We just talked to the vet. She thinks Keith has heartworms, but she can’t say that with complete certainty from the X-rays.
Heartworms are really unusual in cats. Especially indoor cats. And we have 16 indoor cats, and for all the coughing and sneezing, there is no way they all have heartworms.
So this afternoon, we are bringing in Turmeric. She had similar symptoms, but seems to have recovered. This will give us a comparison.
If we treated him for heartworms, it would be a long term thing, and the medication has risks, because there really is no heartworm treatment for cats. Not a risk we want to take for something he might not have. Alternatively, we can go with an antibiotic treatment, because we do know the cats have feline herpes, and that is much more likely to be an issue.
We will talk about it after Tumeric has been checked over.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
I was hoping to have more news before now, but I figured I’d better post while we wait.
My daughter and I headed out to the vet first thing, shooting to get there when they opened at 8am. My daughter tried calling shortly before, and on her second try, someone answered. She quickly explained our situation and told them we were on the way.
They had three surgeries booked for this morning. Depending on the timing, there was a possibility the vet could quickly check Keith out before going into her first surgery. If not, we could drop him off and she would try to look at him in between surgeries.
She still hadn’t arrived when we got there, one minute after opening, so my daughter did a drop off. We will get a call when they are ready. They got permission to do various types of tests, if necessary.
As for Keith, he was isolated with me for the night, but one of our other cats joined us, too. It seems the coughing and sneezing has finally affected one of the cats we brought with us during the move. He’d been fine until last night. He’s 10 years old now, so we seriously considered bringing him in, too, but after observing him for a while, decided against it. They both had access to food, water and litter, but touched none of them by morning. Keith did have a coughing fit until he threw up, then did that face grabbing thing, once during the night, but thankfully there was no blood this time. He almost looked a bit better.
Most of the cats are actually fine. Just a few are coughing or sneezing. Beep Beep has her occasional coughing fits, but she’s always had that, even before she became in indoor cat, so that’s not out of the ordinary for her. Susan does the same thing, so they don’t seem to have picked up anything new.
Hopefully, we will have good news soon, but with three surgeries, it might be a while before the vet can even look at him. We shall see.
At least I have some good news to share, after having to make fruitless run to the vet just a little while ago.
Tuxedo Mask is free!
His eyes got one last dose, and then we left the door to the sun room open so he could leave whenever he wanted. It took him a while to trust he really could go out!
Where he was immediately sniffed at by several cats. :-D
He slunk around for a while, and didn’t seem to sure about his freedom!
Today was a nice warm day – not as warm has had been forecast, but we still hit 0C/32F – and calm, so I was able to use the burn barrel. The barrel is not too far from the junk pile, so I got entertained by cats. They are really going to miss that mess, when we finally get it hauled away!
I found Potato Beetle quite funny, enjoying the sun from inside the old oven! :-D
He’s so sweet, when he’s not being mean to the other cats! :-D
The kitties were quite happy for some fresh kibble this morning! Their heated water bowl was completely empty again. The snow it too packed for tracks, but I strongly suspect we have deer drinking it during the night.
Tuxedo Mask got his eye treatment, and we should be able to let him out tomorrow. His eyes are looking excellent.
I am happy to say that our Starlink is still working. :-D It even moved.
The dish lines itself up to get the best signal. When we first set it up, it was pointing straight up. Now it’s facing North. I thought it might tilt a bit to the North, based on what I was finding online, but I didn’t expect it to tilt quite this much.
After finishing my rounds and checking the trail cam files, I just had to share this image of me the sign cam caught while I was about to switch out the microdisc.
Butterscotch was making the job much more difficult!
Clearly, I have been forgiven for trying to turn her into an inside cat.
With the trail cam on a mounting plate, it can move around while still on the post. I can put it upside down, to make it easier to remove the microdisc, though I do still have to be careful. The spring is surprisingly strong and shoots that disc right out, if I’m not careful! Still, it’s a lot better than trying to get it from below.
Except when there’s a cat in the way!
