There is most definitely a plus to not closing our gate anymore, to avoid having it freeze shut again.
Our angel with a front end loader showed up yesterday! What a beautiful sight!
With the temperatures, no one went out while he was still here, but I did make sure to send a note to the renter to pass on our thanks. Like many others, they were pretty snowed in, too. Having that front end loader sure makes a difference, though! Their kids were home; school was cancelled, and the buses haven’t been running for days anyhow, due to icy road conditions. Plus a shortage of drivers. I don’t know if that’s because the drivers are snowed in at their homes, too, or if they just don’t have as many employed right now. Could well be both!
The driver even made the area in front of our person gate wider. I think he could see, by the tracks in the snow from the tow truck, that the area in front is used, and where space is needed for turning around.
The cats are loving it! After the front end loader was done, I could see on the security camera, cats running around and playing all over the plowed areas! They were having a blast!
This morning, after feeding the critters, I started a bit of shoveling, including clearing part of the snow ridge in front of the people gate, where we unload the van. I couldn’t stay out for too long. I hadn’t put toe warmers on this morning, and my boots that are supposed to be rated to -40C/-40F… aren’t. :-D The girls and I will head out later in the day to clear the paths. I’m just so grateful that the big job is done. Yes, we couldn’t have gotten out with my mother’s car, but this makes life so much easier!
The kitties were looking pretty miserable when they came out for kibble! As you can see by the nose in the window, they were eager to get back into shelter, once they had their fill of kibble and warm water! I do wish I’d been able to catch the death glare I was getting from Caramel, who is drinking water in the above photo. I think she is going to be a very happy camper, once we manage to catch her and she gets placed into a forever home – indoors!
This is what the temperature was like shortly after I got back inside – and still is now, as I am writing this! The -28C/-18F is bang on, but I’m happy to say we weren’t getting that -36C/-33F wind chill. The wind may be coming from the south, which we normally have issues with, it’s only 9 kmh/5 1/2 mph, and what trees and outbuildings we have on the south side are enough to reduce that. Still, it wasn’t a good morning to be out there for very long, that’s for sure!
The 14 day forecast is looking pretty good, though more snow is on the way. On Sunday – tomorrow – we’re expecting less than 5cm/2in, but on Tuesday, they’re predicting another 5-10cm/2-4in, then another 2-4cm/1-2in starting late Thursday and into Friday. I know so many people who are even more snowed in than we have been. Many have the equipment to dig their way out, but they’re running out of room for all the piled up snow! It takes my old brother, who lives closer to the city, 4 hours to clear his driveway with his snow blower. My sister’s husband uses their tractor and it takes him 2 hours, though for where they are, it’s generally a longer wait for their roads to be plowed, so it only gets them so far.
I’m liking the sight of warmer temperatures in the forecast, but the warmer weather also tends to bring more moisture – and more snow!
As much as we needed that precipitation, we have enough, now. :-D
Since I posted a screencap of our weather earlier, it has actually gotten a bit colder, instead of warmer, though the wind chill has been reduced.
While heating up water for the outside cats, I spotted this, outside our dining room window.
They were staring very intently at something past the south yard, but I couldn’t see what it was.
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are still nice and cozy in the sun room. They are getting more active and wanting more attention, too. When the time comes, we’ll see if Butterscotch will let us bring her indoors with Nosencrantz this time, and see if she’s willing to become an indoor cat. If she does, that leaves only Rolando Moon as one of the originals that my late father used to care for, and there’s no way she’ll ever come indoors. My younger brother took her and had her spayed after my husband and younger daughter came out here ahead of the move, but by the time my older daughter and I came out, she had managed to escape the garage they were keeping her in and came back here. She is not a cat suited for indoors, at all! But as snarly, growly, bitey and mean she is – in between demanding pets and skritches! – we love her anyways!
Once outside, I did the minimum amount of cleared needed. We could open the door, but not all the way, so that got cleared. The cat’s non-heated water bowls had to be dug out of the snow. My daughters had already shoveled snow off the low-angle roof last night.
Things like the path to the compost pile, however, will wait a day or two.
