Dramatic kitty, and looking ahead

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I had a smaller crowd of outside cats this morning.

There was still kibble left from being topped up yesterday, so I think a lot of them were well fed and content to stay in wherever their preferred shelters are.

But not Chadiccus!

He kept flinging himself under my feet while I tried to walk, then lying there as if he’d been slain. :-D

What a ham!

We’ve got a couple more cold days after today, one really warm one, then back down to average temperatures for this time of year. I’ve been looking ahead at the end of the month, thinking on when would be best to head into the city for our monthly shop. We shall see if we will even bother going in. Thanks to continued draconian restrictions, the supply chain was being disrupted, and the truckers have finally had enough. There is currently a convoy of truckers on their way to Ottawa, in a protest to end medical tyranny. Last I heard, they had more than 50,000 trucks from all across the country, with more expected to join as they slowly make their way across the country. They’ve also raised over $2 million in donations, to help pay for fuel and other necessities for the truckers. About the only response we’ve had from our federal government has been for our Prime Minister to threaten to designate the truckers as domestic terrorists, which would allow GoFundMe to deny them the funds raised. Our government funded media (which is basically all mainstream media, since they got billions in bail out money), of course, is trying to ignore what’s happening completely, or if they do report on it, they don’t tell the truth about what’s actually going on. We shall see if their tune changes over the next few days. Personally, I doubt it. At least not for the biggest companies. Their survival has depended on government handouts for years, now.

We’ve got about a week before we need to go into the city to stock up again. Depending on how things go in the next while, there may not be a point in trying to shop in the city. There won’t be anything to buy.

The Re-Farmer

What I woke up to this morning

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Since I no longer had to keep my door close, to make sure a sick Cabbages didn’t take off somewhere, I actually got a lot more sleep. I didn’t have cats constantly clawing at the bottom of my door, to get in or out!

This morning, I was awakened by this cuddle pile.

They actually started out on the other side of my head, where there was just a few inches of space, clambered over me and settled in to this aggressive grooming session.

Which I can’t complain about. We had to keep Turmeric in my room with me for about a week, because she kept turning into a snarling beast at the other cats for some reason. Particularly when a tuxedo came by. Beep Beep would also go after other cats, but she would stop as quickly as she started, and just always does that. It took days for Turmeric to calm down, and now she’s back to grooming and snuggling with cats she had been snarling and growling at. !!

I could feel another cat at my legs, so I used my phone to find out which one it was.

Only to discover it was two cats! I wasn’t twisted around enough to see Tissue. :-D Which is funny, because the cat I felt was not the cat I could see!

Tissue really, really loves jamming herself against the back of my legs, or my lower back.

The cats are all very happy my door is open again. They missed having access to my bed. :-D

Silly kitties!

The Re-Farmer

We have news! (Cabbages update)

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I just got off the phone with the lady that took Cabbages. The early news is good!

The initial bloodwork has been done, and she does NOT have feline aids or leukemia.

Honestly, we didn’t think she did, but it’s good to confirm.

The vet checked for a few other things, such as symptoms of FIP; Feline Infectious Peritonitis. I’d never heard of it before, but she said it was a coronavirus, which is something I did know is a large and common class of viruses. The vet wanted to know if she had been outside recently (she hasn’t been outdoors since we brought her in as a kitten), or if she had symptoms like diarrhea (no), blood in stools (no) and vomiting (no) – even if we had a dog in the household (no).

She is so very tiny, but the vet did think she was just a small cat, so we talked a bit out how she didn’t have a lot of weight to lose in the first place, so once she got sick and started losing weight, she quickly became skin and bones.

So far, they hydrated her and have her a 14 day slow release antibiotic. They even put some high fructose stuff on her gums, just to put some calories in her. Then she went home with the woman we are working with, where she will stay for the next while. They will be feeding her a high calorie version of food goo, and trying to get her to eat some salmon. Cabbages is not a happy kitty right now, though, not just from getting so many injections, but with having so many people handling her. She has never been that keen on humans. The poor thing must be pretty stressed out right now!