Meanwhile, I had updated my siblings about how things went with the Starlink set up. Just a little while ago, I got a call from my brother, asking if it’s a good time for him to come over.
He wants to mount it on the roof for us, using one of the mounts for the satellite dishes. He even has something that can fill that hole we had to make to put the cable through the wall. I was more than willing to wait, but having the dish sitting on the ground in the middle of the yard was driving him nuts. He knows we don’t have everything needed to mount it ourselves, and when I brought up about the ice, he didn’t care. He just wants it properly mounted!
So he is on his way over now and should be here in a couple of hours.
Time enough for a post, before I head off to my mother’s. I’ve decided to leave early enough to hit the post office before it closes, then grab something for lunch with my mother. I’m seriously debating whether or not to bring some of the pierogi we made last night for her. On the one hand, it would mean less cooking for her. On the other, they are not like how she fills her pierogi, and that’s always a bad thing. Plus, with my luck, she’ll get the one pierog with a cat hair in it or something, and I’ll get lectures on what a horrible human being I am for having cats. Or she might actually appreciate it. Ha! Who am I kidding?
I don’t know whether to look forward to visiting her, or to dread it. Hopefully, she’ll be having one of her good days.
This morning, as I was getting ready to head outside for my morning rounds, some movement out my window caught my eye.
I knew the deer were going through our West yard, as the snow is crisscrossed with their tracks, but this was the first time I happened to be there to see them in daylight.
They are so fluffy!!!! I just want to smoosh my hands into their fur. <3
After the last couple of bitter days, we’ve screamed up to -4C/25F, which feels downright tropical! We’re already warmer than forecast. In a few days, we’re even supposed to hit 3C/37F! Which would be the perfect day to install our Starlink system on the roof.
If we get it by then.
FedEx never showed up yesterday.
Maybe when I go to the post office this morning, I’ll find they left it there? Here’s hoping.
The cats are certainly enjoying the warmer temperatures. :-)
When I came out this morning, the heated water bowl was bone dry! It wasn’t knocked over. Just empty. It makes me think that a larger animal is drinking the water. It could be my brother’s dog (I saw him on the security camera again this morning), but there’s even a possibility that the deer have discovered it.
Or it couple be something else.
While heading to the corner cam to switch out the memory card – and back again to change out the frozen batteries – I noticed some indistinct tracks along the path. At first I thought it was from a cat, but after a while, I could tell it was something else. Eventually, I got to a place where the tracks were very clear.
Looks like a raccoon had come for a visit!
Well, time to get some stuff done before I head out. Hopefully, at some point today, we’ll get our Starlink system! While it’ll be great to have the better speeds, that’s not the main reason I’m so eager for it. Our current satellites give us some pretty decent download and upload speeds. It’s mostly the connectivity. The new system should mean a more reliable signal. Plus, we’ll have unlimited data and not have to worry about that anymore, either.
While today has warmed up, this morning was a bitterly cold -26C/-15F!
The outside cats still had food in the kibble house, but it was warm water that they were really wanting! Yes, heated bowl ensures they have water to drink, but it isn’t as warm as the water I top it up with.
Agnoos popped outside with me, but was more than happy to join Tuxedo Mask in the sun room again when I went back inside!
Since Tuxedo Mask’s other eye as started to get leaky, both of them got drops this morning.
One of the things I made sure to do this morning was to unlock and open the gate for the FedEx driver with our Starlink equipment. With the current conditions, we can be pretty sure our vandal won’t suddenly show up.
As we waited, I got our tree hung up on the dining room door. At this point, it’s only got the star at the top, because it’s the most awkward thing to put on. I have caught several cats under it, stretching as tall as they can to reach the bottom of the tree, which is wrapped like a gift, complete with bow. They can’t reach it and, so far, none have tried to jump at it. We’ll add the lights next, leave it for a day, then the garlands, leave it for a day, and if the cats seem to be behaving and getting used to it being there, finally finish decorating it.
Still no delivery.