You can see in the foreground, where the deer made their way through the snow into the south yard! They’re not quite comfortable enough to go around the front of the house, to the sidewalk path. :-D
We are fortunate where we are. We got snow, but were not snowed in. I would rather not, but if we absolute had to, we’d be able to use my mother’s car to get out, even if the roads are not yet plowed. I know others have had a lot more snow, and are going to need a while to dig their way out.
We’re supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow, so that might be a good day to start clearing out the paths. It’ll warm up even more, the day after, and generally stay mild for the rest of the month. We’re supposed to get a bit more snow here and there, but as far as temperature goes, we should be good.
Just think; the first day of spring is March 20 this year – not very long! Granted, where we are, we can reasonably expect a blizzard in April, but still… things should be slowly warming up now! If all goes well, we will have a slow melt of all this snow. It’d be nice for it all to be absorbed right were it is, and not drain away into the lake.
And is living the high life! She’s getting a salmon fillet every day, as well as boiled chicken and high protein dry cat food. It takes her about 2 hours to eat everything, and she’s getting lots of weigh-ins. She gets tired very quickly, which the vet thinks is a side effect of the neurological infection. She also has her very own tiny human and to dote on her, and massaging her legs, every day. She also has a new name, but we will keep calling her Cabbages, here. :-)
She will be with them a while longer, until after she recovers from getting spayed, which will be later this month, I think. Then she will be moving on to her forever home.
They have done so well by her!
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
The snow started falling last night, and it hasn’t stopped yet!
We are at a relatively balmy -7C/19F. According to my app, the wind chill is -13C/9F.
I’d say our wind chill is colder than that!
It’s warm enough for the kitties to come out for breakfast, though Caramel’s expression looks like one of supreme displeasure! :-D
I am so glad we built the kibble house. It’s made things much nicer for the babies!
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are still doing well in the sun room, though Nosencrantz did seem almost interested in going outside with me.
Almost.
I had deer hanging around the north yard and waiting for me to be done. It was the usual pair, at first. Then this one showed up.
The piebald deer has returned!
This is at least the 3rd winter she has been visiting us. I can’t remember if she started coming during our first winter here, so it might actually be her 4th winter visiting.
She also chased off the other two! :-D
I checked on the van this morning. The charger read full, so I unhooked it, then tested the van.
It started fine, but then I watched the display screen, as the battery charge dropped before my eyes, then the “charging system failure” warning came on again.
So I hooked the charger back on again.
After making sure our mechanic was good with it, I called CAA to tow it over. As you can imagine, they’re pretty busy right now, so I made sure to let them know, there was no emergency or urgency. They couldn’t even give me an estimated time. Logging on later, they have an ETS past 5:30 this evening, but I don’t expect them that “early”. The driver will have to call me for more detailed directions, anyhow, because they just have the map pinned at the highway junction nearest us. Honestly, if they couldn’t make it out today at all, I’d be okay with that.
When it gets here, we should have enough power to start the van and back it out of the garage, but I’d the battery would be dead before they could finish loading it up, based on how fast I saw it loosing charge in the display. Chances are, they won’t be dropping off the van until after the garage is closed, so they’ll probably have to use their own charger, just to be able to park the van after unloading it.
The snow has pretty much stopped falling while I was writing this. A quick look at the weather radar, and it shows the system is just passing us now. It looks like rain is also on the radar, but it is going to miss us entirely. Previous forecast of reaching as high as 3C/37F this afternoon are now saying a high of -3C/27F. I don’t know how much snow we actually got, but the paths didn’t need to be shoveled when I was out this morning, and the driveway looks driveable. Which is good, because we can’t get the little electric snow blower out of the garage. I was able to shovel out one of the swinging doors on that side, but it still won’t open far enough to take anything out, and we’d have to take the wood chipper out before we could take out the little snow blower. At least we can get inside that part of the garage now, though.
Areas to the south of us would have gotten more snow than we did. My sister wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it in to work. Their farm is one of those “turn on the gravel road and drive until it ends” sort of locations, and their driveway drifts over quickly. I haven’t heard from my brother, yet; he’s even further south, and would be in the thick of system right now, judging by the weather radar. He should be able to work from home, though.
Things went south before I even woke up this morning. Or, should I say, things going south was what woke me up!
I still had a litter box in my office/bedroom, so our post surgical kitties wouldn’t have far to go, if they needed to.
I was awakened by the sound of Beep Beep vigorously trying to spread the litter all over my carpet.
