I popped outside briefly through the sunroom, and heard quite a bit of loud squeaking. It was most definitely coming from under the cat house. On my return, there was no more squeaking, so I decided to stick my phone’s camera at one of the spots the cats have worn down as they go in and out from under there.
All I saw was this.
Then the phone got attacked by a claw, and much growling ensued.
I’d say Caramel just had her babies under there. It’s probably quite cool, compared to the inside of the cat house right now. I had been wondering if she were going to have her litter soon. I think she was the last pregnant looking mama at this point.
I’m extra glad we put bricks under the skids to try and level it off on the lightly sloped ground. This corner would have more room under there because of them.
I hope mom and babies do all right. Unfortunately, she’s right where the skunks also scoot under when we try to startle them away. I don’t expect her to keep them there for long.
Decimus has been more comfortable leaving the babies to sleep and spend her time away from them, but the kittens are now also getting more active! While Decimus and the other cats were meowing for their evening wet cat food feeding – she has already caught on to the routine! – the bitties started squirming around and making their way out of the cat cave!
We’re still working on a spring cleaning in the house, with the tax assessor coming in next week as our motivation (I’m sure the assessor has seen far worse!). One of the things I seriously need to get done is vacuum my carpet. It gets so bad, so quickly, but with Decimus and the babies in the room, I’m not about to start the vacuum and scare the bejeebers out of them. We’ll be putting them in the cat carrier and keeping them in the living room, which is still the plant room and barricaded from cats, unless under supervision, so it will be a safe place for them. Today, however, we’ve been washing all the blankets, towels and mats set out for the cats to use, including from inside the carrier. So my floor is a job that will wait until tomorrow!
I did have an unexpected and sad surprise, though. While gathering the garbage and recycling together for a dump run, I passed through the sun room and found a white and grey kitten on the floor. A dead kitten. It was bigger than Decimus’ babies, but I don’t think it was old enough for its eyes to be open yet. Oddly, its lower jaw was missing. It’s as if a cat brought it into the sun room for us to do something about it. Of course, I looked around for other kittens, but there was nothing. No clue as to who the mother was, either.
So I quickly buried it with Keith under the white lilacs. We still have the boards and the concrete pedestal over the grave, but I just moved the pedestal aside, and moved one of the boards – though I had to pull up a lot of greenery just to access it – then put it all back after burying the little one.
That done, I got the rest of the garbage and recycling together, loaded it up on my mother’s car, and headed to the dump. My husband had asked me to pick something up for him at the grocery store, so when I got home, I grabbed the newly emptied 18.9L water jug to refill and headed out again. Before I did, he quietly told me he’d changed his mind. Instead of picking something up for him, he asked me to pick something up for our younger daughter as a surprise treat. She has been doing the bulk of the cleaning while I’ve been mostly doing the running around. Her sister is still working at night (when her computer and drawing tablet are less likely to overheat and stop working), so her contributions are limited to things that won’t wake the rest of us up. My younger daughter is a great lover of cheesecake, so that was one thing I looked for. I ended up getting her a caramel chocolate cheesecake. Then, as an extra surprise, I picked up a couple of trays of sushi. Yeah, it was just grocery store sushi, but it’s still a treat!
There was a time when none of us would touch sushi (my husband still won’t). Years ago, when we were still homeschooling, I’d take the girls to a weekly park day with other homeschoolers. For years, we didn’t have a vehicle and took public transit. Between the bus and LRT connections, it took about a 1 1/2 hours to get there, and we often got to the park about 45 minutes before anyone else did. It was either that, or be almost an hour later than everyone else. Then it took another hour to get home. Same busses, same connections. It just happened to take less time, later in the day.
Yeah, transit sucked. When we did finally get a vehicle, the same trip took only 10 minutes.
In between connections, we would sometimes stop to pick up food. One day we were looking at the sushi displays, and they looked so beautiful and delicious, we decided to buy some to have for lunch before the other homeschoolers showed up. California rolls, if I remember correctly. We were quite eager and had high expectations.
We each had one piece, and that was it. I couldn’t even finish mine.
The killer was the cold rice. We just couldn’t handle eating cold rice.
So there we were, with a mostly full tray of sushi, when another transit dependant mom and her son showed up. When we found out they liked sushi, we offered it to them. They very enthusiastically accepted.
