Critters

That was fast!

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First, the cuteness.

Toni is healing up nicely and doing great. When we first brought her in and she was recovering from her amputation, we kept her isolated in my room. Once it was safe to let her out, she had zero interest in coming back. Lately, though, she’s started to come back into my room and will stay there, even overnight. Sometimes she’ll cuddled with the kittens, or will get into wrestling matches with Clarence – who is starting to be bigger than she is! Mostly, she seems to just enjoy being on my bed.

While doing my morning rounds, I was surprised to see there was actually still a bit of kibble from last night. Which means, no visits from the racoons! I saw only about 23 cats when I did a head count.

I did find one other, though, just towards the end of my rounds, and it was a sad find. I was coming around the west side of the house, and could just see the tail end of a cat under the cat house. That in itself is unusual. We see them going under on that side, or peeking out, but not lying on the ground. Even before I moved around a piece of insulation we have under there, to see if it would move, I knew it wouldn’t. I can see that it’s a tabby, but that’s it. We’ll have to pull it out later and cremate it, but it’s too windy to get a burn going.

I find myself wondering if this was the result of injuries from a cat fight, just because of how and where I am seeing it. I won’t be able to see if there are any obvious injuries until we get it out.

I didn’t have much time to think about it, either. We had a tow truck booked to get the truck. I’d called CAA last night to make the arrangements, making sure to tell them the tow could be done in the morning. I was told they would release the call at 8:30. Once a tow company accepted the call, they’d let us know and give us an ETA. Once that was arranged, I messaged our mechanic to let him know what was arranged and asked him to check the fuse box along with changing the battery, just to be on the safe side.

I got an automated call just before 8am, with an estimated arrival time for the tow truck at 60 minutes.

He got here before I finished my rounds! I thought I had at least another half hour, so I hadn’t unlocked the gate, yet.

Getting the truck was a bit of an issue. He could back up to it, but only at an angle, because of trees. The truck, however, was also parked at an angle, so it worked out. What he ended up securing it just enough at the front of the truck, to get the road. Once on the road, he unhooked it, drove around to the other end, then hooked it up and secured it properly from the back.

As he was pulling in, I went to put the truck in neutral. I turned the key to light up the dash, so I could see the display, but there was nothing. No dash lights or any sound at all. That battery was stone cold dead! I still put it in neutral; I just couldn’t see to confirm.

I hadn’t had much sleep last night, so once that was gone, I was going to try and get a bit of a nap. I ended up messaging with my SIL, which reminded me to send some photos for my brother that I took this morning.

I couldn’t close the garage door last night.

The top of the frame has been slowly sagging, so when we open and close the door, it hits the frame. That’s why there are pieces of metal under it; they help the door slide across without getting caught and damaging the wood. Over time, we found we’d have to push the door inwards in the middle, so the handle could clear.

Now, it just bashes onto the frame. While I could probably push the door inwards and get it past, that’s just going to make things get worse, faster. You can just see in the picture, to the left of one of those pieces of metal on the frame, that there is a crack in the wood. That crack is getting bigger.

I think it can actually be fixed, still. We’d need to jack the frame up until it’s level again, then secure and support it from the inside. We might not even have to remove the door. Once the frame has been raised back to where it’s supposed to be, the door can be closed, and we’ll be able to access the inside of the wall and roof above. The problem is, we have absolutely nothing to do this with. My brother has the tools needed, and would know how or where to get the things he doesn’t have.

Anyhow; he now knows about it, and might be able to come out some time before Christmas to fix it.

That was my conversation with my SIL when I should have been trying to sleep. 😄 Of course, there were various interruptions during my attempt to get some sleep. Mostly involving a Snorri, using me as a bed! At one point, I decided to check my texts, just in case. Sure enough, there was a message from the garage, saying the truck was ready! It had come in half an hour before I saw it. For some reason, my phone doesn’t give me text notifications. 🤔 He sure got that done fast!

So my daughter and I headed out to get the truck. My daughter just dropped me off and headed home. Since I was in town anyhow, I did an errand and got some gas (the prices have gone down to 149.9¢/L) before heading home. I’m glad we had the cash from selling those scrap cars! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to get the new battery until next week, and the truck would have been sitting in our yard the entire time.

It cost less than I expected. Our mechanic wasn’t there at the time and I only talked to one of his staff, so I couldn’t ask details, but clearly he found no problem in the fuse box. He charged me for the battery, but not for labour! When my husband looked up batteries for our year, make and model, the retail prices start at $250, for a mid range quality battery. Even including taxes, we got a better price by getting it through our mechanic.

As much as I would have preferred to wait until next week, I’m glad we got it done, and that we were able to get it done now!

So that means tomorrow, when the dump is open again, we can FINALLY do a dump run! We’ll also be set and safe for when we do our stock up shopping next week. Yes, there are other fixes that we are discovering – it’s a well used 2011, after all! – but they are relatively minor and do not affect the safety or function of the vehicle. Everything identified during the safety inspection got done before we bought it.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to warm up again, even reaching a high of 0C/32F tomorrow. We’ll have one day with a high of -8C/18F, and then warm up again. In fact, in the first week of December, we are supposed to reach highs above freezing. How many days above freezing changes with the app I look at, but they all say we should be getting at least a couple of days above 0C/32F in early December.

