Converting the fish tank to a cat proof greenhouse, part 2: changed plans

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Yesterday, I got started on making covers for our big fish tank, to keep the cats out. Today, I assembled the first one.

Of course, things did not go to plan.

Does anything ever? :-D

One of the things I needed to figure out was how to secure the hardware cloth to the frame pieces, for those inevitable times when a cat jumps on them. All I’ve got for materials is whatever we can find lying around the farm. While doing my rounds this morning, I went digging in the side of the garage where we store the lawnmowers and snow blowers. I knew there were some roofing nails in there, so I grabbed a while bunch and brought them inside.

Here is the first problem.

All of the nails were huge. There was only a single smaller size, and it was still too large. What I wanted to do was secure the mesh to the tops/bottoms of the boards making up the frame. Previously, we’ve used a staple gun to do that, but these were not for things where the wire mesh was expected to hold weight. Particularly not the sudden weight of a cat leaping onto it from above.

The mesh was going to have to be secured along the sides.

That meant cutting it with a half inch overlap on all sides.

I’m getting closer to the end of my roll of 1/8 inch mesh, and it really does not want to unroll at this stage! :-D I had all the boards on there to hold it down, and it still kept rolling itself back up again!

Once the mesh was cut to side and flattened, I affixed it to one side.

Normally, I would have used the staple gun to tack it in place, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Which is really weird, because I’m the only person who uses it!

So it had to be tacked in place by screwing in the cross piece, holding the wire as taught as I could in the process.

Then I took out one of the screws in each corner.

I had placed the wood in place on the tank and marked each one with pencil, but once the hardware cloth was in place, I couldn’t really see my marks anymore. Plus, with the cross pieces a fraction too long, I had to make sure I didn’t line the side pieces up to the other end, or the while thing would be to big.

So I quickly drilled a pilot hole in each of the other corners of the cross pieces, then went back to the tank.

This way, I could place the long pieces where they were meant to sit, line everything up, then add a couple of screws through the pilot holes to hold them in place.

Then it was back to the basement to continue.

Once each corner was secured with a pair of screws, it was time to bend the wire mesh. Since the sides would be bent in one direction, and the ends in the other direction, I first cut out the corners.

The wood pieces may have been lined up to the tank, but no matter how careful I tried to be, the wire mesh ended up uneven.

Ah, well.

Once the mesh was bent, I drilled pilot holes for each nail (to prevent the wood from splitting) and hammered them in. The flat tops of the roofing nails were perfect for securing the mesh. Very different from how I had to do it with the larger mesh on the screen “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement.

Time to test it out again!

Oh, dear.

The addition of mesh and nails – especially the nails – made it wider. It wasn’t so much that it no longer fit. I could have let it just rest on the nail heads, I suppose. They would, however, damage the tank’s frame.

There was a very easy solution to this problem.

Flip it upside down.

With the cross pieces being every so slight too long, I used my Dremel to take off the corners at roughly a 45 degree angle.

It now fits!

Unfortunately, the wood is a bit warped, so it doesn’t sit flat, but it should still do the job.

There are still a couple of things I need to do. One is to find some way to cover the edges of the hardware cloth, for safety reasons. I’ll probably just use Gorilla Tape, if we still have some.

The other is to find my self-adhesive felt pads. The kind that’s meant to go on the bottoms of chair legs or the like, to protect floors. Since the bottom is now the top, the screw heads are facing down, and each corner screw is sitting on the plastic ledge in the corners of the tank. It wouldn’t be an issue, if I weren’t expecting cats to jump on it, so a bit of padding would be a good thing. I haven’t seen them since we packed for the move, though. :-/

Aside from those 2 things, this cover is done.

The other one will wait for another day! :-D The earliest we should be starting any seeds is in late March, so we have time! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Converting the fish tank to a cat proof greenhouse, part 1: starting a cover

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I have spent some time thinking about how we can convert our big fish tank into a greenhouse to start seeds in, while also making sure the cats couldn’t jump in.

The original covers the tank came with would have been ideal, but the hinges on those broke long ago.

Since a piece of the filtration system broke during the move, it’s just been sitting in a corner. To keep the cats out, we cut pieces of foam core to fit across the top, then covered the whole thing with a huge table cloth. It turned out to be a great place to store baskets in, and the top became a favorite place for the cats to hang out.

Until they broke through.

We ended up cutting some rigid insulation to fit and taping it in place, which worked much better. With their jumping from the piano onto the top of the tank, though, they’ve knocked even that right off!