It was years before we were willing to try eating sushi again. I’m not sure what changed, but this time we liked it. Even grocery store sushi! Cold rice no longer bothered us. Very odd.
Now that we live out here, the only sushi places are in the city, and we have yet to have the opportunity to try one. So grocery store sushi remains our only option! I know grocery store sushi is treated as a bit of a joke, but we like it just fine.
Today, the grocery store happened to be freshly stocked with several larger combo trays, and I picked out two of different ones. Before leaving for home, I messaged my daughter to let her know I was on my way and would be pulling up to the house to unload. Then I told her that after unloading, we could stop for her treat! She was quite surprised and very happy with both the cheesecake and the sushi, and I made sure to tell her how much her dad and I appreciated her hard work. I know how hot, sweaty and miserable it can get, and I wanted to make sure to thank her!
I’m so glad our daughter chose to move out here with us. Taking care of this place turned out to be a much bigger job than any of us expected. We did not have any illusions that the place would be “perfect”, as my mother kept saying it was, but were still unprepared for just how neglected it had become. My brothers did their best, but there was no way they could even know about some issues, without actually living here, and my mother was in complete denial. Since my husband cannot physically do a lot, it would have been just me, and it would have been beyond what I could keep up with. My daughters gave up quite a bit to come out here with us, and I am grateful.
Snarly Marlee, taking a break from snarling at Decimus!
She’s doing quite well, actually. She’s been sleeping with me more often, and has even been making like she wants to leave the room, though when I open the door for her, she tends to back off.
As for Decimus, the other cats are getting used to her. I’ve seen her and Nosencrantz, both on top of the cat cage, next to each other. They were eyeing each other, but not being aggressive in any way. Even Butterscotch seems to have accepted her presence.
When other cats try to come into the room, though, they are not sure what to make of the new family! Leyendecker has come over to the cat cave, sniffing at Decimus, only to leap in astonishment and run away when the kittens started mewing. Other cats dash in ahead of me, see Decimus, freeze, then run out of the room again.
Very strange!
Meanwhile, today we continue to catch up on house stuff. One of my daughter’s goals is to mop the kitchen floor (a difficult thing, since the lino is worn down to the subfloor in places) before we put the interlocking foam mats down in front of the sink and the stove.
Last night, I came into the dining room to find this.
*sigh*
It’s not even out of the packaging yet, and already it’s being torn up by the cats! I’m hoping it will at least last until the next Costco trip. I believe they still have the heavy duty shop mats in stock. The cats shouldn’t be able to claw those up. At least, not right away. If Costco doesn’t have them in stock anymore, I did see them at a local hardware store, though that was months ago, and I don’t know if they regularly stock them.
There is just something about these mats that the cats can’t resist!
I couldn’t even see the other two, wrapped up in Decimus. She now leaves the cave more often and wanders around the room, much to Snarly Marlee’s dismay! Poor Marlee. She’ll be sitting on her stool next to her own cat cave, snarling away; Decimus just ignores her and keeps coming up to her, curiously.
Usually, this happens around 2 or 3am.
I finally took the time to look up Decimus. Turns out it’s a very old name, going back to ancient Rome, and means “tenth” or “tenth born”, so the tenth son born into a family would be named Decimus. It’s also a character in Warhammer, and the name of a famous Victorian architect, Decimus Burton. I should remember to ask my daughters where they got the name from. I don’t think they’ve ever played Warhammer, but they probably know about Decimus Burton.
Along with the adorable kitties inside, we’ve been seeing the outside kitties around the house! They hide under the cat house when we come out, but after my daughters watered the garden yesterday, my younger daughter was actually able to touch one before it hissed and ran off. As I was getting the kibble ready this morning, I could see three of them playing in the water bowl shelter. After I put kibble out and put away the container, I turned around to see one of the mostly white kitten eating at the tray under the water bowl shelter, with Brussel. I saw another little head pop out from under the cat house, only to back off when it saw me, so I delayed refreshing the water bowls under after I finished my morning rounds.
I’m really glad they are starting to come close to the house. They are much safer here, and the chances of socializing them increases as well.
