After a brief and sunny respite, it looks like the storm has finally hit us for real. Temperatures have dropped to -21C/-6F, with a wind chill of -35C/-31F – and this time, we don’t look at all sheltered from it, from what I’m seeing on the live feed of the garage cam! It’s supposed to end overnight, and then tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach a high of -24C/-13F with a wind chill of -36C/-33F. It’s supposed to be about the same for one more day, before warming up to -8C/18F!
Which means we’re going to be digging ourselves out for a couple of very cold days.
Meanwhile, we are warm and safe indoors, and I thought it was a good time for a Cabbages update.
Beep Beep keeps coming over to groom her, then Turmeric comes over and tries to force her way in between them! Jealous of the attention her adopted sister is getting, it seems. :-D
Cabbages is slowly getting better. I see her drinking water on her own more often, so we’re not as concerned about using the syringe to get her hydrated. She has little interest in eating, though. It looks like she can’t smell food right now! Her breathing is fine, so she’s not stuffed up. She’s also more active, and fights us off more when we try to feed her. She stomach seems stable enough that we’re using the syringe to feed her a little more often, and we’ll keep increasing the feedings as much as we are able.
I get to do the feeding part while my daughters have been taking turns, holding her. Both of them have bloody scratches to show for it! She may be almost skin and bones right now, but she’s still remarkably strong.
She still spends most of the day sitting like a little bony loaf in different spots in my office/bedroom all day. As I write this, she is back on the warming mat. :-) The main thing, though, is that she is improving!
First up, I’m happy to say that Cabbages is seeming better this morning. She got more hydration last night, and we even got some solid food into her – also through the syringe. She didn’t like it, but she ate it!
We are still keeping Turmeric closed up with me. I’ve been letting other cats in and out, and while she did growl at the tuxedos, once they were inside, she seemed okay with them. As soon as she’s out of my office/bedroom, however, she still turns into a snarling beast for some reason.
Beep Beep has pretty much moved in and taken Cabbages under her wing, so I had the three of them with me last night. I was awakened by the sound of a cat scratching under the door to get out, and it was Cabbages! That’s the first time she’s made the effort since we brought her into the room.
It turned out their food and water bowls were empty. When I refilled them, Cabbages parked herself at the water bowl and stayed there. I did see her drinking, but mostly, she was just a loaf. I was in and out a few times, and she stayed like that for at least an hour. Right now, she’s back on my bed, next to Beep Beep.
We will keep up with the hydration and the semi-liquid food, even though she is a bit more active.
The other cats still seem very confused by my closed door. I usually have the majority of them splattered all over my bed, finding myself trapped by several when I wake up in the morning. They’ve had to find other places to sleep. A couple of them already preferred my husband’s hospital bed, but now he’s finding his bed covered with 4 or 5 at times. That bed is pretty narrow, so they basically take up the whole thing when that happens! Mostly, though, they have been converging on my daughters, upstairs.
They have not been getting much sleep, lately!
I do wish I knew what was going on with Turmeric, and why she still hasn’t settled down, yet!
Anyhow.
When I head into the sun room to get kibble for the outside cats, it’s not unusual for me to see a cat on the hand rail outside. It’s usually Nosencrantz or Potato Beetle. Sometimes it’s Agnoos or Tuxedo Mask. Not this morning!
The Distinguished Guest had her butt parked there this time! I managed to get a picture before opening the doors, at which point she took off. Not far, though. She knows it’s breakfast time!
She is really looking to be a permanent “guest”.
I counted only 13 this morning, though I did see Ghost Baby show up soon after. We were short two orange tabbies. I didn’t see Butterscotch or Nosencrantz this morning, either. It’s not unusual for Butterscotch to be missing, but I usually see Nosencrantz.
Chadiccus came over for pets, and I was happy to see he’s all cleaned up. No sign of the blood that was all over his front, yesterday. Since no cats look injured, I’m hoping it was just from some rodent he caught and ate.
I can see that the cats checked out our winter sowing experiment! The jugs themselves were undisturbed, though, so that’s good.
Once I was done my rounds and back inside, the two deer that come by regularly were soon at the feeding station. Then I spotted one of them in the south yard!
There is a short path along the chimney block planters that has been shoveled, and that’s where she is standing.
Then she made her way around the white lilacs, to the shrine! From the tracks in the snow, they have been checking out the kibble tray fairly regularly. Which is interesting, since there is nothing there they can eat. There are birds that like to steal the kibble, though, and of course the cats are often there, just like at the feeding station, so maybe the deer is associating the presence of birds and cats with food!