This may turn out to be the nicest winter we’ve had since moving out here!

The Re-Farmer

Not the day that was planned

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First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the US! I hope you have a wonderful day filled with family, friends and food!

As for our day…

Oooh, boy.

Things went pretty normal this morning, plus I had some errands to run this afternoon. The pain I was feeling yesterday has subsided, so I was able to do my morning rounds, as usual. As always, they start with bringing out kibble and warm water for the outside cats.

I did a couple of head counts and reached 34 and 35. Including this battered beast.

Sad Face was looking sadder, with a fresh wound on his nose. He may be much less aggressive with the other cats these days, but at least one of our own males is not happy with him around and regularly growls at him. I suspect that cat is responsible, but there’s really no way of knowing. Ironically, perhaps, it’s one of the white and greys from last year’s kittens, which means Sad Face here is almost certainly his daddy!

There’s a fluffy smaller kitten that looks a lot like Pom Pom I’ve been trying to get a better look at. There’s something weird about one eye, but every time I come near, the kitten runs off. Today it was in the kibble house while I was refilling the big heated water bowl right next to it, and I got the best look at its face so far. That one eye appears to be clouded. I don’t think it’s blind in that eye, but I do think it’s partially blind.

Unfortunately, so many of the cats just will not let us socialize them. Unlike this handsome boy.

Syndol quite enjoys being held and cuddled.

Hypotenose in the background is not quite there, yet. He did let me place a hand on his back, as I was petting Syndol, but only for a moment, before he moved away.

One of the goals of the day was to make a dump run. The landfill is open only 3 days a week. I’d gone there on Tuesday, only to find it was closed. That’s when I realized I was looking at the Thursday winter hours, not the Tuesday winter hours. On Tuesdays, they are open from late morning to early afternoon. With winter hours, they closed at 1pm. I thought they opened at 2pm, which is when they open in the winter on Thursdays, so I got there an hour after they’d closed. *sigh*

One down side of having a box cover on the truck instead of a cab. We couldn’t leave the garbage in the back, because the racoons could easily tear through the cover to get at it. So, back into the Old Kitchen the bags went.

Today is Thursday, so I was planning to do the dump run, then head to Walmart for a couple things, including more cat kibble. *sigh* I can’t even blame the racoons for that one. I didn’t realize how low we were on kibble for the inside cats, when I made the last Walmart run, on Monday. If we refilled the inside cat bin from the outside cat bin, there wouldn’t be enough left to last the rest of the month for the outside cats.

With the dump opening at 2, I headed out shortly after 1 to back the truck up to the house and load the garbage bags. Then I headed inside for a bit before it was time to head out. My younger daughter was going to come along, as she needed to go to the Walmart as well. Sweetheart that she is, she also went ahead to unlock the gate. With the warm weather we had recently, the driveway is mostly ice. Especially under the gate, where water tends to pool! She had to be so careful just walking to the gate, never mind opening it.

Meanwhile, I went to start the truck and…

Nothing happened.

Crud.

It started without any problem when I took it out of the garage! I even considered leaving the engine running while loading the back but decided against it, since I wasn’t sure how long I would be inside before we headed out.

Now, we’ve been talking to the garage about that battery. When we were first looking to buy that truck, he thought he’d replaced the battery, but when he checked his files, it said the previous owner had changed the battery. When we realized there was a problem with it, he looked it up and the battery was from 2019, so past warranty. The other thing that has been odd is the tire monitoring system, which keeps telling me my tires are low when they’re fine. That is most likely the battery dying in the module. I told him we probably wouldn’t be able to get them fixed until December, and may only be able to do one, not both, depending on the cost. He told me that, if I could only do one, he recommended I put a priority on the battery. He got prices for me; a new battery would be $200, while the tire monitoring system module would be only $60, though replacing that requires removing a tire, so there’d be more labour costs on top of that one, compared to just switching out a battery.

Anyhow.

When the truck wouldn’t start, I went and got our battery charger and waved my daughter over. She got an extension cord ready for the charger while I set it up, and we got that going.

While the charger was doing its job, I remembered to look for the plug for the block heater. I found the cord, which was neatly wound and secured around the engine compartment, and followed it along. The plug end turned out to be neatly tucked into an opening in the frame, right at the front. I pulled it out and found…

Oh, dear.

Clearly, no one thought to look at the block heater cord, even during the safety inspection. Why would they?

I was able to text the above photo to our mechanic to let him know it’s something else we’re going to have to eventually fix! Thankfully, there is no hurry on that. In fact, if the forecasts for this El Niño winter are at all accurate, we may not need to use it at all this winter. I’ll get an price on what it’ll cost to get it fixed, then take care of it when the budget allows.

Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that the outside cats are incredibly curious about the truck – and the higher clearance on this truck means more places they can get into, under it! We saw them climbing onto the tires and up into the undercarriage, as well as just loafing under it. I ended up having to put a bit of kibble out, just to get them away from the truck while we tried to start it.

We got it clear of cats and I went to start the truck.

Nothing happened.

We waited a while longer.

The charger stopped charging, and an error message popped up.

I checked the connections and one seemed to have slipped off. I reset them, plugged the charger back in and it started charging.

After a while, we tried to start the truck again.

Nothing. It just clicked.

We left the charger going for longer. I decided it was time to call the garage.

As I was talking to our mechanic, he asked for readings on the charger, so I went back outside. Unfortunately, the writing on the charger is so small, I can barely read it, but I did spot the button to change the display from current to voltage.

7.4

I read that to him and got a “That’s not good!”

I switched it to battery percentage, and it only said “Lo”

Not only that but, as I was talking to him, the voltage went from 7.4 to 7.3

It wasn’t charging.

So, we talked options. He suggested we take the battery out and bring it to him, using my mother’s car, and he’d sell us a new one. Unfortunately, while I know it’s a simple thing to do, I’ve never taken a battery out of a vehicle before, nor have I even seen it done. Plus, we still had our errands to run, though going to the dump was no longer an option.

I told him I wouldn’t be able to do it today, but would call him ahead when I do.

As we were putting things away, there were a couple of odd things. The hazard lights were on. I couldn’t even remember where the button for that was on this vehicle. It was behind the steering wheel, at the top of the column – not a place where it could have been turned on by accident, unless my daughter somehow hit it while she tried starting the truck. She may have tried looking through the computer display which, unfortunately, does not include a display for the battery.

As I was putting the charger back in the garage, my daughter went to close the hood, but it wouldn’t close for her. Unlike very other vehicle we’ve owned, this hood holds itself up, without a metal bar to support it, so closing it should have been just a matter of pulling it down. For some reason, she wasn’t able to get it.

Which is when she heard the ticking sound.

As I returned from the garage, she told me about it, and it was coming out of the fuse box. I tried to open the cover, which had an arrow indicating an “unlock” position… but we couldn’t get it off. I’m sure there’s something simple we’re missing, but we just weren’t in a position to fiddle with it.

This time, when my daughter went to close the hood, it closed just fine. Because of course it would work when I was there to see! 😄

We could still hear the ticking noise.

The next thing we had to do was get my mother’s car out of the garage.

Well, that couldn’t be an easy thing to do, now could it?

Of course not.

One of the things we’ve been doing is collecting aluminum separately from the regular recycling. Before we moved out here, we kept all our pop cans and bottles to take to the bottle depot and get our enviro fees back. This province doesn’t have that, so all that just goes into general recycling at the dump. Only glass gets a separate bin. However, aluminum can get a good price at the scrap yards, so we’ve been keeping that. My brother collected aluminum to help raise funds to build a local church. We don’t typically have a lot of canned food, but we do drink canned drinks, and then we started buying canned cat food, regularly.

We now have about 6 years of aluminum stored in bags the garage, in the space in front of my mother’s car.

We meant to take it in this summer, but we lost use of the van, and then got rid of the van itself. Now that we have the truck, I was going to find out from my brother where he’d gone with the aluminum, but we’ve had other stuff that needed doing, first.

Well, just a little while ago, I came into the garage to find the entire area in front, and under, my mother’s car, filled with cans. Critters – could be cats, could be racoons – had knocked several bags down from the stack and torn them apart, and we hadn’t had a chance to clean it up, yet.

I filled three bags of loose cans. And that was just the ones immediately around my mother’s car, so it could be accessed.

After we were sure the tires were clear, my daughter backed the car out, and I could reach the cans that were under it.

Once that was done, we could FINALLY start heading out.

Of course, this is my mother’s car, and I’m always trepidatious about driving it. I found out today that my daughters have been referring to it as the Car of Damocles. Which is so appropriate, given the troubles it’s had since my mother bought it, never mind just in the years we’ve been keeping it insured for her!

The drive itself went well, though our driveway was not the only area that was sheer ice. The highways may be beautifully clear, but the gravel roads near our place are shaded by trees, so the snow never fully melted away when we had those wonderfully warm days. Instead, they turned into skating rinks.

Yeah. We took it slow! Especially on the way home. Even on the highway. It was past 5pm and fully dark by the time we were heading home, and there are a lot of deer in the area! I was glad to have my daughter as an extra pair of eyes to watch the ditches for me.

As for the truck, after we unloaded, I gave it a listen, and the ticking sound had stopped.

I’ve decided that I will use our CAA and have the truck towed. The ticking from the fuse box is likely caused by the defective battery; the circuits aren’t getting the charge they need. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’d like to have those checked out, too – BEFORE we start trying to drive it after replacing the battery.

So I will arrange, probably tonight, to have a tow truck come by tomorrow. I just hope there’s enough room in front of the truck for the tow truck to access it properly!

Plus, we’ll have to really make sure there are no cats up under there!