In the afternoon, while it was still light out, our prescription refills got delivered.
I decided to make pierogi – something I haven’t done in many years – and my younger daughter has been helping me prepare the filling. I’ve got my own preferred mix, and it’s pretty loaded with stuff. :-D That has filled most of the afternoon and into the evening.
Still no delivery.
Leaving my daughter finished the filling, I started on the dough. It’s at the resting stage now, and I just helped my daughter move the filling to the old kitchen to cool down faster. I’m taking a break to write this, and then I’ll go shred some cheese.
Still no delivery.
In theory, we could still expect them to show up within the next couple of hours, still, but it’s full dark right now, snowing and blowing. I’m keeping an eye on the garage cam live feed but, at this point, I would be very surprised if the delivery actually happens today. So far, my husband has not received any notifications about it. We shall see. I do hate leaving the gate open like that. Especially after dark. :-(
Well, it’s time to get things ready to continue making the pierogi. I started really late for such a big job, but I’ll be heading to my mother’s tomorrow. Since there is no spice cake left to bring over for her to try, I think I’ll bring some pierogi. :-)
At least I thought it was, until I finally sat down and looked at the time. It’s pitch black out, and I was expecting to see something close to 9pm, but nope. It was barely past 6.
I am looking forward to when the days start getting longer again!
Of course, the day started with feeding the critters. Tuxedo Mask and Agnoos’ water bowl was frozen over, and they were very happy to have a warm water top-up! Agnoos, however, wanted to go outside. Tuxedo Mask wasn’t going for the door, so I let Agnoos out for a bit. He immediately ran onto a pile of snow from shoveling paths, hunkered down and stared at me. :-D
He did eventually come back to join the others. :-D
Including Chadicous, trying to trip me, as usual.
After the critters were fed, I made a quick run to the post office; I had to wait long enough to give them a chance to sort through the new mail, but I also wanted to get there before they closed for lunch, because I really didn’t feel like going out again when they reopened at 2! My husband is expecting the paperwork from his insurance company that he has to fill out every year, to let them know that yup, he’s still broken. At least he no longer has to get a doctor to sign off on it anymore, once it was obvious his disability had become permanent. He just has to let them know that yes, he is still under a doctor’s care. Which is getting harder to do, since it’s all phone appointments now, and he hasn’t even been able to get his bloodwork done. A few times we’ve tried, he had to turn around and leave before he ever reached the reception desk, due to pain, because of the long line up caused by restrictions. When he finally was able to get to the desk, he turned out to be missing his health card and, even though they knew who he was, they couldn’t do his bloodwork. Mostly, though, he’s just been in too much pain to make the trip to the lab.
The paperwork from the insurance company wasn’t in, but we did have a few packages. One of them was a couple of small ceramic heaters for the girls to use in their “apartment” upstairs, which gets so incredibly cold in the winter. The heater we got for them a couple of years ago had given up the ghost. This time, instead of one heater they had to move from their bedroom at night, to their studio during the day, they’ll be able to have one for each room.
I got a lovely surprise package in the mail.
It was my prize for scoring so high on my firearms safety exam! A lovely hoodie, with a pouch style pocket in the front, and our instructor’s logos on the front and back.
I had to giggle at the sleeve, though! Too funny!
After I got home from the post office, I did the rest of my morning rounds. Mostly. It was so cold, I didn’t bother trying to switch out the memory card on the sign cam. The LED screen inside doesn’t work when it’s cold like this, so I would have no idea if the micro-disc card was seated properly, or if it wanted me to format it again. I can sometimes get it to work if I warm it up with my hands, but I really didn’t want to stand in the wind for that long. I did the gate cam, which doesn’t freeze up like the newer one, but the card kept erroring out. I think moisture got into it at some point, and the contacts are damaged, because it works again when I take the card out and re-seat it, pressing it in hard. This time, it just did NOT want to read that card! I finally got it working, but by then, my finger tips were dangerously cold. This is not something that can be done with gloves on.