What this means is that the cats are used to having access to the top of this tank. If I set it up as a greenhouse to start seeds, they’re just going to jump in, unless I find a way to cover it.

The tank has a bar across the centre and, after thinking about it for a while, I decided to make a pair of wood frames with hardware cloth, that will fit on each side of that centre bar. That way, if I need to get at the seed trays inside, I just need to lift one smaller cover at a time, rather than struggling with one large cover.

I fully expect the cats to jump on while I try to do anything in there!

Today, I got started.

The first thing was to take a tape measure to the inside of each half of the top, as well as the lip the original covers used to sit on. Each side is 16 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches. The ends and centre bar have a 1/2 inch lip, while the sides have a 1/4 inch lip.

I then grabbed a couple of pieces of wood I’d salvaged from a shed and started by cutting the long sides. Once I had 4 of them cut, I double checked that they fit properly.

They fit just fine, with a little bit of play that will make putting them in and taking them out easier.

While I was checking the fit, my daughter came by. As we were talking, she reminded me of one of her Christmas gifts to me.

I wish I’d remembered them before I took the measurements! This thing is MUCH easier for me to read than the tiny lines and numbers on my tape measure. It made marking the distance to cut the short pieces a lot easier, too.

Another reason I wish I’d remembered them before I took the measurements.

When I checked the short pieces, they were just a hair too long! The difference is so slight, I could probably sand it to size.

But I shouldn’t need to.

This is how the frame will be laid out. The hardware cloth will be sandwiched between the top and bottom pieces at the corners. I haven’t figure out what I can use to secure the hardware cloth best. Ideally, the wire mesh would be sandwiched between wood all the way around, not just at the corners, but I just don’t have the wood to do that. Nor can I think of anything we have that could be used in a similar way. Whatever I come up with will have to not just support the weight of a cat that’s decided to lie on it, but the force of a cat jumping onto it from the top of the piano. All sorts of ideas some to mind, and get discarded just as quickly. :-/

The thing I’m holding in place in the photo is one of the supports for the light fixture. The L bars insert into ports at the bottom of the light’s frame, so where they are is where the bottom of the light fixture will be.

Once I double checked how everything was going to fit together, I moved on to the next step.

Washing the pieces of wood.

They were probably sitting in the shed I found them in for more than 10 years. My mother tells me that shed was full of lumber when she moved off the farm, some 7 years ago, so what little we found in there was the junk that wasn’t worth stealing, I guess. :-/ Still better than nothing, I suppose. Anyhow. There was a whole lot of grime on them, so I gave the pieces of wood a quick scrub. They don’t need to be really clean. I just need to be able to handle them without getting filthy, and trying to scrub them after the hardware cloth is in place is just not a good idea! :-D

So they are now all laid out in the basement with a fan on them, do dry. I will continue to work on the frames tomorrow!

One of the recommendations for using grow lights to start seeds is to have the lights very close to the soil, and gradually increase the distance as the seedlings grow.

That won’t be an option with this set up.

I’m thinking of lining the inside of the tank with aluminum foil to reflect more light onto the seedlings. It doesn’t need to be from top to bottom; just at seed tray height. Which means I could probably get away with lining all 4 sides with foil in the big tank. I will probably line 3 sides of the 20 gallon tank, too.

The other thing to consider is warmth. We don’t have grow mats, and it’s unlikely we will be able to get any. We do, however, have more pieces of rigid insulation that we can put under the trays, or even along the sides closest to the walls. The LED lights won’t generate heat, but I’m sure we could find some way to warm up the tanks enough for seeds to germinate.

Progress on the set up has, at least, finally begun!

The Re-Farmer

Count ’em, plus a preview

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There are eight cats in this picture.

Can you spot them all? :-D

These guys sure do make my mornings!

I also have a preview to share.

I experimented with the no-knead, overnight dough recipe I’d made before, using the old dough bread baby from my Babcia’s bread experiment.

I didn’t take any process photos this time, since I was winging it. The “overnight” dough became an “over day” dough, for starters! :-D

Instead of making a pair of loaves, I made one giant loaf in a parchment paper lined lasagna pan.

As I was spreading the dough out as evenly as I could, I found myself thinking it was looking a bit like a focaccia. Too bad we’re out of olive oil.

Then I remembered… we still have some fake truffle oil (the only kind we can find, or afford!) left.