Hopefully, once the truck is no longer a “new” thing for them, they will stop being so curious about it.

So… That’s how are day ended up. Not at all as planned!

Ah, well. Such is life!

The Re-Farmer

Feeling better, and critter cam update

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First, the cuteness!

Three of the four siblings, cuddling (The Beast was napping somewhere else).

Pom Pom is getting so big!! You can really see the difference between him and little Snorri. Even Soot Sprite is getting pretty big, finally, but it’s sometimes hard to tell Pom Pom apart from the older tabbies, as they run around.

I’m happy to say I was feeling better by the end of yesterday, and back to my normal routine this morning. I counted “only” 33 cats outside this morning.

Having the critter cam in the sun room is… interesting! I turned the motion sensor on in the evening. I didn’t realize just how often those racoons have been going in there! Mind you, if I hadn’t been chasing them off, over and over, they probably would have just gone in once, eaten all the cat kibble, and gone.

Part of the problem is, I forgot to feed the outside cats while it was still light out. It gets dark so early right now! Racoons are diurnal, but they tend to be out more at night than during the day. I don’t know where they have a den, but it’s clearly within earshot of kibble hitting metal containers!

It was mostly one or two that kept coming in. At first, I could use the two way talk function to shoo them out but, after a while, they started to ignore that, so I had to get up and chase them out. Eventually, I need to move on to other tasks and couldn’t be watching the live feed constantly. By the time I could check again, there were a whole bunch of little videos showing three or four of the buggers, coming into the sun room and eating all the kibble.

At least they weren’t destructive about it. It was the cats that knocked over the garbage can, not the racoons!

With so many racoons, though, we will have to do something about them.

My husband is starting to talk about learning how to tan fur, and use his leatherworking supplies to make winter hats.

Not that we’re in a position to do anything that permanent. Too many cats in the way.

The sun room is really busy at night, that’s for sure. The cats are constantly going in and out. During the day, it seems to be almost always empty! That will change as the weather gets colder, I’m sure.

While we hit 8C/46F yesterday, today’s high is supposed to be only -1C/30F. Still very mild, and I’m quite appreciating it. Especially the bright sunshine. A good day to finally make a run to the dump, once it opens this afternoon!

The Re-Farmer

A sluggish morning

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Well, it took a few days, but I’m starting to feel the effects of my fall from a couple of days ago. I woke up this morning to pain in pretty much all my joints, plus soft tissue pain along my left side. My knee that I landed on still has minimal swelling, and only hurts if I press on the area. I made the mistake of putting weight on it while getting into bed. Even though it was on a soft mattress, it hurt like blazes.

So the most I got done this morning was cat feeding.

I was able to do a head count again, and kept getting 37, so it looks like that’s going to be our number for the winter. Our usual wanderers, like Rolando Moon and Judgement, are sticking close to home. Sad Face is now a permanent fixture and seems to have stopped being aggressive to the other cats completely.

Once the cat feeding and watering was done, I skipped the rest of my morning rounds, took some pain killers and tried going back to bed. Sleep was a lost cause. The bigger kittens are now allowed out of the room which, unfortunately, means I’m dealing with scratching at my door much more often, as they keep wanting in and out. The littles are a different story. Soot Sprite keeps managing to dash out, and he’s still too small to be let out; at least at night. Snorri has also started to make runs for it, and he’s the tiniest of the bunch! The Beast (who is still Tiny, but not quite as tiny anymore) isn’t as interested in leaving the room. She and Soot Sprite, however, are balls of energy and frequently wrestling rambunctiously. Snorri is has not recovered enough to join them, and is often content to curl up on my leg or hip, or the back of my neck, and nap. He’s such a featherweight, I have to be incredibly careful before rolling over, because I can’t always tell he’s there!

I’ve given up on trying to lie down, and will work on a couple other blog posts instead.

After I take a couple more painkillers.

The Re-Farmer

What a lovely day!

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It is just gorgeous out there!

We were supposed to reach a high of 4C/39F today. We’re at 7C/45F right now! It turns out we hit 7C/45F yesterday, too. The snow is melting away, and it feels like spring!

Before I go on, though, we must first have the cuteness.

Snorri is just enveloped by David! The Beast (aka: Tiny) is bigger than Snorri! He’s all fur, so he looks bigger than he really is. I have to be so careful at night. He has a thing for curling up behind my neck, or on my legs. He’s so light, sometimes I can’t feel him there at all, and I have to check if he’s on or behind me before I try to roll over.

He does have a thing for necks! If he can get at one, he’ll climb right up any convenient human and settle into a neck, purring.

Snorri’s eyes are still really leaky, but he’s most definitely getting better. I hope he’ll start getting some meat on those bones soon! He certainly has a good appetite.

When feeding the outside cats this morning, I did repeated head counts. I kept getting 37, though I did get 38 once. I think I double counted someone. All the usuals that sometimes show up later were there – Rolando Moon, Brussel and Sprout, Broccoli, the orange and white, both Adam and Driver, Judgement – plus the ones that are almost always here; the printer babies – all the white and greys – the orange tabby, Hypotenose, Syndod, this year’s lone calico and tortie kittens, etc. Then there are the black cats and the grey tabbies. We have so many gorgeous cats this year!

