cats

Planning ahead

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We are going to have a lot of running around over the next while! Thankfully, the weather looks like it’s going to be pretty good, even we are expected to have chillier days for the next while.

Clarence does not approve. I’m supposed to be available to cuddle him at all time, after all!

Today, I needed to run into town for several errands. The first was a trip to the pharmacy, to get refills for myself and for my daughter. Thankfully, her Pharmacare was processed, and she only had to pay under $5 for something that would have cost over $150! My pain killers, however, did not have a refill. I’m not out, yet, so they will send a fax to my new doctor, and they will be included win my husband’s prescription delivery, next week.

I need to remember to call the clinic and see if I can book an appointment for myself, piggy backing on my daughter’s appointment next week, to talk about the painkillers. They help, but not quite enough. Especially since I can take them only once a day.

The pharmacy needed time to get our refills together. Enough for me to hit the grocery store while it was being done. The main thing I needed to get was distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier. I’d forgotten to pick some up, the last time I was at Walmart. Locally, the price at the grocery store is almost double, so I just got one gallon. The pharmacy has distilled water, too, but it’s even more expensive than at the grocery store. I’ll pick up several more gallons when I’m at Walmart, later this week.

While I was at the grocery store, I spotted a new display with an amazing sale on bagged avocados, so I grabbed a couple of bags. Their sale on whole chicken was still going, so I grabbed another for the freezer. A whole chicken, by weight, cost around $10. Normally, these days, they are around $18.

I also grabbed something I could eat in the truck for breakfast, before going back to the pharmacy. I was early enough to pick up a couple more supplements I was running low on. I had intended to get those at Walmart, but the house brand’s price was very good, plus they also happened to be on sale, so it was actually cheaper to get them now.

Once done at the pharmacy, I went to visit with my mother before she had her lunch delivered. While there, I updated her on the plans we worked out last night, to get things ready in her apartment. My brother and SIL and I will meet at my mother’s apartment, and we’ll go through her fridge and cupboards to get rid of anything that should be. I gave my SIL a typical shopping list and she will be picking up fresh groceries for my mother. As I told her this, it gave me a chance to ask her if there was anything specific she wanted, and was able to pass that on to my SIL.

I told her that they were getting a lock box for her medications that should be in tomorrow morning, so we are meeting in the afternoon. I explained again that the home care aides would be able to get into the lock box but, if they don’t have someone available, they will call me and I will have to come over to give her her medications. She didn’t seem too happy with that, or the idea that she wasn’t going to be able to access her own prescription medications. I had to explain again, why her medications were going into a lock box, adding that she has said herself, that she’s starting to forget things. I could see she wasn’t impressed, but was going to let it go. She started to tell me something else…

… and forgot what she was going to say!

Once she realized what had just happened, we had a good chuckle over it.

My mother had one of her bubble packs with her that was almost full, and I know she has some partial ones at home, too. I took the one she had with her, so that I could take it and the ones she has at home, to the pharmacy, tomorrow. Most of her medications can be repacked into new bubble packs. The Home Care coordinator was going to deal with the pharmacy in regards to my mother’s medication changes, and get her file active again for Monday. Hopefully, they will have her new and up to date bubble packs ready, tomorrow, so I can take those for the lock box.

I explained to her again that she will be getting home care three times a day again, but the first visit of the day will be longer. She will have help with getting dressed and they can empty her commode for her, too. Her troubles with the commode was one of the things we remembered to bring up during the meeting with the doctor and the home care ladies.

I told her again about the Life Line she will be getting. She had forgotten entirely about that. Basically, I assured her that we will get everything at her apartment ready for when she comes home on Monday.

As for Monday, my SIL will be picking me up with one of their cars to get my mother home, which will be much easier for my mother than having her climb into my truck! Discharge time is at 11am, so we plan to be at the hospital for around 10am, so we have plenty of time to get her ready and pack up her things.

We then had time to just visit and chat. It turns out there are two other patients that she knows that are also in the hospital, and she was able to visit with them today. I’m glad she did. First, because it showed up much better she was feeling. Second, because the visits made them happy. An unexpected third is that it made my mother realize just how good she is actually doing. She is more than 10 years older than one of the ladies, and probably another 10 years older than the other. I know for sure that one of them will not be coming home. I don’t know why the other was is in the hospital. Then there’s my mother, who’s in her 90’s, and they’re sending her home, where she lives independently!

I really hope they can find an opening in supportive living for her, soon.

When my mother’s lunch was delivered, that was my cue to go. I just made sure all the lids were off her containers, and set everything up for her, before heading out. There was just one more stop for gas – one gas station was at $1.559/L, while the other two were at $1.579/L – then home.

My daughter was happy to get her medication, as she was almost out. The funny thing was, she had to get me to open the child-proof lids for her! She’s having to wear a wrist brace again, for having the audacity of using her left arm, yesterday. She has issues with ganglions. Something else she wants to talk to her doctor about! They’ve increasingly been a very painful problem. I remember that my sister used to get them, too. She ended up getting surgery, and never had a problem with them again. My daughter would really prefer NOT to have surgery, though! Ah, well. We shall see!

For today, at least, I’m done with running around. I’ll be out again tomorrow, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday is when we take Fluffy back to the vet. That is when her 2 weeks in isolation are up, too. We have not been able to touch her at all while she’s in the isolation shelter. Not even The Grink will let me touch him, though he does sometimes sniff at my fingers.

I have noticed something about them in the mornings, though. After I’ve finished my morning rounds, the last thing I do is pop back outside again with a can of wet cat food for them. I have noticed that after I’ve given them their kibble in the morning, they actually sit and watch me, in open anticipation, waiting for their wet cat food! We can only do this for the cats in the isolation shelter. Not only because there are just too many cats outside to regularly give them wet cat food, but also because anywhere else, the food would freeze. In the isolation shelter, the food area is in front of the heat lamp.

Midnight doesn’t know what he’s missing, by escaping the isolation shelter when he did! I did see him today, but not until this afternoon, after I got home.

I did have an unpleasant surprise in the garage when I got home, though. Thankfully, I did NOT drive over it. When I pull into the garage, there is a a moment when I am blinded, so I did not see the empty paint can and broken glass on the ground. !!!

We now have long wooden crates attached to one of the garage walls to create shelves. On top of one of them was one of our tool kits. That somehow got knocked off, and it hit some things on the way down, before landing upside down on a makeshift shelf we have on the ground. One of those things was a bin with light bulbs in it. That was upside down over the tool box, with light bulbs scattered all over. Some broken on and around the tool kit. Others were on the ground, right near where we give through to park! The empty can of isolation shelter paint was also knocked to the ground, along with odds and ends, like our paint stir sticks.

I was able to message the household about it, and my husband brought over a dustpan and hand broom for me while I picked things up and got rid of the broken bulbs and biggest pieces of glass. I was able to sweep the glass off the makeshift shelf, but the tiny pieces of broken glass in our dirt floor could only be swept aside, under the makeshift shelf.

If it weren’t for my habit of trying to part further to the right, so I have more room to open the driver’s side door all the way, I would have driven right over that paint can, the broken glass and probably at least one light bulb, and never seen it until after I got out of the truck.

I sure would have felt it, though!

There are definite issues with some of the yard cats using the garage as shelter. They go up into the rafters, where I’m sure it’s warmer.

We really need to go through the garage to sort and organize. It’s all pretty overwhelming, though. I’m not sure what half the stuff even is, or what might still be salvageable! Once we build more shelves into the walls, though, we’ll be in a better position to get things organized and cleaned up.

That’s a job for the summer, though!

We’ve got plenty that needs to be done between now and then, though.

It would be a huge help of the gas prices could go back down again. 🫤

The Re-Farmer

Snow day

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I’m so glad I don’t need to go anywhere.

As I write this, we’re at -9C/16F, but the wind chill is at -25C/-13F

Around the house, we are sheltered from the wind direction for a change, so we’re not getting quite that wind chill effect in our immediate area. Which I am happy for, since we have to keep the isolation shelter closed, and there was only two cats in it.

These two.

The (Fluffy) Lady, and The Grink.

I’d given them their wet cat food this morning, and Fluffy stayed well away from me. Even when I was about go go inside the house, saw her sharing the food bowl with The Grink and paused to get my phone out to take a picture, she saw me stop and moved away.

Clearly, she has not forgiven us for her trip to the vet! There’s no way I can check her incision, but at least we can tell how she’s feeling by her behaviour, at least somewhat.

The Grink, meanwhile, seems quite happy to stay right where he is! We see them cuddling together in the cat bed pretty regularly now.

I also managed to get a picture of this dude.