And we still don’t have the replacement belts for our new vacuum, yet.
*sigh*
Then I went into the sun room to start my morning rounds, and found water on the floor.
Under the spare cat food bag.
Despite things cooling down, yesterday’s warmth has lead to water leaking in the sun room again, and it’s making its way through now.
And we still don’t know where the water is getting in, so we couldn’t patch it.
So I had to spend some time taking care of the bag of cat food which, thankfully, has an inner lining that kept the kibble from getting wet, and setting out a bucket to catch the drips.
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were doing very well, and enjoyed their wet cat food treat. They are getting so spoiled these days! :-D
The kibble bowls outside had been picked clean of even the kibble from the brands they don’t like. I am pretty sure I know who ate it. Last night, on the security camera live feed, I saw a very large skunk, running back and forth on the driveway, and too and from one of the sheds. Skunks don’t fully hibernate in winter, and it can be pretty safe to assume a very hungry skunk visited the kibble house last night.
When I came outside, I “caught” a deer in the path to the compost pile, half way between the pile and the house. It froze and stared at me for a while, before walking away, then into the spruces. Even as I brought out the seeds to the feeding station, it stayed and watched me until I was almost clear of the lilac bushes. By the time I was heading to the garage, to take the van to the mechanic, two deer were at the feeding station. They watched me, but didn’t run away.
The van started well enough, and no warning light or message from the onboard computer about the brakes. I left it running to warm up while I went to unlock the gate.
The lock was frozen.
We don’t have lock de-icer.
It took me about 10 minutes to finally be able to get the key in and open the lock.
Which is when I discovered the slide bar that holds the two sides of the gate together, was also frozen.
This thing is about 2 feet long, and the ice had formed between the metal of the bar, and the metal of the gate it slides on.
After fighting with it for a while, I went to the garage, shut off the van, and grabbed a tool kit. I ended up having to remove one of the bolts that holds it in place, but also stops it from sliding too far over the other half of the gate. It allowed me to pull the slider upwards, pivoting on the opposite bolt, enough to break free of the ice. Much sliding back and forth was required to scrape the ice off. The ice had filled almost the entire length where the two pieces of metal where in contact.
That took another 20 minutes or so.
The gate is being left open, now.
Then it was back to the van and off to town, with a brief stop at the post office, along the way.
We’ve got high winds from the north right now, blowing across the road the entire trip. It wasn’t too bad at first, but the closer I drove towards the lake, the more snow there was, the more drifting, and worse visibility. When I reached the stop sign to cross the next highway, it was sheer ice and hadn’t been sanded!
Which is when a new warning light came on. The battery light, while my onboard computer flashed with “charging system failure.”
Seriously???
Thankfully, I was less than 5 minutes from the garage.
When I got there, his parking lot was full, so I pulled in behind his own vehicle and went in.
But not until after I shut off the van, then restarted it. The warning light did not come back on.
Once inside, I saw that not only did he have all three lifts full, but he managed to squeeze in another car in the middle, and a utility vehicle between a vehicle on a lift, and the bay door behind it.
At least he had another mechanic with him this time!
Clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to check the van, anytime soon. I did bring in the printout to show him and we talked about what was going on, as well as the road conditions. He thought I was going to be dropping the van off and coming back later, but that wasn’t an option. My daughter still has a limited license, so someone with a full license has to be with her, and my husband no longer has a valid licence, since they wanted him to do a legal name change when he tried to switch to this province’s license. And she can’t take the road test to get her full license, because of all the restrictions and mandates against organic humans.
I would have been willing to wait, or he could have called me later in the afternoon, when he could fit the van in, but with the road conditions, I didn’t want to chance it.
I’m now booked to come back at 10am on Friday.
It’s a good thing we did that, as conditions had worsened even in the short time I was in with him. It was slow going in places, and more than a few spots were down to almost zero visibility.
About half way home, that “charging system failure” warning came back on.
I was just coming up on the turn towards our driveway when the van kicked into battery saving mode and shutting things off.
After pulling into the garage, I checked, and the battery was down to 8.4 volts. It is normally at 14 volts.
Thankfully, we have a good charger.
Unfortunately, the battery is really hard to get at. The fuse box and a piece of frame support is basically on top of it.