One of the places I put a bit of kibble is in the space the smaller cats use to get under the cat house. While trying to count, I spotted a little white face, eating at the opening. I could only see a bit more than the nose and mouth, so I couldn’t say for sure if it was one of our usuals. There is one white and grey among this year’s kittens that I thought it might have been, but when I went to count the cats in the sun room, he was there. I can’t think of any other small, white faced cat that it might have been. I also spotted a couple of tabbies that I wasn’t sure of. It’s entirely possible they’re from this year’s kittens that are just bigger, and we were bound to have kittens from litters the shier mamas kept further away, finally starting to show up on their own. These ones are adult sized cats, though.

Well, no matter. They are welcome to food, water and shelter! Even Sad Face has become a permanent fixture. The next time there’s a cheap spay and neuter day, I hope we can snag him!

How bizarre that the visiting tom we kept having to chase away because he was so aggressive to the other cats, is now more approachable than all the female yard cats. !!

With so many cats to feed, it’s no surprise that we were running low on kibble, so today I made a trip to Walmart. When I got there, I found that Black Friday sales have already started. Another bizarre notion. This is a US thing, since we have our Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. Meanwhile, Black Friday doesn’t even happen in the US until the end of this week, but Canada has Black Friday, too, and the sales have started already.

I was able to juggle the budget a bit and take advantage of some of the sales. Along with the cat food I was there to get, I was able to get things like a case of 24 cans of tomato soup at 77¢ each – easily the best deal among the things I got, since those cans now cost closer to $2 each. One of the things on my list, however, was not on sale. Butter. Even their house brand butter is almost $7 a pound! It would be cheaper to buy whipping cream and make it.

I didn’t buy whipping cream, and got only 1 pound of butter. We’ll just have to use the ghee more often, until our next big city shopping trip. The next time we’re at Costco, I’ll have to stock up on more butter than usual. Another of their big buckets of ghee wouldn’t go amiss, either!

Once I got home and we unloaded the truck, I had to feed the outside cats early. I was just going back to park it in the garage when I saw a couple of cats under it; one jumping up into the undercarriage somewhere, and another jumping up onto a front tire!

Yes, I make it a practise to bang on the truck before starting it.

The sound of kibble was enough to get them away from the truck, though.

In other things…

I called my mother last night, and it was like talking to a completely different person. She went from yelling and raging at me the day before, to cheerful and pleasant. I asked how she was doing, and she went into her usual complaints about her breathing; this time, she tried to blame it on the macaroni she ate. *sigh* After she went on for a while, I more specifically asked about her mood. She was all ready to act like it never happened, and she was never angry or said all those horrible things to me. We talked about it for a bit, and I tried to stress with her that if our vandal starts calling her about me, it’s because he’s trying to cause problems between us. She did try to defend him again, saying he was just telling her what’s going on, and I had to tell her, he has NO idea what’s going on. She quickly changed the subject. She didn’t quite apologize, but she did seem to try and make amends, in her own way.

I told her about our plans to get the hand pump on the original well serviced, so that we can then change the well pump and have back up water if something goes wrong. It took some time to explain to her why the well pump in the house needed to be changed at all. It has been changed in the past, but that was more than 20 years ago. The foot valve in the well, however, is original and some 45 or so years old – I think it was dug in 1974, but it might have been the year before. She couldn’t remember the exact year.

So she’s happy with the plans. Her only thing was to tell me to talk to my brother about it first, and I told her, I talk to him about everything. No living person knows this place better than he does. He was old enough to actually do a lot of this stuff alongside my dad. My other brothers were still too young for much of it, and some of it was done before I was even born. My sister is older, but she wouldn’t have been allowed to be part of this stuff, even if she were interested, because she is female. My mother then started going on about how great my brother is, and what a good job he’s doing with the farm.

Just the day before, she’d yelled and hung up on him when he called her out for how she allowed our vandal to manipulate her and treat me like crap.

She was like a totally different person.

Meanwhile…

In checking the trail cam files, I could see our vandal trying to figure out what was going on. The day the guys where here to pick up the vehicles, I saw him pull into our driveway while the gate was open – but not far enough to be trespassing! – to turn around, then slowly back down the road, so he could better see through the trees to where we were. I even remember seeing a vehicle backing up on the road, while the guys were jacking the truck out of the dirt and putting tires on it. On the trail cam files, I saw our vandal go by again, later on. Then, after the guys were gone and the gate closed, I saw a different vehicle pull into our driveway and turn around. From another camera, I could see that the driver of this vehicle was a mutual friend he’d clearly gotten to check things out.

On today’s file check, I saw our vandal in the morning, slowly driving past our driveway, then slow down even more as he drove past the bushes, trying to see through them to the other scrap vehicles.

Needless to say, we are no longer fake locking the gate.