At least I think he’s a dude. My daughters tell me he is, but I haven’t been able to see, myself, with all that long fur. He does not allow us near him. I had to zoom in to get this photo. He looks so much like Fluffy! She doesn’t have any white fur, other than inside her ears, so we can at least use that to tell them apart. This fluffer is one of this past summer’s kittens, so there’s almost a year between them. Fluffy is pretty small for her age, though, so there isn’t a lot of size difference between them.

The snow in our area started last night. It started coming down pretty hard at one point, but mostly it was light and constant, so there’s a few inches accumulated already. We’ve got a break in the snow right now, but it’s supposed to start up again tonight and keep snowing until about noon, with only a couple of hours break at about 7am. From what I’m hearing and seeing on the highway conditions group, the roads were getting pretty snow covered. The road between us and town was pretty bad, which is typical when the winds are blowing this way. The east-west roads are almost always the worst.

Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll have to break out Spewie and do the driveway.

Needless to say, I did NOT head to town to see my mother. I did phone to ask how she was doing. I’d called shortly after shift change, though, so the nurse had only been there for 15 minutes. She knew my mother was doing well, and was feeling better, but that’s about it.

Then she asked if I wanted to talk to her on the phone. They could bring a phone to her room and she could transfer me over.

Yes, please!

It was good to be able to talk to her directly. Not that she could tell me much; she doesn’t understand much of what they are saying or doing in regards to her treatment, but she could tell me how she felt and we could just chat for a bit. My cousin had visited her today, so she was happy about that.

Little by little, I’ve been remembering different places to call that needed to know about my mother. Home care. Meals on Wheels. Today, I remembered to call her pharmacy. They would normally have delivered her bubble packs for the month, yesterday. Now that they know she is in the hospital, they can suspend her prescriptions until either we let them know she’s home, or a doctor calls to tell them her prescriptions are cancelled with the pharmacy, which they would do if she goes into long term care or assisted living.

I think that’s the last place that needs to know about my mother! Her church would already know, since the guy that took her to her appointment is from the church and has been bringing her communion since she hasn’t been physically up to going to church lately, and the church next to the hospital knows, as the priest has already come to give her communion since she was admitted.

It will probably be a couple of days before I can go and visit her again. While the roads might be clear earlier, it’ll take us some time to get our own driveway clear. In particular, I need to get the end of the driveway done. With what’s already there, once the plows go by, we probably would get stuck trying to get through the plow ridge. It’s going to start getting cold again, though. Today and tomorrow are going to be relatively warm, and then we’re getting highs of -19C/-2F, with overnight lows of -27C/-17F

I worry about the outside cats, but they know how to take care of themselves. The cats that used to hang out in the isolation shelter now hang out in the cat house and the sun room. Usually in big cuddle puddles.

We did get a big stinky kitty visit the sun room last night. I didn’t try to chase it out, after watching it on the camera for a while. The big heated water bowl that stopped working is set to the side, near where the heat lamp is. It’s full of ice, but on less frigid days, the heat lamp is enough for it to start to melt, and the cats seem to really like the melted ice water.

So goes the skunk, apparently. On the camera, I could see it sitting on top of the ice, doing something. It looked almost as if it were chewing on the ice, where a gap forms between the ice and the wall of the bowl. When I headed out this morning, I made sure to look. I could see a deeper spot in the ice, with smooth sides. The skunk had been licking the ice enough to create a hole!

By the middle of the month, I’m hoping we’ll have a new critter cam in the sun room. I’ve just ordered a small security type camera. It can be rotated 360° remotely, while the one in there now is stationary. The cats regularly knock it out of position. The main thing, though, is that it does not require a subscription to record and save files. We can add a micro SD card to record locally. As long as it can connect to our WiFi, that should be good. The last camera I tried simply would not connect to our WiFi, and we could never figure out why. If this one works out, I might try to get a lightbulb camera again, for the basement, to monitor the septic pump.

If I had the funds, I’d be like my brother with their old place. He had cameras everywhere! The buyers actually paid extra to keep his camera system. 😄 In the summer, I expect he will start adding more cameras around the property, since he moved his farm equipment here.

I have no problem with more cameras around!

But that will wait for when things are much warmer, and the snow is all gone.

It’s only February, but I am so done with winter already!

The Re-Farmer

Not today

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Oh, how lovely it feels outside right now! I did my morning rounds and even remembered to wear a lighter coat instead of my parka, so I wouldn’t over heat.

What I didn’t do was break out little Spewie to clear the rest of the driveway. Not today!

As far as the pain levels go, I could do it, but I know myself well enough by now to know that if I did, I would be useless for the next couple of days – and we’ve got too much going on in the next while!

One of those things is to hopefully be able to snag this fluffy lady and get her to the vet on the 30th.

She needs a name, still. So far, no name seems to stick, other than “fluffy lady”, and we have several of those!

After I took this picture, I tried to reach out to pet her, but she kept backing off. I was able to move around and reach her more from behind. Once I started to pet her, she was good with it. She does love to be pet, and I was even able to give her double handed skritches on either side of her head. But we can’t just walk up to her, or reach out to her. We still have to sort of sneak in to pet her.

I am 99% sure she is pregnant right now. Last year, she’s the one who dropped her litter all over the yard and abandoned them, leaving me to have to euthanize the survivors. She got pregnant very late in the season. This year, she went into heat so early, there is almost no chance of survival for her kittens. Especially if she drops her litter again, like last year. So getting her spayed is a higher priority than getting Brussel spayed. We know Brussel knows how to be a mother. The chances of her kittens surviving is still really, really low, just because of the time of year, but we do know she has a safe nest somewhere beyond the inner yard.

As for which male we are able to catch, it could be any one of several friendly males. It might even be this one.

I was actually petting both Magda, when she was up on the shelf, and Kohl (you can just see Magda’s face beside Kohl, near the window) when this tabby pushed himself in, demanding pets. I believe this is the male that was pretty sick for a while, and allowed us to tend to him. He’s grown quite a bit since then!

It was interesting to see these three, plus a couple more kittens on the cat bed inside, and realize they are all almost the same age. There would be only days or, at most, a couple of weeks age difference between them. Magda, another grey and white, and a black and white cow baby the girls call The Grink, are all really, really tiny. Then there’s this tabby, Kohl and her brother, Rabi, who are all so much bigger! Kohl and Rabi were the first litter last year, so they are the oldest among the kittens, but by this time, the others should have caught up.

With things freezing in the snow and being visible that would normally not be seen in the summer, we have a pretty good idea of why some of these kittens are really small. At least one of them has a serious case of round worms. I was very perplexed when I found what turned out to be frozen throw up. There was nothing in the ice but these worms; no partially digested food or anything like that. I’ve seen tape worms before, but I’ve never seen roundworms before, so I was quite perplexed by what I saw. They are very curly!

I’d sent a picture to the Cat Lady (it’s a good thing we’re such friends! 😄😂) and she identified it for me. These are the worms that Button had. He needed to be treated for worms three times before he was clear of them. During treatment, she said it was like he was pooping spaghetti, it was so bad! Once he was clear of them, though, he started growing again, and is now almost normal size for his age. Still on the small side, but not abnormally so.

The question is, how do we even begin to treat yard cats for round worms? It’s not like we can give them a pill. For starters, we have no idea which cat had those throw ups I found. We’d have to basically treat all of them – yesterday, I got a head count of possibly 36 – and just hope we get the infected ones. I lean towards thinking it’s The Grink, a cat we can’t get close to, but there are the two other very tiny cats that likely also have them.

One of the recommendations is to feed them pumpkin. Which would be great if we could do cat soup for the outside cats. Without heated food bowls, though, we had to stop giving them the kibble we softened with warm water we’d been doing in the fall. We could mix in the lysine and ground pumpkin seed with that. When the softened kibble started freezing before they could finish eating it, there was no point in continuing. Once we start consistently getting temperatures above freezing, we can start softening the kibble for them again. That makes dosing them with supplements easier. Not that there’s any way to control the doses this way, but at least they’d get some.

The jury is out on how well pumpkin actually words for this. It might be worth getting more of the Happy Poops stuff as a supplement. Looking up the ingredients – pumpkin, flax seed, coconut, chicory root, turmeric, ginger and banana – I found that several of them were noted as helping against worms. The larger jar would be pretty expensive, though. It’s one thing to buy it for the inside cats, where we at least know that they won’t just get infested again. Quite another to get something like that for yard cats.

There’s only so much we can do for them, but we do the best we can.

The Re-Farmer

Warming up, and pretty ladies!

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Well, we did reach our high of -17C/1F today – at about 6-7am. By the time I headed outside to do my morning rounds, it was down to -19C/-2F, which isn’t too bad, except the wind chill was -32C/-26F It was coming from the north- northeast today, so the house acted as a wind break for the most part. I made a point of checking the ejector this morning, where I found myself getting hit by the wind, full blast.

