base, and the base itself. It will not leak again! He even went around the roof and tacked down anything that looked loose, and sealed around openings above the bathroom, just in case.
In the end, he figures it will not leak anymore, and a collar would not be necessary. It will be up to my brother if he still wants it done, as it is not covered by warranty. Having watched him thorough he was, I don’t see a need!
One more think off the list…
So… where was I?
Oh, yes.
The financing thing.
Before we left this morning, I got an email from the finance lady. The lender had a whole bunch of stuff they needed, now that the vehicle has been insured and sold. Most of that, our mechanic already had copies of that he could sent. In fact, the list was really meant for him, since it included how he wanted to be paid!
Yeah. He still hasn’t been paid, other than our down payment!
One thing they wanted was a copy of the registration in the borrower’s name.
That would be my husband. Who no longer drives and no longer has a driver’s license. I clarified that part but let her know I could get some of the rest for her, if our mechanic couldn’t provide it, since we now have the truck, but it would have to wait until after we got back from the doctor’s.
I took the truck out of the garage so it would be easier for my husband to access and started taking the photos the lender wanted, but couldn’t get a photo of the dash with the mileage. The littler computer display screen it would be on had a warning for a low tire in the rear. Which isn’t low. I saw them top all the tires up, and double checked. It’s fine. I hooked up our OBDII scanner and cleared the codes, but that one kept coming back.
I texted our mechanic about it. When we got to the clinic, the display changed to “service tire monitoring system”. He figures the module needs a new battery, because he knows it’s all fine. I have no doubt; now that I have all the paperwork for the safety, I have a list of all the things he took care of before putting it up for sale! Yeah. I’m even more sure he took a loss on this one.
After we got home, I was going to email the financing lady to see if there were still things she needed that our mechanic couldn’t provide – only to have her phone me before I started! One of the things was a photo of the VIN sticker on the door, which I already got a photo of. The other was more involving my husband’s ID confirmation. They wanted something mailed to him within the last 30 days that has his name and address on it.
His birth certificate name, not the name he uses, which is his second name, as traditional among his Acadian family.
We already sent all sorts of things to them, but they were either with the “wrong” name, or they didn’t have his address. Even his proof of income had his given name, not his first name. Most of the things she suggested either don’t get mailed to us, as we have gone completely electronic, or are under my name. Then she mentioned a cell phone bill.
That was one of the things he updated to include his full name, so that he would have something to show when he finally was able to come in to get a photo ID.
I logged in and checked, and sure enough, it had his full name, just like on his birth certificate, plus both our postal and our physical addresses. Yay!!! Finally!!! I was able to download the pdf and sent that along with the VIN sticker photo.
I just can’t get an odometer reading photo, because we can’t find any way to cycle through the computer display readings. The user manual shows us where the controls should be, but our model doesn’t have it.
There has to be something, somewhere, but we just can’t find it!
Anyhow…
Hopefully, this is the last thing they need, and our mechanic can finally get paid! We’re all getting pretty frustrated, because they keep coming up with all these little things that are delaying it. Everything else is done. We have the truck. He needs to be paid!
Talking to my daughter about all this, later on, she suggested we bake him a cake or something as a thank you! I agree!
On a different note, I had planned to top up the gas tank before going home, but we were out so long, I skipped it, so my husband could get home and recover from the outing. The nice thing?
The needle barely moved, the entire time.
With my mother’s car, we would have seen a substantial drop. Even taking into account the different sizes of gas tanks, the difference is notable. Now, given the specs on this truck, it’s not going to be fantastic on gas, so this is more a reflection on how bad on gas my mother’s car has gotten – and we can’t find the reason why! At least it doesn’t seem to be getting worse anymore.
So that’s were we’re at now.
Tomorrow, I have no errands to run, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to work outside. We’ve had some absolutely gorgeous weather, lately, and it’s supposed to stick around for a while.
We have reached a lovely 16C/61F today, with wonderful sunshine. You know what that means!
Time to get work done outside!
Today, I focused on using the last of the soil in the kiddie pool the melons were grown in and soil from the grow bags, to top up our first trellis bed. The potato bags were already emptied and the soil all in a pile, so that was nice and quick to transfer over. Between that and the soil from the kiddie pool, more than half the trellis bed was covered.
Then I started on the grow bags the bell peppers were in.
I think I discovered why the peppers never thrived in those.
I had two shallow “raised beds” from the dollar store, plus two deeper, higher quality bags. As soon as I started trying to break up the soil with the spade, I found it to be remarkably solid and hard to cut through. That bag in the photo was the last of these fabric grow bags. It flipped inside out as I tried to empty the soil, and was still stuck.