Or she’s just curious. :-D
I like how the cat is so chill about the deer coming at it.
Doing my rounds this morning was a bit of a bother. Those high winds from yesterday drifted over many of our paths with hard packed snow. A couple of days from now, we’re supposed to get hit by a storm, with 10-15 cm of snow (4-6 inches).
*sigh* I suppose we should clear out the end of the driveway again, before the plows have to go through.
We are having another mild and foggy day, and the kitties were out in full force!
I think I counted 19 in total, out of the 20 that are now regulars. I even got to pet the Distinguished Guest again. Earlier, before I headed outside, I spotted her by the bird feeder. The suet cage had fallen to the ground, and she was trying to get at the suet!
Tuxedo Mask is looking great. In fact, all of the outside cats seem to be doing very well right now.
Butterscotch followed me around while I was doing my rounds, really wanting to be picked up!
They had better enjoy the mild temperatures while they can. Today is supposed to be the last really mild day. At 0C/32F, we’re already warmer than forecast, but starting tomorrow, we are supposed to drop and stay between -10C/13F and -20C/-4F for as far as the long range forecast shows.
As for the inside cats, we still have a few sick ones that are learning to enjoy being in the steamy bathroom while we take our showers. Except Beep Beep. She does not like being closed up in such a small space at all! The rest tend to stay, long after the door is open again.
Keith seems to be doing well. Still not much appetite, but he’s been pretty quiet. No more throwing up, and except for a few spells, his breathing is quiet. We can tell he’s still not feeling too good, though, because he hides away. Currently, he’s under the couch. It took my daughters a while to find him! Usually, he’s in the bed we set up in the corner of my closet. I’m hoping this means the anti-biotics are working, and that he does NOT have heart worms!
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. :-)
I’m happy to say that Tuxedo Mask is looking so much better!
This has become his favourite spot, under the ceramic heat bulb.
Unfortunately, he’s still not using the litter. My daughter took a look this morning, and it seems he’s just going on the concrete beside the litter box.
*sigh*
At least the room is cold enough that it’ll be pretty much frozen, and will freeze completely once we are no longer using the heat bulb, until we can clean it up.
Somehow, I never thought I’d be using the mini-greenhouse frame like this. :-D Now we’ve used it to help convalescing critters a couple of times. It works great!
When putting in the eye drops this morning, his eye was looking really great. Just a bit of dry crustiness around his eyelid, and that’s it. If things keep up like this, we’ll be able to let him out in about five days.
Interestingly, he hasn’t been making a dash for the door when I go outside. He seems to quite like his warm spot! Until my daughter comes in, at which point he revels in cuddles.
Some of the outside cats are looking like they could use some eye drops, too, but none of them are cats we can catch. The ones that do let us pet them are all clear eyed.
Potato Beetle is looking pretty battle worn! At least, with the cold, he’s been less aggressive towards the other cats, but clearly he hasn’t stopped completely.
The temperatures outside are still relatively mild. We’ll have a couple of colder days coming up, but so far, we still don’t even need to plug in the block heater on the van.
When I do my morning rounds, I’m in and out of the sun room quite a bit. We didn’t want to take a chance of Tuxedo Mask dashing outside. Every time one of us used the bathroom, we could hear him through the window, crying to get outside! So my younger daughter took on Tuxedo Mask duty. I did have to stop my husband, though. He was about to do the outside cats’ food and water, forgetting that we have a patient in the sun room that would be eager to dash outside!
Tuxedo Mask was not a happy camper when we came in. He had settled at the bottom of the door to the old kitchen, then ran and hid when we opened it. It took a while for my daughter to get him out while I topped up the food and water bowls. Which did not need topping up. If he ate or drank during the night, it wasn’t enough that I could tell the different. The litter wasn’t used, either, which means we’ll likely find a mess to clean up in the spring.
Gotta love concrete floors.
My daughter then stayed with Tuxedo Mask, holding him in her arms while she sat on her dad’s walker, while I went in and out. As unhappy as he was about being stuck in the sun room, he had discovered the joys of being cuddled, and didn’t even try to get out of my daughter’s arms!
His eye is looking pretty much normal already! It wasn’t even very leaky. When giving him his eye drops, it was a bit more closed than the other, but the redness seems all gone. A huge improvement from when I first saw it, and it looked like blood.