Not fun.

Ejector is fine, though. I checked the heat tape and could feel warmth.

As I write this, it’s just past 5pm, and we’ve cooled down to -20C/-4F, but the wind chill is still -32C/-26F

This afternoon, I made sure to check on the truck, get it running for a while, then hooking up the OBDII to do a scan. The same sensor code is coming up; nothing else, so that’s good.

While letting the engine run and warm up, I took advantage of the sunshine and relative shelter from the wind and shoveled out the paths. We didn’t get a lot of snow, but the winds blew drifts into all the paths, with some not even visible anymore. Just flat snow. The kitties will be much happier, now that they can get around the yard more easily!

Speaking of kitties, check out these beauties.

The first one is the fluffy girl that we can sometimes pet while she is eating. She lost her first litter last year. Unfortunately, she is now in heat. Brussel is being left alone, so I have to assume she’s pregnant, but the boys are all over this one.

This is a really bad time of year for a cat to go into heat. They’d both be having kittens at the end of February or so. Chances of survival are pretty much nil.

I’m really hoping we can catch her, or Brussel, for the spay next week. We’re booked for one male and one female, and I don’t expect to have any problems catching the males. They are far less feral than the ladies.

If you click through to the next photo, you can see another of our fluffy beauties; one of last year’s kittens. Totally feral. No idea if it’s male or female. We have at least one, maybe two, more fluffy ones like that that are completely unsocialized, and won’t go near us. I had to zoom in quite a bit to get that picture!

I had a chance to talk to the Cat Lady today. Yesterday, I’d connected with someone in a feral and stray cat group on FB. I normally am not active on there, after being burned by similar groups in the past. Someone was offering donated cat food, though, so I contacted her. I told her outright that we’ve been having difficult getting help, and only one rescue has been willing to help us. We messaged each other privately, and ended up arranging to connect when I’m in the smaller city, waiting for the spay and neuter to be done. I will be meeting the Cat Lady that day, too.

After, I let the Cat Lady now that I’d connected with someone about possible food donations. Today, she phoned me and asked if it was a particular person by name.

It was the same person.

She then warned me to watch out for her. She says, her heart may be in the right place, but she has… issues. Issues that have resulted in her calling the provincial vet on people she had been “helping”, which then resulted in a whole lot of cats being euthanized instead of TS/NR’d. More alarming is that she has been sending cats out of province with “brokers”. The cats get picked up by people in unmarked white vans, and are never heard from again. She apparently is full convinced that these “brokers” are adopting the cats out to good homes in the other province – a province that is just as overwhelmed with cats as rescues are out here (we’ve lived in that province a couple of times, over the years). The Cat Lady suspects the cats are actually going to a lab, based on her own observations before leaving the big rescue she had been connected with when I first met her.

Basically, she said that if we can get help with cat food, getting cats fixed or getting them adopted, that could be fine, but not to give any personal information, not to say where we live, and especially not to send pictures, as those will get shared all over online without our permission. It’s people like this woman, and the rescues she’s connected with, that have resulted in the Cat Lady backing away from her own rescue, and basically working with just a couple of people like us, and that’s it.

As she was telling me this, I remembered some of her past stories she’d told me, about how and why she left the big rescue. No names were mentioned, so I hadn’t known this person was one of the people she’d had issues with.

Well, we just have to be careful, which I try to be, anyhow.

One of the things that came up was how many cats we’re feeding right now. With how cold it’s been, I haven’t done head counts in a long time. The last time I did, I think I counted about 36, or in that range.

Today was nice enough that I tried to do a head count after doing their evening food and water. I counted “only” 23! That’s a huge drop. I had been seeing as many as 15 crowded into the top of the isolation shelter. Today, I counted 5. Looking into the sun room from the bathroom, I’ve counted as many as 20 that I could see, most bunched together under the heat lamp. Today, I counted 8 in the sun room. The rest that I counted were running around outside.

Twenty three cats is still too many, and I know that there is likely cats that just hadn’t come to the house for food yet, but that’s still a big change.

Well, we’ll see how much they change again, as the weather warms up.

Tomorrow, we’re looking at a high of -15C/5F, which is supposed to happen at about the time my daughter and I will be at her doctor’s appointment. We will take advantage of the trip to pick up a few groceries and some more kibble. Our first stock up shopping trip is a week away, so we won’t be getting much.

Man, I really hope the long range forecast into February is somewhat accurate. I’m now seeing forecasts for highs of 8C/46F!

That is going to be so awesome.

The Re-Farmer

Power is back… for now?

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Okay, let’s see how long this will last!

The power is back on again, and stayed on long enough that I turned my computer back on and will try posting this.

We’ve got another brutally cold morning. While doing the morning routine, after feeding the cats, I took the litter buckets out to their compost pile behind the outhouse. They had been in the old kitchen, which is not heated. I couldn’t empty them completely, because of the damp sawdust frozen to the sides of the buckets! Normally, I’d knock the buckets against a tree, but I didn’t want to shatter the plastic.

By the time I got back inside, it had warmed up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F. I just checked again now, and I have three different weather apps telling me three different temperatures! I’ve got one saying it’s -24C/-11F, another saying we’re still at -25C/-13F, and another saying we are at -26C/-15F. Only two of them give me wind chills, with one saying -30C/-22F, and another saying -33C/-27F

I was supposed to pick up our beef share today, but I had already tried to reschedule last night, on seeing the temperatures expected for today. We haven’t replaced the cord on our block heater yet, so I don’t want to try driving the truck. It’s not cold enough to crack the engine block (yes, we’ve had that happen before), but I still would rather not take any chances.

With there being power issues today as well, that’s even more reason to stay home.

In the second photo of the above slide show, you can see the ice and frost accumulated on the inner door of our main entry. There’s frost on the bottom, too.

The next photo shows Caramel in the bigger cat bed inside the shelf shelter, with frost on her face. She could go into the sun room (the thermometer on the wall was reading -15C/5F), or the heated cat house, but she chose the shelf shelter.

In the next photo, you can see that even Kohl has frost on her face! The other fluffball didn’t have any frost on him at all. The insides of the windows were frosted, though. Even the heated water bowl was starting to show ice freezing near the top. After giving them their wet cat food, I scooped out most of their water bowl (the power cord is wrapped around the support on the top, so I can’t take it very far out of the shelter to spill it out) and replace it with warm water.

I noticed a corner of the plastic wrapped around the bottom was coming loose. When I checked it, I found that cats had pulled the plastic down, all along the back of the isolation shelter. So I got a cardboard box and opened one corner, to make one long, flat piece. Three sections were just long enough to cover the entire back, with one section was enough to cover the side of the shelter. I quickly tacked the cardboard in place, but after taking the picture, which is the last one in the slide show, I secured it a bit better and bent the flap, so it wasn’t overlapping the sliding door.

The water bowl in the sun room was frozen solid. It was also completely full. Normally, it just top it off with the warm water, which melts through the layer of ice to reach liquid water below, but that was not going to happen. I ended up taking it outside and chopped the ice out with a hatchet, being careful not to hit the bowl itself. The heated water bowl in the water shelter is still working fine, so they at least had that.

There was still quite a lot of kibble in the outside food trays. No surprise there, really. They would have had to be incredibly hungry to go out there in last night’s cold for food! I know for sure we hit -29C/-20C before I’d gone to bed last night.

With the power going out, we needed to keep tabs on how long it was out. With the heat lamp in the isolation shelter off, it would get dangerously cold in a very short time, and it would be hard for two small cats to keep each other warm, even with the cat bed in the most insulated corner. The cardboard would have helped some, but not enough. We would have had to take them out to join the other cats in their cuddle puddles to stay warm, as there is no way we can bring them inside the house.

Thankfully, the power seems to be staying on, now.

It did get me thinking of alternatives.

If we really needed to, we could use the fire bricks we’ve bee slowly accumulating for our future outdoor kitchen to create a radiant heater in the isolation shelter. A brick or two on the second level floor, more bricks to form a wall around, tea lights inside, and bricks on top to make sure no kitty could touch the flames. The bricks themselves would absorb heat and continue to radiate heat out, even after the candles burned out. For a small space like that, it could work.

We have the ability to do things like cook if the power goes out, but that’s all outside. With temperatures like today, it just wouldn’t be feasible.

Another reason to put a priority on building the outdoor kitchen. Even if we just had the structure up, it would give us a sheltered space for a fire pit to cook over. I’d love to find a way to have it closer to the house, but there just isn’t a good space in the inner yard for that. Too many trees and other structures. As it is, we’ve changed our minds on the outer yard location a few times before settling on the space between the pump shack and the old chicken coop.

Things to think about!