On Tuesday, she will be back at the vet for a follow up, and will continue to stay with this family until she is healthy. There is already a foster set up to take her; an older woman who fosters cats for longer periods, to work on socializing them. I told her that Cabbages doesn’t like to be held or cuddled, though she does get along fine with other cats! I think that, without so many other cats around, she will start taking to people at least a bit more. Then, she will move on to her forever home.

I can’t say I’m happy about her having to go through two other homes before finally being adopted out. She’s not going to be a happy kitty for a while. However, at the same time, I’m happy that she’ll be getting the vet care this organization provides.

Well. It’s done.

As for the other adoptable cats, she is hoping to have them picked up, little by little, and placed with fosters by the end of April. Which means that we will not be getting the indoor adoptable cats fixed, ourselves. The adoptable cats will be going to fosters, and all their care and feeding is provided by this organization. Which means, for the indoor cats, we only have to get Beep Beep done, because the males are already done.

As for the outdoor cats, aside from Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, then the boys we can catch, that will wait until things are warmer, and it’s safe to trap them.

For now, I’m just thankful to have an update on how Cabbages is doing. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and a day of surprises

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This morning was quite chilly, but that didn’t stop the kitties!

We didn’t get much new snow, but it was blowing enough that I had to dig out the water bowls again.

Hmm. As I write this, I’m noticing the red flash on a weather alert on my desktop weather app. It’s an extreme cold warning. We’re supposed to reach -29C/-20F tonight, with wind chills of -40C/-40F!!

While doing my rounds, I made sure to check the end of the driveway, since I was expecting to head out with Cabbages today. The road was plowed, and it looked like we would be able to get through the end of the driveway without too much trouble.

When I came back to the house, I found myself being watched!

I love how Nosencrantz is still licking her chops. :-D

As cold as we’re supposed to get tonight, this afternoon warmed up to -17C/1F, so the cats were up and about when I started getting ready to take Cabbages into town.

I found Agnoos sitting on the sun-warmed black plastic of the snow shovel! I wasn’t quite fast enough to get what would have been an adorable picture of him, but I rather like the action shot I got, instead!

After starting the van to warm it up, I went to unlock the gate and found my first surprise.

The end of the driveway was cleared! We never heard or saw a thing! That was so very sweet. I just am assuming it was done by one or our renter’s hired hands, while on his way to somewhere else.

After opening the gate, I backed the van up closer to the gate in the chain link fence, so that Cabbages would be out in the cold as little as possible. Then, because I didn’t want to leave her, I didn’t stop to close the gate behind me and just headed into town. I would love to leave the gate open all the time during the day, but we’re still not quite sure our vandal would be able to resist coming in, despite the court order to stay away.

Which is how we ended up with my second big surprise.

The driveway was done while I was gone!!

The girls were cooking when my husband told them to look out the window, where they saw a yellow front end loader suddenly go by. This was a huge surprise for them, because they didn’t know I had left the gate open! Normally, I would have asked one of them to lock it behind me, but it was a last minute decision.

As you can imagine, once I was settled inside, I sent a thank you message to the renters. We have got to do something for them as a thank you. They won’t even accept payment for the fuel!

Since the driveway was cleared so nicely, I didn’t have to back up to the chain link fence to unload. I could park in the garage and bring the wagon over to haul the cat food.

And some honey. I had noticed my cousin snow blowing the driveway to their honey house while on the way to town with Cabbages. He was still there when I came back, and I happened to have some cash on hand, so I bought a couple of kg of his creamed honey. What a treat!

While going to the sun room to get the wagon, I found myself with a co-operative model this time.