Those are tree roots.
It turns out those horrible elms from the self seeded row of trees my mother allowed to grow not only release millions of seeds every spring, their roots will actually grow up into the grow bags and smother whatever else is growing there! The only bags where this was not a problem were the potatoes. Those had a thick layer of straw on their bottoms. I did see a few roots here and there, but nothing in the soil layer like this. These fabric grow bags had some grass clippings added to their bottoms. Those were completely decomposed. I didn’t do the feed bags the hot peppers were in until later. Those had straw on their bottoms, too, but not as deep a layer as the potatoes.
So most of my time ended up being spent trying to break up the soil enough that I could finally shake it from the roots, before it could be dumped into the trellis bed. The four bags the bell peppers were in were just enough to finish topping up the trellis bed.
That left five feed bags; four that had the hot peppers and onions in them, and one that had just onions. I left those and shifted to the high raised bed. The grass clipping mulch was moved and the bed was weeded – leaving two little onions to keep growing.
It’s really amazing, how deep dandelion tap roots can grow!
I found what looked like a couple of mouse tunnels in two of the corners. Grass clippings were used to fill in gaps in the corners, and all along the edges, as well as to chink some gaps on the logs that I found. I also debarked it a fair bit. That’s to keep insects and moisture from the logs, so they’ll last longer.
Once that was all cleaned up, I leveled the soil, pushing some of it up against the grass clippings around the edges. Once that was done, I went back to the remaining grow bags and de-rooted them. All five ended up in the high raised bed.
Last of all, the soil was topped with a light sprinkling of grass clippings before both beds got a thorough soaking. I want the water to soak through all the layers, but don’t want to compact the soil layer, and the grass clippings will help with that at least a little bit.
The beds have now been put to bed for the winter!
When adding soil to the trellis bed, I could see it bouncing! I did stomp on them, but the layers of grass clippings, leaves, kitchen compostables, straw, wood chips and bark, all still have quite a bit of space in them. By spring, I expect the whole thing to have sunk and settled at least 4 inches. The main thing, though, is that it is ready for planting in the spring, even if it takes longer to build the trellis part of the trellis beds!
Now for my happy Butterscotch news!
She’s back indoors!
I’d gone out to feed the cats a bit early, yesterday evening. Butterscotch came around and I got to pet her and cuddle her. She still wouldn’t go near the other cats, and if they came close, she would leave, even from the food I’d put near the storage house for her. Shop Towel in particular was interested in that.
After trying – and failing – to bring her to the kibble house to eat, I tried a different tactic. I’d seen a kitten running around around the front of the house, so I left a pile of kibble on the concrete steps for it. Butterscotch let me pick her up again, and I walked around the back of the house, avoiding all the cats, to bring her to the lone pile of kibble.
I almost got there, too.
It just happened that the girls decided to come outside, and as soon as the doors started rattling, Butterscotch got spooked, and I couldn’t hang onto her anymore. Once the girls realized what happened, they worked with me to encourage Butterscotch to come to them at the steps, and got her eating.
My younger daughter stayed with her while her sister and I played interference with the other cats. Several of them suddenly decided they needed to check out what she was doing at the steps!
Including Shop Towel.
Shop Towel has become an enigma. He’s been hanging around and eating with the other cats, and they are mostly okay with that. Driver and Judgement have not been targeted by him, nor have any of the other males. Mind you, he’s clearly the father of most of the adult males, but I don’t know how much of a difference that would make.
The problem starts when he seed Butterscotch and Nosencrantz.
He hasn’t really targeted Nozencrantz, but he has in the past, and she’s clearly nervous around him. When he goes for the food, she leaves. At least she’s not running up a tree anymore, but it means she doesn’t eat. This morning, I left kibble on the red bench for her, just so she could have something!
Butterscotch, however, has his attention, and he wants to chase her.
Between him, and her not wanting to go near any of the other cats, this was a problem. If only we could get her inside, but she wouldn’t let us take her close to the house!
Well, we found a way.
It started with my younger daughter going over to Shop Towel as he was milling around the storage house. She squatted down (oh, to have functional knees like hers!), held her hand out – and he came right over! She was able to pet him as he purred and rubbed against her legs! We were all pretty stunned by this.
That gave us an opportunity.
The cat carrier was in the sun room, in hopes we’d be able to catch one of the adult females for spaying and adoption. While my younger daughter kept Shop Towel distracted, I got the carrier and her sister and I managed to get Butterscotch in.
She was not happy about that.
The carrier also allowed me to get her past all the indoor cats and bring her into my room.
