Enjoy it while it lasts!

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We are having another mild and foggy day, and the kitties were out in full force!

I think I counted 19 in total, out of the 20 that are now regulars. I even got to pet the Distinguished Guest again. Earlier, before I headed outside, I spotted her by the bird feeder. The suet cage had fallen to the ground, and she was trying to get at the suet!

Tuxedo Mask is looking great. In fact, all of the outside cats seem to be doing very well right now.

Butterscotch followed me around while I was doing my rounds, really wanting to be picked up!

They had better enjoy the mild temperatures while they can. Today is supposed to be the last really mild day. At 0C/32F, we’re already warmer than forecast, but starting tomorrow, we are supposed to drop and stay between -10C/13F and -20C/-4F for as far as the long range forecast shows.

As for the inside cats, we still have a few sick ones that are learning to enjoy being in the steamy bathroom while we take our showers. Except Beep Beep. She does not like being closed up in such a small space at all! The rest tend to stay, long after the door is open again.

Keith seems to be doing well. Still not much appetite, but he’s been pretty quiet. No more throwing up, and except for a few spells, his breathing is quiet. We can tell he’s still not feeling too good, though, because he hides away. Currently, he’s under the couch. It took my daughters a while to find him! Usually, he’s in the bed we set up in the corner of my closet. I’m hoping this means the anti-biotics are working, and that he does NOT have heart worms!

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

This year’s Christmas decorations

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Every year, I used to make new decorations for our Christmas tree, and to share with family. We had a multi-year hiatus for a number of reasons, including moving here, but I’ve started the tradition up again.

Each year, I try to do something different, hopefully learn a new skill, and use materials at hand. This year, I started with…

… cans.

Specifically, the cans from Costco’s canned chicken. I liked their size.

My daughter was kind enough to spray paint them gold for me, which took several days and several layers. Paint doesn’t like to cure when it’s cold, and she ended up having to do it in the old basement – forgetting that the furnace is there. :-D The paint didn’t want to adhere to the metal very well, but once it set, it was good.

Those were turned into…

… these.

Most of the materials used were from a dollar store. I tried to find really tiny Christmas trees but ended up getting some floral wire made to look like sprigs. I cut and twisted some together to make little trees, two of which are behind the little church. The ribbon, birds, gifts, bells, glitter paper, wooden stars and fake snow were also from the dollar store. I already had metallic card stock that I used to create platforms, as well as the other wooden pieces. A family member gifted me with a storage box fill of little wooden pieces, years ago, and I finally got to use some!

I did some wood burning on the starts and the church. My daughter painted the church and the books. I just love how the books look!

You can see in the flash picture that she used metallic gold on the books. She also used some metallic paint for details on the church. When I tried to find things small enough for the wreath behind the gifts, she dug around and find some teeny, tiny “gem” shapes she had saved from somewhere. I ended up using several different types of adhesives I happened to have, to hold everything in place. As long as they did the job and dried clear, I wasn’t too fussy!

These are too large to hang on our little Christmas tree, but they will be perfect to add to the lights and garlands we have running across the dining room cabinets at the ceiling.

With having to wait for paint to cure and some adhesives to dry, this took a lot longer than I originally expected. The most difficult part was cutting holes into the metal, then threading cord through for the hangers. I couldn’t be sure where to place the holes until after the insides were done. The church steeple was particularly awkward! Craft tweezers came in very handy! The bells needed their own hole, and I had to figure out how to hang those, and ended up using a piece of the tree-sprig floral wire, then using an extra wide ribbon to edge it, to make sure the part that’s on top was well secured.

I’m quite happy with the finished result!

The Re-Farmer

So many critters!

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We’re getting another warm day today. The forecast was for 1C/34F as the high, hte we were already at that temperature before it was fully light out! Now I’m seeing a high of 2C/36F for this afternoon, but I would not be surprised if we passed it.

The critters do seem to be enjoying the mild tempertures!

Chadicous, of course, was determined to be stepped on.

The heated water bowl was completely empty again. My suspicions that deer have found it were semi-confirmed last night, when I glanced out the kitchen window and saw one at the small gate in the chain link fence. No tracks that I could see around the water bowls, though.

While putting kibble into the trays in the kibble house, I had more cats coming for pets than for food. Including *drumroll please*

The Distinguished Guest!

Yes, I got to give our new addition a thorough petting and ear skritching. :-D I still can’t walk up to her, but at least she’s willing to walk up to me, now.

I even got to pet my brother’s dog, who came for a visit this morning, though the cats were not happy to see him! :-D

This pair of deer are morning regulars, enjoying the bird seed. It’s not the best photo I got of them with my phone, through the living room window, but when I saw the chickadee caught in mid flight, I just had to post it!

Later on, my husband looked out the kitchen window and spotted a big cat going by the barn, to the old hay yard.

And by “big cat”, he actually meant a *big* cat. Most likely a bobcat. I know they are around, but have never seen one, yet.