I ended up drizzling the top with the fake truffle oil, spreading the oil around evenly, then stabbing the dough with my fingers to make lots of little holes, which also helped even the dough out in the pan more, before sprinkling on some coarse salt and dried parsley.

Of course, it wasn’t real a focaccia recipe, and it rose quite a bit. This is how it turned out.

This turned out to be, hands down, the best bread I have ever baked! Definitely a winner!!

I think the next time I try this, I’ll use a baking sheet instead of the lasagna pan, to make a thinner bread. Mostly, because I think it’ll be easier to slice than this was, but it’ll also give a larger surface for the oil and salt crust. The texture and flavour it gave was amazing!

Next time, I will definitely take process shots and share the details here!

The Re-Farmer

Stubborn kitty, and a milestone!

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Once again, Butterscotch simply would NOT let me check her out. I barely even got to pet her, never mind check her wound!

I did manage to accidentally get a picture of a perfect snowflake on her ear, though!

Doesn’t she look so elegant and calm here?

The photo lies! :-D

The best I could get was a glance of her wound as she walked away from me, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I hope that means everything is healing well. She doesn’t seem to be favoring the leg, except I think where the fur is shaved off is cold. I’ve seen her coming out of the shelf shelter we made, which has rigid insulation lining the empty bottom shelves, and more rigid insulation to block the wind and snow. She can sit in there and her bald spot will be nice and warm.

She does not go into the cat shelter. I don’t know where her hiding place is, but it is not in the inner yard. I think it’s somewhere in one of the collapsing sheds in the outer yard. :-/

Seeing two of her kittens peaking at me from between the kibble house and cat house was adorable.

I missed Nostrildamus going into the cat house; you can just barely see his tail tip through the strips of carpet. :-)

Rolando Moon is such a loaf! She is quite prepared to drive away any kitties that dare come close!

In other things, this blog hit a milestone yesterday.

We reached 500 followers!

It was rather funny when I got the notification from WordPress. In the time it took me to actually look at it, the number had gone back down to 499. Then it jumped up over 500 by the end of the day and stayed there.

This is really amazing to me. One thing that always surprises me is that anyone is finding it in the first place! That anyone is actually interested in our crazy little corner of the world is greatly appreciated, and I’ve been getting to know some really amazing people in the process. You guys are awesome! :-)

To all our new followers, thank you so much for joining us for the ride. Welcome! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Oh, to have the life of our cats

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Today was a nice and quiet day, so maybe it was as close to the life of our cats as we humans can manage! :-D

Just look at Keith!

He is such a calm and quiet cat. We brought him indoors to better treat his eyes; they were never as bad as his brother David’s, but they were not really getting better. Even as a kitten, we could tell he would have a sweet and calm disposition as an adult. We probably would have brought him in much earlier, if his cousin Cheddar hadn’t impaled himself with a stick through his armpit and needed to recover indoors from surgery.

I still have that cheese stick, in it’s vacuum sealed container. LOL

One thing out of the ordinary happened today. I had a conference call with my siblings and mother – a technical feat my brother pulled off involving cell phones, land lines and speaker phones – to get us all on at the same time, and able to hear each other!

The topic of conversation was our vandal.

A few days ago, while I happened to still be near the end of our driveway while doing my rounds, I saw a vehicle turn onto the road. As I usually do, I waved at the driver as he went by. Only then did I realize it was our vandal, driving one of his other vehicles, so I didn’t recognize it at first.

He very studiously looked away from me as he drove by.

I thought nothing of it, but I should have made a point of calling my mother to let her know. Sometimes, when he sees me, he ends up calling her and going off on a rant. He hadn’t done it the last few times I saw him, though, so I didn’t think of it.

The next day, I got a call from my mother, asking me if anything had happened – if I got anything else in the mail regarding our vandal’s ridiculous suit against me, or something. I told her no, I only saw him drive by the previous morning, then immediately asked what happened.

He had called just her. She made the mistake of answering without checking call display first. He, as usual, launched into a tirade. He kept asking her things like, why is she trying to put him in jail (he’s been saying that since I laid charges against him, after catching him damaging our gate), but never giving her a chance to speak. She finally hung up on him. He called back immediately, and she answered again, quickly said that he was putting himself in jail, then hung up again.

The whole thing left her quite rattled and it took her quite a while to calm down.

So today, my siblings talked about what happened, and a few other things that have gone on over the years. I found out that, among the things ranted about at my mother, our vandal told her that I said – to him – that my mother shouldn’t attend her sister’s funeral.

