injured cats

Cat colony madness

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Today turned out to be very long and busy, but for I get into that, in another post, I wanted to share this photo of Sad Face.

AKA Shop Towel.

Some time ago, he showed up with his cheek badly injured, a flap of skin torn off and hanging. While he would sometimes allow me to pet him while he was eating, he wouldn’t let me get a good look at him, and certainly not anywhere near the injury. For weeks, he’s had a piece of dead skin dangling off his face, but that finally fell off a few days ago.

This picture is one of the best looks I’ve been able to get of it for quite a long time. There’s no doubt that he’s going to have a massive scar there, but it seems to be closing up and healing well.

That cat is indestructible!

After I got this picture, while he and the other cats had gathered around for breakfast, I tried for a head count.

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

My first count was 44.

That’s right. Forty Four!

My second count was 37, and then 40, but I’m pretty sure that first count was accurate, and that some cats hid on me when I tried counting again.

One of these mornings, I should try to count just kittens and just adult cats. Not an easy task, but it would give me a better idea of how many of the adult cats have disappeared over the summer.

That is totally insane and unsustainable.

The rescue is helping us as much as they can, but with so few people adopting or donating for spays and neuters, there’s only so much they can help with.

Meanwhile, the girls just updated me on how treating and feeding eye baby went. I was just too exhausted and in too much pain to help out tonight. His eye still looks really horrible, but is definitely getting better. We have some plain eye drops – the same that’s used on humans for dry eyes – that we can at least use on the messed up eye. It doesn’t seem to be bothering him or slowing him down in any way, and he is just as active and playful as any of the other kittens. A real trooper!

Given that he is a descendent, direct or otherwise, of Shop Towel, I suppose that’s not a surprise!

I also got some updated on Button from the Cat Lady. Not only have they had to put a bell on him, but now have post it notes all over the place, including the bottom freezer drawer on their fridge, reminding people to check for Button before closing things. He’s just way too tiny!

There is a possible cause for this, though I am just guessing. He has been dewormed and massive amounts of them are being cleared out of his system and into his litter box. She’s never seen anything like it before!

Just a little bit longer and, as long as there isn’t any sudden backing out on the arrangement, he’ll be ready to go to his forever home.

The Re-Farmer

Still there, and thinking warm thoughts

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Well, it stayed cold enough that the snow we got is still there – with a bit more. We might get more flurries later today, and then the wind is supposed to pick up.

It’ll all be gone by tomorrow.

I counted 33 yard cats this morning – but I didn’t see Sad Face anywhere! Which means there’s another new one in the bunch.

I plugged the heat lamp in the sun room back in. They had really enjoyed the warmer temperatures and only a few continued to hang out in the sun room, but now that the temperatures have dropped again and the snow is back, every time I look out the bathroom window, there’s a crowd. Several crowds, actually, on and under the platform.

They will not be happy when they loose their platform so I can set up for my plants. 😁

Breakfast in the snow!

I got a good shot of the cat with the damaged eye. The hematoma doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, that I can tell, but he seems to have no vision issues. He’s certainly more lively and active now, after having spent several days being quite lethargic and shivering in the sun room. I’m glad he sought out the warmth and shelter when he was feeling sick. Now that he’s improving, the down side is, he’s no longer letting me touch him. I managed to sneak pet his back while I was petting Driver (on the far right of the photo), but he quickly moved away. He is less skittish then he used to be, at least. The cats were all very hungry this morning, so I let him be rather than interrupt his breakfast.

With the chill and snow out there, I wanted to share something more spring like, so here is a video from MI Gardener to enjoy.

Some of these “hacks” are things I’ve already been doing, or trying to do. The first one is to have hose guards on his raised bed corners. That’s something I’ve appreciated about the higher raised beds, as the beds themselves are the hose guards. The only problem is that I typically have several hoses joined together, and the couplings tend to get caught on things. I’ve seen people use curtain rods they picked up at thrift stores; the round kind, where one half slides over the other to adjust the width. Setting them so the outside half is on the top allows it to rotate as the hose is pulled around it, which keeps things from getting stuck.

In the comments under the video, someone described how they’ve put permanent hose guards in their beds, made from small fence posts – then topped them with tennis balls for safety, so their grand kids are less likely to hurt themselves on them. What a great idea!

Using a board across the beds is something else I do, though I don’t have the knees to get right on one and squat to reach the soil! Mostly, I use them to lean against and support myself with one hand, while using the other to do what I need to do. Handily, we’ve got quite a bit of scrap boards that can be used for that, though they tend to be pretty rotten and damaged, and I’ve had more than a few of them crack and break up!

I’ll have to remember the “using the pot to make a transplant hole the right size”, tip.

With the carrots, I’ve used scrap boards to cover the seeds until they germinate. Only because I tend to have plenty of those, but not cardboard! What’s fun is to move them aside to check for germination – and finding frogs sheltering under them! Slug eating frogs must always be encouraged. 😁

I like his pretty dibbler tool. Since mobility is an issue for me, I tend to use something longer. Some days, I’ve used 4′ long support stakes as dibblers. Those are handy to mark out shallow trenches for smaller seeds, too. If I need larger holes to plant in, we’ve got lots of sticks or tree branches that will do!

