Morning kittens, reunited, and I got to touch a dinosaur

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Some morning cuteness to share with you today!

The first image is of Sprout with three of her four (Colby, the fluffy orange and white, likes to go to the house or the isolation shelter on his own). Her calico is starting to get big enough that I’m starting to get her confused with Mom at times!

The white and grey garage kitten is getting to the point that I can sometimes not only pet him (her), but pick him up and hold him for a sort time.

But not this morning!

His smokey sibling in the next photo, on the other hand, won’t let me come close. I got to pick it up and hold it that one time, weeks ago, and that’s it. Haven’t been able to get close, since.

My goodness, that is one gorgeous kitten!

We had ourselves a lovely little reunion. My brother and SIL booked a tour for their grandsons at the large animal rescue that took in Poirot’s orphans, and included me and my younger daughter as well. We got to visit Miss Lemon, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp today!

They have gotten so big! They’re practically twice the size they were when my daughter and I brought them over. They are still small for their age, but it’s good to see how much they’ve grown.

They are also incredibly chill, and the centre of attention. They have different names now, though none that have been settled on. Talking to one of the staff, after telling her they came from our colony, and some of their background, she told me they are a real hit. At the end of tours, they often ask the kids which was their favourite animal, and the answer is almost always, the kittens! Which is amazing, considering the variety of animals they have. Rabbits, pigs, goats, ducks, chickens, donkeys – lots of donkeys! – horses, miniature horses and…

These guys.

My favourites.

I got to pet two of the three emus, but this one really seemed to want my attention! We were warned in advance that they like to go for shiny, sparkly things. I’m amazed they didn’t go for my hat! This one kept coming back to me for more pets, though.

What a face!

What’s amazing is some of the noises they make. Totally what you would expect to hear from a dinosaur!

After we left their area, this one came up to the fence to check me out again, so I got a bit of video.

Yeah, that chomp was totally self inflicted.

I regret nothing.

We also saw some guineas wandering around, several of which were white. I’ve never seen white guineas before!

After the outside tour was over, we were all led back to the main shelter, where the kittens, rabbits, smaller goats and a piglet are kept, along with a gift shop and a few other things. One of my great nephews got a ride on a miniature horse (the other wouldn’t even go into the area with the horses and donkeys). The bunnies and the goats got some attention, but the kids all eventually converged on the kittens! The kittens have their own pen that they can get in and out of through the gaps in the walls, any time they want, but the gate is kept closed to keep the family’s dogs from going in and eating their kibble. 😁

Those kittens get SO much love and attention, and they are just lapping it up.

While looking at some of their displays, I read a sign at a table of pet rocks, talking about where the rocks came from, and that they were painted and made available for “sale” by donation, to help fund the rescue.

Them and the plants.

Which is when I realized that several jade trees from our place were on the ground near the display table! Not very many of them were left, and there were no aloe left at all. I was really hoping they’d be able to use them to raise money for the rescue!

I also bought a couple of dozen of their eggs. We still have quite a bit, but we can always use more!

While getting them, I joked about how we don’t have our own chickens yet. The staff member, who I’d been chatting with a fair bit, sharing about Poirot’s babies, suggested I look into getting ducks, instead. Apparently, they are better layers, and the eggs taste pretty much the same.

I certainly wouldn’t be against that idea!

It was really nice of my brother and SIL to include us today. We drive by the place regularly, and have been to the house part of the property, but that’s it. Plus, we got to visit with Poirot’s babies, too! I feel much better after seeing them. There’s always that worry in the back of your head, when they get adopted out and, in this case, they’re not even adopted out, but will be adopted out when they are a bit older.

As we were leaving, one of my great nephews was saying he wants to go back, tomorrow! 😁

I’d want to go back, too!

I want my own dinosaur. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some firsts in the harvest, and weird corn

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Just a quick garden post to start with today.

While doing my rounds and checking in the garden, I found this strange thing in the corn.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!

I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.

There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.

I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.

After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.

Good for the digestion.

We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.

Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.

Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.

I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.

They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.

Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.

It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.

The Re-Farmer

Critter fence

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, we’ll see how this works.