In other things…

I was so happy to get that call from the new pain clinic. They have just opened recently, and my husband’s new doctor had referred him to it already. They needed to send him a questionnaire, which they normally would have mailed, but the postal strike is still going. So they wanted an email address to send it to, instead.

This is why having a corded phone on a land line is still important. We don’t get enough signal to get phone calls on our cell phones – I’m amazed I was able to make my earlier post, with how poor our signal was at the time. Far less signal strength is needed to send things in text, thankfully. At least there was a signal. Usually, there’s nothing.

Hmmm… I’m going to try something here. My current computer with the current OS has features my old one didn’t. One of those is the ability to do a video screen capture. Check this out…

This is the animated weather on my desktop app. From the colours, you can see that large swaths of Canada and the US are as cold as, or almost as cold as, the Greenland glaciers!

Thankfully, days like this will apparently be few and far between, this winter. We’ll have some cold days in the week before Christmas, but the long range forecast is now saying to expect 3C/37F on Christmas Eve, 1C/34F on Christmas Day, and 5C/41F on Boxing Day! Then stay with highs above freezing, through to New Year’s Eve!

Of course, I expect those forecasts to change, but so far, we’re not going to be getting weather like today very often. Quite the change from our first couple of winters here, when we saw entire months much like what we’re getting right now.

Funny. As I get older, I’m finding I can handle the cold a lot better than I used to, physically – but mentally, it’s the other way around!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

The Re-Farmer

A quiet day after evening drama

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First, the fun stuff!

I did the morning routine today. We were under weather warnings yesterday for snow, but from what I could see, we didn’t get much of any, overnight. Or, if we did, it melted right away, then froze by morning, because it was SO slippery! It’s snowing now, though, so we’ll see how that works out.

Of course, the isolation babies got their extra treat of wet cat food. The cat beds we washed last night were returned, so they now have two in their shelter again. Unfortunately, they seem to be ignoring the freshly cleaned litter box and just using the floor on the bottom level. At least some of it will be easy to clean up once they are frozen. 🫤

Kohl really wanted attention! I spent quite a bit of time petting her through the sliding windows. She made no effort to get out! The closest was when she rubbed her face against my arm so far, she almost fell through the doorway.

Her partner in crime deigned to sniff my fingers a bit, but Kohl was so aggressive for pets, she got in his way. When I saw him at the food bowl, I thought I might pet him while he was eating, but as soon as Kohl saw me at that sliding door, she came right over. She was pushing her way through to get pets so aggressively, she pushed him away from the food! So I stopped, to give him a chance to eat. He, also, made no effort to leave the isolation shelter. Other cats, however, saw the open sliding doors and wanted in!

Later on, I got to enjoy another bit of adorableness. Our elderly grandma managed to get access to the new cat bed again. With the other cats, we’ve found as many as three of them squeezed into there, all at once!

There’s barely room for Grandma in there, never mind three cats!

After yesterday evening, I’m happy to say that today really has turned out to be a day of Peace, for the Second Sunday of Advent.

I got a call from my mother “late” last night. It actually was pretty early, but had been dark for so long already, I thought it was closer to midnight, not early evening!

She had clearly called for a reason, so I asked what was going on.

Very long story short…

She was dying and needed to go to the hospital.

Of course she did. It was a Saturday night. *sigh* It’s always on a Saturday, or Sunday on a long weekend.

I really don’t want to be so jaded by this, but she does it so often!

I told her, we’re under a weather watch. If she really felt she needed to go to the hospital, it would be safest to call an ambulance.

Then I had to keep asking questions to get some idea of why she felt she needed to go to the hospital.

Her cold was getting worse. She was coughing lots. There was pain in her stomach. She had a headache, which she thought was connected to her stomach.

Even the pain in her stomach took quite a while to get straight. About all I could get out of her is that she felt pain directly below her sternum. Every time I tried to get a clearer description, she’s start to tell me, then launch into something else, like did I know where her important stuff in her apartment was hidden (in case she dies or is in the hospital, and people go into her apartment to snoop).

She didn’t want an ambulance, because she wanted someone with her to watch her purse for her; she has important stuff in her purse, and she didn’t want people going through it while she was getting tests done.

She didn’t want to go to the same ER as last time, because that hospital is run by Muslims now. The last time she was there, when I went to pick her up, she told me she had a Muslim doctor (a hijabi woman), and that she had “stolen my heart”. She’d had a very positive experience with her, but has since rewritten her memory again. Now, because there was one Muslim doctor, she has decided that means the entire hospital is run by Muslims. *sigh*

Then she didn’t want to go to that ER because last time, she was in the waiting room for 15 hours (she did get called for tests in that time frame, but I had to explain triage to her again).

I ended up going online to see which hospital ERs in our region were open. The one nearest us was still open, but closing at 9pm. The other, in the hospital her doctor’s clinic is in, was open for the night. Did she really want to go to the ER? We talked about how, every time she’s gone, they would do tests, find nothing wrong, and send her home.

Oh, they found something, but they won’t tell her, because they want her to die. They take advantage of old people. They don’t care. Etc.

It was while I was looking up to see where there were any open ERs in our area, and talking about how busy they get on the weekends, that my mother even commented on how this always seems to happen on a Saturday! I wonder why? she asks. 😄

Then, because I wasn’t leaping to drive her to the ER immediately, she launched into how her children didn’t care about her, either. When that didn’t work, she shifted to, “oh, you are already dealing with so much. I’m sorry I called you. I shouldn’t have called you.” (a regular passive aggressive dig about my disabled husband)

*sigh*

After straightening that out, too, she started talking about how she needs to be in a nursing home, she can’t take care of herself anymore, she needs help.

I told her (again), you can’t just walk into a nursing home and get accepted. We are working on it. There is a process that has already been started, but it can take a while. Nursing homes are for people who are a lot further along than she is, and we would basically be waiting for someone to die for a bed to open. She forgets how my dad was before he went into the nursing home. By then, he was getting home care visits for personal care three times a day, and had declined to the point that they could not longer meet his needs. Very different from my mother getting three med assists a day, to make sure she takes her pills properly.

I was finally able to calm her down and told her that I would talk to my siblings and let them know what’s going on, suggesting she have herself some hot tea and rest. Which she agreed to do.

Once off the phone, I created a group chat to message my siblings, thinking it would be faster than email. My sister turns her phone off when she’s at home, though, and didn’t respond until well past 1am. I was finally able to reach my brother in a side chat, and he only had time to ask if Mom had been eating those mandarins my sister had picked up for her. I completely forgot about those. My mother isn’t supposed to eat anything citrus, as it triggers her acid reflux, but my sister got them for her because she felt they were mild enough *sigh* and because my mother had a cold and needed the vitamin C.

For someone who was really sick with a cold, my mother had sounded really great on the phone. Just some mild coughing, towards the end of the conversation.

So I finally went to bed and didn’t see my sister’s response until past 6am.

After doing my morning rounds and having breakfast, I figured it was a good time to try calling my mother. Her morning med assist should have come and gone by then.

I’m happy to say that my mother reported feeling much better. The “pink medicine” (the Pepto) helped so much. Her stomach was hurting much less and her cold was getting better.

Her voice was sounding hoarser this morning, though, and she was coughing more throughout our conversation, but overall, she said she was improving.

I remembered to ask her if she’d been eating the mandarins. She bounced around the answer, saying things like, not this morning, or, let me check, and, only during the day (since she insists on eating foods that will trigger her acid reflux, I’ve suggested that she at least tries to eat only a small amount, early in the day, since it’s when she lies down to sleep that it really bothers her) and so on. So I concluded that she probably did have several of them before all this started, but wasn’t about to admit it.

We talked a bit about the list of foods I gave her that could cause her problems, and which were okay. I think the printout I gave her might still be taped up on one of her cupboard doors. I brought up tomatoes, because I knew my sister had been giving her tomatoes from her garden, first fresh, then canned, over the past while. She said, no, she’d already finished those off. My mother even had given me one of my sister’s jars of tomatoes a while back, because it was just tomatoes; my sister didn’t even put salt in it. 😄 I forgot to bring up onions, though. I think she does still have some of those. So anything citrus, anything in the onion family, and tomatoes are the things she most commonly eats that are causing her problems. She is on acid reflux medication, and I’d hate to see how bad it would be for her if she wasn’t! The Pepto helps her for these short term problems, though.

At one point, when I was asking her questions about how she was feeling and what she had been doing, she brought up dry mouth again – this time, blaming the mandarins. We talked about her need to hydrate, but she just doesn’t want to drink water! As she put it, her mouth wants water, but her stomach doesn’t.

I do get that, so we talked about other ways to hydrate, including through some kinds of foods.