Another commenter mentioned a tip I’ve heard of before that I definitely want to try, for the low raised beds. Get a piece of PVC pipe and use it to drop seeds in place. That would solve both mobility/pain issues, and short-people-like-me reach issues!

Just a side note, when it comes to reach; the lower the bed, the harder the reach. So for a low raised bed, accessible from both sides, like what he has, I’d recommend going no more than 3′ wide, but with a high raised bed, 4′ wide works just fine.

I’m really looking forward to winter finally being done with us!

The Re-Farmer

Good kitty news!

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Check this out!

Driver is putting full weight on that foot, and he’s no longer limping! He even followed me around while I was doing my rounds, running ahead, flinging himself to the ground and rolling in the snow.

I only counted about 23 or 25 yard cats this morning, but one of them was Judgement. He was hanging out in the sunroom again, and looking just fine. I wasn’t able to check his nethers to see how things were healing up, but he did allow me to pet him.

As for the indoor cats, Wolfman is behaving as if nothing happened. Beast is behaving normally, too, but has been avoiding me more. Tissue is still mad at me, even as she cuddles against my legs at night. PBC has been running away and hiding more. I think a couple of the other cats have been less than welcoming, and she’s nervous. She hasn’t allowed me to pet her lately. She is, however, exploring the house, and the girls have found her upstairs. We will still keep the basement door closed, at least until she’s healed up. We don’t want her getting her incision infected, dragging her belly on the floor while exploring under shelves. She’s all over the place! Meanwhile, Butterscotch barely even goes out the door and into the hallway at feeding time. The little one is much more willing to check things out, while the grand old lady just wants to sleep in my pants shelf all day. 😁

As much as we need to keep trying to find homes for all these beasts, and they’re eating us out of house and home, I sure do love them dearly!

The Re-Farmer

Exhausting change of plans

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My goodness, what a day!

What??? It’s not even 3pm yet???

Okay, let’s back up a bit!

First, the good news.

While doing my rounds this morning, I saw Driver limping around – and he’s starting to put that front foot down and putting weight on it. Not much, and only briefly, but that’s a good sign.

He went onto the cat house roof for breakfast, and while he wouldn’t let me look too closely, I was able to see this.

It looks like whatever injury he has involves a toe, but that’s all I can see. In fact, I can see more in this cropped picture than I could in person.

Yesterday, I saw Judgement hanging out in the sunroom through the evening, which I was happy with. He seemed fine and content to sit in the bottom of the shelf to look out the window. This morning, however, I saw no sign of him – but I got a headcount of “only” 29, so quite a few cats weren’t around at the time. Shop Towel was also nowhere to be seen.

They very much like their new beds, though! Checking through the window last night, there was a mass of cats curled up among the beds and blankets under the platform. The one smaller bed went on top of the platform, next to the self warming mat. Shop Towel was on that one. He basically covered the whole thing, he’s so big!

After my rounds were done, I was starting breakfast when the phone rang. It was my brother, letting me know he was going to our mother’s place today, to replace the peep hole in her door and get a visit in. He was wondering if I could join him.

Of course, I said yes! 

I had intended to go into town this afternoon to pick something up that my husband asked for, but I could do that at my mother’s town, too. So I left quite early to take care of that first. The grocery store turned out to open a lot later than I thought, so I ran my other errands first and was waiting when I got another call from my brother. He’d called our mother ahead (hands free, of course) to let her know he would be coming by. After giving him grief about how he should be in church with her, she asked him to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store. 😁 Knowing that’s where I needed to go myself, he let me know what she needed, so I picked her stuff up, too. By the time my brother arrived and met up with me, our mother would have already left for church, so we headed straight to her place; my brother and I are the only ones that have been entrusted with spare keys to her place, for times like this – and for emergency wellness checks, if that every becomes an issue.

Once we were settled inside, he very quickly popped out the damaged peep hole.

Check this out.

The last time we were there, and my brother discovered the damage, he’d tried scraping off the stuff, unsuccessfully. We were pretty sure it looked like Krazy Glue. Now that it’s off, it quite clearly is some sort of instant glue.

Kinda like the glue that was used on our gate locks a few times.

We have no real idea of how long it has been like this, since my mother never bothers to look through it.

The new one is very pretty, and has a little cover on the inside so no one can look in from the outside. It turned out to be ever so slightly bigger than the hole, but my brother was able to enlarge it with a pocket knife. He was kicking himself for not thinking to bring his drill. Frankly, I think the pocket knife did the job just fine. You can’t even tell the hole was enlarged, the different is so slight.

Of course, once it was in, we tested it out, with one of us going into the hall while the other looked through. My brother thought it wasn’t focusing right, but when I started from against the wall across from her door and walked forward, he could see me perfectly fine once I was at knocking distance. The peep hole has a 120° view, so that’s good, too.

After that, we had time to check my mother’s CID and messages, and clear some of them out for her (she’s never been able to figure out her answering machine!), leaving a couple of mystery messages for now. One, we’ve determined was a wrong number. The other, the person used my mother’s name, and left her own name – both of which were very hard to hear, with the strong Polish accent, but we were able to make it out. The message was for my mother to call her back, but no number was left. Whoever it was assumed my mother already had it.

We weren’t able to match the CID numbers with the messages, though. Her answering machine doesn’t leave the same date and time information on them. 

