Things continue to remain mild; I think last night was the first time we didn’t go below freezing, overnight.
This morning, there was no kibble at all left outside, and even the sun room bowls were empty, and the room was slightly ransacked. The outside heated water bowl was overturned, the there was still liquid water in the other bowls – and the hole in the ice left by the heated water bowl is full of water! That cats even seem to prefer drinking out of the ice bowl instead of the actual bowls. :-D
As expected, when I did my rounds, I found the new path dug to the fire pit had lots of new hoof and paw prints going back and forth. :-D
No digging today, though. Too wet. Supposedly, we’ve had rain today, though it seems to be one of those things that showed up on the weather radar, but not outside our window.
So today, I got some work done on an indoor project, which I will post about next. :-)
The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.
When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.
Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.
Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.
While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.
They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.
They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.
While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.
This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!
The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.
To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.
This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. ;-)
Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.
We have a fire pit again! Yay!
Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.
I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.
The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.
There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.
Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.
Critters have already made their own path to the pile!
There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.
Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.
There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!
I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. :-D
Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.
Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL
Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!
Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.
It’s awesome out there!
The outside cats are loving it.
I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.
We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.
In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.
If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!
Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!
The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.
Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.
I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! :-D
Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!
I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.
This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.
One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.
This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.
The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.
I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!
She has been coming out more often, even with other cats around, though she wants nothing to do with them, and is more likely to growl and hiss, even if they’re just going by, than anything else.
Interestingly – and not necessarily in a good way – she and Beep Beep are not getting along at all. I’m sure they remember each other, but Beep Beep has been pretty aggressive towards Butterscotch. Mind you, Beep Beep bullies the other cats a fair bit, too, but she seems to be unhappy to be reunited with Butterscotch!
The main thing is the Butterscotch actually does seem to be happier now that she’s indoors, which was so totally unexpected based on her past behaviour. She would just rather be with people (not me, though! LOL) instead of other cats.
We are having another lovely, warm day today. Not as warm as yesterday ended up being, but still enough that things are melting.
Things are starting to look really messy and gross as the snow melts away to expose layers of dirt, but it’s so uplifting to finally feel “spring” happening, no one cares. Least of all the cats!
I checked the tracking on our Purolator package last night, and was happy to see that the replacement bands for our vacuum cleaner finally came in. I headed into town this afternoon to pick them up, which is when I saw the one unfortunate thing of the day. The first sign of trouble was when I saw two sets of headlights, side by side, coming towards me on the road – with a third vehicle on the side of the road in between. I started slowing down, of course, but so did the truck that was passing a car – which also pulled over to the side of the road!
When I saw the driver of the first vehicle on the side of the road get out and start walking around her car, I considered stopping to see if she was okay, but the truck stopped beside her to talk to her, so I kept going. Then I saw someone get out of the other vehicle that had just pulled over, which is when I spotted something on the road, across the lane.
It turned out to be a deer. The woman in the first car must have just hit it. The woman in the second car pulled it off the road.
This time of the year, we always see a LOT of deer crossing the roads. It makes driving unexpectedly dangerous.
Since I was in town to pick up our package anyhow, I made a quick stop at the grocery store. Bizarrely, the staff are still all wearing masks, as where most of the customers. Even outside, walking around by themselves. The psychological addiction can be very strong.
I was very happy to see one familiar face, though. A friend of mine that I used to work with, the last time we lived in this area, many years ago. She was just as pleased to see a face as I was. We chatted a bit about it, as well as the vaccine mandates that have also been lifted. Like us, she and her husband would be far more at risk from the vaccine than getting Covid, so the whole thing was very frustrating for them.
They have a farm to the north of us, so of course we started talking weather! Such a relief to see things melting. The amount of snow we got this year is not enough to make up for the last couple of years. Much will depend on spring. When she hears people complaining about how much snow we got this winter, her thought has been like mine: this is what our normal winter’s snow is! We needed more, to make up for last summer’s drought, and the conditions of year before. The response she usually gets to that has been comments on spring rains taking care of that, but she says we haven’t and spring rains around here for 7 years. Yes, we did get some last spring, before the heat waves hit, but nothing close to the average amounts. So these drought or near drought conditions have been around for quite a while now.