With her voice being so rough and her coughing, I didn’t want to keep her talking on the phone for too long. I tried to say good bye a few times, but she kept finding other things to talk about, like how she had “forced herself” to change her bedding, and mopping her bedroom floor with disinfectant while her bed was moved away from the wall, and how she was so sick, she never even got out of her nightgown, all day…

Honestly, my mother has no idea how strong she is, and how well she’s doing. She’s practically indestructible, but constantly complaining about how sick she is and increasingly talking about how she is dying.

Today, though, she was able to recognized that yesterday was a combination of things that made her feel so much worse, and now she’s glad she didn’t go to the hospital.

I really do hope they are able to get her into some sort of assisted living soon. It’s so hard to know what’s going on with her, how much is real, how much is her deciding things are worse than they are, and so on. She really does need someone around that can monitor her. Between me and my siblings, none of us are in a position to be that for her.

After I was done talking to her on the phone, I updated my siblings. My sister later reported on her own phone tall to my mother. It seems she’d picked up some cup-o-soup for my mother when she did her grocery shopping for her – something my mother would never had bought for herself – and that Mom was going to have some for lunch.

So all is improving with my mother.

Meanwhile, it has been slowly snowing throughout most of the day. We have another ongoing weather warning for “snow showers” right now, because we’re at only -3C/27F, though the wind chill puts us at -12C/10F. It’s supposed to keep snowing, heavily, at times, until about 3am. It’s also supposed to slowly keep getting colder overnight until we reach about -11C/12F by about 7am, and stay that temperature all day.

Hopefully, the roads will be cleared and no longer slippery, by the time I have to go to my mother’s, tomorrow, for her telephone doctor’s appointment.

For now, though, it does look all peaceful outside, and I’m much relieved that my mother is doing better today.

The Re-Farmer

Costco extra stocking up: this is what $899 looks like

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I am exhausted.

It was a good trip. The actual shopping wasn’t too bad, considering the time of year. I’m just getting drained, and it’s starting to have an effect on me.

With Christmas and New Year’s coming up, which changes when my husband’s disability payments come in, I decided to go into next month’s budget and get as much as I could on this trip. So this shopping trip included larger packages or extra items to stock us up into January. Plus, I’ve started to get things that we will be having for New Year’s in particular. We have decided to make our Christmas and New Year’s celebratory meals to be as stress free as possible. So there will be a lot of frozen appetizers as finger foods, heat and eats, etc. We will likely do some charcuterie as well, so some items, plus any fresh foods, will be picked up locally, closer to Christmas.

We already have a turkey in the freezer, plus we are getting our 1/8 beef next week. We’d been making monthly payments against that until the ranch told us they thought there was enough. The beef has been butchered and is being cut and frozen now, so they got the final weight, and it turned out we overpaid for our share. We will be getting a credit on that. I would have preferred extra beef, but they don’t butcher for general sales anymore; just pre-ordered beef shares, so there was no extra available. So we didn’t need to get a lot of meat this trip, not did we need to get as much cat food.

On the way out, the truck’s tank was below half, so I did stop at a gas station in my mother’s town along the way. I got $30 of gas, at $1.309.

As had been my plan when I tried to do this trip last week, I stopped at a shopping mall, first. It was past 11 by then, and I hadn’t had breakfast yet. This time, the food court was all open, though, and I ended up getting some Chinese food. That cost about $18 and change.

Once at the Costco, my first stop was to fill the tank. The Costco price for regular gas was $1.119 and it cost me $47 and change to fill the tank. So before I even started shopping, I already spent $77 in gas and $18 on food.

This is what $899.82 at Costco looks like.

I got a shot from each side, because so much was hidden from view.

So what did I get for almost $900

For the cats, I got two 9kg bags of kibble and a box of puppy pads. There is a case of Coke Zero for my husband and I, plus a case of energy drinks, which my daughter paid for. Also among the drinks list was a large box of Earl Grey tea and some iced tea mix. I also got some Eggnog, which was on sale, mostly for the girls, and a case of oat milk, completely for the girls.

Paper produces included toilet paper and paper towels. I probably should have got more facial tissues, but I didn’t want to take up too much space on the flat cart. I needed room for the big bag of sugar and the case of vinegar.

Also among the non-food items is some dish detergent, toothbrushes and a package of pens. I was out of normal coloured pens.

In the pharmacy section, I got both acetaminophen and ibuprofen, plus adult gummie multivitamins for my daughters.

For bread products, I got a couple of 2 pks of rye bread, four packages of tortilla warps and a 3 pack of sunflower and pumpkin seed, multigrain sliced bread.

For protein, I got a package of chicken breasts that was on sale, plus some tilapia fillets for the girls. I also got a panini pack for sandwiches, with canned chicken and pack of Spam for the pantry. There’s also a double flat of eggs (5 dozen).

In dairy, I got 5 pounds of butter, whipping cream, a 3 pack of cream cheese, mozza, Old cheddar, marble cheddar, goat cheese and a wheel of brie.

There’s also a bag of spinach and mini portabellas (aka: cremini mushrooms).

Among the jarred items, there are two big jars of mayo, olives and pickled asparagus, which was on sale. The pickled asparagus will be used, along with tortilla warps and cream cheese, to make appetizer pinwheels for our celebratory dinners.

There is a bag of Basmati rice and some hazelnuts. Oh, and a 3 pack of 4 cheese, rainbow tortellini, which was on sale.

For snacks, I got my husband a big back of Munchies Mix, and two boxes of Sweet and Salty granola bars for the four of us.

Then there are the frozen items. Along with a box of perogies and a box of Pizza Pops for quick heat and heats, we have the appetizers for our celebratory dinners. There are Mac n Cheese bites – something we’ve never tried before – mozza sticks, bacon wrapped scallops and mini quiche.

And that’s everything.

Hopefully, I won’t need to go another Costco trip until February! Or at least not until mid-January.

So it was a very productive trip, though part way through the shopping, I realized I was not doing well. I was over heating, but also getting very dehydrated. I did use their public water fountain about half way through my shopping, which helped a lot, but by the time I was standing in line to pay for the stuff, I was starting to feel dizzy and getting the shakes. I was at least getting a breeze from the giant fan above, while half taking off my coat and removing my hat, which helped.

While my items were being rung through and they were doing the stuff still on the flat cart, I dashed over to a water bottle vending machine and got one to start hydrating once back at the till. It wasn’t a large bottle, so by the time I loaded everything into the truck, I’d finished it off. I also keep water in the truck, and still had half my drink from my lunch, so I was able to continue hydrating for the ride home, and was feeling much better.

My back was also starting to give out, well before I reached the till, but that was also much better by the time I got home. An hour or so of sitting instead of walking around, wrestling the flat cart, helped a lot.

I was able to back the truck up quite close to the house, making it easier to unload. My daughter’s knee was still hurting her from her fall yesterday, but she was no longer using a cane. Once the truck was empty, I had to feed the outside cats to get them away from the truck – by then, it was starting to get dark and time to feed them, anyhow – so I could park it. Once I got back to the house, I also got some warm water to top up their bowls. The big water bowl in the sun room just had sheets of ice left in it, and the working heated water bowl in the shelter was almost dry!

The babies in the isolation shelter still had plenty of water. They got canned cat food with their morning feeding, along with the kibble. There was still kibble left in their bowl, but the wet food was long gone!

Unfortunately, as I was unloading bags to the door, I spotted Kohl digging around on the cat bed on the lower level. The little bugger had just pooped on the cat bed, instead of the littler box, right next to her!

Both of them seem much calmer now, but Kohl would not let me touch her, never mind pet her, or check her incision. I’m not too concerned about her, though. I’m more relieved the male it no longer panicking and trying to bash his way out through the wire mesh walls. They were both watching us closely, as we unloaded the truck, right near them.

When I topped up their kibble, neither tried to escape or anything like that. When I reached in to try to pet Kohl, I could feel it is nice and warm in there. I’ve been keeping the Cat Lady up to date on how they are doing, and she was very relieved to hear they are doing well. For all the effort we’re making to provide them with a safe, warm shelter during their recovery, the isolation shelter is still basically just a small box outside in the winter. She would really like to find homes for them. I told her to go ahead and share the photos I’d been sending her, and to tell people these two will be released to the yard again, after their recovery period. Hopefully, that will encourage someone to want to adopt and rescue them from the outdoors and give them an indoor forever home. It doesn’t hurt that they are both so incredibly adorable!

So, that’s my running around for today. Tomorrow, the dump is oven longer hours, and we are overdue for a trip, so I am hoping to get our garbage and recycling finally out. From there, I should be able to continue on to the feed store with the brand of kibble in 40 pound bags that the cats like better. As of right now, the high for tomorrow is expected to be 3C/37F, which makes it the ideal time to repair the wind torn vinyl around the catio. Plus, there are some tears in the vinyl around the bottom of the isolation shelter, where other cats were trying to get in. We should be able to patch those up with the extra vinyl table protectors I picked up while I was waiting for the vet to finish with the spay and neuter, yesterday.