As for the inside critters…

… here is Keith, getting some major cuddles from Beep Beep.

Keith didn’t seem to have many issues last night. He was noisier while Beep Beep was lying across him than he was before. :-D My daughter has brought him into the bathroom with her so he could get a steam treatment while she showered. :-)

I don’t know if he’s any better. I can only say for sure that he’s not worse. Still not much appetite, but he seems to be moving around more. I think it will be a while before we can say for sure whether the anti-biotics are helping or not.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Keith is home!

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The boy is back!

My daughter and I brought Turmeric to the vet for a check up (driving into a wall of fog on the way!), as she was the most recovered of the cats that had gotten sick – all of which started just within the past few days. The vet checked her over, and she’s fine. It was just difficult to listen to her lungs, because of the purring! It did not take her long to settle in at the clinic at all, and she was more than happy to jump at the vet for attention. :-D

As for Keith, it was decided to try him on antibiotics for two weeks, first. He got an injection at the clinic, and we’ll be giving him half a pill, twice a day. If he gets and stays better after those two weeks, then he just got hit with what the other cats got, but harder. If he doesn’t, then it’s heartworms, and we need to take him back and figure out the next course of action. The vet does think it’s heartworms because, when she did an ultrasound of his heart, she thinks she actually saw a worm. It could have been a “heartstring”, but those should not be visible in an ultrasound.

Personally, I am leaning towards respiratory infection. Even this morning, he seemed a bit better than yesterday, and after we brought him home, he actually showed interest in food and water. Not much, but at least enough for a nibble and a lick. As for the other cats, after examining Turmeric and hearing the descriptions, it sounds like a feline herpes flare up. The clinic knows that both the inside cats and outside cats have it – we’ve brought various kitties for treatment over the past few years. What is possible is that the outside cats have a different strain than the inside cats. While treating Tuxedo Mask, as careful as we were about hand washing, etc., we could have exposed the inside cats to a new strain and, as the vet put it, the two were fighting it out, and some cats were being affected by it more than others. Which makes sense to me.

Also, if it does turn out to be heartworms, this will be the first time the vet has personally seen heartworms in a cat. She sees them in dogs fairly regularly, but it’s just so unusual for cats to get them.

So we will be monitoring Keith and medicating him for the next two weeks (unless he takes a turn for the worse and has to be taken back, of course). Thankfully, my older daughter filled all her slots for quick commissions and was able to pay for it. All those tests added up. :-(

As for the couple of other cats that seem to be having a harder time of it, it was recommended to have them in a steamy bathroom. So my younger daughter will be taking a long, hot bath tonight! With feline company :-D

I am hopeful that Keith will recover just fine.

The Re-Farmer

Another Keith update

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Well, this is curious.

We just talked to the vet. She thinks Keith has heartworms, but she can’t say that with complete certainty from the X-rays.

Heartworms are really unusual in cats. Especially indoor cats. And we have 16 indoor cats, and for all the coughing and sneezing, there is no way they all have heartworms.

So this afternoon, we are bringing in Turmeric. She had similar symptoms, but seems to have recovered. This will give us a comparison.

If we treated him for heartworms, it would be a long term thing, and the medication has risks, because there really is no heartworm treatment for cats. Not a risk we want to take for something he might not have. Alternatively, we can go with an antibiotic treatment, because we do know the cats have feline herpes, and that is much more likely to be an issue.

We will talk about it after Tumeric has been checked over.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.

The Re-Farmer

A quick Keith update

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I was hoping to have more news before now, but I figured I’d better post while we wait.

My daughter and I headed out to the vet first thing, shooting to get there when they opened at 8am. My daughter tried calling shortly before, and on her second try, someone answered. She quickly explained our situation and told them we were on the way.

They had three surgeries booked for this morning. Depending on the timing, there was a possibility the vet could quickly check Keith out before going into her first surgery. If not, we could drop him off and she would try to look at him in between surgeries.

She still hadn’t arrived when we got there, one minute after opening, so my daughter did a drop off. We will get a call when they are ready. They got permission to do various types of tests, if necessary.

As for Keith, he was isolated with me for the night, but one of our other cats joined us, too. It seems the coughing and sneezing has finally affected one of the cats we brought with us during the move. He’d been fine until last night. He’s 10 years old now, so we seriously considered bringing him in, too, but after observing him for a while, decided against it. They both had access to food, water and litter, but touched none of them by morning. Keith did have a coughing fit until he threw up, then did that face grabbing thing, once during the night, but thankfully there was no blood this time. He almost looked a bit better.

Most of the cats are actually fine. Just a few are coughing or sneezing. Beep Beep has her occasional coughing fits, but she’s always had that, even before she became in indoor cat, so that’s not out of the ordinary for her. Susan does the same thing, so they don’t seem to have picked up anything new.