It amazes me how furious and possessive he is about the junk. Yeah, some of it was his, but he abandoned it years ago, and neither vehicle that was taken had ever been his to begin with. The ones he’d left are in such bad shape, they aren’t even good for parts. Just the scrap dealer. Which is why he dumped them here, instead of keeping them on his own property. He was using this place as a garbage dump.

So we’re going to have to keep an extra eye on things for the next while.

Something else we might be able to keep an extra eye on is the sun room critters. My SIL gave us a camera. It was a Superstore freebie for purchases over X amount of dollars, and they had no use for it. It’s one of those little security cameras you can link to your phone to keep an eye on things through a live feed. It is not an outdoor camera, but if we can set it up in the sun room, we should be able to confirm what critters (most likely racoons) are knocking things over in there during the night. If it could handle outdoor conditions, I’d want to set it up facing the cat, kibble and water shelters, so we can see what, besides cats, is eating all the kibble, and sometimes knocking the heated water bowl right out of the shelter! Having a critter cam in the sun room, however, would be a good thing! It mostly comes down to how the device is powered. If it’s USB, we’ve got nothing to plug it into in there. We just haven’t had a chance to even take it out of the box, yet!

Who knows. I might be posting critter cam pictures on here, soon!

The Re-Farmer

Snowcats!

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The arrival of some expected snow kept being pushed earlier and earlier. It hit us last night, so we woke to a winter wonderland of soft, fluffy snow. We were at 0C/32F while I was outside, so it could just as easily have been rain. That was supposed to be the high of the day, but by the time I was settled back inside, we’d warmed up to 1C/34F and the system had passed us by. As I write this, the system is still hitting the southern part of our province, and crossing into the next, as well as hitting the Canada/US border. From what I’m hearing, the city is getting more snow than we got, and some of the highways are getting packed snow. Enough that I’ve decided to not bother with a dump run today. It can wait until next week.

We’re supposed to hit 3C/37F over the next couple of days, and then warm up a bit more, before we’re supposed to start getting highs below freezing next week. All I care is that the roads and weather are good for Saturday, when we’re heading to the city so my husband can finally visit his family!

The deep snow did make it a bit harder for the cats to eat on the roof of the cat house – but they insist on eating there!

It wasn’t until I uploaded this photo to my desktop that I realized I’d caught, not one, but two tongue blehps!

I didn’t even try to do an overall head count, but…

… at one point, I could see eight cats crowded together in the big cat bed at this window! Then the tabby in front came by – there was no room in the cat bed for him! – plus I saw some other movement in the background.

They do love the cat house, this time of year!

While I was out, I took advantage of the snow still being light and fluffy and shoveled around the cat shelters, paths around the yard, including to the compost ring, the back of the garage and our emergency bathroom – the outhouse! 😄 I also made sure there was a path from the house to the front of the garage, wide enough for my husband’s walker, and cleared enough snow that we can open the doors on the sides, to access my mother’s car, of where the little snow blower is stored. No point in using the snow blower at all, though. The snow may have been light and fluffy, but it was also very sticky. Nothing like trying to toss a shovel full of snow and nothing happens, because the entire load is stuck!

We’re supposed to fluctuate around the freezing mark all day today, but as we reach our high tomorrow, all those paths should melt away first and make things easier, later on.

It’s a good day to say inside and work on the Christmas decorations I am crocheting for this year’s ornament.

We have a cat free zone in the living room now. We can actually put up a proper tree, rather than hang one against the door in the dining room. The problem with that is, we’ve been using the room as a catch-all for everything we need to keep safe from the cats, so it’s just jammed full of stuff!

Wanting to set up the Christmas tree is a good excuse to finally go through everything and reorganize.

The Re-Farmer

Toni and Snorri (or Hunter?)

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I was able to accomplish something last night.

I got a decent picture of Toni!

She took a break from squirming and worming around and actually posed for me!

Like the kittens, she is recovering just fine from surgery. I managed to get a look at the incision site, and all is clean and clear.

Our new addition, however, is comically difficult to photograph.

This is the best of many attempts.

Our phone cameras simply do not want to focus on that fuzzy black fur! Especially when we try to get a photo of the face.

We’ve settled on a name. Almost.

We have a tendency to stick to a theme with names, if we can. Like the calicos: Cabbages… Broccoli… Brussel and Sprout. Then there was Rosencrantz, Nosencrantz, and Toesencrantz. That sort of thing.

With an all black kitten named Soot Sprite, someone suggested another sprite name; Brownie. I loved the sprite theme idea, but … well … this is a black kitten.

Then I heard a wet, snorking noise behind me, and I was inspired.

Snorri.

Snorri is one of the Huldufólk – Icelandic sprites – living in Gimli, Manitoba. My daughters and I have been in their attic home, and even got to meet Leo Kristjanson some years before he passed away. We even already have a cat named Freya (aka: Grandma), which is the name of another of the Gimli Huldufólk.

The girls have also been talking about names, and they have been thinking of using Hunter. A friend of theirs has an almost identical cat named Fisher, so they thought that would be funny. But they like Snorri, too.