I went back to the corn/squash bed to get the formerly trellis fence set up. I set the posts as best I could. They had to go right at the corners for the wire to fit all the way around, so I didn’t have the option of moving them if I hit a root or a rock. So they aren’t quite as deep as they should be.

Once the posts were in, I set the wire back on the built in hooks in the posts, tightening things up as much as possible.

In the first image above, you can see my “door”. I wove a couple of 6′ support stakes through the wire, near the ends. The ends themselves just barely overlap, and I can hook them together a bit. The support stakes are long enough that I can drive them into the soil.

Well. Almost. One of them was hitting something and wouldn’t go any further. Probably a root.

In the second image, I tried to get a view of the top, which is wide open, of course. Ideally, it would be covered.

Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do this at all. Those squash should be sprawling all over, not barely meandering between the corn. I don’t know how big this variety of squash vine normally gets, but the Crespo squash we had last year in this spot spread out far enough to start climbing the cherry trees.

I’m hoping this will work. It should at least keep the cats out. A determined raccoon would get through fairly easily, but I’m hoping they’ll just be too lazy to get through the wire to get at the corn.

We shall see soon enough, I guess. The corn in this bed is developing faster than in the other bed, and there are some really nice looking cobs starting to form!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: a nice harvest, and breakfast!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!

I had some help, too.

When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.

Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.

The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.

After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.

There were lots of Spoon tomatoes to pick!

I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!

There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.

After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.

In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!

That was from roots.

These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.

Those trees have got to go.

Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.

Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!

In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.

When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.

It was very good!

The Re-Farmer

More kitties and, it’s official

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We must, of course, start with the cuteness!

The cat cave I hoped that Frank would use has been discovered by the littles.

Some of them, at least.

I honestly expected to see it being used more but, hey… if it gives the littles a place to chill without scary strange adult cats to bug them, that’s just fine! They seem to be discovering the cat cage is good for that, too.

I didn’t see any in there this morning, but things get pretty chaotic when I come out with the food. More of the littles are actually staying and eating, rather than running and hiding. I really need to watch where I put my feet!

After feeding the cats and doing my rounds, I was about to go back into the house through the sun room, when I heard little squeaky noises and paused.

I’m glad I did.

Lady Hypotenose was being absolutely tackled by her littles. Where she is in the photo is right next to the door to the old kitchen. I stayed out of the sun room and just zoomed in with my phone’s camera to get some photos, then left them be! I could use the other door to go inside!

On a completely different note. While checking my email this morning, I found a notification from Canada Revenue that there was a message awaiting me at the website.

Well, there it was.

I am now officially classified as disabled by the government. Until 2030. I suppose in 2030, I’ll have to reapply? I dunno. I’ll get a letter in the mail about it. The website doesn’t give any other informaiton.

What this means is that, at tax time, I can get the disability tax credit instead of the caregiver tax credit I’ve been getting. As my younger daughter has also applied for disability and most likely has also been accepted, this means my older daughter can apply for the caregiver credit for one of us.

It also means I can apply for various supports available, and get my own disabled parking placard. My husband has one which, in this province, we have to pay a doctor to fill out a form, then send it in with a check for the placard itself, which then gets mailed to us. In the province where we were living when my husband went on short term disability, he got a prescription that we took where we had our van insured, and we were issued one without charge, immediately. It was a red, temporary one. After six months, when he went on long term disability, we did it again and he got the blue, long term one.

Other than that… I don’t know. I’ve been looking at the various supports out there, both provincial and federal, but it seems I don’t qualify for most of them. Most are aimed at people who are in supportive living or long term care, neither of which I need.

So… really, it doesn’t change anything for me other than being something the federal government recognizes at tax time.

I somehow thought there was more to it than that. I’m used to dealing with my husband’s private disability insurance. Not government stuff.

Thank God for private insurance. We’d be so hooped without it!

The Re-Farmer

Not the kittens I expected!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

So I headed outside to do a quick walk around. The storm hit while I was in the sun room, checking on the littles.

There were these ones.

The tabby leaning back blissfully is the kitten I found in the garage (still no side of the second one I saw briefly). The other two are from the litter of four Lady Hypotenose brought into the sun room.

There are quite a lot of “missing” kittens. I am pretty sure at least a couple were taken somewhere else by their mothers, but I haven’t seen Lady Hypotenose’s black and white today, and there is another white and grey/black that I couldn’t see.