Then I noticed something new. A picture. That, in itself, is not odd; my mother has photos, prints, pictures from newspaper articles, etc. all over the place. It wasn’t until we had the table set up for lunch, with me in the extra chair that’s normally never at the table, due to lack of space, that I was facing the picture and getting a real look at it.

It was a picture of my mother, with our vandal and his wife, sitting at a table in a local restaurant.

Which made the location of the picture downright creepy. She set it up on the little mirrored altar that my brother had repaired the light on for her not long ago.

There was nothing to tell us when she had gone out to dinner with them, but it had to have been fairly recently.

After a while, with lunch set up and tea ready, my brother was starting to wonder where Mom was, as she normally would have been home by then. Church is right across the street, so it’s not far for her to go. So he went out to look through the lobby window – and found Mom! She had sat herself down in front of the window to watch people as they left church, completely forgetting that my brother had told her he was coming over!

She was very happy to come in and have everything ready and waiting for her. Of course, that didn’t stop her from finding something to complain about, but we were able to distract her and settle in. My SIL had prepared lunch for us, including a Greek salad that was in a larger Feta container that sealed nicely and could be left behind. My mother, in the most convoluted way possible, eventually managed to tell my brother that he could take the container home, because it was such a nice container, etc. Once we were able to decipher what she was saying (I think she thought it was a yogurt container, so we were quite confused when she started talking about the yogurt container, when she turned out to actually be talking about the salad inside), my brother tried to explain that the container was used specifically so that it could be left behind. There was more than enough for her to have with another meal or two, and then the container could be put in recycling. Oh, no! It was far too good of a container to throw away…

…

After a while, we got to explaining to her about the peep hole being replaced, and my brother showed her the old one, with the glue clearly visible on it. None of the other doors had damage to their peep holes (my brother checked), only hers, and there’s only one person we know who goes around vandalizing things with Krazy Glue.

She then made a big deal about how we were fussing so much about the peep hole that she doesn’t use. We were just explaining to her what was done and showing her what we found. To her, that was “fussing” about it. Meanwhile, she was the one getting all worked up about it.

It did give us an opening to ask about the picture.

It took time to piece together her explanation, as she kept jumping all over the place, and we could see she was trying to protect our vandal. It turns out he and his wife had shown up at her place on his birthday, which was at the beginning of the month. This would have been before I’d come over to her place most recently, to help her with groceries. She’d never mentioned it to me. 

She then told us that he said he’d been trying to phone her first, but couldn’t get through – so she told him that my brother had set up her phone to block scam calls, and after listening to the last message our vandal had left with her, his number was blocked, too. So he now knows all about it, she told us.

*sigh*

Around that point, I told her, we’re working so hard to try and protect her from him, but she keeps undoing what we’ve done!

From there, she tried to lecture us. What’s between us and him has nothing to do with her! I reminded her, it has everything to do with her, and 10 years of abusive messages he’s been leaving with her, among other things. Then it had to be clarified that it was abuse with words, because yes, when he tells her that she’s not going to heaven because she won’t give him the property that we’re on, that now belongs to my brother (somehow, he seems to think she can still give it to him, even as he ranted in his answering machine messages about how she’s apparently given the property to me!). 

Then she started the whole “we need to forgive each other” and “none of us are perfect”, as if we were the ones going out of our way to cause problems! At one point, she went on about how she prays every night that we will reconcile with him, and that we shouldn’t hate him. I told her, we don’t hate him! He hates us! Especially me, at this point. She tries to say that he is somehow harmless, though she is still really upset about what he did to the gate.

…

*sigh*

Then she started going on about how he’s the only one still keeping in touch with my late brother’s (now adult) children. I told her, I did try to reach out to them. They didn’t respond. Our vandal has been lying to them and driving them away from us. Even in one of his answering machine messages, he complained about how they weren’t allowed on the farm. He’s the only one that’s not allowed here anymore. We’ve never said my brother’s children weren’t allowed here! 

She just doesn’t get it, and keeps making excuses for him. 

So we finally got past that conversation, but it did give my brother the segue to get my mother to look out the new peep hole. She got upset and tried refusing to get up, because we were making such a big deal out of is, but my brother got her up and to the door. Then he stepped outside into the hall, so she could see him through the peep hole.

Oh, I just had to laugh!

I’m on the short side of things, but even I need to bend down a bit to look through the peep hole.

The peep hole is higher than her head. 

She tried going onto tip toes, but all she could see was the ceiling, because she was still having to look up to see anything at all!

Well, no matter. The damaged peep hole has been replaced.

My brother did bring up about possible getting one that will record when someone’s at the door, and he and I can later check to see who’s been leaving stuff at her door. She said she knows who’s leaving stuff, and to be sure, with some things, she does. The social workers regularly leave little care packages for all the people in her building. That stuff, however, gets left at everyone’s doors. She has stuff being left at only her door. While we can be almost certain that it’s our vandal, we have no proof. Plus, she’s found notes taped to her door that were clearly not written by him, or his wife, telling her to give the farm to our vandal. We’ve never been able to figure out who did that.

We didn’t push, though. That sort of thing is more than she can grasp, and she was still upset that my brother fixed the peep hole.