Of course, they garden as well, plus they have an assortment of animals. The cost of feed has been going up, and seed is running out. They’ve noticed lots of people diving into gardening as well, contributing to the supply shortages and increased prices (at least until the seed companies can catch up). As we were chatting, her husband joined us and commented on the cost of oats for human consumption. Seed oats cost over $17 a bushel right now. It used to cost about $3 a bushel!
Time to stock up on oatmeal while it’s still affordable!
Before I left the store, I picked up a lotto ticket. I figure if they can win the jackpot, so can I! :-D
Once at home, I opened up the vacuum cleaner and changed out the broken belt, and immediately started to vacuum my disgusting, disgusting floor. The carpet in my office/bedroom is a strange, felted sort of surface, and it probably 50 years old. It used to be in our living room, but when we got the current shag carpet put in, this one got slapped down on the floor of what used to be my parents’ bedroom, like a rug, with molding along the bottoms of the walls holding it in place. It’s severely stretched and lumpy-bumpy in places, and attracts dust, dirt and cat hair like nothing else I’ve ever seen! I was so thrilled to finally…
… break the new band on the vacuum cleaner.
It turned out I hadn’t quite lined the cover up right over the beater bar when I put it back.
I’m glad I got extra bands! If I break it again, there’s still a couple more.
It feels so good to finally have a red carpet again, instead of grey with cat hair. :-D
You know you’re getting old, when being able to vacuum a carpet is exciting.
Unfortunately, with the noise of the vacuum, all the cats ran off, including Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Nosencrantz has started to explore the house more on her own, and has even visited the girls upstairs, but Butterscotch still hadn’t even shown an interest. Nosencrantz has made her way back and is settled down on my bed with several other cats, but not Butterscotch. Right now, I have no idea where she is!
Well, I guess that’s one way to get her to check out the rest of the house! :-D
I’ve made a post that’s now pinned to the top of the main page on this blog, while we’ve got a fundraiser going for the Cat Lady. I got a call from her while I was outside this morning and got some other news.
With her new cat rescue organization started, she had an interview with a community paper. Not one we get in our area, though. Anyhow; she wanted to let me know about it, because they had asked a lot of questions about Cabbages’ history. She assured me she was careful and tactful about it, to respect our privacy, but also used our situation to illustrate the need for affordable spay and neuter programs in rural areas. Which I greatly appreciated.
She also expects to be able to take another cat to the vet she has worked an arrangement out with. It sounds like it will be one at a time, at first. It will be Turmeric. She has Saffron and Nicco listed on her new website, and has noted that Saffron’s sister will soon be available for adoption, too. She was asking me about keeping Saffron and Turmeric together or not. Saffron is apparently the most chill and adaptable cat she’s ever worked with. Nicco has been getting along well, too, but there doesn’t seem to be any bond between her and Saffron. Which doesn’t surprise me. Nicco never really had a chance to bond with any of the other cats here, as she was on the bottom of the pecking order here. I think she will be much happier somewhere with much fewer other animals around! The Cat Lady will contact us again when she has timing worked out between the vet and the foster families.
Speaking of bonding…
Check this out!
Nosencrantz joined a cuddle pile!!!
She was snuggled right up to David’s butt.
A lot of the cats like to snuggle up to David. :-D
This is HUGE, because Turmeric and Beep Beep are right there, and they tend to hiss at Nosencrantz pretty regularly. They hiss at the other cats, too, but as the new kit on the block, Nosencrantz hasn’t learned to just roll with it, yet.
There was another cuddle pile happening.
It involved me.
Fenrir decided to snuggle into my arms and take a nap on my chest while I was at the computer earlier.
This is Fenrir being all sweet and cuddly.
Yeah. She always has that “murder” look in her eyes.
We have another day that is turning out to be warmer than predicted – again, by only a degree! We were supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F but, as I write this, we are at 2C/36F, and for this time of day, we could potentially warm up a bit more before cooling down for the night.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very well this morning, and one of my daughters was sweet enough to do the morning outdoor chores for me. It seems we all had rough nights last night, though with the girls, they are having issues with the roof leak coming in at one of their windows. They ended up having to move their computers (they have a double sided desk that they share) and other electronics. Unfortunately, one of the only 2 outlets in that room happens to be under that window, and it’s the only one that takes 3 prong plugs, so they don’t have a lot of choice on where to set up. For my older daughter, that means a delay on her being able to work on commissions.