Hopefully, we will have good news soon, but with three surgeries, it might be a while before the vet can even look at him. We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

That was probably good timing

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As much of an inconvenience it was to set up our new Starlink system in the winter has been, it looks like it was good timing. It looks like we’re all getting our OS updates, and with each of us having our own desktops, that would have done a number of our data limits!

My computer downloaded the update when I shut it down last night. When I started it up this morning, after doing my morning rounds, it spent the next while updating and restarting itself until it was done.

I did remember to get photos of the finished set up, this morning.

You can see where my brother ran the wire across, above where the old cables were. The one that’s hanging down was from the dish that was removed, which was the only one that had a connector. I’ll have to go back and tie it off so it doesn’t blow around in the wind, as soon as I can, until we can take it the rest of the way down.

Plus I’ll re-wrap the excess cable and make it tidier. My brother was a bit enthusiastic about making sure it was secure to the wall, so I’m not in any hurry to take out those screws! :-D Hopefully, I’ll be able to use the same screw holes when I put it back, because I sure don’t want to make more of them!

I did a speed test on my phone while I was at the burn barrel in the outer yard. Not too shabby!

This is my desktop, taken just this evening.

We have better signal in the outer yard than I have in my office! :-D

It’s still pretty darn good. Especially when I checked checked the outage log on the Starlink app. There were just three of them in the past 12 hours. Not sure what could obstruct it up on the roof like that. One, shortly before noon, shows the signal was obstructed for 10 seconds. The other two were just a minute apart. One was “no signal received” for 3 seconds, and the other was “network issue” for 13 seconds.

We never noticed any of these.

The app has a visibility check, showing any obstructions it is picking up from its current location – which is handy, since we have no way to get up there and do a check with a phone – and there are just the tiniest bits of red showing in a few places on the edges. Most of it is clear view, in all directions.

Since we got set up, my husband has tested its limits. There were some games he was curious about and downloaded them, tried them, then uninstalled most of them. There was one game he’d tried before, but it was unplayable. He’s now able to play it. Even my daughters, who play Star Wars in the evenings, have had a number of problems they were having simply disappear. For my older daughter, it’ll mean she’ll be better able to upload files, which will free her up to do more complicated, data heavier pieces, such as her animations and videos.

So far, we all are really, really happy with the improvements!

The Re-Farmer

The post I intended to write

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Oh, what a day!

At least I have some good news to share, after having to make fruitless run to the vet just a little while ago.

Tuxedo Mask is free!

His eyes got one last dose, and then we left the door to the sun room open so he could leave whenever he wanted. It took him a while to trust he really could go out!

Where he was immediately sniffed at by several cats. :-D

He slunk around for a while, and didn’t seem to sure about his freedom!

Today was a nice warm day – not as warm has had been forecast, but we still hit 0C/32F – and calm, so I was able to use the burn barrel. The barrel is not too far from the junk pile, so I got entertained by cats. They are really going to miss that mess, when we finally get it hauled away!

I found Potato Beetle quite funny, enjoying the sun from inside the old oven! :-D

He’s so sweet, when he’s not being mean to the other cats! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Not the post I intended to write

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Okay, so this has been a weird day, but I’ll get right into what just happened.

I had just settled at my computer and started a post when I heard a cat having issues behind me. I found Keith, who has been having an odd cough lately, horking like he was about to throw up. He didn’t actually throw up more than some spit, but then he flung himself to the floor and began using both front paws to pull at his face, as if trying to get something out of his mouth. When I tried to reach him, he ran off. When he headed up the stairs, I called on the girls to check on him.

Then I went to clean up the little bit of a mess on the floor.

Wipe, wipe… red?

Which is when one of my daughters came rushing in to tell me that Keith was throwing up blood.

I quickly went online to find the emergency number for the vet. Their website says they are open 24/7 for emergencies, but they also had extended clinic hours. They were still open! I tried calling, but no answer. Just a machine giving their new hours, and saying to call back later if calling during office hours.

My daughters, meanwhile, got Keith into the carrier. While we drove to town, my younger daughter kept trying to phone the vet.

No answer.

We finally get there, and they were closed! There was a quickly made sign on the door saying they were closed and, for emergencies, had the name and phone number for a veterinary hospital I’ve never heard of. I called while my daughter updated the family (I love technology!).

The emergency vet turned out to be in the city.

I asked if there was an emergency vet in our area, because there’s no way we were going to put Keith through such a long drive.

Turns out there are none. At least none in this town.

So much for 24/7 emergency vet care!

Keith seems to be stable, though still coughing, so we will take him to the vet when they open in the morning. Until then, he is isolated with me in my office/bedroom for the night.

It seems to weird to not have any emergency veterinary services in our area! I just finished doing a search, and found one in another larger town, but they are connected to the one we usually go to – in fact, I got directed to the same website.

As to the clinic we tried, they should have been open, but given the type of sign they had on the door, it seems like they had to close unexpectedly.

We plant to be there before they open in the morning.

The Re-Farmer