She was not happy with the kittens. She snarls at them, and spent the night hiding under my printer table. She still came out for pets and cuddled, though, and she was very happy to have wet cat food!
The kittens are curious, but we let the big ones in and out, so she’s not overwhelmed by them. The three tiny ones are still too small to let out.
After I finished up in the garden, had a shower and came into my room, I was able to persuade her to come out for pets, and even go up onto my bed for cuddles. The kittens still in the room were all asleep, so there was no snarling involved.
As I write this, she is still on my bed, curled up and having a nap!
I feel much better having her inside. She probably would have been fine outside, but that whole thing with her not being able to get food because she wouldn’t come closer to the house or other cats was a concern. Plus, she’s one of the originals that my late father cared for. Grandma deserves a warm and comfortable retirement!
I really hope this works out for her.
Once we get some of those kittens to the clinic for spays then adoption next month, I’m hoping we can convince Nosencrantz to come back in, too. I miss her nightly cuddles!
I forgot to mention this less than happy surprise I found while doing my rounds yesterday morning.
One of our highbush cranberry trees has been eaten. Again! This is the one that has an old saw horse over it to protect it, yet it still got eaten! The other, unprotected one was ignored. Why are the deer so determined to eat this one cranberry bush??? It was left alone all summer, too. With the damage being done so late in the growing season, I doubt it will survive. We shall see in the spring, I guess.
I had another surprise when I headed out to feed the outside cats for the evening.
Butterscotch emerged from wherever she’s been hiding out and came running for pets and cuddles. She still wouldn’t go near the other cats, so I ended up leaving some food on the ground on a cat path near the storage house. She did eat some, but then other cats came to investigate, and she took off.
One of those cats was Sad Face (aka: Shop Towel).
Sad Face has been around a lot more often lately, and he has NOT been going after the other cats. In fact, I’ve seen him eating along with them. Nosencrantz doesn’t like him, though, and takes off when she sees him, and so does Butterscotch. He and the other cats seem to be starting to get along; still not sure about Judgement, but Judgement tends to stay in the sun room more often then not, curled up in a cat bed and covered in kittens.
Eventually, Butterscotch just left entirely, disappearing into the maple grove, which meant there was still kibble in the grass that Sad Face was very interested in. As he was eating, with his back to me, I slowly started to approach him.
I’m sure he’s at least partially deaf. Likely due to ear mites.
Then came the surprise.
When I reached out and put my hand on his back, he flinched a bit – then kept on eating!
So I started to pet him, and he still kept eating.
After a bit, with other cats coming over to see what was going on, he did move away and turned to face me – but didn’t run away. Instead, he started eating again, with me and 8 other curious cats around him. I moved forward and he backed off slightly, until I reached my hand out.
He came over to sniff it.
Then he came closer for pets.
And more pets!
He actually started purring, and rubbing around my legs!
We have never been able to approach him before, and have actually had to chase him away because of how aggressive he was to the other cats. I’m sure he’s the one that killed that poor long haired ginger I found in one of the old dog houses by the outhouse. I’ve broken up a number of fights between him and The Distinguished Guest, and TDG was usually on the loosing side. We don’t see him anymore, just as we don’t see any of the other visiting toms anymore. I’m pretty sure he’s why Gooby is gone, too.
And yet, when given the chance, he was incredibly friendly with me and loving the pets!
Also, that cat is a solid brick of muscle.
That was yesterday. What about this morning?
Well, as I brought the food out, Nosencrantz was in among the other cats, but – as usual – waited for kibble to be left in the bowls under the shrine. That was always her favourite spot to eat, before we brought her inside, and she doesn’t like eating closer to the house. By the time I was done putting food out, I saw Butterscotch come running from somewhere beyond the storage house, so I made sure to leave a bit of kibble on the path again, just for her. She was more interested in getting pets, though, which was fine.
I counted 36 cats, cattens and kittens. No Sad Face, at the time.
I did the rest of my rounds and when I got back to the house, there was Sad Face. He was milling around with the other cats, going into the old kitchen garden as I came closer. When he had his back to me, I was able to approach him again and start petting him. That was going well, until he spotted Butterscotch near the storage house. I tried pushing him around to face another direction, but he was utterly focused on Butterscotch.
Yeah. He went for her.
Butterscotch already saw him and went straight up a tree. I had to chase Sad Face out of the yard. Unfortunately, by the time I finished up and was ready to come inside, she was still up the tree.
I really want to bring her back inside, but even when I’ve been able to pick her up and carry her, she doesn’t want to go near the house. Not even for food.