Which means, unless something changes for the worse, he’ll be in the sun room for only a week.
Hopefully, he’ll have learned to use the litter box before then!
The other outside cats, meanwhile, were in fine form. Even Broccoli’s eye has no visible redness, and any signs of leaking doesn’t appear fresh. I couldn’t see Caramel’s eyes, though. Too much running around!
Rolando Moon joined me for a while.
Ah, Rolando! One moment, it’s CHOMP!!!
The next moment, it’s KISS!!
She’s so mean and loving. :-D
Meanwhile, the fix on the door is holding out wonderfully. Tightening that hinge plate seems to be making the biggest difference. All this time we fought with the door, and never thought to look at the hinge! There was one spot on the floor where the door would jam. If I could push it past that one spot, it would swing free again. The floors in this house are uneven, and it’s been doing this for longer than we’ve lived here. It never even occurred to me that it was anything other than the uneven floor being the problem. Tightening the hinge plate adjusted the door a tiny bit, but it’s enough that we can now open the door all the way, without it jamming on that bump on the floor!
The door latches much better now, too, and we no longer have to fight to get it to stay closed. Which means where will be less wear and tear on the knob mechanism. It opens and closes so smoothly now, I didn’t even notice the bit of give on the handles, because of the too-long bar!
To think we put up with this for 4 years, and never thought to look at that hinge the entire time. Even my dad would have been putting up with it for who knows how many years; as his mobility declined, he went in and out through the sun room, too, because there are no stairs that way.
Funny how easy it is to miss these little things, yet they can make such a big difference!
We had some maintenance related issues that prevented me from posting an update as soon as we got home, so I figured I’d just cut to the chase with the title!
We were not able to catch Broccoli, though.
She and Caramel just did not want to leave the cat’s house, even when I started scraping ice and snow off the roof – a noise that usually sends them running.
She did eventually come out just as we were heading to the van with Tuxedo Mask (with a delay I will write about in my next post). We tried again to get her, but she just would not let it happen.
On the plus side, her eye looked much, much improved since this morning, so that’s encouraging.
Even with the delay, we got to the vet early, which gave me time to pop across the street to a hardware store. My daughter went in with Tuxedo Mask.
It’s basically a herpes infection. He was coughing a bit, too, which would also be from herpes. She prescribed eye drops for him. She legally could not prescribe extra for Broccoli, though. Anyhow, he is to get the eye drops twice a day for a week longer than when his eye clears up. Considering that his eye was looking dramatically better by the time we took him to the vet, that should not be too long. And if we happen to be able to catch Broccoli and be able to hold her, well, it’s up to us if we happen to give her eye drops, too!
Honestly, I don’t see that happening.
Once we got home and were let into the house – more on that later! – we set up a nest for Tuxedo Mask in the sun room, along with the extra ceramic heat bulb, similar to how we set things up for Ginger. He will stay in the sun room, where we can easily catch him to treat his eye, until it’s no longer needed, and then we can let him outside again. We were warned to watch out if the eye starts to get cloudy, though, and if it does, to bring him right back.
Considering he’s already recovering, I think that will not be a concern.
On top of all that, the cost of the visit and the prescription was way less than I feared. I keep wildly overestimating how much things will cost, but he didn’t need any Xrays or anything like that, so there weren’t any add on’s to his exam. Just the prescription. Such a relief!
Getting to and from the sun room to treat his eye might be a challenge over the next while, though, depending on how we manage things tonight.
I missed my morning ginger cuddles, but that’s okay. He got other cuddles!
That’s Keith on the left, and Cheddar at the top. Cheddar is the one that came indoors after we found him walking strangely, and could feel what we at first thought was a dislocated rib. It turned out he had somehow impaled himself with a stick, at about his armpit. It was surgically removed, and he never went back outside.
I still have the “cheese stick” in its vacuum sealed tube. And yes, the vet actually labelled it “cheese stick”. :-D
Keith came indoors some months after Cheddar, so all three of these guys are “rescued” yard cats.
Ginger is very close to Keith in size and shape, though Ginger isn’t even a year old yet – and Keith is not a small cat! You can see in this photo, a bit of why we would sometimes look at Ginger and think we’re seeing Keith!
There’s no mistaking Cheddar, though. He’s a big, hulking block of cheese, that boy!
