While I was working outside, my husband worked his magic, and fixed our internet problems. Now let’s see if I can catch up before another thunderstorm hits!
First, we gotta have the kitties!
The calico that hands out with the bitty kitties must have been really hungry, because she came over to join her brother (sister?) in the kibble house! they’re over on the left, and you can just barely see her behind her sibling.
I left a bit of food by the grape vines, and the black and white kitten from the oldest litter showed up for breakfast. :-)
The fourth kitten ran off before I could get my phone out. Throughout the morning, I was able to pick up and hold the two on the right a couple of times, but not the fuzzy one. The other black and white kitten disappears so fast, I barely see it, never mind try to touch it!
As for the adult cats, Potato Beetle is still in the sun room – and he really wants to leave! Unfortunately, he doesn’t like to use the litter box, so I did have a mess to clean up. I’ve been making sure his water was a frozen water bottle in it, and have even left the door open into the old kitchen, in case he wants to go somewhere cooler. It’s difficult to keep him in, when I have to go in and out of the sun room with tools so often.
I have noticed one thing, though. He is still limping! The last time we took him to the vet, it was for his limp, and they found some puncture wounds, but not much more. They figured the tooth or claw that caused the punctures caught on a tendon, too. Still, I would not have expected him to still be limping after all this time!
Oh, the thunderstorm is almost on us! Glad I finished up outside when I did. :-)
While working on breaking down the largest of the branches pruned from the ornamental apples, I heard a cat starting to “talk” loudly. This is something we’ve learned about The Distinguished Guest. He makes noises that sound like he’s talking!
The problem is, the only time he makes those noises is when he’s being aggressive towards another cat.
For the last while, Sad Face has been going after him – and winning. TDG has a nasty scar across his shoulder to show for it. If Sad Face were around, I wouldn’t have been hearing TDG talking. I would have heard an all-out cat fight.
There’s only one cat that is now lower on the pecking order than both of the visiting toms.
Making my way around to the pump shack, I spotted TDG with his fur sticking out like a bottle brush. He ran off as I came close. It took a bit longer to spot Potato Beetle, flattened in the tall grass. He was more than happy for some pets, that’s for sure!
He was also looking very skinny. I knew TDG would go after him again if Potato went for the kibble trays. Thankfully, Potato actually likes being picked up and carried, so I took him to the sun room, where his own personal food and water bowls await him.
He was very, very hungry!!
After topping up the food and refreshing the water, I left him be. When I headed into town to get the mail, I sent a picture of him to the Cat Lady. She has us booked for 2 females for spays and shots on Aug 3, but she had space available for 1 male, too.
If we can keep Potato Beetle in the sun room until then, we can get him to the vet to be neutered at the same time.
That’s just over a week, though. It will not be easy to keep in there for that long. Plus, he’ll need to stay another 4 days for recovery. We’ll also have to keep a close eye on the temperature in there. We aren’t expecting excessive heat for the next while, but it does get quite hot in there. If necessary, we’ll bring out some ice packs or frozen water bottles to help him keep cool.
For now, at least, he’s quite enjoying his own personal sanctuary!
As for the other cats, the girls took care of feeding them again this morning. I had been leaving food by the pump shack for the oldest litter of kittens that’s in there (and possibly a baby skunk…), but they forget that. Which is okay. The kittens are used to eating kibble by now. They’ll be looking for it. Which meant that, when I came out not long after, I spotted an unfamiliar black and white kitty butt, at the tray on the ground beside the kibble house. It ran off when it heard me, which is when I saw the tabby and the tuxedo, hiding in the spirea by the storage house. I did try to get pictures, with no success.
I did, however, get a different kitty!
A very thirsty little kitty!
He seems a bit more skittish around me right now. My managing to pet him and briefly pick him up seems to be something he does not want to happen again – at least for now! Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to try playing with him again, and convince him to let me touch him again.
The Cat Lady has a bead on someone on a farm that is looking for a cat. She was talking about possibly trapping one of the kittens and getting it fixed. I wonder if they’d be okay with an adult cat, instead? Potato Beetle really deserves a better situation than what we can give him, with the visiting toms beating on him.
Not only did I see the little kittens this morning, I got to have HUGE progress with them!
First progress was with this one. This one kept right on eating as I came closer, then reached out to pet it. That’s when I spotted a wood tick on its ear. It took some doing to reach over the water tray, hold on to the ear with one hand and pull the tick with the other (getting a wet boob in the process. 😂), but it never stopped eating! It just let me do my thing and ignored me.
