Critters

You’re not Slick!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

One of my daughters let me know that the water bowl in the sun room was no longer on its heater, so when I had a moment, I went out with a pitcher of fresh warm water, heading through the Old Kitchen to fix it.

On opening the inner door, I noticed the food bowl in the sun room was empty, so I paused to grab some kibble to top it up.

Of course, as soon as I opened the door, there was a flurry of cats running out of the sun room, while others were running towards the Old Kitchen door.  I saw Ferdinand run out, and then Slick headed for the door.

Except…

Wait a minute.

Is that Slick?

Thanks to Ferdinand staying in the doorway, preventing the other cat from getting out, I was able to grab a few quick pictures.  I had to show it to my daughters to confirm.

This is not Slick.

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What I did not see until my daughter pointed it out to me, not only is Ferdinand in the doorway, but Nicky the Nose is outside, looking through the window. 

The new cat finally ran past Ferdinand when I opened the door.  I never saw Nicky the Nose at all, but Ferdinand did not run off like he usually does.  He actually hung around, watching me from just a few feet away, as I knocked the ice out of the outside water bowl and refilled it, as well as topping up one of the outside food bowls.

The water bowl was indeed knocked off the concrete block, but there was no spill.  It was completely dry!  With the outside bowl frozen over, they were very happy to have fresh water.

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He has the saddest expression on his face!

My older daughter had been seeing a strange cat that was more grey than Slick, off and on, but this is the first time I’ve finally seen him.  So he’s actually been around for a little while.

This brings us to 14 outside cats in total.  The 6 kittens.  Beep Beep, Butterscotch, Rolando Moon and The Hand are all cats we were feeding when we first moved out here.  Slick, Nicky the Nose, Ferdinand, and now this guy.  That’s basically twice as many as we were regularly feeding last winter.

No wonder we’re going through the cat kibble so fast!  ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Foxy Neighbour

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

I wanted to share some images from a few days ago, when a fog rolled in, covering much of the prairies.

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Part of our spruce grove.

It resulted in some incredibly beautiful frost.

On the way home from town, my daughter tried to get some photos out the window.  At one point, I was able to come to a near stop for a while, as she took photos of an old church.  Which is when we spotted this guy.  He was right in front of us, then dashed off towards the church, where my daughter managed to take a few pictures.

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Our foxy neighbour!

What a big, bushy fellow he was!

Now I can’t go near that intersection, without looking for foxes! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Frozen Food

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

The smaller of the pair of deer that come by regularly now, trying to eat a frozen apple.

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I’ve knocked down as many of the frozen apples as I can reach with the pole I found.  From the branches I’ve been finding on the ground, I think they’ve been trying to reach up to them, and pulling twigs down in the process.

We got invaded

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I go this photo this evening, of three deer showing up at the feeding station.  It was getting a bit too dark for photos (we’re fully dark by 5:30, these days), but I did manage a couple.

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None of them are the ones we’ve been seeing for the past while.

Less than 10 minutes after I took this, more showed up.  By the time I got back to the window, there was 4 at the feeding station, a 5th one had been chased off, and two more were under the crab apple tree!

So we’ve gone from having 1 or 2 show up at a time, to an entire herd!

Maybe time to start leaving more than just an ice cream bucket full of deer feed. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Little Squeak!

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Cats, being cats, will hunt things.

The outside cats do a great job of keeping the rodent population down.  Every now and then, we’ll see signs of their successes.  All part of that whole “circle of life” thing.

On the way out this afternoon, I took the time to get another pitcher of warm water for the cats before we left.  I saw The Outsider by the entryway steps.

He looked at me, paused to bat something around, then ignored it for a bit, then batted it around some more.

A quick glance and I could see a tiny little fur ball and realized he had caught a vole.  Something I’ve seen quite a few times.

Then he batted it again until it was upside down…

… and I saw the little legs wiggle.

Then I heard the tiniest of squeaks.

The vole righted itself, only to have The Outsider bat at it again, and pounce a bit.  No claws.  No actual biting.

Yeah.  He was playing with it.

The poor thing would get tossed a bit, would right itself and sit there, but as soon as it moved, it would get batted or pounced on again.

While squeaking the tiniest of squeaks.

Normally, I wouldn’t do anything about this.  Rodent population control is one of the reasons farm cats are so good to have around.  But I could also see that this little guy was completely uninjured.  Plus, The Outsider was interested only in keeping it from running away.  He was much more interested in the pitcher I was holding.

Then he batted it again, the vole righted itself and just sat there.

I couldn’t help it.

I picked it up.

It made no effort to run away.

The Outsider seemed to be wondering what I was doing, until I put the pitcher of water down, when he immediately lost interest in the vole and went for the water, along with three other cats.

The vole stayed in my hand, no longer squeaking, but trembling mightily.

My daughter came out, and I handed it to her, so I could distract the cats away with the warm water – the bowls of water outside were already frozen.

It made no effort to run from her, either.

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Of course, I got a picture, first.

He was so velvety soft!

Looking at that long snoot, I find myself thinking it might be a mole, not a vole, but when I try to look it up, I’m not any clearer on this.  It’s like it has a vole body with a mole snoot.

I’m still thinking it’s a vole.

While the cats were distracted, my daughter went to where there were leaves piled up as a mulch in the flower garden on the south side of the house.  She made a little nest in the leaves and dropped it in.  It snuffled around in a circle for a bit, then she loosely covered it with more leaves, so the cats wouldn’t see it.

We are such sucks. :-D

The Re-Farmer