The last challenge was just before we had to leave, as we suddenly realized it was starting to snow hard, and my brother had a long drive home on open highways. My mother remembered that she had a phone number for a relative in Poland she wanted to call, but was having troubles. As my brother asked her questions and tried the number himself – it didn’t work – my mother told him that she’s been told she would never be able to make a call to Poland on the cordless phone. Only on the corded phone.

???

My brother told her that was not at all true and asked who told her that. All I could figure out was that it was someone in her building, but whether it was someone who lived there, a visitor, or one of the social workers from the senior’s centre, I could never get the straight of it.

After a quick search, my brother found the problem. The number may have been written correctly for someone in Poland, but not for someone trying to call from another country! 

The other problem was that my mother had written the information out on a scrap piece of paper. As my brother tried to write down the corrected information, she started flipping out about it having to be written clearly – which there was no room for! – while she went digging for the original letter from among her papers. Once she got that out, my brother worked on deciphering the hand written numbers – some numbers are written differently in Polish than is typically written in English – for both a land line and cell phone, I was able to get her to find an actual note pad, where I could write out what she needed without anything else on there to confuse things. 

My brother then helped her call the land line, which worked by got a busy signal. The cell phone number kept ringing until it stopped, with no voice mail. The land line was tried a couple more time, and it finally started ringing, but no one answers – that that number didn’t have voice mail or an answering machine, either.

The concerning thing was that my brother had to walk my mother through pushing the button to hand up the cordless phone. A phone she’s had for at least 10 years. I’ve had to try and find the right buttons myself when using her phone, as it’s different from mine, and poorly labelled. She had been the one to confirm which buttons were for “picking up” and “hanging up.” Now, she can’t seem to remember how to hang up her own phone.

Whether or not she’ll try to call again on her own, I don’t know, but my brother and I had to leave, before the weather got worse.

As we left her place, I could see my brother was looking even more exhausted than I felt! I’m glad I could be there, as she really does behave better towards him while I am there, then when he’s there on his own.

For me, at least, once I got out of town, the weather cleared the further north I drove. My brother, however, had to go south, and I think the weather was getting worse in that direction. He should be home by now, so I should finish this off and send a message to check if he got home okay. Knowing him, he probably found errands to run in the city before going home! 😁

On a different note, I didn’t even turn my new computer on until after I was home and settled. This thing boots up so quickly, it’s amazing! Even before my computer started dying, it was take several minutes to finish booting up. Now, it’s almost no time at all!

I’ve started to set up a few things, but I suspect it’s going to take quite a long time. Yesterday, for example, I installed my movie making software. I found the original .exe in my downloads on the back up external hard drive, but the initial set up assumes a free trial. I also had two versions, but couldn’t tell which one was the upgrade. You’d think it would be the one with the more recent download date, but nope. Turned out to be the other one. Once I finally got the right on installed, it still wasn’t what it should have been. I bought the software, rather than getting the subscription, and it kept wanting me to set up a subscription. After some fussing about, I spotted the “activate” button, logged onto the website and found the activation key. It’s now up and running.

I just no longer have any photos or my old project files. Most, I can get on the new back up external hard drive, so that will take more time to get all set up before I even try to make any new videos.

But not today. Today is supposed to be my day of rest!

I do have one more short post to write after this, though, and I’m quite excited about it! Especially giving the snowy weather we’ve been having lately. 

The Re-Farmer

Still going!!

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Good grief.

My new computer still isn’t set up.

Yyo.  I’m still blogging with my phone.  Please forgive any typos I miss!

With the constant restarting, followed by the screen saying to check our Wi-Fi, and no way to bypass it, we tried something different.

My husband had suggested setting the computer up in the living room, where the Orbi signal boosting device is located. 

There was no way I was going to haul everything over to do that.

So,,my husband brought the device to my room, instead.

The risk of that is twofold.  One, the log walls of my room could affect its ability to improve signal to other parts of the house and two, my room is not a cat free zone.  The risk of the device being pulled down, knocked over, etc. was much higher.  We ended up setting it on the top of my wall shelf, so it’s now just the power cord that needs to be watched out for.

Did it work?

Well… sort of?

We dud a hard shut down to set things up.  When I turned it on again, it went back to where it left off – this machine behaves as if it was in sleep mode, rather than powered down  – when through the first part of the loop, got to the “Just a moment…” screen…

…and stayed there.

I left it and went to bed.  Of course, I couldn’t sleep, so I checked it frequently.   No change.

I finally fell asleep, and when I got uo this morning, there was still no change!

I went to do my morning rounds, and when I got back, there was finally a change.

It was off.

I turned it back on, and it went straight to the “Just a moment…” screen.

Then it restarted.

Since then, it has restarted itself and gone through the loop 5 or 6 times in the last hour.

I dud call the customer support number, but they aren’t open in California, yet.  I left a message, asking for a call back.  With the time zones, they won’t be open for almost another hour from the time I’m writing this.

What I hope is happening is that the computer is finding updates, downloading them, installing them, then restarting.  After restarting, it finds another update, and goes through the process again.

The problem is that “Why did my PC restart?” screen.  That screen is always part of the loop, which tells me there is a Wi-Fi problem.

Also, there is no other information.  No download status bars.  No installation status bars. Just “checking for updates” followed by “just a moment…” and then the restart. 

I would expect it would take a while to find , download and install updates.  I have NEVER had it take this long.  We’re at almost 20 hours of this, at the time I’m writing this post.