The others had moved away, but this little fuzzy one likes to just sit there, posing so adorably, to watch me. After a while, its sibling came out – the less fuzzy one that I’ve been able to handle more often. I did manage to pick up the fuzzy one last night, but it wasn’t happy about that, so I didn’t hang on to it for long.
The calico and the other black and white started to come closer, too. They wanted that food, but not quite enough to go to the tray while I was there.
When these three were in the tray, I was able to pet ALL of them! Yes, even the fuzzy one! They just kept on eating.
Eventually, they all came out, though the other black and white one didn’t want to be too close to me. Still, I was able to pick up the container I use to carry the kibble, without them all running away. Even the calico just froze in place and watched me, then went back to eating after I picked up the container and moved away.
For the past while, I’ve been rather confused about these kittens. While they were in the branch pile, I counted 6 small kittens, and even saw the mama nursing all of them. Then there were the 4 larger kittens, including that calico, and they all played together. I just went back to some older photos to confirm, and that calico is definitely one of the kittens we would see under the cats’ house last month. The one that, when we first saw it, had leaky eyes that were almost glued shut. That dark patch on its forehead is quite distinctive.
So the calico has simply moved in with this younger litter. The other three older kittens still frequent the area by the sun room, playing in the old kitchen garden or on the laundry platform, and eating from the food there.
That accounts for 8 kittens.
So I went looking at older photos.
This is the very first photo I got of this litter, when I discovered they were in the entry into the cats’ house. There are 5 kittens. You can see the two black and white kittens on top of each other. In the foreground is the fuzzy one, and beside the mama is the other one that I’ve been able to pick up every now and then.
The dark kitten next to the fuzzy one is missing.
Also… where did the 6th kitten I saw among them in the branch pile come from? I suppose it’s possible it was in the cats’ house with the 5 pictured above, just out of sight.
Whether it was originally part of this litter or not, where did it go when the mama moved her kittens to the board pile?
I found some video I took of the kittens in the branch pile. The quality sucks, because I had to zoom in so much, but I can still figure out which two kittens are now missing.
So are these two actually gone gone? Was there three, rather than two, litters in the pile at the time? Are the two unaccounted for kittens hidden away somewhere else? The mamas don’t seem to care all that much about which kittens are their own or which are part of another litter.
Last night, I got horribly ill for some reason. I have no idea what triggered it, but it was very painful and unpleasant. I spent most of the night in the bathroom, unsure which end of me was about to explode.
Thankfully, whatever it was responded to some good ol’ Pepto, and I finally got some sleep. I woke up to this.
Nosencrantz had actually been lying on her back, paws in the air, but moved when I managed to reach my phone to get a picture.
She kept trying to cuddle me throughout the night. Such a sweetie! It’s too bad I had to move her every time I had to get up! I like to think she was trying to make me feel better. 😊 Now that I’m up and about, she’s ignoring me. 🤣
Whatever it was that hit me, I haven’t completely recovered. I feel weak as a kitten right now, get dizzy easily, and have been very nervous about eating anything. The girls were sweet and took over most of my morning routine for me, but it sounds like one of them is now not feeling well, either. It’s not whatever hit me, though.
We finally have a day where it’s not too hot to work outside, and here I am, unable to do the manual labour I want to do! *sigh*
This evening turned out to be a very pleasant 23C/75F, with a lovely breeze. I was able to stay out longer when doing my evening rounds, and take care of a few little things – with the help of a lot of mosquito repellant! We got enough cardboard from packages in the mail that I was able to lay some around the G-star patty pan squash, with only minor gaps. After topping up the kibble trays, I was able to hold a couple of kitties, including one I’ve never been able to touch before.
It was not happy, but it didn’t quite freak out, either. 😁
I also finally got the clothesline up.
The old line tightener worked just fine, and the new spacers will help a lot, too. We’ve never actually used the clothes line much, but now that we’ve got a nice, clean new line, I think we will use it more often. If nothing else, it’s a back up if we don’t want to use the dryer for some reason.
Like now. I did some laundry yesterday and, after popping it in the drier, the entire entryway and dining room filled with steam, basically. One of my daughters was able to clamber to take a look and discovered the hose was damaged and no longer properly attached. Best guess is, a cat fell off a nearby shelf and landed on it. We really need to build some kind of shelf back there, to keep the cats out! They wrecked the old dryer hose, too, as well as making a huge mess behind both the washer and dryer.
