This is what I found, when I was about to go into the sun room with the kibble.
One very bedraggled baby taking advantage of the empty heated water bowl!
Also, that has got to be the whitest nose I’ve ever seen on a cat. I think it may just be how the camera picked up the lighting. Particularly since the eyes look so light, too.
I am somewhat concerned about the long haired cats outside. None of them are socialized, really. There’s one that sometimes lets me pet him. We can’t get near the others. Their fur could get to incredibly matted. Even if we were able to get them to the point that we could pet them, I just can’t see them ever letting us brush mats out of their fur!
Wow, did the temperatures sure drop overnight! Especially with the wind chill.
It does make for pretty sun dogs, though.
I honestly can’t remember if I’ve ever seen rainbow sun dogs before, other than in photographs! The colours were much brighter in real life.
As I write this, we’re at -19C/-2F, with a wind chill of -31C/-24F. It’s actually gotten colder from when I was doing my rounds this morning! It was “only” -16C/3F with a wind chill of -25C/13F Our high for this afternoon is supposed to be -16C/3F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F If I could avoid heading to the city today, I would, but it’s supposed to get colder over the next few days, so this is my window.
The kitties are taking full advantage of the sun room, including this little shrimp.
The photo sucks because I was taking it through a screen window. This tortie has been named Phantom by the girls, because it has a black “mask” over one eye. She was so solidly asleep that, not only was I able to go into the room and set out kibble in various containers in the sun room, I was able to actually PET HER!!!! Just for a few moments before she woke up, saw I was touching her and ran off. Even then, she only ran as far as the door, then stopped to look at me, until I went over to untie it so I could do the outside kibble trays.
It would make life so much easier if we could socialize more of the females. I don’t like the idea of having to trap them, as that would make them even more distrustful of us. Still, it’s better than having so many litters of kittens again!!!
The fog has mostly dissipated – I was still seeing touches of it while going my morning rounds.
My goodness, but it does make things beautiful, this time of year!
I couldn’t resist getting a picture from the same spot as yesterday.
The temperatures are nice and mild right now. As I write this, we’re at -8C/18F, with almost no breeze at all. We’re supposed to reach a high of -6C/21F today. A good day to finish clearing in front of the garage so I can open the doors to get my mother’s car out, and clear a few more paths.
One way we can tell how much more pleasant the weather is, is by the cats.
The usuals are back to preferring to eat on the cat house roof again. In this bunch, there’s only one that’s friendly. I can sometimes pet the black and white, but not often. Still more than I can come close to Broccoli. I don’t know how she’s been with her kittens gone. She’s been avoiding me, so perhaps she’s made an association between me and missing babies. I don’t know. I so want to socialize her more! We’ll have to wait longer before we can try to trap more females. The hard part is waiting for things to warm up, so there’s no chance of a critter freezing in the trap, but not so warm that they start going into heat and get pregnant, first.
Speaking of which, I saw Shop Towel skulking around when I put the food out. While I was switching the memory card on the trail cam (and melting the frost off the lens and solar panel), I heard a cat fight, and am guessing it involved Shop Towel.
Before going in, I tried to get some more pictures of the frost and was able to zoom in to get this little cutie.
We have not been able to keep up with the feeding this winter, because of the racoons destroying the hanging feeder, but the chickadees and blue jays have been raiding the kibble trays, instead!
While getting this shot, something strange in a tree above the storage house roof caught my eye.
Well, I guess we can see who Shop Towel went after! One of his older sons, no less. A couple of the grey and whites are much larger – more like their dad in size.
In other things, I spoke to my mother last night. She’s in need of a grocery shopping trip, which is why I want to clear the doors to her car. She was fully expecting to go to the grocery store today; apparently my sister is supposed to be visiting her, though my mother didn’t seem sure, when I spoke to her. I pointed out to her that it’s New Year’s Day. The stores will be closed. She sounded so surprised when I told her that. 😕 So, if all goes well, I’ll be heading out tomorrow to help her with shopping – in her own car!
For now, I’m monitoring cats. With the littles gone, I actually got a full night’s sleep! The ladies seem relieved to have the room to themselves again – even if Marlee still hisses at Butterscotch and Nosencrantz sometimes. Leyendecker and Cheddar seem to be looking for the littles when they come in. Meanwhile, I now have grandma, who moved out here with us, in with me. My daughters just let me know she’s been behaving oddly, like there is something stuck in her mouth. We thought it might have been something stuck in her throat, but I’ve seen her eating. She seems fine, until she suddenly makes retching faces and started rubbing the sides of her face with her paw. My one attempt to gently move her head for a look had her meow in alarm and run off, so I do think something is hurting her. Hopefully, it’s something that will work itself out. So far, she’s eating and drinking normally. Right now, she’s on my bed, not far from Marlee, and settling in for a nap.