It’s gotten to the point that I am considering setting up my old computer in the l8ving room and using the TV as a monitor.  We have spare keyboards, though not ergonomic ones, and I’m using the new mouse on the new computer, so the old mouse is available.  I just don’t know if we have a spare HDMI cable to attach the TV as a monitor.  My husband might have one.

Oh, look at that.

The computer is restarting itself again.

*sigh*

Meanwhile…

Temperatures have been dropping since yesterday after, and a light snow started.  My highway conditions group has been very busy.   Everything is incredibly slippery, with several reports of vehicles in ditches, and at least one very major accident.   People were reporting the need to drive at very low speeds, and advising others to stay at home, if at all possible.   The high winds were causing many problems, too. 

This morning, the snow had stopped where we are, and there was only a light layer on top of the frozen slush.  I’m very glad we don’t need to go anywhere today.  I hear the sand crews are out, so when it’s time to go to the vet with 5 cats tomorrow  things should be safer. I still plan to leave very early, and expect to be taking it slow.

I counted about 30 or 31 cats outside, this morning. Nineteen, just in the sunroom.

Driver, here, is still not using that front leg.  It doesn’t stop him from jumping up to the cat house roof, though!  I am really unhappy that we can’t take him to the vet.

After he ate and seemed to want attention, I picked him up and cuddled him fir a bit.  He was nervous, so I took him into the shelter of the sunroom and gently put him down.

Which, for some reason, caused all the other cats to explode in all directions, which also caused Driver to panic and bolt out of the sunroom, then squeeze his fluffy bulk under the kibble house. 

I have no idea what trigged all that!

The ground under the kibble house is coveted by a sheet of rigid insulation, with another under the floor panels above, so that’s a good spot for cats to be.  He was still under there, when I finished my rounds.

Tonight, we will grab that fluffy tortie and bring her inside for her overnight fast.  Hopefully, in the morning, Sad Face will be around, and we’ll be able to get him in the big carrier.  The carrier is already in the sum room, so the cats are used to it.  If we can’t get Sad Face, there are many friendly males we can bring in, instead.

I have a sinking feeling, though, that if we bring that fluffy tortie in, we won’t be able to let her outside again.  She will need more recovery time than a male, and with the sunroom bring used as winter shelter, it’s not available as an isolation ward.

Unless the Cat Lady is able to take her.  The rescue is paying for three of the five cats.  She thought the tortie might be easier to adopt, but I don’t know if she got any responses, or was even able to share the picture.   I’ll have to ask her about that, today.

We shall see.  It would be good if all three littles went off for adoption, rather than coming back here!

I cam dream, can’t I?

The Re-Farmer

One last time? And cat stuff

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While I am using my phone to make this post, because I can’t do anything with photos on my desktop, this might be the last post where this is an issue.

My new computer is ready to be picked up at the post office.

Unfortunately, I can’t get there before it closes over the lunch period.  It reopens at 2, so I’ll head our then.  After that, we’ll see how long it takes to set it up and see how it works.  It will take a long time to set up or transfer my data over, but I should at least be able to go online and write posts.

I really hope this turns out to be a good machine.

In other things, cat related.

I’ve been chatting with the Cat Lady.  They now have several cats from us, living with them permanently.  They have pretty much all had weird health issues.  Thankfully, Cabbages is now hale and hearty.  Leo – a kitten we never named and never expected to survive – had lung issues but is now officially declared healed. 

Then there is Muffin, a muted calico that was supposed to be adopted out, but bonded instantly with her husband.  For some reason, she hates the Cat Lady, but gets along with everyone else.  She also goes to job sites and coffee runs with her husband!

Well, one day, while the family was out of country, her mother, who was taking care of the cats while they were gone, found her with a bloody mouth.  After an emergency weekend trip to the dentist, she had some teeth removed.

Since then, they got a diagnosis of stomatitis.  She’s going to need all her teeth removed.  !!!

Telling my daughters about this, they told me of a cat they follow online (Yes, a cat; not the owner!) that had all her teeth removed a couple of years ago.  Apparently, cats can handle being gummies just fine.  So hopefully, things will work out for Muffin.

I shared this with the Cat Lady, along with mentioning how we feel so bad that she has all these cats from us that turned out to have major health problems.  She told me it was okay.  Other cats they’ve found themselves with have been much more difficult.  And she wasn’t talking about the one that was do physically abused, he can no longer eat without help, and had to have a leg and tail amputated. 

Which is rather alarming!

Then she got back to me later, after talking to someone with 41 cats, wants to adopt some out and get some of them fixed.

Just some?

The Cat Lady says she is getting so tired of dealing with the public, she just wants to focus on us and our cats.

What does that say about the other situations she deals with, when ours is the least problematic??

Speaking of which…

We have a problem with Driver.

A couple of days ago, he seemed to be limping on a back leg.  I wanted to keep an eye on him, but yesterday, I never saw him walking.  While feeding them, he was in the cat bed under the platform in the sun room, and didn’t get up.  When I came back after finishing my rounds, he was gone.  Checking through the bathroom window during the night, though, I spotted him on the top shelf by the window.   I figured if he could get up there, he was doing alright, or at least improving.

This morning, however, he was walking around on 3 legs, holding a front paw off the ground.