I have a shelf against the wall next to me, when I am sitting in my office chair. The chair has a high back and rotates/tilts freely. Parts of the shelf are kept clear for the cats to use, including the very top, so they can take naps next to the ceiling. They’ll sometimes use my chair to get to the top of the shelf but mostly they get down from the top by jumping into the padded headrest of my office chair, then down to the floor.
I gotta say, when Cheddar is the one jumping down, and I’m sitting in the chair, I practically get whiplash! It’s amazing how much force that boy has when he lands, and the chair slams back as far as it can tilt!
Beep Beep even hopped up to check out the new boy.
She doesn’t like him very much, and ended up driving both Ginger and Cheddar away, so she could snuggle up to Keith and start grooming him. :-D
Also, this is why my bed is so hairy all the time. It’s constantly covered in cats!
Having brought Beep Beep indoors to have her babies last spring, this will be her first year of NOT getting pregnant. She seems quite content with that! She also seems quite content with her new life as an indoor cat. Even when she went into heat, she showed no desire to go outside to visit the (intact) boys in the yard. We don’t know how old she is, but I have pictures of her from when we made the drive out and stayed here with my dad, back in 2015, and she was definitely an adult cat at the time. That makes her a minimum of 7 years old. I would guess she’s closer to 10, and she would have had a litter of kittens every year of her adult life, until now. She is a wonderful mama, but I’m sure she’s more than done with the babies by now! :-D
Meanwhile…
Ginger’s surgical site is looking really good and healing well. He displays no sign of pain or discomfort, and it’s not slowing him down at all. Which is starting to be a problem, as he is exploring more and trying to get into things he shouldn’t be! We’ve been able to train most of the cats to stay away from/off of certain areas and, of course, he hasn’t learned that yet. :-D
There is some tension between him and some of the other cats, but not in any out of the ordinary way. Some of our cats are just more ornery than others, so it’s not just him.
Last night, we decided to close the other cats out for the night. Not because there were any issues with cats not getting along, the night before, though. The other cats are really liking access to Ginger’s food and water bowls (as well as his litter box). With the other cats around, he spent most of the night in his bed at the bottom of the closet, and by the time he came out in the morning, all the food and water was gone. He does the stairs to the basement really well, but I’d rather he didn’t have to do that because the other cats were too lazy to! :-D
The bonus was, morning cuddles with Ginger!
As soon as he realized all the other cats were out of the room and the door was closed, he jumped upon the bed and started roll and stretch and squirm, while demanding face skritches. :-D He did eventually go back to his “cave” in the closet for the rest of the night, but by morning, he was back for more cuddles.
After a leisurely breakfast from his still-full food and water bowls. :-D
I think he enjoyed the break from the other cats! He is certainly enjoying people time, too.
I was talking to my daughter about one of the things I noticed about him. He and his sister, Cabbages, are the youngest cats in the house. Yet he is bigger and burlier than her, and even his older sister (half-sister, I suppose), Nicco. The spice girls are both downright tiny compared to him, and even Tissue, who is about the same age as the older kittens, is smaller than he is. Our Ginger is a beefy boy! He’s about as big as his Aunt Beep Beep, who has been filling out since coming indoors. He hasn’t caught up to Big Rig, but then, Big Rig got her name because she was so much bigger than the other kittens. I don’t think he’ll get as big as Cheddar or Leyendecker, but I’m sure he’ll be at least as big as David and Keith, soon.
He was always a bit bigger than his brother, Nutmeg, but Nutmeg is definitely filling out, too.
So is their mother, Butterscotch (on the left).
Who is looking decidedly round in the belly.
*sigh*
Rosencrantz is another beefy one. If she’s pregnant, we might not even be able to tell until we start seeing kittens running around again.
Thankyou to Wolfsong for passing on the name of a vet that does a barn-cat spay day. It’s a long drive for the cats, but we’d be able to do 4 females for about the same price as the local vet doing only one, so it would be worth it. We will definitely be contacting them to find out when their next spay-day is. The only challenge will be to catch yard cats like Junk Pile (I haven’t actually seen her in a little while), and I’m sort of assuming Rosencrantz’s baby, the sort-of calico, is female. It’s not like we’ve been able to see her well enough to confirm, either way. Just like Junk Pile; we didn’t know for sure that she was female until she showed up with kittens following behind. In fact, because she never looked pregnant, I had thought she was a he!
At least we’ve been able to get the indoor males snipped for now, including Ginger. Can you imagine the poor boy being intact, recovering from an amputation, and surrounded by a house full of female cats in heat? LOL
The Re-Farmer 