Agnoos was perched on the sun warmed black plastic of the other snow shovel this time! :-D

As I am writing this, I can see the live stream from our garage security camera. I’ve bene seeing cats running around in the cleared driveway the entire time I’ve been writing. Right now, I can see The Distinguished Guest, sitting in a big, black, fluffy loaf in the middle of the driveway, and a bit of another cat, next to the wall of snow on one side. Oh! There’s another one, making its way through the snow from one of the sheds, into the cleared driveway.

They are appreciating our neighbours as much as we are!

They are just fantastic people! I am so glad they are renting the bulk of the property from my brother. We have such awesome neighbours.

The Re-Farmer

Saying goodbye; a Cabbages update

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Well, it’s done.

As I write this, Cabbages should still be on the road to the city.

Last night, we tried her on some of the cat milk we picked up. She wouldn’t do it while I was close by, but once I stepped away, she did drink from the little bowl. Which was adorable, with her snout completely hidden, but no chance of a photo!

We also fed her food goo, thinned with the cat milk, using the syringe. She definitely liked it better than thinned with plain water.

So did Turmeric. While the girls were feeding Cabbages, Turmeric tried to eat the food goo right out of her mouth!!

Once she had a full belly, she got to enjoy some cuddles and grooming.

I think Beep Beep is going to miss Cabbages!

Here she is, getting some post-breakfast cuddles from “grandma”. :-)

I got texts this morning from the woman that is helping us with the cats. She was going from town to town, so we arranged to be her last stop before returning to the city, to reduce the amount of time Cabbages would be in a vehicle. She had a kennel for Cabbages, and was also picking up six (!!!) other cats along the way.

Then I got a text saying they had an unexpected extra cat, and were using the kennel intended for Cabbages. She was wondering if we had one they could borrow, though she might be able to borrow one from the vet clinic. We have three carriers in total, but won’t need all three until they start taking more cats in, so we’re okay with lending one of them. We’ll still have enough to bring Butterscotch and Nutmeg in to get fixed, at the end of the month, and can get it back then. Plus, it meant not having to transfer Cabbages from one carrier to another, while in a parking lot! I’m good with that.

I had an awesome surprise when I headed out early to meet them with Cabbages, and an even bigger one when I got back, but I’ll share about those in my next post.

I left early with Cabbages, because I expected to have snow issues. I didn’t, but I didn’t mind being early. They got to the place we arranged to meet early, too. We got two big bags of donated dry cat food and a case of wet cat food they couldn’t use (the wet cat food had no labels on the cans!).

She let us know that Cabbages would first be tested for Feline Leukemia – she made an appointment for her at the vet this afternoon, and it’s a quick test, so she will be able to let us know by this evening. If she does test positive for that, all the cats will need to be tested. !!!

She was happy to hear that Cabbages has been doing better and starting to eat and drink on her own. She hasn’t been throwing up anymore, and there has been no blood in her stools, which are other positive signs. Hopefully, the blood tests they will be doing will answer some questions.

So there we are. One cat, already gone. She is hoping, over the next few weeks, to be able to take 3 cats at a time. Including Cabbages, we have a total of 8 cats to be adopted out, so that should work out to 3 trips.

The house is going to feel pretty empty with “just” eight cats left in the house!

The main thing is that Cabbages is now going to get the vet care she needs, and that makes us happy.

The Re-Farmer

We made it!

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We made our much needed trip into town!

As I write this, we have warmed up to -7C/19F, with a wind chill of -13C/9F. It was just a couple of degrees colder and had stopped snowing when my daughter and I headed out to town.

For all the clearing we did, once I started down the driveway, I didn’t dare stop until I got to the road. My daughter could take care of the gate for me, so that worked out.

The winds were still coming from the south-southwest (as I write this, they are now coming from the northwest), and the roads were drifting over, but we were still able to get through all right.