My aunt is living but, as you can imagine, that freaked my mother out a bit, since she is in a nursing home.

Of course, I haven’t spoken to our vandal since I laid charges against him, two years ago, so this claim of his was just another thing he invented, like so many other things.

I learned today that when he had called my brother at work a few months ago, he ranted so loudly, everyone in the office could hear him!

The question is, what do we do about it?

Unfortunately, not much. I’m already doing the only things I can. Anything he does to my mother, she has to do herself. We can help her, but we can’t do it for her. The only way someone else could do it for her is if she were medically declared not of sound mind, and she is still far from that.

The frustrating thing is that, with our province extending the lock down again, my restraining order application’s court date will likely be delayed, yet again. I need to phone the court office closer to the date they gave me when I last called about it, so I will be calling next week. His civil suit against me is by teleconference, so there’s no delay in that. As you can imagine, it is extremely frustrating that a criminal matter is being delayed in the courts because of government shut downs, but civil cases can go ahead by phone. For us, so far, he’s only tried to destroy property and screamed verbal abuse as us, but what about people who applied for protection orders that fear for their personal safety? These lock downs have already caused a spike in domestic abuse, as so many tried to warn about. It’s hard enough for people to get the protections they need to begin with. Now, with the courts closed, they can’t get any at all.

The other frustrating thing is that our vandal is angry at me, for being here on the farm and actually standing up to his abusive behaviour, but it’s my mother that he takes it out on. He seems to still think he can get her to give the property to him, even though she no longer owns it, while at the same time, still seems to think she has given it to me. So… he thinks she can “take back” ownership from me, when I don’t own it, and give it to him?

That this makes sense to him is just a reflection of his state of mind. What is more confusing is how he managed to convince other people that this makes sense, and willing to even leave anonymous notes on my mother’s door – in spite of her building being locked down to visitors – telling her to give the farm “back” to him.

Bizarre.

On the plus side, my siblings, mother and I are being a lot more communicative and drawing around my mother to protect her as best we can. That we have to do it at all is just sad.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and apparently we had a storm

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I just had to pause for a picture when I saw these guys, watching me when I came outside this morning.

These guys know well enough to stay out of the wind, even if they can see fresh food and water is about to be dispensed! :-D

Except this little Spice Boy, who has a thing for drinking out of the water jug. He prefers this over drinking from a bowl! :-D

Also, those bulk sized Orville Redenbacher popcorn containers are the handiest things. The plastic is really strong, and they are a very useful size. We’ve got some with the bottoms cut off and the lids in place, that I use to scoop and carry critter feed. I used to use a metal pitcher for their water, but this holds a lot more water, and the handle design is easier to carry with one hand and not slosh while opening and closing doors. Used to put them in recycling, but now I keep them because they’re so useful!

As I was finishing up my rounds, Butterscotch made an appearance, and even let me carry her!

Well, sort of carry her. :-D

She still moves around too much for me to get a good look at her wound, but from what I can glimpse, it’s still looking good. Understandably, she seems uncomfortable sitting in the snow, as much from the lack of fur around it as for the wound itself!

We’ve got another relatively mild day today, though winds are certainly making it chillier. We were supposed to get snow this afternoon, but a storm passed through to the south of us, last night. We got light snow and winds, in our area. Now, it’s just winds. I’m good with that. We need to make a trip to the pharmacy this afternoon, which is when the weather was originally predicted to hit us. We’ll just have to watch out for ice, high winds and deer, and not the edges of a snow storm, too! :-D

I am soooo appreciating our mild winter. The last 3 since we moved here got so brutally cold. We’ll be getting colder next week, according to the long range forecasts, but it’s more of a normal cold than what we had in previous years.

I have no doubt the wild critters are appreciating it, too! Much better chances of survival. With Butterscotch having a little of kittens so late in the season, it is a relief for them and their safety, too.

Life is good.

The Re-Farmer

They’re finally in! Also, we still have an income…

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The last of our seed orders FINALLY came in the mail today. They were shipped quite a while ago!

This was the first batch that was ordered.

I completely forgot that, on noticing how few seeds were in the packets compared to the giant sunflowers we ordered last year (which was by weight, not seed count), I had ordered two of each.

The Crespo squash, which is a type of pumpkin from the Andes, was a last minute addition. I couldn’t resist!

I love how they use adorable children for scale.

This was my second order.

This was another “I couldn’t resist” order. After placing the first order, I went looking around the site. Baker Creek then sent me an email to up-sell me, using some of the new things I’d added to my wish list. I ended up ordering all of them. With seeds selling out so quickly again, I figured it was worth it. The price was right, too.