We’re starting to run low on kibble, so I’ve decided that I’ll head to Walmart today to pick up more, as well as Canadian Tire to get more litter pellets. Work outside is going to be delayed a bit, though. I found out last night from my brother that an assessor will be coming out next week. She’ll be going through and measuring every room in the house (with a laser measurer, so it’ll be fast). We’ll, we’re not exactly good at that “housekeeping” thing, so this is an excuse to finally do some major cleaning over the next 4 days. Which is not easy to do with so many cats! The girls are going to focus on the upstairs and the basement, while I start on the main floor. Hmm. This would be a good time to rearrange my husband’s bedroom. That room is so small, it would involve moving half the furniture out completely. Mostly, I want to make it so that, when we finally get the plumber in to work on our bath tub faucet and taps, he can access it from the other side, if necessary. We should have had him in long ago, but getting ear mite medication for 16 cats took up the budget, and then some, even with my daughter helping pay for the vet bill.
Well, we’ll figure it out.
Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go stock up on some more cat food. Mamas and babies need to be fed!
We had another lovely, cool night last night. As expected, I had a hard time getting going in the morning, so the girls were kind enough to take care of feeding the outside cats. By the time I was pain killered up enough and ready to head out, I didn’t bother switching out the memory cards on the trail cam.
I did, however, get back to working on mowing last year’s grass. It took all day, but I finally got it done! What a huge job it was, but all that tall grass and dried thatch from last year is cut, and almost all the clippings hauled away. When there was just a small triangle of tall grass left, I gave in. I set the mower as high as it could go and went over the tall grass a couple of times. Then I took the bag off and mowed the whole remaining section. I really should have put the bag back on and gone over it again to pick up the thickest areas of grass clippings, but I just didn’t have the energy left for it.
It’s all done, and I now have huge amounts of grass clippings available for the garden. Because of how thick last year’s dead grass was, it’s mostly dry clippings, too. For all that the area looked so green, there actually was very little live grass in there. Now that it’s cut, and most of the dense clippings removed, it will have a chance to recover. All we need now is a good rain!
We have a 45% chance of rain tomorrow afternoon.
I figure, we might get a few drops.
The garden is going to get its watering, just in case. The girls will be taking care of that, though! I’m done for the day.
After taking a break, I went back to the mowing, planning to stop when I ran out of the third refill on gas.
I didn’t quite make it. Just too tired! Working through that super tall grass involved a lot of back and forth-ing, and at times, the bag would be full within just 3 or 4 feet. It felt like I spent more time emptying the bag than mowing. I definitely spent more time trudging to the main garden area to dump the clippings than mowing. I did get all the necessary mulching done, though, and have been working on a second pile of clippings.
Once everything was put way, it was time to feed the outside cats, so I took care of that, too. Which is when I spotted these guys.
At first, it was just the one mostly white kitten at the food bowl, then the other three emerged from under the spirea. You can just barely see the black and white one on the other side of not-Junk Pile’s front leg.
That other white and grey one has really distinctive markings on one side! The other side is pretty much all white.
I’ve seen these kittens in a group of 6, but I think this litter is just the 4 of them. I think the other two are from another litter, but I have no idea who the mama might be.
From the size of the kitten I saw with Brussel, I think we’ll be seeing those ones around the kibble bowls too, pretty soon!
I was pretty tired when I finally came in, but it was after I’d sat for a while and had supper that I realized I will probably paying for today’s progress. My entire body stiffened up to the point that I could barely walk when I finally got up again. Yes, I did take pain killers, but it wasn’t pain that was giving me trouble. My joints just didn’t want to move! Of course, the only way to take care of that is to force them to move until the limber up again, but until that happens, I’m hobbling and lurching around like a broken automaton.
I keep telling myself to go to bed early, so I can get an early start on the day, only to find myself still up at 2 or 3 in the morning. Or awakened around that time by cats. Decimus is wandering around more often when her kittens are asleep, and that sets Marlee of into continue snarling and growling. Decimus just ignores her.
Now that the mats are trimmed off of her, and most of her fur is gone, we’re getting to see what an incredibly tiny cat Decimus is! Small in stature, but also very thin. I’m hoping that having a kibble bowl right next to her and her kittens, plus regular wet cat food, will get her filling out soon. I don’t think she’s going to grow any larger in size, though. She would be about a year and a bit old right now, and should be at her adult size.