When the girls were tending to Snorri/Hunter yesterday, they took a look and determined we had a female on our hands. Considering how difficult it’s been to socialize the females outside, this was good news. One less pregnant cat, next year!

Except…

Well, I took a good look this morning, and I’m 99% sure we’ve got a male.

The problem is he, or she, is so tiny, so fluffy and so black, it’s really hard to see!

As for his first night indoors…

I woke up during the night to find him sleeping on my hip.

This kitten has settled in like he’s always been indoors. Even when another cat gets nervous and hisses or growls, he either ignores it, or responds by head booping them.

On being introduced to David, David immediately started to groom the new baby.

As I write this, Snorri/Hunter is curled up and sleeping near Cheddar. Cheddar is sleeping in the little cat bed I got from the dollar store.

He’s bigger than the cat bed, so it’s quite amusing to see.

I have yet to see Snorri using a litter box, but my daughter noticed sawdust under his feet when she came to see him this morning, which suggests he’s at least been in one. I’ve not found any messes anywhere, either.

As for settling in, that has been pretty much instant. He’s been spending most of his time on one corner of my bed. For a kitten that was still a bit stand offish while outside, he’s done a complete turnaround. If you so much as walk close to him, he’ll start purring. While walking past him one time, I reached down to pet him, and he immediately rolled over to let me pet his belly, and started grabbing and playing with my fingers.

Which is how I now know that, along with a white patch on his chest, he has a white patch on his belly, near his hind legs, and one white armpit. 😄 Most of the time, though, he’s loafed, and we can’t even see the white patch on his chest. He also has a pair tiny white stripes at the base of his tail, right over his … brown eye, shall we say.

He’s also much tinier than we thought. It’s all that fluffy fur. He is mostly undercoat, and is more of a long or medium haired cat, unlike his siblings, Soot Sprite and Tiny, The Beast. Those two are short haired cats. He’s more like his brother Pom Pom, who is practically all undercoat with long hairs sticking out.

Snorri is actually smaller than Tiny. !!!

He’s so fluffy, he looks bigger, but he is most definitely smaller, and all skin and bone!

Now that he’s inside, he’ll be getting wet cat food regularly. When I did their morning feeding, he was right in there with all the others, milling around the food bowls laid out on a towel on my bed, along with the other kittens and Toni, as if he’d always been there. A full belly and an eye wash later, he was more than content to go for a nap. Hopefully, we’ll get him healthy, and some meat on those bones, in short order.

By the time the Cat Lady and her family have moved and settled in, he should be ready for adoption. I think he will be snapped up rather quickly, too!

The Re-Farmer

What else could we do?

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First, my apologies for the terrible picture, but it was the best of the lot.

Meet our new baby.

This is the kitten, sibling to Soot Sprite, Tiny and Pom Pom, that I’ve had to bring inside every now and then, to wash its eyes. It’s the only kitten right now with such messed up eyes.

When I got back from town, I unloaded the truck by the door, then my daughter started taking things inside while I parked in the garage.

It’s rather difficult to haul things through a pair of doors while one cat inside – Big Rig – is trying to get out, and another cat outside – Rolando Moon – is trying to get in. So she got her father to do door duty while she went back for the 5 gallon water jugs. This time it was the one orange tabby kitten of the year that was trying to get in.

As she came out again, this little black puff ball came over. Purring.

It tried to get in, too.

So my daughter ended up picking it up, and it was so very happy. This was the first time she had handled it!

As I came around, she asked me what I thought about bringing it in. It’s eyes were getting messy again, and it’s basically skin and bone. I’ve been debating keeping it inside, every time I brought it in to wash its eyes, and after finding 2 dead kittens we didn’t even know were particularly sick… well…

What else are we supposed to do?

So my daughter took it to the isolation ward – my bedroom – while I did the evening cat feeding. While I was doing that, the girls did the evening cat feeding in my room, too – both were being done hours early – including wet cat food.

The kitten was purring non-stop already, but once there was wet cat food to be had, it was in heaven!

Also, they were able to take a peek, and it seems we have a little girl on our hands! Which is awesome, because we’ve had such bad luck when it comes to socializing the females, so we can get them fixed and help with population control.

As I write this, the feeding frenzy is over, and she’s on my bed, loafed next to the tiny cat bed that has Soot Sprite and Pom Pom in it. So she’s getting reacquainted with her long-lost siblings!

My daughter was able to wipe her eyes while they were setting up for feeding, but we’ll give her a bit more time to settle before we try to wash her eyes again. My husband and I did her eyes this morning.

Aside from a couple of surprised moments that brought out quiet growls, there was been zero issue between her and the other kittens. Even the adult cats in the room were barely even curious.

It looks like the only thing we’ll have to deal with is making sure she figures out the litter boxes.

I’ve already sent this picture to the cat lady and told her why we brought her in. I don’t expect a response for a while, since they’ve got so much going on right now. Nothing is going to happen until after their house is sold and they are settled in their new house, so some time in December, at the earliest.

Which will give us plenty of time for us to get her healthy, and get some meat on those bones!