But, it is charging, and I should at least be able to get it to the mechanic in a couple of days.
One of the things on the list of stuff to check that I got after changing the oil, was corrosion on the battery connectors. It was something I’d noticed myself. But would that be enough to prevent the batter from charging? The mechanic suggested it might be the alternator, but until he actually gets under the hood to check, it’s just guesswork.
So, there’s something wonky with the brakes. The battery is losing its charge. We have a loose wire in our manual headlights knob, so that if I want to turn them on manually (auto still works fine), I sometimes have to wiggle it just right for it to work. The ABS needs to be fixed, and on and on.
This van has done well by us, considering the problems we had when we first bought it, but it’s mileage is right up there; I’m actually hoping to catch the odometer at 456,789.0 km, but I might have missed it on the way home. It’s old and little things are giving out, all over. We’re keeping up on them as much as we can, but the budget is just not there to get it all done.
Meanwhile, there is basic maintenance needed on my mother’s car, we have other equipment that needs to be fixed, the roof is leaking, we’re on borrowed time for our well, and the whole house needs a top to bottom renovation.
A lottery win would really come in handy right now. Not even a particularly big win. Just enough to replace and fix the things that need to be done!
Today’s forecast for our area was 1C/34F with less than 1cm/0.4in of snow.
The plan was to head into the city with one of my daughters for their own separate grocery shopping trip. We weren’t planning to leave until noon, so I had plenty of time to do the morning rounds and check the trail cam files.
The outside cats were almost completely out of water in their heated water bowl again – and that thing holds a lot of water!
Also, they have a definite preference for Costco’s Kirkland brand of kibble. :-D
The deer have really dug up our compost heap! Not sure what they’re after under there, that they haven’t already eaten.
Nosencrantz and Butterscotch are absolutely luxuriating in their convalescence. We could bring Nosencrantz indoors right now, but Butterscotch has another few days, at least, before we can let her outside.
She hasn’t shown any interest in going outside since the surgery! What a complete reversal!
Beep Beep and Fenrir, meanwhile, spent the night isolated with me and seem to be doing very well, so they are no longer being kept apart from the other cats.
Beep Beep, unlike Butterscotch, did no go through a “catonality” change, and is still a bully towards the other cats. :-D Nothing bad enough to be a concern, but she does keep herself right up there on the pecking order!
By the time I was done my rounds and heading in, it had started to snow. After a while, it got heavy enough that we were reconsidering our trip to the city.
I’ve gotten to be a wuss in my old age. If I can avoid driving in inclement conditions, I usually will. Back in the day, I had no issues driving through blizzards severe enough that highways were closed, while we were on them. Not anymore!
Meanwhile, as I watched the visibility drop on the security camera’s live feed, the weather app was telling me, “rain will continue for 104 minutes.”
Rain??
Not where we were!
We did decide to head out, and the conditions were much better than I feared. About half way to the town my mother lives in, where we stopped for gas, it switched from snow and snow covered highway, to rain and mostly clear.
The rain continued all the way to the city, and we didn’t hit snow again until we passed back though my mother’s town, though by then the snow had moved further south and was a lot heavier than when we were heading out.
The wet road conditions made for some very messy driving; especially when crossing paths with oncoming semi’s. Thankfully, it’s been warm enough that the windshield washer fluid in my mother’s car was thawed! It had frozen before I had a chance to put winter fluid in. I had still topped it up with winter fluid, so that would have helped, too.
Once home and unloading the car, I paused to top up the windshield fluid again (rated to -35C/-31F!), which is when my husband popped out to ask me to unlock the gate again. We’d just received a call that a delivery was on its way, but the driver couldn’t find our physical address. Neither the name nor the numerical designation for our road comes up on GPS. So I took care of the gate, then topped up the washer fluid before putting my mom’s car in the garage (it barely fits in the addition it’s parked in) when the delivery van pulled in. The driver was very cheerful and we chatted a bit about our issue with road names. Then he had to back his way out of the driveway, because with my mother’s car out, he didn’t have room to turn around in the snow.
Which was fine, right up until he had to stop at the end of the driveway to make sure the road was clear.
With how warm it was today, the rear tires sank right into the plow ridge and he got stuck!