The temperature changes fluctuating above and below freezing have been absolutely brutal on my husband. He’s had to resort to “take as needed” medications he’s been able to avoid for months, just to be able to stand up more or less straight. The down side is that one of those medications causes drowsiness, and while a deeper sleep may seem like a good thing, it isn’t when one is also on a water pill.
Among my disturbances of the night was dealing with the mess Nosencrantz made. She has been using the litter to pee in just fine but, for some reason, she prefers to poop in my closet, near where we’ve got a cat bed set up in an old laundry basket; one of her favorite places. I’d already resorted to using carpet cleaning powder on the area and leaving it there instead of vacuuming it up (the replacement band for the new vacuum cleaner still hasn’t shown up, so we’re not able to properly vacuum right now, anyhow). It seemed to be working but, last night, I discovered her pooping right next to the powder.
*sigh*
So at 2 in the morning, I was cleaning it up, adding more carpet powder, and re-arranging things stored on the bottom of my closet to protect some of my longer clothing, like my summer dresses, that the cats were mucking about with. Then, since I was up anyhow and she was cooperative, I checked out Nosencrantz’s surgical site.
The stitches they use are supposed to dissolve, but for some reason, only with Nosencrantz, some of them aren’t. We could feel them when brushing a hand across her belly, but this time I took a closer look. One piece with a knot at the end that stuck out seemed to be loose, so I thought I could gently brush it out – only to see skin being tugged in another spot!
After getting a better look at it in daylight, I decided to call the vet about it. They asked for a photo for a technician to look at it, so I sent this one – at full resolution, so the tech could zoom right in.
My daughter’s fingers are pointing at the 3 spots of concern. On the right, that purple dot is the knot. It sticks out surprisingly far. In the middle, you can actually see a stitch joining two reddish spots. On the left is another slightly reddish area. We couldn’t actually see anything there, but we can feel something. That spot seems to be the other end of the thread.
I got a response from the vet very quickly. The technician said that sometimes, stitches just take longer to dissolve. It should be fine, but if it seems to be irritating her, we could make and appointment and they would remove it.
So it still should dissolve away. Nosencrantz seems utterly oblivious to it, except when we are checking it. The slight redness is a bit of a concern to me, but it isn’t getting infected or anything, and the knot doesn’t seem to be catching on anything.
We decided not to take her in, but having been assured that it will, indeed, dissolve, I did snip that bit in the middle, and was able to pull part of it out, from the knot.
It was almost an inch and a half long! That doesn’t look at all like it’s in the process of dissolving, either. :-/
The main thing is that there is no longer a piece sticking out, and no loop tugging her flesh together, which is likely the cause of the redness we could see.
We will keep monitoring the area, of course, but I think it should be fine, now. We could have done it earlier, but I didn’t want to remove only part of it, if the rest of it wasn’t going to dissolve away.
I also have some news that I’ve been sort of waiting until I had more information to share.
There have been some major changes in regards to the Cat Lady that has slowed down the adoption process for a while.
The Cat Lady has left the organization that was covering most of the vet bills to get the cats spayed, examined, vaccinated, etc. There had been an intake freeze with the clinic we use, because of the vet costs of so many sick cats, but now there is an organization wide intake freeze. This organization is completely by donation, so I can understand that needed to happen at times.
The Cat Lady was also having issues with them. There was, of course, the usual issues that seem to plague any organization; gossiping, internal politics, etc. The final straw, however, involved out of province adoptions.
They wanted to adopt Saffron and Nicco out of province.
It would have meant a THREE DAY van ride!
The cats get stressed out enough just with a ride to the vet in the city! She couldn’t let them inflict that on Saffron and Nicco. Since they are still with her, instead of a with fostering household, she simply quit her job and is hanging on to them longer.
She is now going independent, and Saffron and Nicco will be the first cats up for adoption when her new website goes live. Cabbages is the model on her flier, though Cabbages is not up for adoption. Her daughter is too attached! She already has 10 foster families lined up, has the support of the local shelter, and just worked things out with a vet, but she has to get things live quickly. She’s picking up another 10 or so cats from the area this week! In the middle of all this, she was also able to get another pair of cats settled into a new forever home. She has placed a priority on getting our cats adopted out, though, so as soon as she can, she will be taking on the next pair of cats for a trip to the vet, recovery time, then adoption.