Which means tomorrow will be another day of running around. Thankfully, I will be able to stay home on Sunday. I’ll be going to my mother’s on Monday. She has a telephone doctor’s appointment, and she wants me with her, since I help her remember things, and can understand what the doctor tells her and can spend the time to explain it to her later.

Meanwhile, I really, really glad to get this stock up shop done, even if it did get pretty expensive. This is meant to last us longer than usual, and will hopefully result in a quieter time over the holidays.

I’ve reached that stage in life where quite and boring is all I want! 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Finally home and settled!

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I swear, it was more hectic as soon as I got home than with the running around I did earlier!

The Cat Lady and I met up after I dropped the cats off at the vet, then had breakfast at McRaunchies at the Walmart. She started handing me things for the back of the truck.

Then more things.

Then more things!!

This is so amazing!

The big reusable bag, the cat bed, the small bags of cat food under it, and the big bag on the other side, are all from the Cat Lady. These are all things she can no longer feed her own cats, because it all has chicken in it, and The Wolfman keeps steeling into it, even though they give him things like freshly baked salmon way too often. There are five small bags under the cat bed. They are some fancy type of cat food – she described it as a prescription cat food, though the bags say senior cat on them – that normally cost $60 each. *gasp* She got them at half price, which is still insane. She warned me that this kibble really stinks. It’s a herring and chicken blend, so it’s likely the fish smell, she says. The cat bed is one her cats have stopped using for some reason, so she passed it on to us.

I am more than happy to take her cast offs!!

The other two bags were donated by a friend of hers for us. She’d never seen the brand before, so she couldn’t tell me anything about it.

After we loaded up the truck box, parted ways. I headed to the Dollarama to get new vinyl to repair the catio covering and things I thought might help hold it in place better – and some spring cat toys.

Then it was off to the Walmart to get some stuff my husband asked for. I also got myself a pair of slipper shoes. I’ve been trying to replace my inside shoes for ages, and can’t find any that are as comfortable as the old ones. So I tried the men’s slippers. I wasn’t able to try them on, but I got some size 9’s – the size I usually get – that were indoor/outdoor with memory foam insoles. I figured, if they didn’t fit, my daughter/s would have some new inside shoes.

I would have looked around for other things, but so many people were blocking the aisles, I gave up, paid for my stuff and left.

I still had time, so I drove across the street to the Canadian Tire to hang out there. Usually, I would have just stayed in the truck and napped, but it was too cold.

I did remember to pick up a carabiner for the isolation shelter latch, and a windshield fluid funnel for the truck. I was able to pay for it with change. I’m glad I had some, because I wouldn’t have wanted to make such a small purchase on my debit card! 😄

I did almost buy myself a new winter “going out” coat. I found a display of nice parkas on clearance that were very affordable. Alas, it was not to be. Being built like a tank has its disadvantages. I found an XXL to try on, and it mostly fit, until I tried to move my arms. My shoulders were too broad for it, and they didn’t have any bigger sizes.

Ah, well.

I still had time and it was coming up on noon, so I headed over to a nearby Timmies for lunch. For my readers outside of Canada, Tim Horton’s, aka: Timmies, is an iconic Canadian coffee and donut shop, though I don’t think they are Canadian owned anymore. Tim Horton was a hockey player. Today, they now do all sorts of sandwiches, soups and so on, as well as coffee and donuts.

Until yesterday, when my daughter and I went to one for breakfast, I hadn’t been to one in ages.

My daughter worked at the local one for awhile. She ended up quitting because of the health and safety violations from one employee. When she made a complaint to the manager, she was the one who got in trouble. After seeing more health violations by this employee that got ignored, she quit. She later got a job at the pharmacy across the street. During her interview, she told them why she’d quit her last job. The manager that was interviewing her just nodded and told her, that manager was gone.

The problem employee, however, wasn’t, yet.

We don’t go to that location at all anymore.

Then the illegal lockdowns and mandates happened and the entire franchise went full gestapo, right down to the physical assault of patrons.

I would rather have gone somewhere else, but it was either Timmie’s or back to McRaunchies. I do like their chili. A nice, thick, robust chili that is low on spice heat, so it’s something I can actually eat, served with a generously sized baguette style bun. I figured I would have chili for lunch.

It was quite the disappointment. It wasn’t chili. It was soup. I ended up literally drinking it out of the cup, because I could barely get anything with the wooden spoon they now provide. The bun was half the size, too. Meanwhile, the price was higher than it used to be, too.

Ah, well. At least the Boston Creme I also got was still tasty! A donut used to be part of the meal deal, but I had to order it separately.

I should have gone back to McRaunchies.

At this point, I still hadn’t heard from the vet clinic, but I figured I would be hearing from them soon, so I decided to go back and stay in their waiting room until the cats were ready to go home.

When I got there and told the receptionist which cats I was waiting for, she went to check their status for me.

They were ready!

It turned out, they had tried to phone me and left messages, but I never got a call. I had given my cell phone number before I left earlier, and asked what number they had.

One digit was wrong.

Someone out there must be getting some very confusing messages on their voice mail! This happened last time, too. I will need to take extra care in enunciation when I gave them my cell phone number in the future.

I’m told the kittens both did really well. They got their spay and neuter, basic vaccinations, tattoos and treatment for ear mites.

Since the rescue was covering the cost of this, they had to call the Cat Lady before they could release the cats, and then I was on my way.

They are both so incredibly adorable!!!

Once they were loaded up, it was straight home. I’d already arranged for my daughter to take care of getting the isolation shelter ready, making sure the food and water was topped up, the litter box was good, moving the entry box and closing the ramp door so that there would not be other cats in it. She had to use the bricks that were under the entry box to keep the ramp door closed, though, until I could get the carabiner on the latch.

When I got home, I backed the truck up to the house, then dashed inside for a quick bathroom break while my daughter headed to the truck to get the carriers out.

When I got back to help her, I discovered she had slipped and falling, landing hard on one knee, on the concrete.

She is now walking with a cane again, because of it!

😢😢

As for getting the cats in, we used one of the sliding doors on the second level. I tossed in a couple of the spring toys for them, first.

Kohl was easy to do; she let me pick her up and cuddle her a moment before I put her on the shelf board with the sheet of insulation on it. She promptly loafed on the insulation and stayed there.

The fluffball – we still haven’t named him – wouldn’t let me take him out of the carrier, though, so my daughter just brought it up to the open window in the second level and opened the carrier door. He dashed right in, then down to the lower level and tried to get out!

My daughter took the carriers in while I unloaded the truck. Kohl stayed calm, but the poor male was having panic attacks, in between stopping to eat a bit. He really wanted out.

With the stuff brought inside, I fed the rest of the outside cats early to occupy them, so that I could safely drive the truck out of the yard and park it in the garage. When I came back, I grabbed a can of wet cat food and added it to the food bowl in the isolation shelter. While they are in isolation, they will get to enjoy wet cat food, since we know it won’t freeze in there. Hopefully, that will help socialize the male.

In between things, I took the new cat bed and set it on my bed next to our elderly Freya, who was asleep on one of my pillows. I came back a few minutes later and found this.

It absolutely envelops her!

The Grand Old Lady deserves to be pampered!

I then used a half dozen of the donated cat food to make cat soup for the inside cats before going through the bags and organizing things.

There are three cases of 24 cans from the Cat Lady – plus the 6 I used to make cat soup. There were also two big containers of treats. Made with Real Chicken! There’s another case of 12 same size cans from her friend, plus I think 9 of the big cans. There are also 3 boxes. They are labelled duck paté, but also as “sensitive” and as grain free. The boxes look like they should have liquid in them, though, not paté. I’m curious to find out what these are!

There were also three more bags of kibble hidden under the cans, the same size as the five small bags of kibble from the Cat Lady.

I’ve looked up the brand for most of these, and it looks like they are the house brand of a specific pet store franchise, which would explain why neither the Cat Lady nor I were familiar with it.

After I got all the cat stuff done, I finally settled down to try on the new slipper shoes I bought.

My daughter now has new indoor shoes.

I couldn’t even get my feet into them! I do usually get size 9 men’s shoes – in triple wide. These were NOT triple wide. *sigh*

Then I remembered that, since I had cats in the truck, I hadn’t stopped to close the driveway gate behind me, so I bundled up and took care of that. On the way back, I got a couple of pictures.

The entry box is just off to the side, and as you can see, it’s also being used as a shelter, even though it’s completely open at the back!