There was one place they could be that I can’t look in. At least, not normally. I tried to “look” by using my phone’s camera. It took several failures before I finally got this photo.

Oh, my goodness. I just went looking at photos I took, the first time we saw Lady Hypotenose’s babies. The black and white I posted a picture of earlier is NOT Lady Hypotenose’s. That one had a black noce and chin, which I can see in the above photo.

So the two on the right are both from Lady Hypotenose’s litter.

That black one, though?

I don’t think I’ve seen it before. Or, maybe it’s the one I saw briefly on the critter cam that one night? It’s impossible to know for sure.

There is a whole lot of mixing and matching going on with these new kittens! It’s really hard to keep track. That’s why I try to take photos as much as possible, but it can be really hard to get a decent shot of them, as they run around and hide so quickly.

With all the moving around of kittens, we still have no idea what the kitten count is this year. Of course, it’s still possible there will be losses, some we will know about, some we won’t. The ones we saw that the moms have moved are the ones the least likely to make it.

I hoped to see Frank while I was checking things out before the storm hit (it has already passed, but we are still under a severe thunderstorm watch), but there was no sign of her. I hope she is somewhere safe and warm with her new babies – and that she’ll find the new cat cave and bring them to the sun room!

Unlikely, but still possible.

The Re-Farmer

Kitten status

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yesterday evening, I headed outside a few times, just to try and get over my funk. Plus, I just couldn’t be inside and not do anything productive, even though I did rather waste the day.

The first time I headed out, I was checking on the kittens, but only saw two.

That little tabby looks so angry all the time! 😄 That’s the one I found in the garage.

I have not seen that blue eyed black and white kitten all day today. Not sure what’s going on. That is one of Lady Hypotenose’s litter.

I also haven’t seen the other two foundlings I wrote about here. I don’t know who the mother is, but it seems they’ve been moved.

I started to check on the old kitchen garden when I heard the tiniest of meows from… somewhere. It took a while of listening before I could pinpoint a direction, and it was most definitely a distressed meow.

I found Ink’s litter. They’re in the collapsed log building by the fire pit.

One of the kittens had fallen down!

There’s an old tire leaning against the wall on the outside. The kitten was on it, crying out to its three siblings, above. The adult cats can get in and out of this old building fine, but small kittens like this… well, they can fall out, but they can’t get back in!

I was able to quickly grab it and lift it up to the top of the wall, where its siblings were. It did NOT like it, but it took only a fraction of a second, and it was free of the scary human. After they all scattered, I lifted my phone as high as I could and took a picture in the general direction they ran to. That’s the last picture in the slide show above, cropped down to just the two kittens that were visible.

I was happy to see that white one’s eyes were open, because in the other pictures, they looked glued shut! What I can’t tell is if the kittens are just starting to get into their leaky eye phase, or if they are getting out of it.

Later on, I took the log I’d removed the the old kitchen garden bed, where it’s being replaced with wattle weave, and brought it over. I was able to lean it in that low spot in the top log and settle it in place firmly. The kittens can now get in and out of the building on their own, rather than Mom having to try and carry while jumping down from the top, herself!

That was yesterday evening.

This morning, as I was in the old kitchen, about to prepare food for the outside cats, I saw this through the window.

Note that cat in the carrier. That turned out to be Frank. In the next picture, you can see she slammed herself into the cuddle puddle in the cat bed! The Grink is in that bed, along with Eyelet, Grommet and Sir Robin. The Grink isn’t much bigger than the kittens!

Frank didn’t stay, though.

As I was going around to all the food bowls and trays, I was watching Frank. She was in the water bowl shelter, checking out the cat beds and box in there. She was in the sun room, checking out the cat carriers. She was going from place to place, poking around and moving on.

I realized she had to be looking for a place to give birth.

I messaged my daughters and asked them to put fresh puppy pads in the cat carriers in the sun room, in hopes she would use one of those.

The sun room littles have discovered the cat cage. They are really skittish and quick to run away, but I’ve been seeing four of them consistently.

Three of Lady Hypotenose’s babies were snuggled in one of the beds in the cat cage – I put a small bowl of food in there for them, too. They started to use the cat bed in the other cube as a littler, though, which was something I needed to deal with later.