Now, we could continue to work with the organization she left, as they do have a lot of resources she doesn’t, however I’m not keen on the possibility of cats being adopted out of province, so we are sticking with the Cat Lady! Her organization is going to be specific to our region, too, not the entire province.
This is a huge leap, but she’s got 13 years experience in animal rescue, and clearly cares deeply about the cats, and where they get adopted to. I think she will do fabulous.
Which brings me to our ongoing fundraiser. I’d set a goal of $1500 to surprise reimburse the Cat Lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, knowing it likely would be more than that. I’ll be keeping the goal at $1500, but anything above and beyond will still go to the Cat Lady, to help with her new cat rescue organization.
If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, you can go to the fundraiser page though this link, or click on the button below.
Here’s a switch. Instead of being colder than predicted, today we were warmer! Only a degree warmer than forecast, but that was enough to make quite a difference outside!
Inside, I had Turmeric making it difficult for me to make my bed.
She won.
Rolando Moon claimed the favourite sun room bed for herself. Since we’ve been leaving the doors propped slightly open, so the cats can get to the inside heated water bowl, I’ve noticed she’s in there quite a lot! She may not have the temperament to be an inside cat, but she does claim some of the luxuries when they are available. ;-)
The outside cats were very active this morning. Since I shoveled most of the snow off the cat room, we now regularly see several of them up there at the same time, when we first pop outside.
I counted about 14 of them this morning. While setting out the kibble, The Distinguished Guest came by, so I took advantage of the opportunity and copped a quick feel. Alas, I did find a tiny pair of nibs under that long fur.
Well, I guess we’ll have “long haired black cat” added to the genetic diversity of our yard cats!
I stayed out to get the burn barrel going again – it really did not want to stay lit!
With today’s warmth, it was getting a bit more dangerous, moving around. Formerly hard packed snow would collapse under my feet, or I’d find a layer of ice – the hard way – and came close to losing my footing.
Which meant that we had issues when we headed out to pick up the pizza’s my daughter ordered. The van just sank into the softened snow. We didn’t get stuck, at least!
The highways were nice and clear, though the visibility was down.
Where we live is a transition area between prairie and Boreal forest. We don’t have far to go before we leave the trees behind, and see this.
This is with the camera on my phone cleaning up the shot! It looked like there was fog, though it was actually snow. The white expanse and reflective light was actually a distraction in my peripheral vision. I kept thinking my daughter’s window was getting frosted over, but it was just … whiteness. She took some pictures to try and capture that for me. You can just see some trees dotting the horizon. These are most likely shelter belts around distant farmhouses.
Once in town, it was warmer, of course. That urban heat island effect had all sorts of things melting, and some of the streets were starting to flood. I was more concerned about dodging the fresh potholes. ’tis the season! We’re supposed to reach temperatures just above freezing, every day for more than a week. The streets and highways are going to get torn apart during the overnight freezes!
After we got home, I found this little bundle on my bed.
Nozencrantz was all curled up like a shrimp, snoozing right in the middle of my bed – with several other cats nearby! She may not be settled in enough to join the cuddle piles, but she’s at least allowing other cats near her more often. Even cats she normally hisses at. Progress!
Over the next few days, we’re going to have to keep a close eye on some things. Though I shoveled as much as I could from the sun room roof, I expect we’ll have water leaking in there. My daughters are having to deal with a leak that comes through one of their windows, even though they’ve cleared the snow off the low slope roof. We’ll have to watch in the old basement in particular, and if the sump pump goes off, make sure it is able to pump through that section of hose outside that was previously blocked. If water starts showing up on the concrete, we’ll have to make sure the big blower fan and the dehumidifier are up and running, to try and keep things dry. We’ll need to keep an eye on the new part basement, too, now that we know the weeping tile is likely full of silt and roots. :-( This will the the first winter since we’ve moved here, where any of this will be an issue.