Of course, we had snow shovels handy, but I ended up having to dig out the steel garden shovel again. The plastic snow shovel just couldn’t do the job there! Thankfully, he got out very quickly, though he joked about how common this actually is, with rural deliveries!
The delivery was the 14’x200′ (4.3mx30.5m) netting we ordered, to use as temporary critter fencing around our garden areas this year. We will be ordering a second one, probably next month, since we have so much area to cover. Plus, we’ll be cutting pieces to size to create covers for individual beds, too.
I’m quite happy to have our first roll in. Even if, for some reason, we can’t order a second one right away, it’s enough for us to put a perimeter around most areas we will be planting in. The only real concern is that, being just plastic netting, if the raccoons decide they want in, they can tear right through it.
I look forward to when we can build permanent protection for our garden beds!
I’m glad we did make the trip today, instead of putting it off again. Tomorrow, I’ll be dropping the van off to get the brakes tested, and to see what needs to be done next. With the rain today, it’s going to make roads slippery, but our area got snow (no matter what the weather apps said!), so the road to town should not be too bad. The day after tomorrow, we’re supposed to get even warmer, and get 10-15cm/4-6in of snow – or 5-10cm/2-4in, depending on which app I look at! Either way, it’s not a day I’d want to be driving to the city again. The less such trips, the happier I will be!
I’m happy to say that Beep Beep and Fenrir are now at home, recovering nicely. They did very well at the vet today.
Once I lifted Fenrir onto the bed to remove the bandage on her “wrist”, she settled right in, and is still sitting there as I write this.
Beep Beep, on the other hand, has been constantly in motion! I was told she had a bit of a panic when the IV was removed, and she was pretty vocal for the ride home. They are now isolated in the room with me, and she’s only just now settled down on the bed, though she is sitting and staring at the door with great intensity!
It took a while to get that bandage off of her!
We’ve got different instructions than with the outside cats. Water only for now, then a bit of food to see if they can handle solids yet, this evening. Starting tomorrow morning, we have a pain killer to give them. The dose is based on weight, which they highlighted on the package in different colours. Beep Beep is over 3kg, or about 7 pounds, while Fenrir is just barely over 2kg, or about 5 pounds. I did ask about her small size, and if it should be a concern, and was told no. She is just a small cat. As for the pain killer, we have a syringe to administer it – a much smaller one than was we used to feed Cabbages!
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
We can put the medication on their food, but only if we’re sure they won’t eat each other’s food, which… ha! Not going to happen. So we will dose them directly into their mouths.
Beep Beep is not going to like that!
It should be interesting to see if she has a “catonality” change, like Butterscotch did, after this surgery.
Once I got the call telling me when to pick them up, I left early to run some errands first. One of them was to pick up the soft sided carrier used to transport Cabbages to the cat lady for medical car. This time, it did make it to the donation bin at the shelter – and I was happy to see actual donations in there, too. Last time, it was empty.
I was also able to connect with our mechanic and talk to him about our brakes on the van. I told him about what the garage in the city told me, and then the warning light turning on the next day. He thought there might be some water in the fluid, and asked me to drop it off so he can check it with his tester. Once he does that, he’ll be able to tell me more, and give me an estimate. The estimate will determine if we can get it fixed right away, or if it has to wait until the end of the month. February, at least, is a short month! :-)
I’ll also be able to give him the printout and we can talk about the other things they listed as needing to be checked out, and make any future appointments needed, as the budget allows.
I’ll be dropping the van off the day after tomorrow. He did suggest tomorrow, but the girls have their own shopping list for a city trip, so I’ll be driving in with one of them, using my mother’s car. It’s due for a highway run, anyhow.
Tomorrow, we still have a forecast of 1C/34F. Today, we warmed up to at least -8C/17C. The thermometer in the sun room reached 8C/46F, so that was quite nice for the kitties in there! And now, even my other weather apps are showing a high of 3C/37F, a few days from now. If we do get that warm, it’s going to feel downright tropical out there! :-D
This morning, a daughter and I took Beep Beep and Fenrir to the vet, which meant doing the morning rounds a bit earlier.
At least it’s light out, now.
The heated water bowl was empty again.