I see the other cats have been fussy again, and didn’t eat much of their share of the wet cat food. More for Decimus, later! 😄
Okay. Time to pain killer up and try to get some sleep!
We caught a lovely pair on one of the trail cams this morning!
We’ve got them on the driveway cam, too, running down the road, but the fawn is so small and hard to see against the gravel, it was barely visible.
The girls and I checked on the cats and garden beds this evening. While we were out in the main garden, they called my attention to the sun.
The camera had a hard time showing just how brightly orange the sun is right now. We could look right at it, too, with no discomfort at all. The weird thing it, it doesn’t really seem that smoky out. Certainly not like when we had wildfires all around us during the major drought we had, two years ago. Thankfully, this year we’ve had some decent moisture, though we certainly can still use more rain.
While we were out, we picked a whole bunch of spinach. I’m going to have to remember this variety, because even with the heat we’ve been having, they’re only just now starting to show signs of bolting. So we will probably pull the entire bed of spinach soon. I’ll probably transplant more onions into it after that, since I still have quite a few that need to go into the ground.
I also ended up picking a whole bunch of rhubarb. We don’t use it a lot, but my younger daughter has a recipe for rhubarb cake she got from my sister (who doesn’t even remember giving it to her!) that she wants to make. The girls had gone in by then, and they checked the recipe for how much rhubarb it uses – four cups! – so I went and got another bunch of stalks, just to be sure we had enough.
With how messed up my sleep has been lately, I’m thinking of going to be really early tonight. Hopefully, I’ll get some actual sleep and get an early start tomorrow, and try to make up for the lack of productivity today!
If you look carefully, you’ll see a total of four kittens. Two stay hidden under the spirea.
It looks like the kittens in the cat house are no longer in the cat house. I did see the mama at feeding time. I hope she didn’t move them too far.
My daughter and I headed into town today to run several errands. As we were finishing up, she wondered if the haze we were starting to see what fog or smoke.
It was smoke.
We are now getting air quality advisories for smoke from fires to the east and north of us. Most are on the other side of the lake, but quite a few are way up north, too. As I write this, only two are listed as out of control, and those are nowhere near any towns or villages. Most are listed as under control or being held, with a few as being monitored. Our current fire year isn’t anywhere near as bad at other provinces, but most of those are turning out to be arson. Ours are almost all listed as natural caused.
Right now, I feel like I’ve been totally lazy. Once we got home and put everything away, I tried to catch up on a few things on the computer before changing and heading outside. I was falling asleep in my chair, though, so I lay down to close my eyes for a few minutes.
Almost three hours later, I suddenly woke up, thinking it was morning. !! My brain still feels foggy.
I might still get some work done outside, but we’re at the hottest part of the day now, so not quite yet.
Well, we’re not going to hit our predicted high of 30C/86F, but got close enough to not matter!
I took this screen shot after my daughter and I got back from the city. Last night, my older daughter asked when I had time to go in, and since today was going to be basically heat stroke weather, I figured a trip to the city in an air conditioned car would not be a bad thing! Since my younger daughter had their shopping list, in preparation for joint Father’s Day and birthday celebrating, I went ahead and got a few things, too.
While today’s heat is not conducive to debranching and dragging out dead trees, I did manage to get some tiny steps done yesterday evening.
I marked out where the first pair of mid-height raised beds, with a permanent trellis tunnel, will be. I’m rather impressed with how close it matched the Ruth Stout potato and melon bed. That was determined by the size of the black tarp we lay down to start killing of the grass, first. The posts at the far end are just a few inches longer than the straw bed.
The posts across the ends are all 4 ft apart. There will be a path down the middle, and the logs for the walls of the beds will be placed inside the markers, so that they will be 4 ft wide on the outside. Yes, we will loose some growing space; especially once the vertical posts for the trellis tunnel are put in, but the width is for reach and accessibility, not growing space.
The beds will be 18 ft long – twice the length of the high raised bed beside it. I used the high raised bed to first mark out the south end and the middle of the first bed, then I could use those markers to help make a straight line to 18 ft at the north end.
My tape measure only goes to 16 ft. 😄 Not a problem, but it was funny! Once I had the corners of the first bed marked out, I used them to mark out the second bed.