About the only positive thing I can say is that the leg isn’t dangling.  With Ginger and with Toni, when I saw how their legs were dangling and flopping around, I knew right away, amputation would be the most likely recommended course of action.  With Driver, however, he’s holding the leg up, but there is nothing swinging around or flopping.  As I had not noticed him favoring his front leg before, this may even be a new injury he somehow got last night.

The last I saw him, he was disappearing under the storage house.  I wasn’t even allowed to get close to him, never mind pet him, which is now unusual for him.

The problem is, we can’t even take him to a vet.  With the spay day coming up this weekend, plus expenses like the new computer, expecting new glasses for my husband, etc, we just don’t have any more budget left for vet bills.  I’ve told the Cat Lady about it, but not with any expectation that they should take in the expenses. 

We have had cats show up favoring paws or legs before, that healed on their own.  We will watch closely.  Hopefully, it’s not anything serious, but at the moment, I can’t get close enough to check.

*sigh*

Well, we do the best we can.

What else is there?

The Re-Farmer

What a lovely evening!

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And a lovely morning, with faces like this, saying hello.

Unfortunately, he was just in some sort of altercation – I never heard a thing, but my daughter went running outside, earlier. There’s a puncture wound on the paw, but he wasn’t favouring it in any way.

I tried doing a head count this morning. I counted 37! Then I counted again and got 34. So I counted again and got… 34. This count included Nosencrantz (yay!), Rolando Moon (yay!) and Shop Towel (boooooooo!!!). Shop Towel is the likely cause of that puncture wound.

We had a fantastic time, yesterday! Having company for a cook out gave us the excuse to do things that tend to slide, when it’s just for ourselves. One of those things was to empty the fire pit of ashes, level the bottom as much as we could, then re-set the concrete blocks that are there to hold the old oven racks we saved for fire pit cooking, as well as solidly setting up the four fire bricks we found here and there around the property, to set the Dutch Oven on, so the legs won’t sink into the ground. The ashes were dumped near the garden, to later be used in garden beds.

My younger daughter took on the job of getting a fire going, then burning it down to get the coals needed for the Dutch Oven. Since the set up for it is right near the fire itself, one side would be really hot, so she set a timer to rotate the oven every 15 minutes or soo.

It turned out awesome!

The inside of the pot was first rubbed with ghee, which can handle the hot temperatures better than, say, olive oil or normal butter. Some slices of bacon went on the bottom. The beef was seared in a pan before going into the pot – with the legs on the Dutch oven, we can’t do a sear in the pot itself unless it’s been heated over a fire/coals.

Since the meat would need quite a long time to cook, I used whole small onions from the ones we had to harvest early, because they’ve been cat crushed, whole Irish Cobbler potatoes, and big chunks of Uzbek Golden carrots. When we grew the Uzbek carrots last year, like so many other things, they did not grow to their full size. This year, they did much better! The ones I dug up for the pot were big, thick buggers! There are still plenty in the garden.

There’s a whole bulb of garlic in there – all three massive cloves of it! 😄

For seasoning, I used the truffle salt we were gifted with, and I cut up one of the sprigs of fresh pepper and scattered them about. Last off all, I added about a litre of water.

In the future, I’ll have to make sure to add more water. The photo was taken right after the pot was removed from the coals. The cast iron stays hot for a long time, and by the time we were eating, it was getting pretty black against the iron!

I neglected to take a picture of the roasted Pink Banana squash.

We also had hot dog fixings, if anyone wanted to roast some wienies, and if we were really into it, we had burger patties ready and waiting in the fridge, so there was plenty for everyone when company arrived. Especially since they brought pizzas, pie and ice cream! They also were incredibly generous and brought us FOUR big bags of kibble! 9.1kg size bags. Between that and a generous cash donation we received from a dear friend, it’s going to be a huge help with stocking up for the kitties for October.

Oh, and it looks like we have a new favourite local pizza place. They tried a place that opened in a new location recently. They’ve been around for a while, but I had no idea. I’ve walked past the previous location many times, but it was such a hole in the wall, I thought it was somehow part of the Greek restaurant, next door! There were no signs to say it was anything else. I think this new location will be much better for them. People will actually be able to see they exist!

We had a fantastic evening. We even managed to do a walk around the inner yard and garden beds before it got too dark to see.

It gets dark so fast, this time of year!

My husband was able to join us for the cook out for quite a long time. The longest I’ve ever seen him manage in ages. Of course, he then had to go inside and medicate to the gills, and he’s paying for it today, but he got to spent time with his family, and he really, really misses that. We’ve had to turn down invitations to see family simply because it’s so painful for him to travel, and he’d have to leave so quickly. So for us to have some of his family be able to make a last minute visit to our place is really, really special for him.

It was such a perfect night for it, too. Things got pretty hot during the day – our predicted 22C/72F turned out to be 25C/77F – but the evening temperatures were just ideal. Even after our company left, my daughters and I stayed out to tend the fire and let it burn itself down (leaving the most perfect cooking coals, and nothing we needed to cook anymore! 😂), because we just did not want to go inside. I felt ready to go to bed outside, it was so gorgeous! This, on the last day of September, too!

It was a bit disorienting when we did finally make it inside. After hauling everything in, putting things away, I finally started my computer, settled in and…

It was barely past 10:30pm.