Because Beep Beep and Fenrir needed to fast, I had them closed up with me, overnight. Which meant I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I had cats trying to claw the door open from both sides! When I made the mistake of going to the bathroom before going to bed, I had Beep Beep escape, dashing down to the basement. I caught her before she ate anything, though. Then I tried to get her back into the bedroom, only to have Fenrir escape. I caught her, only to have Beep Beep escape again, and she was NOT going to let me catch her! I finally had to snag a daughter to catch her, then hang on to her while I dashed into the bedroom, grabbed Fenrir and held on while my daughter quickly tossed Beep Beep onto the bed before any other cats got in.
I had only one carrier in the room with me, but that was enough for me to be able to get out of the room long enough to grab the second one, this morning. I had both carriers on the bed, with Beep Beep in the hard sided one (where she was trying to claw her way out!) before doing the inside cat morning routine and warming water up for the outside cats. Before heading outside, I went to move the carriers closer to the old kitchen door for later.
When I walked into my room, I found Beep Beep and the carrier gone from the bed.
!!!
I found it on the side of the bed, sitting as if it had been placed there. :-D She had managed to roll the carrier completely off the bed, and it landed right side up!
The plan was to do the critter part of my morning rounds first, then get my mother’s car started and warming up, so I made sure to hang my purse inside the sun room, so I could just grab and go.
It’s a good thing I did.
The old kitchen door into the house hadn’t latched properly behind me. Looking in from the sun room, I found it crawling with exploring cats!
Thankfully, my daughter was able to take care of that, while I went to my mother’s car – after scraping away more ice and snow, just to be able to open one of the doors wide enough – and getting everything ready so we just needed to grab the cats and go.
The drop off went well, with my daughter taking the time to warn them about some of their quirks. We just happen to be bringing two of our “meanest” cats this time. :-D
I still haven’t been able to connect with our mechanic, so we swung by the garage to see if I could talk to him about our van. Unfortunately, though it was supposed to be open, he wasn’t there. He’s on his own, so if he has to get anything, there’s no one to do it for him and he has to lock up. :-/ Hopefully, we’ll get another chance, later.
Once we got home, I was able to spend more time with our recovering kitties.
Nosencrantz doesn’t like to leave her favourite spot under the light bulb. It burnt out last night, but I found one last full spectrum bulb in our stash of incandescent bulbs – this light is meant for seedlings, not cats! :-D – but it’s brighter than the old one, so I wasn’t sure if she’s still like it. She clearly has no issues!
Butterscotch, meanwhile, has switched favourite beds! Usually, we find her in an enclosed box bed on the bottom shelf, but now she’s gone up a left and has been hanging out in the open bed. We’ve also been finding her loafed under the ceramic heat bulb more often, too.
She accepted pets, but had no interest in leaving her bed! :-D
Meanwhile, we have already heard back from the vet. They were checking details about our arrangement with the organization that’s helping us with all this, in regards to the shots and deworming and the like, as was arranged when we brought in Butterscotch and Nosencrantz.
Beep Beep had already been done and they were about to start on Fenrir. Since I had her on the phone, I brought up what they had found with Butterscotch, and how far gone her uterus was, and if there was anything similar with Beep Beep. It was quite a bit larger, and looking a bit worn out, just from having to many litters, but it was not so badly damaged as Butterscotch’s was. We don’t know how old either of them are, but I think we can now safely assume that Beep Beep is the younger one. For all we know, Butterscotch is her mother.
So we will get a call back later, to let us know when they can be picked up.
Meanwhile, the cat lady messaged me last night, with a reminder to have Beep Beep and Fenrir start their fast. While I had her, I asked about Cabbages.
Yesterday was her last day on antibiotics. Yay!! She’s eating quite a lot now, and today, she be moved out of the cage, to their “cat room.” In a few days, she will have a buddy joining her. That would be the more recent frozen cat they picked up, that lost its ears.
I’m just amazed by how quickly she’s bouncing back from being at death’s door the way she was!
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
So now we are just waiting for the call from the vet, for when we can bring Beep Beep and Fenrir home. Since they are both inside cats, we won’t have to do any isolating, but we’ll be keeping a litter box, food and water in my office/bedroom for a while, so they don’t have to go far.