We had to deal with some of this, during our first spring here in particular, but this winter, we’ve got a lot more snow. Without being able to clear snow from the yard so we could drive up to the door, we can also expect a lot more water in front of the outhouse. I remember having difficulty getting to the door at the back of the garage, because of a large pool of water that had formed. I recall seeing through the hole under the outhouse, that the pit was flooded out. That hole has been blocked off, now, but this year, a groundhog made a den under there. I hope it has a back door, because after clearing away the gravel it filled the pit with, the back of the outhouse is now blocked with wire mesh. It’s set up to keep things from digging in from the outside, though. I think a groundhog would be able to dig its way out from the inside. Assuming it comes out of hibernation before its den floods out. :-(
After about a week, the temperatures are supposed to drop to just below freezing again, through into April. If things go well, we will continue to have this slow, gentle melt, giving the ground time to thaw out and absorb the water, increasing our water table, rather than surface flooding and draining away to towards the lake. We need every drop of moisture to make up for last summer’s drought and heat waves. The local farms could certainly use a good year, after the last two disastrous ones. Me, I’ll be happy to not have to water all those far flung garden beds every day, twice a day! Though we will be shifting the garden beds in the north east corner close to the house, we’ll still need to be able to water the berry bushes that will be planted where we had the sweet corn and sunflower beds, last year.
So much work to do, once the snow it gone. :-) I’m really looking forward to it!
The transition of Butterscotch and Nosencrantz into indoor cats progresses.
Butterscotch has started to come out of her favorite corners of my office/bedroom more often, even when other cats are in the room. She turns her nose up at me, but if my husband or daughters come into the room, she will come out and, if there aren’t too many other cats around, come for pets. She still has shown zero interest in leaving the room!
Nosencrantz, on the other hand, is getting more adventurous and has started to explore on her own a bit. She particularly likes to visit my husband in his room, even when there are other cats sleeping on his hospital bed.
Just look at that nose!
She especially likes his little side table, and keeping him company while he is on his computer!
I’m really glad we were able to catch her and get her fixed when we did. Her female age-mates in the yard have been going into heat. Today, we saw Caramel entertaining all the boys in the yard. Including…
The Distinguished Guest.
Crud.
As a long haired black cat, it’s really hard to see well enough to identify gender. He did allow me to pet him while he was eating, and I was able to do a quick examination, and I found no nibs. Or anything else, for that matter. I figured we had either a female, or a neutered male, moving in with the yard cats.
He’s been fighting with Potato Beetle and Creamsicle Jr., which suggested males establishing status, but Rolando Moon and Butterscotch both did that, too. Rolando Moon was fixed when we were in the process of moving here, while Butterscotch remained intact until recently, so that particular status made no difference.
After seeing The Distinguished Guest entertaining Caramel, however, it seems we have an intact male added to the mix.
Except…
… some of our neutered males in the house have also tried to engage in such activities when the ladies went into heat. Heck, just today, I saw Beep Beep, whose belly is still growing its fur back from being spayed, trying to get it on with Turmeric. I’ve seen some of our other female cats engaging in similar behaviour, which is typically a sign that they will soon go into heat, but Beep Beep shouldn’t be doing that anymore! Which means, I guess, that it’s still possible The Distinguished Guest is just frustrating Caramel, but… the chances of that seem pretty low.
Nosencrantz, at least, gets to skip all that, and just be adorable.
Well, today, I finally got it done. My daughter and I made it to Costco in the city and survived. ;-)
It wasn’t too bad, actually, though I did have some concerns when we first headed out.
Of course, the critters got fed before we left – and Ghost Baby made an appearance, too! As you can see, it was snowing again.
Chadiccus is not impressed with more snow.
It was coming down heavier by the time we left; enough to make visibility a bit of a concern. Especially when passing oncoming trucks, and all the snow they were kicking up. The main concern was more about deer than traffic – and I counted at least three dead deer on the side of the road, just between our place and the town my mother lives in. By the time we picked up a bit of gas and breakfast, it was starting to clear up, though, so that was good. We did see several deer crossing the highway on the way home, though. Thankfully, visibility was just fine at the time, and all the traffic could see them and slow down!