We were a bit too fast with our shopping, though, and when we stopped to get the mail, the post office wasn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet. So we unloaded the van, put stuff away, then my daughter crawled through their upstairs window to start shoveling the roof while I waited until I could go back to the post office to pick up our packages. If we didn’t get them today, we wouldn’t be able to get them until Monday.

I was heading back out in less than an hour, and by then it had started to snow again.

Very picturesque, but the visibility had dropped dramatically. I’m glad I only had about 3 miles to go!

Once back, I brought out the telescoping roof shovel we’ve got, to get some other parts of the roof. I did as much as I could reach over the sun room which, unfortunately, isn’t very far. I was able to clear under the Starlink dish, however, and I’m glad I could. Once the snow under it was moved, a whole bunch more immediately slid off the dish. I really appreciate that these dishes are self heated!

The cool thing is, even though there was snow built up on the dish, we’ve had almost no noticeable loss of connectivity. There was an hour last night that had a series of short outages, due to network error, while this morning there was one, due to obstruction, but in all that, there was only one that was long enough for even be noticed.

Aside from the sun room roof, I also got as much as I could off of the entryway roof. The west side of it had a drift that was at least 4 feet thick!

I’m glad we got that done, though I’m a bit concerned about tomorrow. We’re supposed to meet with the woman that will be fixing our cats, to pick up donated cat food and drop off Cabbages into care. With the way things are blowing, we might have issues getting out of our driveway. I do expect the plows to be out already, but it’s hard to say when our gravel roads will be done.

It’s a bit late, considering Cabbages is to be taken in tomorrow and getting vet care through this organization, but one of the things we picked up today was cat milk. We need to get more calories and nutrients into her, and I’m hoping she’ll actually like this stuff enough that we won’t need to use the syringe. I’ll be trying that out once I’m done writing this post.

It does look like the snow had stopped again, so that’s a good sign for getting out tomorrow! Though we are supposed to be getting cat food donated to us, I still looked for some while at the grocery store, and the big bags were out of stock, just like the stores in the city. There have been real issues with lack of inventory for quite some time. Particularly in the big bags. We were never quite able to stock up adequately. All the more reason to be thankful for the donated food!

Now if we can just pray that we don’t get snowed in – and neither does the woman we are supposed to meet up with tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Warming… up?

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Well, we are on track to warm up quite a bit, by this afternoon. Depending on which weather app I use, we’re either supposed to reach -7C/19F, or -5C/23F.

The problem is the wind. There is a “Blowing Snow Advisory” out right now. As I write this, we are at -14C/7F with a wind chill of -25C/-13F

Or -13C/9F with a wind chill of -28C/-18F, if I go by my phone’s app.

The wind is from the south-southwest, which means it was a bit brutal when I did my morning rounds. Not as bad as yesterday, thankfully.

The wind swirls around the cat area so much, I actually had to empty all the kibble trays of snow. You can see some of the snow that drifted in front of the kibble house. It completely covered even the heated water bowl, forming a layer of ice and snow across the top, about an inch above the liquid water!

Our winter sowing experiment is getting buried!

I checked the driveway – especially the end of the driveway – and we can still get out. I even started the van and let it run for a while, just to make sure it would start. We need to go into town this afternoon – a trip we’ve already put off too many times.

I’m keeping an eye on a local highway status group, and this morning there were a lot of people saying to stay home if you can, because of the drifting, and there are even sections of highways that are closed, but it all seems to be happening closer to the city, and they were posted hours ago. Others that are farther north, and closer to us, have said the highways are completely clear. However, none have said anything about the road we need to take.

It should be fine, but it would be nice to know in advance, one way or the other! I’m just glad we can get out. Not everyone has been able to dig out of the storm, yet.

The Re-Farmer

She ate kibble!

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We are so thrilled!

Last night, I actually saw Cabbages eating some kibble! It was just a few pieces, but this is the first time I’ve seen her eating in days.