The next trip to the vet, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be taking cats in, and they won’t be coming back. The cat lady will be taking them to fosters for recovery, and then they will be adopted into forever homes. As she’s able to book dates with the vet, we’ll keep doing that for the rest of the adoptable cats (the males are already fixed, as is one female) through March and April. By then, we should be able to start snagging outside cats, starting with the ones we can catch easily (which all happen to be male). Then, once it’s warm enough to do so safely, she will lend us traps for the outside cats that we haven’t been able to socialize at all.
It’s going to be weird, to not have so many cats around!
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were doing very well, this morning. They both seem to be enjoying their recovery period in the sun room! Nosencrantz wants more attention than Butterscotch, but not enough that I can get a good look to see how the ear mite status is. Butterscotch is still so much calmer now. She’ll come over for pets and I was even able to pick her up this morning, but she will not let me check the surgical site. I’m not about to risk injuring it by forcing her; so as long as there aren’t any concerning warning signs, I figure she’s doing fine. Amazingly, she still has shown no interest in trying to escape the sun room, which is so totally different from the past. Granted, when we were trying to keep her in the sun room for lengths of time before, it was because she was about to have kittens. Once she had them, she was more than content to let Beep Beep parent both litters while she tore her way through the screen on the old door.
If this behavioural change keeps up, Butterscotch may actually be willing to become an indoor cat!
We shall see. After all those years outdoors, it would be nice for her final years to be in comfort and safety.
By the time I’m done taking care of the sun room kitties, there’s usually a crowd outside the door, waiting for their kibble! Chadiccus, however, was much more polite about it and wanting attention before food. :-)
The water in the heated bowl was almost completely gone again, and it had been very full. It does make me wonder what other critters are coming around at night, to drink. The snow around the kibble house and water bowls is too hard packed for tracks. One of these days, it would be nice to have a spare camera set up on the area, just to see what’s going on! :-)
I’ve not been seeing quite as many cats, all at once, of late. I haven’t seen Potato Beetle in a while. Since he came back, he had been more aggressive about being the Alpha male – though he was tackling the females as much as the males. That seemed to end after I found him with that injury above one eye. It was pretty minor and healing up nicely, the last I saw, but it seems that battle lost him his status. I think I might have seen him this morning, but he slunk away before I could get a good look and be sure.
While putting the food and water out, I heard a loud yowling from the outer yard. I’ve heard it before, but when I when to check, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. This time, I saw Creamsicle Baby out by the pump shack. I’m still not sure it was him, as he’s developed a very squeaky little meow. I went to check closer and decided the pump shack door needed to be shoveled out.
This is where the cats usually get in and out of the pump shack. When the driveway was cleared, a pile of snow was made near the pump shack. While it does not block the door, there’s a ridge of snow in front that’s pretty high. With the winds we’ve been having, more snow has drifted in front of the door. The cats are still squeezing their way through, as you can see in the photo above, but I wanted to make it easier for them. It took breaking up a lot of snow with the ice chipper before I could dig a path, but I got it clear.
The door opens inward, so I didn’t have to worry about digging it out too much. Once I got it clear enough, I went in and cleared away some snow that had blown through the hole.
I had a bit of a surprise when I opened the door, though. One of the lights was on! I forgot to shut it off, the last time I was in there. It’s a CFL bulb, not very bright, and not near a window facing the house, so we never saw that it was on. :-D Ah, well. No harm done.
When repairing the south facing window of the pump shack a couple of summers ago, I deliberately left an opening that used to have the chimney from a wood burning stove running through it. The stove is long gone, but with a pile of tires on the outside, and various junk on the inside, it’s a way for the cats to get in and out. The shack itself is just a frame with cladding on the outside, and I noticed a new hole in the wall, where some cladding has broken. It’s not visible from the outside, as there are sheets of aluminum against the bottom of the wall on that side.
On our list of things to work on is to fix up the pump shack. The concrete floor is badly cracked up, and the old cladding – which would be quite a bit older than I am – is looking water damaged and has gaps. It would be awesome to turn this building into a little workshop and, of course, we want to get the old well repaired. There is a lot of stuff in there I just don’t know what to do with, including bags of ancient clothing and rolled up awnings stuffed into the rafters, broken furniture, an old fridge that I remember my parents using for cream cans, and even an old, tiny, two burner electric stove sitting in the corner where the wood burning cookstove used to be. That old cookstove was what we used to heat water for baths, before my dad had the well dug next to the house and got running water and an indoor bathroom. If we can fix the well and fix up the pump shack, we could turn it into a summer kitchen for canning.
