Then there were the ones eating the kibble I left on the roof of the cats’ house, and the ones eating at the tray under the spirea by the storage house – including the one that was hiding in the background, waiting it’s turn.
Twenty five.
I counted twenty five cats and kittens this morning.
And that doesn’t count Rolando Moon and Potato Beetle, who have not been around for the past little while, or the two toms that show up. Plus, I’m pretty sure there are other, younger, kittens hidden away somewhere.
With the cooler nights, I finally closed my bedroom window yesterday.
This was more complex than normal.
The cats like to sit on the window ledge, but with the window open, they could attack anything that blew or flew by. Nosencrantz in particular was getting very destructive. Even when I got the window fan and set it up, she kept trying to get at the window, knocking the fan down. I had cord running through the handle, and more across the window, to keep the fan from being pushed off the ledge, but she would jam herself in behind. I finally had to grab some of the old window screens we used for drying mind leaves, needing 2 of them to cover the window and the fan, along with a cut-to-size piece of 2 inch Styrofoam between the top of the fan and the top of the window sill. She still kept clawing at the screens (which, thankfully, we metal mesh and stronger than the window’s screen). I had to come up with a rather elaborate barricade to block access to the window, and still allow air flow and use of the fan. That included creating a barricade around the shelf near the window she likes to curl up in, because she would actually pull one of the screens out of position.
I was able to take the fan down a while ago, but still had to keep the barricades. Nosencrantz was very, very determined!
To finally close the window, I had to remove cords, that piece of Styrofoam and the extra screens. Then, once the window could finally be closed, I had to remove its screen and tuck it behind the other ones to further protect it. Then I could finally move away the barricade around the shelf.
Which meant that Nosencrantz could now access the top of the shelf again.
This is what I get to see, now.
She has such and expression. Like she’s analyzing, and trying to figure things out.
I spent most of yesterday helping my mother run errands, so I didn’t get a lot done at home. It was a lovely evening, however, so I took advantage of it to do a burn.
I had company.
It took a few sprays of the hose for him to learn to stay away from the fire ring and burn barrel, but he quickly learned that if he was in my chair, I would let him stay.
It was just too funny to turn around and find him in the cup holder!
Keith passed away peacefully during the night. When I found him this morning, he looked like he was having a lovely little snooze.
My older daughter and I buried him this morning. At first, we were going to bury him under a willow, where there used to be a flower bed, but there were too many roots under the first few inches of soil. Knowing we could not be able to dig very deep, and not wanting critters to do damage, my daughter went looking for something to use as a cover while I decided to dig among the white lilacs.
We have horrible, rock hard, rock filled soil on top of hard clay and rocks. But we traded off and made progress, until we hit some much bigger roots. We took a hatchet to those, only to find a large rock under them. After much digging around it, we realized it was just too big and was not going to move.
We were able to bury Keith, though, and cover his grave.
It seems rather appropriate that as soon as everything was in place, a kitten decided to play on the spot.
The bench was returned and will add an extra level of protection. Once the ground is frozen, we won’t have to be concerned about it. In the spring, we will add soil and plant something over his grave.
Good bye, Keith.
How strange that we would suddenly lose Keith, when Leyendecker was the one who as so very ill. He has been active, has a good appetite and is overall looking so much better… but still doesn’t seem to be able to void properly. My daughter wants to have his blood tested again before making a final decision, to confirm one way or the other, whether his is recovering.
Right now, I just feel so tired.
And not because I just spent more than an hour fighting a losing battle with a big rock.
In between helping my daughter when she needed an extra pair of hands while building the cats’ water bowl shelter, I harvested most of our onions.
These are the yellow onions from sets – there was no variety name that came with them. The netting was very handy to hold the onions for me!
I also had a helper.
This little beast was traipsing through the Black Nebula carrots, like he was on a jungle safari. Every now and then, when I tossed an onion on the netting, he would leap up from below to try and catch it! Then just hang there until I unhooked his claws and set him aside, only for him to run back into the carrots and hunt down the next onion!
The little bugger even tried it from under the mosquito netting while I dug up the Red of Florence onions. Those were split between two beds, and both are on the netting now.
We aren’t expecting rain for several days, so I’m actually going to leave them on the netting to cure for a while. Quite a few of the yellow onions no longer had their greens, but of those that do, they’ll get braided and hung up to finish curing indoors.
The Red of Florence onions, with their long shape, were a lot easier to harvest.
There are still the Tropena Lunga onions in the high raised bed, but they haven’t started to fall over yet, so I’m leaving them to grow some more.
We don’t have as many onions as I would have liked. The ones planted in the bed by the chain link fence might have one or two worth harvesting, but that’s it, and the red onions from sets planted with the yellow pear tomatoes are really small. I’m not sure if there will be much out of those.
Note for future reference. Plant a LOT more onions. These will only last us a few months, and certainly not the whole winter.
The yellow onions from sets were not any bigger than the ones we started from seed, though we don’t have other yellow onions to compare to, since they didn’t survive after transplanting. Nor did the shallots, both from seeds and from sets, planted in the same bed. At this point, we’re not seeing any advantage between starting from sets or from seed in the final product. Which means that next year, we will likely do both, again. We seriously need a better set up for starting seeds indoors. One that keeps the cats away! We’re actually looking at making a removable hardware cloth door between the living and dining rooms, as well as similar barrier over a shelf that is open on both sides. If we can keep the cats out of the living room, we can dedicate the room to starting seeds and not have to be constantly protect them from the cats. Having to keep the seedlings in the aquarium greenhouses, and under the plastic cover in the mini greenhouse, didn’t allow adequate air circulation, even with fans, and made it more difficult to provide adequate lighting.
We will have the winter to figure that out how to do that, though. 😊
As I was finishing up my evening rounds, I noticed this mama.
Well, that explains why I keep finding the netting pushed in at that spot!
What was really funny, though, we seeing this as I was going in through the sun room.
It’s a kitty hammock!
At least it’s not touching the ground. The spinach is struggling to grow, and the first seeds I’d planted had germinated, only to get flattened by cats. They did not recover. The second sowing is coming up, but very slowly. The netting is the only thing protecting them from being rolled on by kitties!
The Re-Farmer 