I’m pretty sure she would have eaten earlier, but when I saw her by the food and water bowls, I topped them up, and every other cat in the room came running. I made sure there was some kibble right in front of her, but any Turmeric kept trying to groom her, and she finally left. :-D

We’re still feeding her food goo with the syringe, of course. Which is why she’s looking so dishevelled in the above photo. :-D I had just finished feeding her, and she was most displeased with me!

She still looks like crap, does not seem to be regaining weight yet (still not enough calories getting into her. :-( ), but she is drinking more often, is more active, and has even been trying to get out of my office/bedroom. If we didn’t have to worry about her hiding in some crevice where we can’t find her or reach her, we wouldn’t be keeping her in.

We’re also still steaming her when we shower, if there’s even the slightest hint of wheezing when she breathes. She seems to like it. The fact that the house is so dry and chilly, and she’s so skinny, she’s probably quite enjoying her saunas.

We like it when we have happy, steamed Cabbages. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Last ones

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This is it. The last ones.

This afternoon, I headed into the roots cellar and grabbed the last of our yellow onions that we had hanging down there. These are the Norstar we grew from seed. We finished the ones we grew from sets a while ago.

And these are the last of the Red Karmen onions we grew. There’s one more, hidden from view.

All the onions we grew and harvested back in August have lasted us more than half way through January. Adjusting for the time then needed to cure, that’s about 5 1/2 months.

Not too bad, considering they didn’t get very big. We did try to be a bit frugal with them, though.

They also stored really well in the root cellar. We had the fewest shallots (what are not in the photos above), and they were gone in less than two months, so we never found out how well they stored. ;-D

We will be growing a lot more onions this year, all from seed. The goal is to not have to buy onions from a store at all, anymore.

I am just itching to start the onions indoors, but I have decided to wait until the middle of February to start them, at about 15 weeks before last frost. The only other thing we would start that early are the luffa gourds.

I’m actually sad that we’ll have to start buying onions again. The ones we grew were so much better! I don’t know what varieties the stores carry. They usually have labels like “yellow” or “medium cooking onion”. LOL They’re good, but the varieties we grew were tastier. That’s the main benefit, in my view, about growing onions from seed. Buying sets is easier, but there are a lot more varieties to choose from with seeds.

The Re-Farmer

Little Cabbages

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A bit of an update on how Cabbages is doing this morning.

I don’t know that I can say that she’s getting better, but I can say that she’s not getting worse.

We had some issues with feeding her the food goo last night. Not issues with her, really. Since we’re using a syringe, I’ve been basically making baby food for her, from canned cat food. Since we’re doing such tiny amounts, I’ve been using a mortar and pestle to make it into as smooth a past as I can. Still, the syringe would get blocked while trying to fill it. Then the tip of the plunger would come off, and I’d have to find something thin enough to go through the tip, so I could push it back and get it out.

Well, it turns out the problem was not with the food. It was the syringe. The rubber? laytex? tip of the plunger was simply getting stuck from too much friction. I used a bit of vegetable oil, and it worked beautifully.

This morning, I was even able to feed her a syringe and a half of food goo, without a second person holding her. She’s never liked being held, and once she started to get some strength back, she started fighting the girls off more, leaving them quite scratched up. Today, however, I let her just stay on the warming mat she was enjoying, and feed her. She didn’t like it, but it went so much easier with the lubricated syringe, I was done in no time, even with refilling the syringe.

As much as she doesn’t like the feedings, she’s not throwing up or anything, even after I fed her extra. I’ll still be making the food supper mushy, and watering it down, both to make it easier to get into the syringe, and for extra hydration. We need to pick up more syringes, though. They’re awfully handy things to have around. This one was actually my daughter’s, that she originally used for some of her ink pens. It was really handy to add water to the test tubes when we were doing soil tests. Yes, it gets properly cleaned. But we really ought to have more on hand.

Anyhow. I think I’ll go make some more food goo, to be ready for her next feeding. :-)

The Re-Farmer