A lot of cats were trying to get into the shelter. Some of them had gotten used to being able to stay in there. Unfortunately, we can’t be letting other cats in and out when we have one that needs to recover. The fluffball male could probably be let out, but then Kohl would be in there by herself, and that would not be good. The male does seem to be calming down and only panics a bit and tries to get out when the house door opens and startles him. If you click through to the next picture, you can see that Kohl is still quite content to just loaf on the insulated shelf!

So the isolation shelter is getting its first test run. So far, it seems to be holding well, though it already looks like cats have tried to claw their way in from the outside! The vinyl on one corner at the back is tattered a bit. Not that they can get through the wire, but they may be trying to reach the window. They know it opens.

As I write this, we are at -16C/3F. The wind chill is -33C/-27F, but with the plastic around the bottom, that should have little effect inside the isolation shelter. The vinyl wrapped around the lower level should keep the wind out. They have the heat lamp, two cat beds to curl up in, one on each level, plus the insulated box “nest” under the shelf. Even the heated water bowl would add some warmth to the upper level. Some wind might get through the spaces between the boards of the ramp door, but this will make sure they get some fresh air coming in. With colder air coming in from the bottom, and warm air escaping through the gaps around the sliding windows and the space in the insulation ceiling the extension cord runs through, there should be decent air circulation in there, while still being warm.

Our temperatures are supposed to go up overnight, and keep going up for our daytime highs. Our forecast for Saturday is now a high of 4C/39F. It’s expected to slowly drop after that until we get a sharp drop on Wednesday, which is supposed to have a high of -20C/-4F, though the overnight low is supposed to be just a few degrees colder.

The long term forecast has changed and, while we are still supposed to reach highs above freezing in the week before Christmas, the overnight lows around Christmas and Boxing Day are expected to dip below -30C/-22F. 🥶 The cats will no longer need to be isolated well before then, so they will be able to join cuddle puddles in various heated areas by then.

Of course, the forecast is different pretty much every time I check it, so we’ll see how things actually go. I just want things to stay mild during their isolation period!

Meanwhile, tomorrow I will finally be able to do my Costco shopping. December is a weird month for my husband’s disability payments, though, and it comes in before Christmas instead of at the end of the month. Usually, that has meant us doing our Christmas/New Year’s shopping and January stock up shopping at the same time. This trip is so much later in the month than usual, I might be able to do most of that tomorrow, but we’ll see.

The less time spent shopping, this time of year, the better. I’d hibernate all winter, if I could! I don’t like shopping and I don’t like crowds at the best of times, never mind with holiday crowds and winter driving! Even just today, by the time I got home, I found the donated canned cat food I used to make the cat soup had started to freeze!

Ah, well. It is what it is. No point complaining about it! 😁

As for me, I didn’t get much sleep last night and had to get up extra early, so I am more than ready to go to bed early tonight!

Who am I kidding. I’ll probably be lucky to get to bed before midnight, anyhow! 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

A day of rest

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Since yesterday – Sunday – ended up being a very long day of driving around and getting our truck in the city, today became my day of rest.

I even got to sleep in, and sleep well. As usually, I got inundated with cats but this time, they actually snuggled pleasantly. No stepping painfully on various body parts. No trying to lie on my face. No fighting amongst each other.

Well. Not much. Just a bit of hissing at times.

In fact, they helped keep me warm and cozy and let me fall into a deep and restful sleep.

I don’t expect this to happen again, so I’ll take it!

My daughter was only up to doing short rounds this morning, which is basically just making sure the outside cats got food and warm water. I did their evening feeding and topped up their warm water, too. With the sun room water bowl no longer working, it was full of ice.

And the critter cam.

Some cats like to hang out on the plant trays on the shelf where the critter cam was set up. I saw it was pushed downwards when I tried to check it. By the time I got out and could fix it, it had been knocked off completely. The camera was held in place with Alien Tape, which works great, normally. It’s frozen now, so once it gets unstuck, it won’t work again until it’s thawed. I ended up having to put the camera one shelf down and tried to wedge in in place. I had to make sure it couldn’t fall into the water bowl again, too. If it does get knocked off, it should just dangle a few inches but that’s it. It it working now, except the view is partially blocked by the shelf itself on one side.

While I was outside, I just had to try and get a good shot of Patience. I wasn’t able to get the shot I wanted, since he moved while I was getting my phone out, but I think I got one that captured what I was after.

His fur has gotten SO long and thick. When he’s loafed on the ground, he’s just a big round mass of fluff with eyes.

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see his sister, Peanut Butter Cup. She, too, is a mass of fluff!

The Cat Lady and I are both surprised she hasn’t been adopted yet.

Overall, today was pleasant outside, if a bit colder than yesterday. We reached a high of -11C/12F, which is a degree warmer than was in the forecast yesterday. It’s supposed to start snowing tonight, then tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach a high of -4C/25F I was thinking of doing a dump run tomorrow, but the dump is open in the morning, and it’s supposed to still be snowing then. We’ll see what the road conditions are like, since I was planning to also hit a feed store for 40 pound bags of kibble.

Wednesday – which is when my daughter and I have our doctor and eye appointments – and Thursday – when we have 2 cats to go in for spays – are supposed to have highs of only -16C/3F and -15C/5F, but it’s Friday and the weekend that is really catching my attention. Friday is supposed to reach a high of 0C/32F, while Sunday is supposed to reach a high of 2C/36F!! It’s supposed to cool down again after that, but I’m really hoping it’ll stay quite mild, since we will have the ladies recovering in the isolation shelter for 2 weeks after their spays. Looking further ahead to the week of Christmas, and we have forecasts for highs up to 6C/43F for a couple of days! Christmas day itself is currently expected to be the coldest day of the week, with a high of -1C/30F.

I’m just excited by the idea of having two mild winters in a row. Having an El Nińo winter last year was great, but NOT having a strong La Nińa winter this year is just bonus. I’m hoping this will also be good for our winter sown garden beds, too.

One thing we haven’t been doing at all yet is start decorating for Christmas. I haven’t bothered setting up the Advent wreath. Normally, we would have had it on the dining table or on the counter dividing the kitchen from the dining room, but some of the cats would have a field day with it. The alternative is the living room – the cat free zone – but the bins of tomatoes I brought in from the old kitchen are still ripening in there, and taking up the space.

Yes. We still have tomatoes ripening!

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get stuff like that cleared out enough that we can at least put our little Christmas trees on top of the piano, like we did last year.

I think it’s going to be a quite Christmas this year. I don’t mind that at all. In fact, the quieter the better, as far as I’m concerned! 😄

All is good.

The Re-Farmer

We have a truck again!

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Wow, what a day today turned out to be!

Since the truck was booked to be looked at tomorrow morning, I rescheduled my mother’s shopping and errands to today. The plan was to do her errands, making sure to bring along our water jugs that needed refilling, so that I could go to the town nearer to us and fill them while running some errands of our own before going home.

Early this morning, I got a text reminder – at about 7am! – from Canadian Tire for our 7am appointment on Monday, saying to make sure to be there ahead of time and be ready to drop off the keys; standard stuff. I responded by saying the vehicle was already there, and they already had the keys.

It was probably around 9am when I got the first call from them.

They had already looked at the truck!

The problem was, indeed, a wheel bearing. I asked how much it would be, and it was thankfully lower than I feared. Being just the one tire, the total came to less than $500. I was half expecting both tires and a $1000 bill.

I authorized the work, which took a few texts, another call, then an email, because the link they texted me wouldn’t work on my phone. Instead, I got a message saying I needed to complete the process on my computer – but I don’t have text to desktop set up on this computer. In the end, all I needed to do was text back “approved”, but what they were trying to send me was the document showing an itemized list of what was to be done, and the cost of each item.

So that got approved just in time for me to start heading out to my mother’s.

Except…

I didn’t realize it, but my younger daughter was planning to come with me! I misunderstood something she’d said. She was behind on doing the morning cat feeding and the morning rounds, so I switched out one of the trail cam memory cards while she did the other. Everything else got skipped.

The slight delay turned out to be a good thing, because I’d forgotten the water jugs!

It’s a good thing I started heading out early. By the time we finally got everything ready, we were on the road exactly when I knew was the latest we could leave and get there for the time I told my mother I would be there.

When we got to my mother’s, I went in to get and go over her list with her. My daughter stayed in the car. With how my mother behaves towards her, she has no interest in being around her grandmother anymore and, to be honest, I can’t blame her one bit.

Normally, our first stop would have been the pharmacy, but they were still closed, so we went to the grocery store instead. They opened their doors at 11am – pretty much as we were parking! I keep forgetting about Sunday hours.

My daughter stayed in the car for that part, too, as there was nothing she needed there. That done, it was back to the pharmacy. It was still closed, so we went looking for the posted hours and realized they opened at noon, so we still had time. We took advantage of that and went to the gas station to fill my brother’s tank, which was just below half by then – it still feels so strange to be able to fill at tank for $30! That’s a quarter tank, on our truck.