That would be very handy.
After clearing a cat path to the door, I put feed out for the deer and birds – interrupting two deer that were at the feeding station! I had to interrupt them again, to go switch out the memory cards on the trail cam by the sign.
That location is a real pain to get to in the winter!!! At least I don’t have to switch the cards as often, there. Between the snow and the plow ridges, I’m not at all concerned that our vandal will fight his way over to the sign and try to steal it, like the old one, or damage it.
Not even the deer will go through the area in front of the sign! A nicely plowed road is so much easier. :-D
Coming back to the house, I found these two babies, bellies full and watching the world go by in warmth and comfort!
These cats may be semi-feral, but they do get pampered as much as we can! :-D
Rolando Moon had claimed the prime real estate! She’s such a meany to the other cats, they don’t even try to fight her for this favourite spot.
Gosh, that expression! :-D
While still a bit chilly today, we’re supposed to warm up quite a bit tomorrow – perfect for taking Beep Beep and Fenrir in to the vet. My Weather Network app on my desktop has suddenly gone haywire, so I used the app that came with my computer.
Of course, all the apps are showing something different, since they all seem to be connected to different weather stations, even though they’re all supposed to be for our specific area. This is the only one that is showing us going above freezing, in the long range forecast. Above freezing in the middle of February? Yeah, I’ll take that, thanks. It’ll make things messy, but I’d rather have a nice, slow melt of all this snow, then for things to warm up all at once, later on. With the amount of snow we have this winter, as much as it’s needed, if it melts before the municipalities get a chance to clear the ditches, we’ll get flooding. Where we are doesn’t get too bad anymore. When I was a kid, there were a couple of sections of road that would get washed out every spring. Since then, a network of municipal drainage ditches have been dug through farmers’ fields that have been doing a good job of preventing that, as has taking trees out along the sides of the roads in strategic locations. There are still a couple of spots that are at risk of being washed out, if there is enough snowmelt all at once, but we are able to use alternative routes to avoid them.
If we have a wet enough spring, we might even be able to do a controlled burn in some sections of the outer yard this year. Wouldn’t that be nice!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Seeing those warmer temperatures in the forecast has me looking way too far ahead right now! :-D
The Re-Farmer
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We had another storm sweep through the area, but that climate bubble sitting over us resulted in our having a bit of snow and wind, but nothing that could possibly be called a storm.
The outside cats are quite good with that!
Especially since it’s also warming up a bit.
I even got to pet the Distinguished Guest this morning.
Their heated water bowl was almost completely empty this morning. That actually made it easier to clean. I could scrub the bottom with snow, then just scoop out the dirty snow.
The metal water bowls were, of course, filled with ice. These are all old stainless steel frying pans with their handles broken off. I’ve found they make the best water bowls, as they can handle a lot of abuse. Like being kicked and stomped until the break loose from the ice and snow.
I wasn’t able to get a photo, but after getting one of them loose, there was something strange and mirror-like under it.
The pan had split!
This pan had one of those multi-layer bases for even heat distribution. Between getting filled with warm water, then frozen to the ground, then kicked loose, repeatedly, the base layer finally just popped right off! I look forward to getting a better look at it, once the ground thaws. I’m not going to bother trying to dig it out, now. :-D
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are doing very well in the sun room. After moving the sheets of rigid insulation I had to reduce drafts from the window, Butterscotch now likes to sit there, under the ceramic heater bulb. Nosnecrantz, meanwhile, prefers sitting on the fixture! We’ve got the full spectrum light bulb hanging from the top of the mini-greenhouse frame we’re using to hold all this, with the board the ceramic heater bulb supported by the top shelf. I had some concerns about leaving the light on constantly, since I thought the cats might actually want full darkness at time, but Nosencrantz loves it. Though there are several soft beds in boxes she can choose from, she’s preferring to sleep on a board, under the light! I’m guessing the board itself is a bit warm, just from rising heat from the ceramic bulb.
Speaking of warm, check this out.
Not only are we still expected to reach 1C/34F in a couple of days, but now we’re supposed to reach 3C/37F a couple of days later!
With more snow.
Whatever. I’m loving this milder February we’re having this year!
The Re-Farmer 