I must say, trying to place those old conduit pipes I was using to mark the corners, really illustrated how much we need to make raised bed. I was able to use a piece of board to hammer most of them in, just enough that they could hold themselves up, but with some of them, they simply would not go into the ground. I ended up using a hoe to loose the top couple of inches, only for it to still not go into the ground. So I’d use the hoe again, until I could finally get the post to stay up. It wasn’t just that I was hitting rocks, but the ground in places were just as hard as the rocks! The only exception was when I pushed a post to mark in the middle, lined up with the north end of the high raised bed. That one post was in the middle of the amended garden space, and I was able to push it easily into the soil. The other posts were just along the edges of the amended soil.
The next step will be to remove the straw mulch from where the beds will be, and make a shallow trench were the long logs will rest on the ground, so they don’t roll away. For these beds, we’ll use salvaged shorter logs – we still have lots of 4 ft lengths from getting the chipping done available to use – and screw them into the ends of the long logs to hold them in place.
Once the vertical supports for the trellis are installed and the walls and ends secured, we’ll do some layering of organic material – the straw we took out, wood chips and whatever else we have available – before topping the space with garden soil.
Then I can finally transplant those melons we have waiting, and maybe even have space to do some direct sowing. At this point, anything we direct sow has to have a growing season of under 90 days, including the time needed to germinate. Under 80 days would be better.
If we can manage to get two beds with trellises done this spring, I will be very happy. We’ll be dropping quite a few things that I hoped to plant this year, simply because it’s taking so long for us to get these beds ready. Still, we did manage to get quite a few things in, among the various garden beds we have spread out around the inner yard.
Over time, we still plan to have garden beds built in the outer yard. With those, we can focus on having things that get harvested all at once in the fall in the outer yard, while things that get harvested throughout the summer will be planted closer to the house.
We’ll see how the timeline works out! I do see that we’re going to need at least another truck load of garden soil before then. That probably won’t be purchased until next year, though, at the earliest.
In the time it took me to write this, we are now past 4pm, and we’re still at 29C/84F, so we’re not going to be heading out to work on the garden beds tonight. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out early in the morning, before things start getting too hot.
Meanwhile, my younger daughter and I got a big job, done in tiny snips, done this afternoon.
We decided to work on Decimus’ matted fur.
What we ended up doing was laying a towel on my bed, then putting all her kittens on it, then getting her out of the cat cage – a space she clearly considered her safety zone! – and putting her with her kittens. While one of us comforted her by stroking her head and neck, and holding her in place, the other worked on snip snip snipping away. We got a burr buried in fur off of one of her legs, and another off her back, before focusing on the big mat covering her back.
It was even bigger than we thought.
It was easily as big as my daughter’s hand.
While Decimus did try to get away or squirm around a few times, I think she could feel improvement, and became much more patient. As we took turns snipping away, depending on who could get the best angle at the time, I could see that her skin was pulled up and even twisted in places. You could see folds of skin dropping down, bit by bit, as we snipped the fur away. There was a lot of cat dandruff stuck in there, too, and we even found a smothered bug! No signs of any other insects or lice, thankfully. It easily took at least 10 minutes to get that one mat off.
Once we finally got the piece free, we let her go. She had been so patient! Her back is pretty much completely shorn now. There is another large mat on her back end, but we will give her a break before working on that one. Then there are all the little ones, all over.
As soon as we let her go, she ran straight back into the cat cage and lay down on the baby nest! Her little grublings, meanwhile, had been squirming all around while she was getting trimmed, trying to find some nip. They were very happy to be back in the cage with Mom!
I think Mom is a lot happier now, too.
As for me… I think I need to go wash my bedding and certain towel, now!
I stepped out for a moment, and came back to find Decimus had left baby jail, and was exploring my office/bedroom.
Which gave me a chance to get this photo.
Just look at that adorable little tongue blep!
Decimus was willing to sniff at my fingers when I held out my hand, but was very nervous and skittish.
Then she found the other food bowls that still had wet cat food in them, and cleaned them all up!
I left the room again for a while, and when I came back, she was curled up with her kittens again.
While she may not have been willing to let me touch her while she was out and about, if we reach in to give her ear and neck scritches while she’s with her kittens, then pull our hands away, she will actually reach out and grab our hands to pull them back for more pets!
She seems to be coming around to this whole “humans might be okay after all” thing.
The Re-Farmer 