It felt like it should have been at least midnight!

We did end up getting a solid rain last night, starting at maybe 4 or 5 am. The forecasts were predicting a thunderstorm today… or maybe tomorrow. Now, I’m seeing more rain in the forecast, but no storms. I’m also now seeing predictions for overnight lows of 0C/32F on Friday, when earlier long range forecasts weren’t expecting anything that low for another couple of weeks. It changed, every time I look a tthe forecasts, it seems!

We shall see.

Anyhow.

We had an absolutely fantastic day yesterday, and such a great visit. I’m so glad they were able to come out!

The Re-Farmer

Before and after – all is well!

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TTT had her trip to the vet and, generally speaking, all is going well.

Here she is, ready to come out of the carrier in the examination room.

She was quite content in there and didn’t come out on her own at all. When the tech came in, I had to take her out!

The incision site is a sort of Y shape. She took the staples out of one section without any problems, but it looked as if there were some leaking at some point, and a few were harder to get out than others. As she went on, there was a section she decided the vet should see, so she moved to the other end. There, the skin was sort of folded and tucked in. She moved things around and started to take out staples, and there was more skin than expected, as well as some gunk. There was also a floppy area that looked like it might have fluid in it. Or just be floppy skin (I actually have similar under my arms, from when I had by breast reduction but elected not to pay extra for liposuction under the arms).

The vet did end up taking the rest of the staples out. She doesn’t usually do staples. She had considered removing more skin during the surgery, but decided to leave things a bit looser, and a bit more got tucked in with the staples than usual. The gunk was just that; stuff that normally would have sloughed off naturally from the skin, but couldn’t. The incisions looked really red as a result, but they were all closed up and healing well. Everything got a good cleaning, and she got a slow release antibiotic, just in case. What the incisions really need right now is air. However, just to be on the safe side – especially since she likes to lie on that incision site – we’ll be putting her back in the coat she was wearing when we brought her home.

I did get a chance to talk to the tech about her refusal to use the litter. After asking some questions about what we use for litter, she suggested we try using a clay litter instead of pellets, as it would be more like the dirt she’s used to. Though she has no problems using the puppy pads next to the litter box! I’m willing to try it. We might just use both and transition back to pellets over time.

Overall, though, she got a clean bill of health, and the vet is quite happy with how she is doing. We’re all quite amazed by how calm and accepting she is, considering she hardly had any direct human contact at all until just a couple of weeks ago. I held her while the staples were being removed, and she was trembling like crazy, but she didn’t try to run away, didn’t meow or complain, or anything like that. At most, she squirmed around a bit and the vet brought the V shaped bed to make it easier for her.

When she was put on the scale, she actually settled down and stayed there while the vet went out to get the injection!

As for the puffy spot, the vet tried to see if she could get fluid out of it, and got nothing, so it’s just a floppy bit.

This is her in the carrier, back in the car and ready to go home. She was completely calm and quiet for the entire drive, and didn’t complain until I took her out of the car and carried her to the house. Once inside, she stopped complaining.

I’ve started to put the word out that she’s available for adoption, once she’s healed up. I figure another 2 weeks to keep an eye on her and the surgical site. She has certainly adapted to her situation really well!

The kittens are now at adoptable ages, so I’ve taken some new photos to pass on to the Cat Lady. All be putting the word out myself, but she has a lot more resources than I do.

Snarly Marlee will be very happy once the kittens are gone! TTT, too, though they don’t interact much and keep their distance. When it comes to the kittens, though, all she has to do is see them from across the room, and she starts growling and snarling at them.

Just hearing a noise behind me. It’s Nosencrantz.

I’d really like to know why Nosencrantz has suddenly taken to using the kitten sized litter pan all the time now, instead of the adult sized litter boxes!!!!

The Re-Farmer

Tiny harvest, and a bit o’ nip

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I didn’t head outside to do my morning rounds until after TTT got her morning medications. Somehow, I managed to not look out a window until then, so it was quite a surprise to see how hazy everything was. There’s smoke everywhere. I’ve just checked the live fire maps, and all the fires are well to the north of us. Air quality warnings say the smoke is coming from the territories and northern areas of the prairie provinces. Looking at the live feed on the security camera as I write this, I can see the smoke in the trees of the old hay yard, and my younger brother’s field across the road just sort of disappears.

I didn’t do much of of harvest this morning. I didn’t have a container, so I didn’t try to pick beans. I might come back this afternoon, but will likely leave it to tomorrow.

While pruning the Roma tomatoes, I knocked three off their vines, and found a fourth one already on the ground. I’d put them in my pocket as I found them and kept working and, unfortunately, squished one while bending over! So that went into the old compost pile. There was only one zucchini ready to harvest, and I grabbed the last two of the Sweet Chocolate peppers that had matured the earliest. My daughters had picked the third one a couple of days ago. I can certainly see why they are called “chocolate” peppers!

It feels strange to be half way through August and be harvesting so little. The peas are still having their second production, but there’s only enough that I pick a few pods and eat them while doing my morning rounds. We have yet to have a good year for peas. I think it’s time to harvest the potatoes in the old kitchen garden. They’ve almost completely died back. The purple potatoes in the grow bags are still lush and green, though.