Meanwhile, my younger brother’s dog had come over for a visit. It’s been a while, and I was happy to see him. The cats, however, were not at all happy with the big, shaggy beast that kept wanting to play!
It did give me an opportunity to get a photo of Cabbages, sitting above dog height. Her eye has cleared up nicely though, as you can see, it’s still leaking quite a bit. There is no sign of redness anymore.
I’m seeing the forecast for Sunday is now up to 2C/36F! The cats will really appreciate the warmth. Today is supposed to be the last chilly day, and then it’s supposed to stay above -10C/14F, for a week, and even when the temperatures start dropping again, they’re still expected to be above -20C/-4F. Even the expected lows aren’t going to be much different. The cats will like that. And so will we, when our Starlink system comes in. Apparently, it’s going to be delivered by FedEx tomorrow! It was originally supposed to come by mail. It would be too dangerous to try and access the roof right now, even if it’s just the edge of the much lower sun room roof, so we might have to wait a few days. This is a bad time of year for it to come in! Which is okay; saving a couple hundred dollars a month will be worth it – if it works! Since it’s hard to tell which satellite dish is for the primary account, and which is for the secondary, we decided we will simply suspend both accounts (there’s just a $25/month fee per account that way) while we make sure the Starlink is working. If it does, we’ll close both of our current accounts and return their routers. If it doesn’t, we’ll put back whichever of the dishes we take down (we should be able to use either of the existing supports for the Starlink dish) and reactivate the accounts.
With the running around this morning, it was a while before I could snag a daughter and do Tuxedo Mask’s eye. The sun room is chilly enough that his other eye has started to leak a bit! I’d gone into the sun room ahead of my daughter to snag Tuxedo Mask and found him in his spot under the heat bulb, looking out the window.
Agnoos was outside the window, looking back at him, his front paws on the glass! He saw me and started bobbing his head around, looking into the sun room. So I went and opened the inner door. As soon as he heard it, he came running. When I opened the outer door, he slithered under it and into the sun room before I could open it all the way!
I think Tuxedo Mask was quite happy to see his brother, and they both wanted all kinds of cuddles!
The only problem is their new habit of sitting on the board the heat bulb fixture is attached to and hanging down from. It’s a good thing we can see into there from the bathroom window, because I discovered it knocked off its support. I set it back up and secured it with a small Bungee cord, but in having to keep it well away from the fixture, it would still slide around when they jumped off. When I had the chance, I put pieces of rigid insulation we have from a cat condo we made with cardboard boxes, a couple of winters ago, to make walls around the bottom of the mini-greenhouse frame I’m using the hold the heat bulb. They won’t be able to see out the window from there anymore, but it’ll be warmer. I cut a piece of insulation into two, to put on the shelf that’s supporting the board the heat bulb is on, one on each side of the board, in such a way that they will stabilize the board and also give the cats more space to sit on and look out the window, while acting as a roof to help keep them a little bit warmer under there. Between that and the box nest, they’ll be nice and toasty, even as the temperatures drop.
My husband, meanwhile, cut holes in the sides of the boxes the packages came in, to give to the cats to play in. Which I did not appreciate, since I was in the middle of cleaning at the time. He dropped them in the space I had just opened up in front of where the Christmas tree will be hung! LOL
They were, however, perfect for the sun room.
The brothers were quick to explore one of them! :-D
My big job for the day was to get things ready for decorations. Normally, we would at least have the tree up by now, and have started decorating, but this year, the only thing we’ve got set up in the Advent wreath! I decided to shift some furniture around, after vacuuming the living room carpet. While moving smaller things aside, I got distracted by the cat scratcher. It’s just a post on a base. The post originally was wrapped in carpet, but when that got torn off, my husband got some sisal rope to wrap it in. It has since been re-wrapped a few times, but the cord keeps sliding to the bottom when the cats use it. Today, I decided to save our furniture a bit and fix it, using adhesive all over the post. That took a while, but I think it was worth it. It should no longer slide down! However, the adhesive needs 24 hours to cure, so I had to hide it away until tomorrow.