I also picked up some fried chicken and wedges for our lunch, along with some drinks, since we would still have to wait. After parking by the pharmacy again, I called my mother to let her know we were waiting for the pharmacy to open at noon, so we would be longer. Then we had our lunch – very carefully, so as not to drop any crumbs in my brother’s car! – and watched all the people going to the pharmacy doors, realizing they were locked, then leaving again. 😄

As we were waiting, I got a text from the garage.

The truck was ready.

!!!!!

At this point, I’d already made arrangements with my brother and SIL for switching vehicles tomorrow. The garage already knew about this, so that was not an issue.

They were done so early, though. After updating my brother, he wondered if we meant to get it today, instead.

On finding out the garage was open until 6, and it was barely noon, we decided to just finish my mother’s shopping, then head straight to my brother’s, then to the city to get the truck.

After I did my mother’s shopping at the pharmacy and my daughter did part of hers, we went back to my mother’s place. She isn’t up to going to church lately, even though it’s just across the street, so someone comes over with communion for her, after services. She was all set up for this when I got there, so I quickly told her what was going on as I put her things away. I was just packing up my reusable bags when there was a knock at the door. Perfect timing! It was the guy from church.

So, off I went and soon, my daughter and I were on the road to my brother’s new place.

This is the first time I’ve driven to their place myself; I’ve been driven there as a passenger, and I’ve driven FROM their place, and everything looked different. I kept second guessing myself when I knew we were getting close. I had a landmark building I told my daughter about. It’s been there for probably 100 years. I told my daughter, it’s now an antique store.

“But what do they sell?” she asked me.

…

It took me a few moments. I’m not too swift with jokes.

I then laughed for the next 5 minutes!

Finally we got there, and then I had to remember which driveway was the right one. They’re in a row of townhouses now, and they all look identical, and I couldn’t remember their unit number. I recognized a car in another driveway, so I pulled into a driveway that I was pretty sure was theirs. I figured, if it was, their garage door opener would work. I knew which button closed the door, so I tried the other buttons to open it.

No garage doors opened.

I was still pretty sure we were at the right place. I could see some decor items near the door, but couldn’t remember if they were familiar to me or not.

Then, as we got out, I saw the block heater extension cord on the step, recognized that, and knew I was in the right place.

😄😄

Oh, and it turned out the same button on the garage door opener that closes it, opens it. We have no idea what the other two buttons are supposed to do. 😄

When we got there, they were all ready to set up a pot of tea and stuff, but I didn’t want to delay. The garage would be open for a few more hours but, since we were in the city, we could still do our errands at a nearby Walmart, and fill our water jugs at the Canadian Tire. So we were soon out the door again. Both my brother and SIL came along and drove us to the garage, taking advantage of the trip themselves to look for things.

When we got there, we were able to spot the truck fairly easily, so my brother pulled in behind it while we transferred my daughter’s shopping to the truck box – where I found the box with the old wheel bearings they’d left for me – and grabbed the water jugs, then my brother parked.

My brother went in to the auto service area with me while my daughter and SIL took the water jugs into the store to refill them.

I got the keys and paperwork for the truck and then got sent over to the cashier on the store side of the barrier to pay for it. Boom, boom, boom, and it was done!

I was so happy!!!!! What a relief!

We reconnected with my daughter and SIL soon after. They couldn’t find the refill station. I went to where I thought it was, completely forgetting that this is a different store than where I’d refilled at before. After looking around, I finally asked an employee.

This location doesn’t have a refill station. They only did Culligan brand exchanges.

Well… so much for that!

I put the jugs back in the truck, then met back up with everyone else in the store again. Since we didn’t need to get anything else and my brother and his wife were going to do some more looking around, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

With the Costco pretty much across the street, I figured I would at least go there to fill the tank with cheaper gas.

Then we saw the lineups of cars at all the pumps.

We went straight to the Walmart, instead.

It was really busy, too!

My daughter had her list and I had mine, so we parted ways for a bit, then reconnected in the grocery section. We didn’t bring in the water jugs, though, because I didn’t know if this Walmart had a refill station.

We never did see one, so probably not.

By the time we were done and paid for our stuff – I didn’t take any stocking up photos, like I usually do, as we were just in high gear, the whole time – it was starting to snow quite a bit. So we just took the time to update the family before we started out. Well… updated my husband, as my older daughter would have still been in bed. She just closed the slots for her Christmas quick commissions sale, while also having several regular commissions to complete, last night, so she is going to have some very busy work nights for the next couple of weeks. She then takes time off for Christmas and New Years.

I also updated the Cat Lady whenever I could, throughout the day, and confirmed that we will NOT be rescheduling those spays she booked for us on Thursday!

She had good news for me, too. A friend of hers had donated 50 cans of wet cat food to us! That’s on top of the 100 or so, she is going to pass on to us because her own cats won’t eat that flavour, plus some kibble a grocery store donated. When we meet up with her at the vet, she’s going to have all sorts of donated cat food to pass on to us! In fact, we might find ourselves with enough wet cat food that we might be able to treat the outside cats to some cat soup! The Cat Lady is so awesome in being able to do this for us!

If we can keep it from freezing.

We’ll figure it out.

She said she even ordered more kibble for us from Amazon, though with the postal strike, it’s hard to say when it’ll get here. It’s a rotating strike; mail gets delivered in some places, while others are picketing, then it changes every week. So mail can potentially get through, at some point. We just have no idea when or where.

This strike is killing a lot of small businesses that depend on shipping out orders. Especially this time of year, when most businesses have their highest sales, putting them in the black before the end of the year. Some things just can’t be shipped by courier.

Anyhow.

For most of the drive out of the city, we took things easy. Nearer the city, roads were icy, but they cleared up the further north we drove. Which was good, because visibility decreased at the same time!

We got to the town nearest us and made our first stop for my daughter to run in and get what she needed while I updated the family again. Then it was to the grocery store. This time, I ran in with the water jugs to refill them – and picked up some food for my daughter, since she was too stressed out to choose something to eat on the road. She’s even worse for crowds and shopping than I am!

By the time we were done there, it was full dark. We made one more stop for gas, since we didn’t get any at Costco, then finally we headed home.

The snow was coming down harder by then, and I was very glad my daughter was with me. I had to focus on the road directly in front of us, just to stay in my lane. I couldn’t see the centre line, but I could make out the shoulder, at least. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic. Still, at times we were doing only 60 kph in a 100 zone.

My daughter, meanwhile, was on deer watch, scanning the ditches for me. You’d think deer would be hunkering down in shelter somewhere in weather like this, but nooo. These are Canadian deer. They’ll stand in the middle of the road and wait for the vodka to freeze.

Credit to my daughter for that one… 😄

So this day ended up being much, much longer than expected. The outside cats hadn’t been fed before it got dark, like we usually try to do. My older daughter wasn’t up yet, and my husband can’t manage getting kibble to all the spread out food bowls anymore, now that there’s ice and snow on the ground making it more dangerous for him to hobble about, even with a cane.

Which worked out, really, since we had to feed them to get them away from the truck before I could park it.

We had some very hungry babies. By the time I finished doing the outside trays and bowls and came back into the sunroom, the sunroom trays were almost empty!

As for me, I was very happy to be parking our own truck in the garage, instead of a borrowed car.

I’m so incredibly thankful they were able to get it done today, and that we could work out the transportation and vehicle switching with my brother and SIL on such short notice.

Best of all…

All the time that we were driving, all I was hearing was normal road noises. 😄

When I get a chance, I want to bring in the old part from the truck and take a look at the damage. I’m curious to see what kind of damage would make the noise I was hearing, since it was so different from the last vehicle we had to replace wheel bearings on.

To top it off, we now no longer have anyplace we will potentially need to go to, tomorrow. My mother’s errands are done, and now the truck is home, too.

We can actually *gasp* stay home for a day!

Which is good, because it’s supposed to be colder, tomorrow. The next day – Tuesday – is supposed to be warmer, so that will be a good time to make a much needed trip to the dump and, since I’d be going in that direction anyhow, go to the town north of us and get a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble. Yes, we have cat food donations coming, but you just can’t have too much kibble! Especially in winter. It’s looking like we will have a mild winter, but if things ever change and we end up not being able to get out for some reason, we need to have the pantry stocked up with enough for all of us – humans and feline alike. In the winter, I want to have at least one, preferably two, months worth of supplies on hand. We’ve already have a few times when we’ve relied on our stocked up items. It’s getting harder to keep it up, with the cost of everything going up, but I view this as an essential.

An essential, like our truck is!!

Have I mentioned, how glad I am that our truck is back?

😄😄

The Re-Farmer