Angry kitten, meanwhile, was snuggling with Grommet in the shelf at the window.

I could not see the black and white anywhere. Hopefully, it’s just under the counter shelf. Even Lady Hypotenose seemed to be looking for it!

I pretty much finished off the kibble with the morning feeding, though, so I headed out after breakfast. I decided to go to the feed store in the town north of us, instead of my mother’s town. I got two 40 pound bags, which should last us two weeks. After picking that up, I went into town and checked out their Red Apple store. I found a cat cave of a particular design I’ve been looking for for a while – one that doesn’t collapse easily. I was actually thinking to pick up a clear storage bin and finding a way to turn that into a secure cat cave a mother might like to give birth in, but the only ones they had that were the right dimensions was insanely expensive. The fabric cat cave I found was expensive, too, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, so I snagged it, anyhow.

After a brief stop at the grocery store across the street, I headed home.

I was too late.

I saw Frank moving around the yard, and the first thing I could see was the blood on her back end. She had clearly just given birth – and yet, there she was. Not only was she going around the yard, but she was roughhousing with Sir Robin and Havarti, too!

That is not the behaviour of a cat that’s just given birth so recently, I found drops of blood on the floor of the sun room.

I still set up the new cat cave, in hopes she will find it and move her babies there. Given her state, I thought they had to be close by and checked all the usual places. Nothing. I was even bracing myself to find remains. None of that, either.

Given her behaviour, I strongly suspect she lost her litter.

One of the sun room kittens and Lady Hypotenose, however, have discovered the new cat cave and checked it out. I might find other littles in there, instead!

Meanwhile, I took out the cat bed the littles had started using as a litter box and put in an actual litter box. I used a garden hose to wash out the cat bed as best I could, and it’s now hanging on the line. I don’t expect it to dry anytime soon, though. We’re under a severe thunderstorm watch right now, so it’ll probably get rained on.

In fact, I think I’ll check on the outside cats and see if they need a kibble top up now. It’s early, but if the weather apps and warnings are right, a thunderstorm will be hitting us around the time I would normally be heading outside to do it. I did top up the kibble after refilling the bin, though, so they should be fine.

Time to see what I find!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: thinning carrots

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Just a quick little garden post to start with.

We did finally get the predicted rain this morning, which made thinning the row of Atomic Red carrots much easier!

I’d manage to space the seeds out pretty well when I planted them, so most of the “thinning” I’ve done until now has been to pull up weeds and sprouted Chinese elm. Which is why what I pulled today looked like this.

They were all much bigger than I expected them to be! They look really small from the surface.

At that size, they’re useable, but too small to peel or even scrub. I washed them off with a hose before bringing them inside, the rinsed, trimmed, and rinses some more. As I write this, they’re soaking in water to try and loosen any last bits of soil stuck to them, before we use them.

Or just eat them as snacks.

They’re not at their best at this stage, of course; they’ll be much sweeter once fully mature. I did make sure to taste one, though – it’s a new variety for us – and they’re still quite good.

As we expand our garden beds, we’ll be growing a lot more carrots, as they are a good storage crop, and such a staple in the kitchen. We’re still trying new varieties, too. Now that we know how well they can do with winter sowing, we’ll be planting some this fall for next year.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, afternoon kitties, and not a good day

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I’m having a rather bad day today – and I don’t know why!

But first, the good stuff.

In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.

The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.

The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.

The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.

The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.

When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!

There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.

We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!

We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!

I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.

It didn’t get better after a nap.

So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.

Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.

Anyhow.

I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.

After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.

Five.

Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five

Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.

I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.

Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!

As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.

Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.

They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.

*sigh*

I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.

Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.

I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.

Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.

I think I’m really starting to burn out.

The Re-Farmer.

More babies!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Okay, it’s official.

I now have NO idea how many kittens we have.

For some time now, I’ve been wondering when the more feral mamas that have been showing up at feeding time, would bring their babies. I thought it would start weeks ago, to be honest, but I think at least a couple of them had litters very early, lost them, then got pregnant again. Slick being one of them for sure.