She is tiny, long haired, black with some white on her chest, and tiny patches of white in other areas. I think she will find a forever home very quickly, once she’s ready for adoption!

The Re-Farmer

A few updates

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First, the cuteness!

The Beast looks so tiny at the top! Directly below is Pom Pom, and they are both on top of Clarence, who is getting HUGE. Then there’s Shadow at the bottom. Tin Whistle is snuggled into Clarence’s chest, and Ghosty is off by herself. Soot Sprite crawled into the pile after I took this photo, too!

All the cats are doing well. I have not been able to get a picture of Toni. She is such a worm! If you come close to pet her, she starts to squirm and roll and wriggle – then seems confused when the petting stops, because she’s no longer in reach.

Today is working out to be a fairly quiet day. We have reached 8C/46F! Warmer than forecast. I think I’ll take advantage of it and head into town to refill the water jugs after I finish writing this.

Speaking of taking advantage of the weather…

After talking with my brother (I don’t think he’s happy with me, but he did agree to the vehicle sales), I did some research on that old panel van, then contacted the guy today. The van is actually a 1950 Dodge panel truck, and it turns out to be a collector’s item. I found some similar ones, 1959 or so, in rough shape like this one, but they still had their engines and door handles, etc. selling for $2000 or more. That would be US dollars, too. Anyhow, some years ago, my brother said it was worth around $1000, and that does not seem to have changed.

When I first called the guy, I left a message and mentioned that. They decided not to buy the panel truck! 😄 The other vehicles will be used in restoration, but that one was an “extra”.

To take advantage of the mild weather we’re having, they’ll be coming out on Friday for a truck and two cars. The tractor his son wants to buy will likely have to wait until spring. The forecast does say we are supposed to get heavy snow on Thursday, but only briefly in the morning, then Friday warms up again, so it should be okay.

So Friday should be interesting.

The Re-Farmer

Breakfast for kitties, and 6 years ago today

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I tried to do a head count this morning, while feeding the yard cats. I got either 34 or 35. Rolando Moon was not around, but Sad Face was there this time.

I still don’t know which ones are the new ones. All 15 cats in this photo are regulars, as far as I can tell. There’s that spotty grey tabby, on the water house roof, that I was talking about yesterday, that I hadn’t seen in a while.

Meanwhile…

Six years ago today, the movers arrived.

Completely unprepared.

I ended up spending most of the day in the van with a friend, two cats and our aquarium fish in a bucket, while my daughter took a walk around downtown until I messaged her to come back.

What a mess the whole thing turned out to be.

It gives me the willies, just thinking about it.

On a completely different note…

I’m going against my brother’s wishes today. Partly.

Last week, I got a call from someone interested in some of the old vehicles we’ve got lying around. He’s interested in restoring vehicles which, to me, is a lot better than just selling them for scrap! I did tell him it was my brother that owned the place, and we were going to wait until the weather was better for him to come out. He called last night, and talked about his son and a friend coming over, late this morning. I did tell him, he wasn’t going to be able to get anything out right away. He’d have to see, to understand.

Then, of course, I told my brother. I would never sell anything without talking to him, first, since this is all his stuff.

My brother said, don’t let them in.

???

We were messaging, so he called and we talked about it.

There were a few concerns he had. The first was that this was someone trying to take advantage of me and offer less than the vehicles are worth – and I sure as heck wouldn’t know what they’re really worth. Still, I think my brother doesn’t realize just how far gone some of those vehicles are. I didn’t even know which one the guy was interested in; he’d said a Ford truck, but there are several of those!

Another concern my brother had is that these vehicles have basically been used as storage. They have all sorts of things in them he might want to keep. He’d have to go looking through them all, even if we were just going to call a scrap dealer, to make sure nothing was hauled away that shouldn’t be. That won’t happen until spring, at the earliest.

And finally, there’s the question of how to transfer ownership. As far as we know, none of these vehicles have any sort of ownership papers left. It wouldn’t matter for something going for scrap, but if a vehicle is going to be restored, registered and insured, there needs to be some sort of paper trail. It’s something he and my parents had to deal with, years ago, and it was a major pain to find a workaround.

So when the guy called this morning, as I asked him to, so I could open the gate, I told him I had bad news and explained the situation.

In the end, though, I decided to let them come and take a look. I honestly don’t think they’ll find anything worth buying, but looking wouldn’t hurt. It turns out he’s not only interested in looking at the ones in the old hay yard, but was wanting to see the vehicles way out in the car graveyard, too. He knows nothing will change hands, but he will bring along pen and paper and write out which (if any) he’s interested in, and an offer. I can then pass that on to my brother.

I hope my brother understands that I’m actually trying to help him out with this. Of course, if they don’t see anything they’re interested in, it won’t matter either way. In the end, we really need to get those old vehicles out. If for no other reason than they are a hazard for the renter’s cows!

So I’ve got the gate open, and am keeping an eye on the security camera live feed for them, and we’ll go for a walk together. The guy is even bringing his wife along. 😊

The Re-Farmer