One of the changes in today’s plans had to be about my glasses. I don’t know how much they will cost, but I did have an idea of what our shopping list would cost, and I knew we probably couldn’t do both. I still thought I might be able to get an eye test, though, which our insurance covers 100%, once every 2 years. While standing at the counter, being ignored, I noticed their sign on the eye exam door making a big deal about masks, due to close proximity. All restrictions are supposed to be lifted in our province tomorrow, but I’ve been able to go without even my Mingle Mask (which I shouldn’t be wearing, either), without any problems lately. This Costco location has been particularly good, except for the odd harassment from customers, though I’ve heard of others getting abuse from staff. I think it can depend on who’s on shift at any given moment, and how much they are into power tripping. Either way, after reading the sign, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and left. I’ll see if I can get a eye exam somewhere, later, and hopefully will not have to deal with medical discrimination any more.
There were a couple of things I found at Costco that I decided was worth getting, even though they were not on our list. One was a large bag of soil for seed starting. I’d been getting smaller bags until now, because that’s all that was in stock. With this one, we now have enough for all the seed starting we need to do, and probably have some left over, all at a significantly lower cost.
The other thing I got was a shop light that was remarkably affordable.
Last year, we rigged up the long aquarium light fixtures that are currently being used on the big aquarium greenhouse that they were designed for. This is brighter, and much less fragile! If I can avoid moving those more than I have to, that’ll be a good thing.
While it’s intended for the sun room, once we start transferring our seedlings there, I have it rigged up in front of the mini-greenhouse right now. For an overcast day like today, it’ll be much more efficient than the little lights I’ve been making do with right now. I’ve actually got it hanging from one end from a plant hook in the ceiling of the living room, in front of the mini-greenhouse. It’s braced in place, but I do have some concerns a cat will knock it aside. If that happens, at worst, it’ll just be dangling from the ceiling and not lighting up inside the mini-greenhouse. We are still relying on the aluminum foil lining the back and sides to reflect the light. At some point, we might be able to get smaller lights that will fit under the shelves of the mini-greenhouse but, honestly, by the time we’re ready to invest in those types of lights, we’ll be using larger, sturdier shelving to start seeds in, so it’ll be a moot point.
This light can be linked to others, so if it works out in the sun room, we might pick up more. If they’re still available by the time we can test it out, of course.
The remote control is an interesting thing to have. It means that we’ll be able to control the light from inside the house, if we want to. Most likely from the bathroom window, which overlooks the run room.
We’ll see how it works out and adjust accordingly.
While we were unloading the van, I spotted an Agnoos. He was having so much fun rolling around on the cat house roof, he almost rolled himself right off of it! :-D Silly boy!
So we finally did the big shopping trip we normally would have done at the end of last month, and are all stocked up again. We now also have all we need for starting the remaining seeds, and even an extra light. About the only thing we’re short on is a storage bin of the appropriate size and shape for when we start the kulli corn. We’ve been saving our toilet paper tubes to use again, with some modifications after things didn’t work out as planned, last year. We got 100 kulli corn seeds in total which, if we can find the right size and shape storage bin, we should be able to fit into one bin. We still have the under-bed storage bin we used last year, but that will be too long for just the corn. Last year, it fit both corn and sunflowers. It worked, but I’d like something less awkward to move around, and we’re not starting sunflowers indoors this year.
Oh, there was something else that has progressed. Or should I say, has actually stalled. We hit the mail before heading into the city, and I found a letter from the RCMP. My PAL application went through, but my “credit card” didn’t work. They can’t do debit Visa. I don’t have a credit card. The letter included a form for new credit card information, but I’ll have to phone them tomorrow and see if I can mail them a check, or if I have to go to the bank and get a cashier’s check. There is also a letter saying the quality of the photo I sent them was not good enough, and they want another one. I could probably use the same photo; the problem would have been with my printer. I’ve printed other photos since then, and the quality has been much better, so I’ll try again.
Anyhow. We got some good progress during what has turned out to be a very dreary day. Not as warm as was predicted (no surprise there). We’re also getting predictions of above freezing temperatures tomorrow, but still overcast, so… we’ll see what actually happens!
Tomorrow, however, is pizza night. One of my daughters has a birthday this month, so she’s treating the whole family to pizza. The place she wants to order from is a 45 minute drive away, but what birthday girl wants, birthday girl gets. ;-)
The Re-Farmer 