That distraction meant it was a while before I could finally start vacuuming – only to discover the beater brush on our new vacuum cleaner isn’t working! Everything else was working fine, though. I figure the belt broke, but would have to take it apart to see. I decided to just use it as it was and leave dismantling the base for another time. It meant having to run it back and forth a lot more often. With our 1970’s shag carpet, it wasn’t going to be a good cleaning at all, but I’d at least be able to get some of the cat hair off the top. LOL
Not only did this end up taking a lot longer than normal, but as soon as I started, my rotator cuff in my right shoulder decided to let me know it was injured. Except I haven’t injured it. I have no idea why it was hurting! So on top of having to take extra long to vacuum the carpet with (I’m assuming) a broken belt, but I had to do most of it using only the one arm.
Oh, and move furniture, too. Not much, mind you, but enough to make things even more “fun”.
The most frustrating thing was pausing half way through the vacuuming and using this opportunity to take out a power bar with an extremely long cord my husband got a while back. There are not enough outlets in this house, and the one that’s being used to light the aquarium greenhouse is the only one on that side of the living room, and has only one working plug. So for my husband to have a light on his desk, where he does his leather work, he had to use the only other available outlet, which is on the opposite wall from the aquarium greenhouse. He picked up one of those big power bars that has three rows of plugs, facing different directions, plus USB ports. It had a cord long enough to run behind the piano and the large aquarium greenhouse to the corner of the room, then behind the small aquarium greenhouse, a plant table, the TV and DVD shelf, to the outlet in the opposite corner.
It was very handy, until it stopped working.
Then it started working again.
Then it stopped working for good.
So today, I pulled out the cord, starting at the plug end by the TV, only to get hung up at the corner where the aquarium greenhouses are, fought with it for a while, eventually having to pull the cord through the cabinet the large aquarium sits on, before freeing it from whatever it was caught on in the corner and finally being able to pull it from the other side of the piano.
Which is when I made a discovery.
It was two power bars.
Yeah. I know. You’re not supposed to plug a power bar into a power bar.
The big one that I thought all that cord was attached to did have a longer than usual cord but, somewhere behind the piano, it was plugged into a regular sized power bar with a super long cord.
Once I got them both out, I tested them.
They both worked just fine.
What I think happened is that the cats stepped on the switch on the bar behind the piano, turning it off. So when we tested the outlet and it was working fine, we figured something had gone wrong with the power bar. We were confused when it suddenly started working again, and now I figure a cat must have stepped on the switch again, turning the smaller power bar on again, only to have them turn it off again later. With it working sporadically, we tucked it to one side, figuring maybe a cat had peed on it or something.
Nope. It most likely had just been turned off in a place I didn’t even know existed until I fought with the darn thing for nearly an hour.
So frustrating.
Anyhow.
While working on the living room, furniture got shifted so I could fit the extra chairs from the dining room and store the bins for our Christmas decorations out of the way. Then, when I had the chance, I put large cup hooks in strategic places along the walls the power bar cords had run along before, well above the floor, attached the big power bar to the wall above the work desk, then set up the one with the super long cord, running it from hook to hook behind the piano, aquariums, TV, etc. and plugged it in.
My husband can now have a light at his work desk again.
And you know what?
That thing is juuuust long enough that there is no need to use the big power bar.
Oh, sure, we won’t be able to plug in USB cables to charge phones, but that just means we can set the big power bar up somewhere else, if we want to.
No more power bar plugged into a power bar.
With all that finally done, I was able to prep the space in front of the dining room door, where we will be hanging the Christmas tree, flat against the door and high enough off the floor that the cats won’t get at it. That worked very well, last year!