I’ll have to get one of the girls to take over monitoring her when it’s time to get outside.
First of all, I wanted to update on the cat lady’s husband. They’re awaiting the results of neurological tests but, so far, he seems to be all right. It turns out that, while he stopped for a traffic light, a tow truck, towing a vehicle and driving 80kph, didn’t notice that vehicles had stopped. It hit her husband’s truck, pushing him into the vehicle in front of him. If he had been driving a smaller car instead of a large truck, he would have been killed!
Road conditions have been slippery on the highways, and it got brutally cold last night. At about 7am this morning, I checked the weather and we were at -32C/-26F, with a wind chill of -36C/-33F
My husband got this picture through the bathroom window, this morning. We left the doors to the sun room propped open just enough for the cats to get through. The spare ceramic heat bulb is set up, and sometimes we’ll see cats under it, or on top of it, but mostly they just pile together on the swing bench. When I headed out this morning, the thermometer in the sun room was at -20C/-4F. Better than outside, but still nasty!
The big tuxedo and its black and white sibling were covered in frost! I’m not sure why those two were the only ones that were so frosty.
Meanwhile, I’ve managed to bring in three kitties that are now in baby jail.
Cheddar was most curious about the strange ladies!
The other cats were not at all happy to see them. Nosencrantz sat there next to the cage, staring at them and growling.
They aren’t sure about being in the cage, but when I was petting Plushy and Princess through a wall with larger squares, they were both purring enthusiastically. Unfortunately, Plushy started trying to shove her face through and actually getting pretty far, so I’ve had to cover about 3/4s of the top with towels. As I write this, Plushy is settled on the red blanket above the litter, Princess is crunching away at the food bowl, and Muffin (the muted calico) has settled onto a towel next to the food bowl and just sitting like a loaf. They are doing okay, but I’m glad I put together the baby jail, because they’d be quite freaked out if they were loose in the room. Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are not pleased to see them. Only Cheddar seems good with them, but Cheddar is good with any cats!
Later on, we’ll keep going outside to pick up any white and greys that will let us, and figure out which one is female. If any. Strange that it seems to be almost exclusively males that are becoming more socialized, but almost none of the females.
Then, tomorrow morning, we’ll load them into carriers (either with another female from outside, or one of the remaining indoor females that still needs to be fixed), and head out to meet the cat lady with them. She’ll take them to the vet the day after, and then we’ll figure out when they’ll be coming back here to finish recovery.
We are supposed to be warming up from now on, though we’re still at -28C/-18F right now, with a wind chill of -39C/-38F. At these temperatures, it takes almost no wind at all for those wind chill numbers to drop substantially. The forecasts have changed again, of course. Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of -20C/-4F, then -12C/10F tomorrow. We no longer have predictions to go above freezing anymore, but in a couple of days, we’re supposed to reach -1C/30F and stay close to that for almost a week.
Tomorrow morning, we should get a visit from one of the guys on the roofing crew. I may be out delivering cats when he’s here, though, so I’m hoping my husband will be able to go out and talk to him, and find out what kind of schedule they’re looking at. Depending on how things go with dropping the cats off tomorrow, I might continue to the city and do the Costco shopping, since I’m booked to help my mother with errands the day after, and I really don’t want to do the Costco shopping on a weekend!
I’ve been driving around more in the last couple of weeks than I have for the past several months!
Oh, that reminds me. I need to call the garage and book my mother’s car for an oil change. I’d better do that now, before I forget again!
As much as I wish Nosencrantz would leave my room, and I could leave my door open without worrying about other cats going after her, there is something really nice about waking up in the morning and discovering her cuddled up against me.
Butterscotch is really enjoying her retirement years!
She is okay with Nosencrantz and Cheddar. She puts up with Leyendecker. She wants nothing to do with any of the other cats. If I open the door and they start coming in, she’ll hide in her favourite shelf and watch them, suspiciously. If they come too close, she will hiss and snarl at them.
She has zero interest in leaving my office/craft room/bedroom. Grandma is more than happy to just lounge around on my bed, snoozing. Sometimes, she’ll play with Nosencrantz. Maybe even cuddle with Cheddar. When a human comes around and sits on my bed, she’s all over them, demanding attention, but is quite content to have little to no attention from other cats.
After surviving all those years as a yard cat and having who knows how many litters of kittens, I think she’s earned it!
The Re-Farmer 