I have no idea if we will be able to plant any of these this year. We shall see how much space we have for starting seeds indoors. I think, at the very least, I want to try and germinate 2 or 3 of each variety.

Then there are the freebies.

This is the second package of purple kohlrabi we’ve been sent. I really, really want to try growing kohlrabi again. Gotta protect them from the bugs somehow!

As for the kale… we’re not fans of kale, except as kale chips (leaves tossed in olive oil and salt, then dehydrated in a warm oven). They are supposed to be very cold hardy, though, so that’s always a bonus for our area. We’ll make that decision then the time comes. I’m certainly willing to try a new variety!

I was very relieved to have these finally come in the mail! We do still have some back ordered items, and others that will be shipped at planting time, from Veseys, but those haven’t been shipped yet. These were shipped about month ago.

Something else came in the mail today.

It was from my husband’s health insurance.

Every year, he has to fill out a form to confirm that yes, he is still disabled, still under the care of a doctor (well… as much as he could be, this past year) and still alive. He is able to fill out the form, take a picture of it, and email the image, rather than send it through snail mail. At this point, he doesn’t even need a doctor to sign anything anymore. Everything gets process very quickly, and he later gets a letter detailing how much he will be getting in disability payments per month (it changes by a few dollars every now and then).

A while back, he got letter reminding him to send in the form.

Which he had already sent in.

He phoned them up and, after some digging, discovered that there was a different email for these forms than the one he’s been using for the last 5 years. Once he had that, he sent the form in again.

Today, he got another letter, reminding him to send in the form.

!!!

Thankfully, it was still early enough that he could call the insurance company, the office of which is in a different time zone. After sitting on hold, then being transferred to several different people, he got to the right one. His filed was looked at and…

All is good. His form had been processed.

Yesterday.

So that was a bit of a heart attack. If something had gone wrong, we don’t just loose the income we’re living on. We lose his coverage for prescriptions. This province does have Pharmacare, but that does not cover all of the medications he’s on. The medications are actually covered by a different company. His employer switched companies after he went on disability, so while his long term disability payments stayed with the original company, prescriptions are now covered by the company they switched to. If he loses one, he loses the other.

Which means we really, really appreciate that his insurance company was willing to send not one, but two reminder letters!

One thing I can say. Even with some screw ups related to the move, the insurance companies have done very well by my husband, and even gone above and beyond.

I thank God constantly for the excellent health insurance plan my husband was on. Yes, Canada has a “safety net”, but I know people who rely on it, and it sucks. We would have been financially devastated within months, probably weeks, without private health insurance.

We have much to be grateful for!

The Re-Farmer

Trying out an overnight bread recipe

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One of the things we enjoy doing is baking bread and experimenting with bread recipes.

Unfortunately, none of us are particularly able bodied. In what way may be different for each of us, but it’s not unusual for none of us to be up to kneading dough at the same time. I would happily use a bread machine, but not only do we not have enough outlets for another kitchen appliance, but even the ones we do have trip the power bar if we use more than one at the same time (before we started using the power bar, it would trip the breaker, and we’d have to climb up a small ladder, onto a shelf, to reach the breaker box and flip it back on).

Last night, I decided to try a plain, basic, overnight bread recipe that would not require kneading. After a bit of searching, I found this one.

Of course, I didn’t follow it exactly, but I stayed close. ;-)

One of the things I changed was to add a bit of sugar to the yeast and water mixture, just to feed the yeast.

I did not transfer it to another bowl, drizzle it with oil, then put it in the fridge. The bowl I used has a lid, so I left it in the same bowl and skipped the oil and plastic wrap. We also did not have room for such a large bowl in the fridge. I suppose I could have put it in the old kitchen, which is easily as cold as a fridge, but out dining room is pretty chilly, too, and I was feeling lazy. So I left it on the dining table overnight.

The only other difference is that I used half a cup less flour than the recipe called for. It’s really dry here in the winter, and that has a very noticeable affect on how much flour we use, vs what recipes call for, this time of year. I worked that last half cup of flour in by hand, and could feel that adding more would leave me with a regular, stiffer bread dough, so I left it be.

Here is how it looked in the morning.

What bubbly heaven! It actually looks like you could pour it!

Looks, however, can be deceiving.

While it was certainly a soft and sticky dough, it did pull away from the sides very easily as I stirred it down and worked it a little bit.