Oh, my other daughter just informed me that her sister managed to get behind the dryer and fixed the hose. Only a few inches of damaged hose needed to be removed. I’m still glad I got the clothes line fixed, though!
When I was a kid, we had three clotheslines set up on these posts. The hooks to hold pulleys are still there, if we ever want to set up one or two more lines. One of them has a pulley hanging off a length of twisted wire. It looks like someone had a line that wasn’t quite long enough, so they added length to the pulley to set it up. I have not seen any other laundry pulleys, though, so if we do want to set up the other two lines, we’d need to get 3 more pulleys, and another 240 or so feet of clothes line.
I doubt we’ll ever need to do that, but at least the option is there!
It was so pleasant out that, after I finished with the clothes line, I sat on the laundry platform bench to enjoy the cool breeze.
I had company.
There is a kitten in the above picture! One of two that were watching me.
The fuzzy one was watching me from behind the lettuce bed, and its darker sibling joined him while I was trying to get pictures.
They do not like the mesh over the beds, and kept going further and further around, trying to find a way through to where their sibling was playing in the path.
Their sibling didn’t stay in the path.
Instead, it came around the beet bed, walking along the logs, so get a better look at the weird human that keeps pointing a strange object at them. 😁
I keep expecting this one to be a good candidate for socializing, since he hangs around the house the most, and tends to stay and watch me when I’m moving about. So far, no go. He simply will not let me come closer. *sigh*
Oh, that reminds me. I heard from the Cat Lady today. We now have an appointment at the vet for spays and vaccinations. The two left among the inside cats are Tissue and Big Rig. She had slots for 2 females and a male, but the only male we’d be able to bring in is Potato Beetle, and he’s not around right now.
The appointment is for Aug 3, and they’ll be coming home with us after. Right now, she’s focusing on spays and neuters more than adoptions. No one is looking to adopt right now. The shelters are all full from so many “pandemic pets” being surrendered. !!!
Once the indoor ladies are done, and the yard mamas have weaned their babies, the next thing to do will be to start trapping yard cats to get them done. I expect that won’t happen until much later in August or even September. As long as it’s before the snow flies. Otherwise, trapping is more dangerous for them, due to potential exposure.
The Cat Lady has been in and out of hospital lately, and told me she’s been really missing Cabbages while she’s away! It’s so funny. Before they took in Cabbages, she didn’t like calicos, and preferred male cats, but Cabbages has completely won her over. 😄
I’m not surprised. Cabbages has a way of worming her way into people’s hearts! 😁
While putting the kibble and water out this morning, I found the bitty kitties playing on top of the board pile. I managed to catch a picture of a kitten that usually runs off before I can get a good look at it.
There were six kittens from this litter in the branch pile, but since they’ve been moved to the board pile, I’ve only been seeing 5 at a time, and that includes the calico that is from an older litter.
I can usually count on seeing this one around the kibble house or laundry platform, often by itself. While I saw its calico sibling with the bitty kitties, I saw one of its other siblings later on. Mama had gone onto the laundry platform, and the darkest kitten of this litter appeared out of nowhere and practically pounced on her, going for the nip, barely giving her a chance to lie down! 😁
Oddly, I didn’t see a lot of adult cats while doing my rounds this morning, but I did see the black and white kitten near the pump shack when I brought kibble that way, then later saw a tabby eating the kibble I leave on the table by the door.
I suspect something other than kitties has been around during the night. When I came outside this morning, I found the diverter for the downspout above the rain barrel on the ground – along with the screen cover for the rain barrel, and the board and bricks that support the diverter and hold the screen over in place. My guess is, something heavier jumped onto the board and knocked it all down. The shelf on the other side of the door has two shelves for the cats to shelter in, while the top shelf is full of various stuff. Something had gone into there and knocked things about, too. Even one of the bricks that are part of the counterweight for the cats’ house was knocked out and onto the ground. My guess is racoons, since none of the cats are heavy enough to knock some of this stuff about, and skunks can’t climb up to some of the other stuff. Even some of the board at the top of the board pile that I’d straightened out, after the groundhogs knocked things askew while pulling down the old tarp that had been covering it, were pulled aside. At least the wood and water trays were still on the pile and not on the ground.