The Roma tomatoes are ripening steadily. I could have picked more, but I want to leave them to ripen on the vines longer. The Indigo Blue and Black Beauties are still rock hard. I suppose I could be harvesting carrots and turnips, but I want to leave most of them to harvest for the winter, not for casual summer eating. With our garden turning out to be so much smaller than planned, there just isn’t much to harvest on a regular basis.

Wow. In the time it took me to write that, I can see on the security camera that the smoke has gotten even denser!

In other things, TTT is doing incredibly well after her surgery. The vet clinic called yesterday to follow up on her, and we made an appointment for her to get her staples removed. This will be just with a tech, not a vet, unless we see some sort of problem that needs to be checked.

We did have a surprise last night.

She actually nursed Tin Whistle for a while! Until now, she’s shown no interest in nursing, nor have the kittens shown an interest in her. Considering that one time, when we let Cheddar in, the kittens tried to find nip on him, I am slightly surprised. They are very close to weaning, though. In fact, Decimus has taken to batting them away when she’s done with them. She comes in just long enough to nurse for a minute or two, and that’s it. She wants out again, and spends almost no time with them at all now!

TTT, on the other hand, it quite okay with them. I’ve seen them grooming each other and now, she actually got nurse. I don’t know that she’s producing milk anymore. While she was rolling around, we could see only two active nips – possibly three. I know I saw her nursing 6 kittens one time. Did she have losses that we never saw? I know her kittens are hanging around the house now, but we’ve got other little ones from other litters, and all the moms nurse all the kittens, so we just can’t tell which kittens belong to which mother!

As for TTT and the inside kittens, so far, there have been no other attempts to nurse, but we’ll see.

There is one major downside with TTT being in my bedroom/office isolation ward.

She hasn’t figured out the litter boxes yet.

With the kittens, I had to put puppy pads under my desk, but it does seem we’ve been able to train them to stop going there. I’m not finding little puddles or tiny turds anymore.

No. Now I’m finding big, adult sized puddles and turds.

At least the puppy pads make it easier to clean up. It’s obviously TTT. Last night, I even caught her peeing on my pillow, and we had to strip the bed and do laundry. I had grabbed her and dropped her into a litter box, but she was so startled, she just ran off. With so many litter boxes to choose from, you’d think she’d figure it out, but nope. She wants the puppy pads! She waits until I’m out of the room, since it means I’m no longer at my desk, so I come back to find the results, and she’s back to napping somewhere. Frustrating!

Another, different sort of frustrating, is in sympathy with my younger daughter. She got sick yesterday evening, and is still stick now. So far, she doesn’t feel bad enough to go to a hospital. She’s trying to think what she might have eaten that could have done it to her, but she didn’t eat anything different than the rest of us, and no one else is sick. During the night, she tried to eat a piece of bread, and that didn’t stay down. She’s so hungry, but doesn’t dare eat. At least she’s feeling a bit better, but that’s not saying much right now.

Hopefully, whatever it is, will pass quickly and completely!

As for me, I’m going to see if I can escape my room, without any kittens escaping, and try and get something useful done today!

The Re-Farmer

Morning mamas

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We always had the hardest time telling Junk Pile and Not Junk Pile apart. When Not Junk Pile got really bad ear mites, to the point of causing wounds behind her ears from scratching, those wounds were one sure way to tell them apart.

Then the fur started growing back after treatment.

Well, we won’t have the problem now!

Here’s a hungry Junk Pile, who will not allow pets, and Baby Beep Beep. Or, Beep Bop, as the girls call her.

Junk Pile is a slightly stockier cat. I don’t think she could have squeezed through 2″ square openings!

As for Not Junk Pile, she was quickly renamed Two Toes Tony at the vet, but now that we’ve had her surgery and her many successful escape attempts, I’m tempted to rename her Houdini. When I messaged that to our family chat, one of my daughters came back with Anthony “2-12 toed” Houdini. (I’m pretty sure she has 15 toes, but that doesn’t alliterate well… LOL)

She is also the easiest cat to medicate we’ve ever had. When she was still in Baby Jail in the sun room, we knew forcing a pill in her mouth, or using syringes for the liquid meds, was not going to work. So the girls put a spoonful of wet cat food in a tiny bowl, buried the pill, seasoned it with the liquid meds, and gave it to her. She absolutely devoured it! When we tried that with other cats, they either ate around the pill, or refused to eat the dosed food at all. Even today, when we gave her the dosed food, the pill hadn’t been buried far enough and got left behind, but as she licked the bowl clean, she ate up the pill, too!

Then she got more food, even sharing a bowl with kittens. To keep them away, after taking the spoonful out for a dose, the rest of the can to split up into other food bowls for the kittens and other cats. Otherwise, the kittens would have been after Two Toes’ medicated food! The babies do have excellent appetites. For wet cat food, at least! Not so much the dry stuff. 😁

Decimus asks to come into the room and nurses the kittens briefly – maybe a minute or so – before checking out the food bowls, then asking to be let out. I think that if she didn’t need to nurse to relieve pressure, she would be completely done with nursing now!

Which means it’s time to look into booking the spay that’s waiting for her, then sending all their pictures to the Cat Lady to post for adoption.

The kittens are so sweet, but I’m going to be so glad when they’re gone!

(I say as a kitten in my chair behind my back starts violently attacking the end of my braid.)

The Re-Farmer