Now, my plan had been to use this to make hamburger buns.

Ha! Silly me!

Not the right dough for that! I supposed I could have done it, but I was prepping this to rise before heading out to do my morning rounds, so I just didn’t have time to be fuzzy.

Instead, I made a couple of very lopsided loaves on a pan I’d prepared for buns. :-D

I then left it to rise in a warm oven, then headed out to do my morning rounds and take care of critters.

I gave the loaves about an hour to rise before preheating the oven to 450F.

This is how they looked, while the oven was preheating.

I need to sharpen my knives. :-D

Here they are, after baking for 20 minutes. They were so pale, I was concerned they might not have had enough time, but when I pulled them apart, I could see they were just fine.

The resulting bread had a lovely, spongy crumb. The texture is soft and chewy, and it had a bit of a sourdough tang!

It was definitely a hit!

I think the next time I make bread using old dough the way my Babcia did, I will try it as a variation of this overnight bread. I would just have to adjust the quantities to make sure I have extra to remove for the next batch.

Once again, if you feel like giving it a try, this is the recipe I worked from.

I definitely recommend it!

The Re-Farmer

Stubborn Kitty!

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After getting Butterscotch’s wound stitched, and keeping her in the house overnight, we’ve been keeping an eye on her to make sure she is doing okay. As much as possible, anyhow.

She is not making it easy!

I had to zoom in, just to get a picture of her NOT letting me come close, this morning. :-D You can sort of see her skinny chicken leg, where the fur has been shaved off on the inside of her right leg. Her tail hides most of it.

She did eventually come over for some pets, though.

She will take attention on her own terms, thankyouverymuch!!

With her constant moving, it was hard to get a look. I had to giggle at myself, “chasing” a cat around, trying to look under her butt.

She seems to be moving around normally, and not favoring the leg more than the other, so that’s good sign that she is not in pain and the injury is healing up.

Other cats were much more friendly.

Nosey is such a sweet cat!

Interesting thing about him is that he wouldn’t come near us for the longest time. He sister would let us come near, which is how we were finally able to snag her and bring her inside before she could get pregnant. Once his sister was no longer around, he became much more willing to let us near, and now he’s one of the friendliest of yard cats!

There was only one problem, though. I had a crowd of cats following me as I did my rounds, which is usual when it’s wonderfully mild as it is today. Butterscotch tends to pick fights with the other cats, but this morning, after she hissed at Potato Beetle when he got too close, he actually went at her! As I moved to break it up, Butterscotch ran off, but Potato stayed, intently sniffing at the snow. Some of her kittens came by, and they started sniffing the snow, too.

When I got close enough, I could could see fresh urine in the snow, and they were very interested in it! My guess is, with the antibiotics and other medications she was given, it smells very different.

Butterscotch, meanwhile, did not go far!

There she is, with her baby. :-D

I love how the cats peek under the garage door like that!

As much as I was able to see of Butterscotch’s wound, it looks like everything is going well. Which is a relief. There is concern of her getting aggressive with the other outside cats, but that would be much more of a problem inside than outside. :-/ Ah, well. She’s a hardy cat and has probably survived far worse, before we even moved out here!

The Re-Farmer

Back outside: Butterscotch recovery update

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We ended up keeping Butterscotch indoors, overnight. After 2 hours in the carrier, she was certainly more active and alert after the anesthetic wore off, but she was totally cracked out! We did not feel it would be safe for her to be outside, yet.

She got the basement all to herself for the night. The inside cats were most upset over the closed door! :-D

This morning, my daughter got her into the carrier again (after checking her out) and I took her outside and let her go.

I could tell she was feeling better. As soon as one of her kittens came up to her, she batted him upside the head!

As you can tell, he wasn’t too bothered by that. :-D

Her wound looks good, and she did not seem to be favoring the leg as she walked around. She was soon in the kibble house, having a snack.

When I first let her out of the carrier, she was all about getting the pets, but after that, she wouldn’t let me near her!

After bringing the cat carrier back in, the inside cats were all over it, sniffing away. We’d put a small, soft crocheted mat inside for a bed, and I took it out and put it back into the box bed it’s normally in. Before long, I found Cabbages and Nicco – both Butterscotch babies – obsessed with sniffing it!

My daughters had started to talk about the possibility of trying to keep Butterscotch indoors, but she is much happier outside, and I think even the inside cats were pretty disturbed by her presence. Except Beep Beep, who simply ignored her! :-D

The Re-Farmer