Speaking of slick…

Last night, I checked the critter cam and was amazed to see a couple of very small kittens, one of them almost completely black with what seemed to be splashed of white on its chest, making its way up to the platform above the cat cage – along with another that looked like another white and grey. Then I saw Slick (formerly Octomom) with them. I’m not sure if she was the mother, but I got that impression.

I did not see them when I did the morning cat feeding.

I did see some of the new littles. They seem to have picked under the counter shelf as their place to hang out.

As I was heading towards the garage to put food in the tray there (still no sign of that kitten that popped its head out momentarily, before disappearing again) when I spotted two very scared looking kittens under the table I have up against the house, where the isolation shelter was for the winter.

We’ve got another white and grey, and a fluffy tuxedo!

The tuxedo started to run off and went around the house, but I was able to catch it and carry it to the sun room. It was NOT happy about that, and started to cry out very loudly. I put it down near a tray of food and it immediately ran off further into the sun room.

I then went back to the other one, which was much easier to catch. It did start to fight back, hiss and finally cry out loudly as well, as I was carrying it, before I set it down by the food tray, too.

Since then, I’ve seen the white and grey, tucked into a corner next to a shelf, just like in the picture, looking very forlorn. One of Lady Hypotenose’s littles was curiously trying to come closer, but it was having none of that. Last I saw, it was on its own, still curled up in the corner. I’m hoping it came out to eat, later on. I also hope the mama comes around.

With all the new littles hiding under that shelf, there’s no way to know how many there are. If I had to guess, I’d say nine new ones, including the two I’ve only seen on the critter cam. Ten if I count the one I saw in the garage, but haven’t seen since. While I was expecting the mamas to start bringing them over, I wasn’t expecting them to start doing it all at once!

I also wasn’t expecting mamas to bring such small kittens, and then disappear. There was no sign of a mama when I found the two this morning, and still no sign of a mama for the one that I found in the garage (I don’t know what to think about the second kitten not showing up anywhere) that Lady Hypotenose immediately adopted.

Which makes it really important for the new littles to be in the sun room, where they have the most protection, as well as access to food and water. I’ve got the live stream on the critter cam on my phone up as I write this and, while I’ve seen the odd kitten come put and play, mostly I’m seeing nothing but some older cats sleeping on the platform over the cat cage.

It looks like, for the next while, part of my rounds is going to include watching out for kittens being left in the yard, and if I find any, getting them to the sun room. Which is where I think the mamas are trying to get them to, anyhow.

Well, I can say this much, at least.

There are a lot fewer kittens than last year, and I’m happy that they are looking so healthy. There was a while last year where, every day, sometimes more than once a day, I was coming out to find dead kittens or dying miscarriages that I had to euthanize. It was really rough. I’ll happily take the fewer, healthier looking kittens over that. I just wish we should get their feral mamas spayed!

All in good time.

Meanwhile, we will work on socializing these littles and try to get them adopted out!

Oh, that reminds me. While I was at the Walmart yesterday, I was waiting my turn to get to the wet cat food. The woman that was there with her cart was loading it up with cans and kibble, so I asked her, how many did she have?

It turned out she not only had her own cats, but was fostering both kittens and a dog. So we chatted for a while. She is working with the big rescue that the Cat Lady was volunteering with before she left to start her own rescue. I told her a bit about what happened, and she was nodding her head. She told me that there have been some changes in the organization in the last while, but I’m still loath to turn to them for help. I mentioned that the rescue that’s been helping us is shutting down this year, as are other small rescues. She was not surprised. It’s too heart breaking. No one is adopting or, if they are, they don’t want to adopt until someone else has spent hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to spay/neuter and vet the cats first. They want a “rescue”, but they also want a perfect cat – and then they balk at the adoption fees. As the woman I spoke to put it, the problem is the people.

She’s totally right.

The Cat Lady has so many cats right now that they’ve kept permanently because people adopted them, claiming they understood that, say, this kitten had heart problems, or that one had respiratory problems, and yes, they fully understood and expected that they will need medical care – only to bring them back a few days later, because it was just “too much” for them.

Then you get people like that one that told the Cat Lady she wanted a calico, but when shown pictures of one we had, she said she wanted one with more white.

…

Yeah. The problem is the people. Not the cats.

Well, we do the best we can, anyhow.

What else can we do?

The Re-Farmer