One of the things I got done this morning was use the slow-release granulated fertilizer on the garden. It’s an organic fertilizer made from chicken manure, designed for tomatoes and vegetables. There wasn’t enough to do everything, so I focused on the heavy feeders, and the things that seem to be struggling the most. I ran out before I could do all the squash in the squash patch, but I was able to get everything in the corn and squash patch, the tomatoes and the bell peppers. The fertilizer releases nutrients when it gets wet, but we’re not expected to get rain again for a few days. With how damp the ground it, it’s unlikely anything will need to be watered before then. Ah, well. It might take a while, but it should be interesting to see how the plants that got some of the granules will do, compared to the ones that didn’t.
No rain this morning, so the bitty kitties were out and about!
This one looks disheveled because I had just been holding it. 😻 Not only did it let me pick it up and cuddle it, but when I put it down in the food tray, it just started to eat, ignoring me while I continued to pet it.
*melt*
The little calico acts conflicted. It’s curious enough to slink around, watching me closely, sometimes inching closer, but shy enough to not let me anywhere near it.
This one is not conflicted. It will stay and watch me, only if it’s behind something. It will not come any closer, and will leave it I pay too much attention to it, even if it’s holding my phone off to the side to try and get a picture.
It was, however, more than happy to get into the water tray, after I refilled the gallon water bottle that I’ve set up to drain slowly. They seem to like it when I put the frozen water bottle in the tray to help keep the water cool longer, too.
As I continued on, I did a double taken when I realized I was seeing something new. A self-sown poppy had opened.
When we moved there, we found ornamental poppies growing among the lilacs along the side of the house, so seeing poppies show up in other places was no surprise. This one, however, is a completely different flower! The others are more of an orange, and don’t have the ruffled petals. So far, the is the only red poppy like this we’ve seen. A couple of self seeded poppies have sown up in our beet bed. I kind figured they were from the bread see poppies that we have in a nearby bed, but I know my mother had ornamental poppies growing in the old kitchen garden for quite a few years. When I was a kid, she had seed poppies in that garden. It should be interesting to see if these volunteers turn out to be an ornamental poppy, or an edible seed type!
As for the red ornamental poppy that just bloomed, I’ll be sure to allow it to self seed. This area needs more cleaning up, and it would be nice for the stuff we want to get rid of to be crowded out by something we would like to keep! :-)
While continuing my rounds, I had another nice surprise. Our very first golden pattypan squash is forming! It was too small to try and get a picture of, among the foliage. Hopefully, it’ll get well pollinated and not just wither and fall off.
We’ve got a very few other things trying to produce. The sugar snap peas are not doing well, but I did find a single well formed pod.
I ate it. It was tasty!
The King Tut purple peas grown from our own seeds are producing pods, but they are green instead of purple. There aren’t very many, but I have been able to pick the odd pod and give them a taste.
They are not tasty. Quite bitter, instead! Which is different from last year. I wonder if they had cross pollinated with the pod peas growing on the other trellis. The peas did so poorly last year, I would not have expected so. The one King Tut volunteer from last year has produced a single purple pod, which I’ve left to dry out and keep for seed. Now I wonder if it’ll stay true to type. It bloomed well before the shelling peas and snap peas did, so it should be fine.
Some of the Chocolate cherry tomatoes needed additional support. Not all of them are blooming yet, and no tomatoes forming yet. Some of them are growing well, but others, not so much. One end of that bed along the chain link fence got drowned, even though the bed itself it raised about 4-5 inches. We’ve lost quite a few of the shallots from sets to the wet, and it looks like none of the shallots from seed have made it, but I was able to give the yellow onions grown from seed a “hair cut”. I now have more green onions dehydrating in the oven, along with a tray of mint.
I was still able to pick some lettuce this morning. They have not yet bolted from the heat, which is nice. The chard I planted not long ago has started to sprout! I should sow more of those soon.
Though we had a decently cool night last night (it was a wonderful 17C/63F at about 7am), it quickly heated right up to our expected high of 27C/81F. We’re not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm. Hopefully, between the heat and the wind, things will have a chance to dry up. Yesterday’s downpours flooded out quite a few towns. I’d heard the town my mother lives in got 5 inches of rain in 3 hours, however it now seems it wasn’t quite that much. More than enough to flood streets and parking lots, however. The town to the north of us was among those that got hit the worst in our province, and they had flooded streets as well. We certainly don’t have much to complain about, where we are! Still, it does keep us from getting a lot of outside work done. Frustrating, but we’ll live. 😉
The Re-Farmer 