By the time that was all done, I was completely wiped out. So was my younger daughter, who baked three double batches of bread and buns while I was doing this. My older daughter was working on her quick commissions. A couple of times a year, she opens a limited number of slots for relatively simple commissions, for a quick turnaround time at discounted rates, skipping the usual back and forth for details. She has a lot of repeat customers that wait for these to get digital art as gifts, so the slots fill up fast. Which means she has a whole list of commissions to get done in a very short time. She worked all day, but when she came down to start another pot of tea, she told me she had just realized she’d a mistake on a commission. Instead of being done for the day, she was going to have to go back to work.
Well, at least she’s warm while working, thanks to the heaters that arrived today. In the summer, she had to work at night because it was too hot for electronics during the day, but now it’s so cold up there, they both have had to bundle up in blankets at their desks, and the cold was even affecting her drawing hand.
Tomorrow, we should be able to set up the tree and start decorating for Christmas!
I had to dash outside to do a meter reading, and the boys dutifully and adorably posed for me!
Aren’t they sweet?
Doesn’t Tuxedo Mask’s eye look great? It’s his left eye that was affected.
That, however, is not my news.
I finally got a call back from our vandal’s lawyer. He was quite apologetic for not getting back to me earlier, due to conferences he ended up going to all week. I laughed and told him I was starting to think our vandal had fired him, and he assured me that did not happen. :-D
So it turns out that our vandal somehow did not understand some of the wording of the conditions. I know the lawyer spoke to him about them before, but I guess once things were written down in the form of a court order, it seemed different? I don’t know, but I’m not surprised he wasn’t able to understand them. He has always had such difficulties. Did very well in spite of them, so this is not a knock against him. The judge gave him time for the lawyer to go over it with him, and he’s back in court this Friday. I do not need to be there, but the lawyer said he would be there (I believe he attended by phone, previously). He assured me he would update me with an email after it was done, and was confident our vandal would accept the conditions to a Peace Bond.
I did ask about the psychiatric assessment, for which our vandal is on a waiting list, and the lawyer said that this was a separate matter and still ongoing. Accepting the conditions of a Peace Bond does not change that. That is encouraging. I really hope this puts him on the road to getting the mental health help he needs.
On a more pleasant note, today is St. Nicholas Day, and I decided to make some Polish spice cake today, instead of our usual spice cookies. The recipe was enough for two loaf pans, and is in the oven right now. I will have to set some aside to give to my mother, when I go over later in the week. It’s an interesting recipe that included strong coffee – which my daughter made for me in her French press, because I don’t do coffee – a cup of dark honey AND a cup of packed brown sugar. This is going to be sweeeeeetttt!!!! It also called for a teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. We had just dregs of ground cloves left, because I couldn’t find any in the stores, so I used our little coffee grinder (which is never used to grind coffee) on some whole cloves. Freshly ground cloves are very different from store bought! You can really tell the higher oil content. That should really come out in the flavour, I think. Apparently, it tastes even better after resting for a few days. I’ve never had this kind of cake before, so I’m looking forward to trying it out. :-)
It was pretty nippy this morning, with the temperatures dropped down to -26C/-15F. Thankfully, with no wind chill! That’s the coldest we’ve had this winter so far (and yes, I know; technically, we’re still fall), and the coldest we will be for the next few weeks, at least. As I write this, my desktop tells me we are at -22C/-8F with a wind chill of -30C/-22F, but my phone’s app tells me we are at -20C/-4F with a wind chill of -23C/-9F. My phone app seems to be the more accurate one.
With the cold, I did a short version of my rounds, mostly just making sure the critters had fresh food and warm water. My older daughter assisted with giving Tuxedo Mask his eye drops, then stayed with him to make sure he didn’t get out, as I had to go in and out of the sun room. It got cold enough that his water bowl actually froze! My daughter put some pieces of rigid insulation on the concrete floor in a few strategic places.
We also decided to allow Agnoos into the sun room to keep Tuxedo Mask company. They are brothers from the same litter and get along, and Agnoos already allows us to pick him up and cuddle him, so he was the least disruptive choice.
I just spotted this, outside our bathroom window.
They are just smooshed together, on top of the board the ceramic heater bulb is mounted to! Something out there sure has their attention!
The Re-Farmer 