Maybe as things change with the kittens, we can bring her back in. I’ve been chatting with the Cat Lady, about the discounted spay day next month. The vet really wants to do females, not males, if at all possible. Which makes sense for population reduction. Toni is booked for sure, which we will be paying for ourselves, and she will be coming home with us. The rescue would have paid for 2 yard cat males to be done, and they’d have come home with us, too. However, she has found a home for Ghosty, so she’s asked us to bring Ghosty to get fixed, along with the two males, and Ghosty would go home with her. Which makes a booking for four cats instead of three! And these bookings have to be used, or the clinic will be less likely to accept appointments from her on these discount days in the future.
As we talked about the clinic wanting to do females, I mentioned that Tin Whistle and Mitsy could both be done. If they were done, she would be taking them to adopt out, as she has people wanting female cats. They’d take the adult yard cats, but we can’t get hold of them.
So we will have to figure that out as the time gets closer. We only have 3 carriers, with two of them soft sided carriers that a yard cat could probably tear out of pretty easily. With the kittens, we could easily put two, or even three, into one carrier without any issue, but there would be no sharing of carriers with the adult cats.
I’ve also shared photos of some of the yard kittens with her. She may have found a home for the little black puff ball – one of Soot Sprite’s, Pom Pom’s and Tiny’s siblings that we’ve been able to socialize quite thoroughly, just recently. There’s also a friendly black and white catten that looks so much like Decimus. Mostly by his permanently stunned expression. He would be a good one to adopt out, but I had to remember to let the Cat Lady know that he is probably not a well cat. His lungs rattle when he breathes. I made sure to tell her that this is probably a deal breaker, and not to feel she has to take him in. Some of the people who have adopted cats from her work in vet clinics, though, so I thought perhaps one of them would be willing to take him in, as they would be in a better position than most, to find what’s going on with him and give him the right care. She will pass his picture around and let people know.
As for Decimus and the others, I’m told that Decimus is getting quite fat from all the mice she’s catching, and is the best cat the woman has ever owned! Phantom, however, has no interest in the outdoors anymore, and is now an indoor cat. Turmeric (they all have new names now), on the other hand, is making strange. She’s staying outside, even at night (the woman keeps them indoors at night, but hasn’t been able to with Turmeric). She’s very sad about not being able to make friends with Turmeric, but at least Turmeric is staying there.
Meanwhile, it turns out she has a neighbour on a farm nearby who has no cats, and is interested in getting some. I am amazed by this, to be honest. I’m used to cats just showing up on the farm, but that isn’t happening where they are. The Cat Lady joked with her that she should move to our area; she’s have lots of cats show up!
If this neighbour wants outdoor cats, it would be nice if they would be willing to take some males. We have four of five adult males that we could bring over right now, and probably another 3 or 4 friendly kittens and cattens, if they wanted youngsters from this year. I’ve even been able to start petting Driver regularly while he eats on the cat house roof, and he’s only been back about a week.
I’m trying to think of ways to lure the female cats over and try to socialize them, but every idea I can come up with would lure in the friendly males even faster and they mill around so much, the females wouldn’t be able to come any closer. The only exception is Caramel, and she’s often even pushier than the males, while also trying to bit the hand that pets her! Trapping is always a possibility, too, but you just never know what cat would end up being trapped, with so many around. The friendly males would be more comfortable investigating the bait in a trap than the females! Of course, once I have a cat in a trap, I’d have to take it somewhere right away. With how we have the sun room set up as shelter this time of year, we can’t use it as an isolation room anymore, and we certainly couldn’t bring a mostly feral yard cat indoors until we could get it out. At least with the Egg Lady, if we catch a cat, we can bring it straight to her place. She has a chicken coop set aside for them to get used to their new home, and to stay in until she gets them to a vet to get fixed.
Normally, the Cat Lady doesn’t pass on personal information, like where people live, other than a general sense, but with the way things are… I wonder if we could work something out? From what I know, the lady that took in our three isn’t all that much further away than the Egg Lady, and has an isolation ward set up, too. If I could get the cats directly to her, where they could stay in isolation under they get fixed, that would also give her time to socialize them in a more controlled setting – something we just can’t manage with our set up.
Hhmm… I’ll run that idea by the Cat Lady.
If things work out – if we could just catch these cats! – we could potentially adopt out 6 or more outdoor females to homes where they would get spays and vet care right from the get-go. Plus, there is interest in some of the kittens, indoors and out. That would make a HUGE difference in our own population issues, and be much better for the cats, too.
We shall see.
Plus, if we can get friendly with Sad Face, we should be able to get him fixed, too! Hopefully, that would make him less aggressive with the other cats, and we could finally make him one of our own. I really hate having to chase him away.
The Re-Farmer 