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.)
Taking my mother to my brother’s place for a visit went rather well, overall. There were a couple of predictable incidents, like when she suddenly started yelling at me in a rage because I took a slightly different route than the one she always took. That took some time to calm her down. It amazes me how, in her mind, the “short cut” that she always took (it isn’t any shorter, nor is it a faster route) is the only right route. Which, in itself, I wouldn’t mind, but the sudden and incredible anger she displays because I prefer a different route just blows me away. She’s more laid back about other route changes, but this one, and one other, just set her off like nothing else. The one other route that sets her off, my brother had driven her and took a different route, probably more than 20 years ago, and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it. Very strange.
There was also the very predictable attempt to pit my brother against me. Of course, she brought it up completely out of context, saying that I’d “reminded” her that this is no longer her house – but she paid for the roof! She neglected to mention the parts about her and my sister being in the area, and my not inviting them over for an unexpected and unplanned visit, or how she had tried to guilt me by saying “don’t forget, you’re living in my house.” Then she tried to say that she “paid for everything”. Everything? She seriously has zero understanding of just how much my brother and I are spending to keep this place up – the “perfect” house she asked us to move into that turned out to be in far worse shape than I ever thought.
Thank God my brother now owns the property!
What was also not a surprise, but still sad to hear, is that after I said no to her about coming here, they instead went to visit our vandal. This, in spite of the abusive messages he still leaves on her answering machine, and the horrible things he says to her about me. I’m quite disappointed in my sister for doing this. She says she wants to stay out of it and be neutral, but there is no neutral in this. Part of taking care of our mother is protecting her from herself, too. And there is nothing neutral about staying in contact with him, knowing the things he’s said and done to the rest of us.
Ah, well. What’s done is done. I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt.
My mother was very tired, even before we left, so the visit was relatively short. Which, of course, she turned around and made it sound like my brother wanted her to leave early, when all he had done was be solicitous about her being so tired, and giving her choices. She chose to leave.
During the visit, my daughter sent messages to keep me up to date on what was going on at home.
Two Toes had escaped again.
They reinforced the cage, and were able to catch her.
After I got home, I wanted to walk around outside, only to find…
… a tripod staple cat walking past me!
It took a while – and the help of another cat! – but my daughter was eventually able to catch her again and put her in the carrier.
She is such an escape artist, and so determined to get outside, that we had to make the decision to bring her inside and add her to the “isolation ward”. Which is getting pretty full! Her babies will be okay. Other creche moms will nurse them. Who knows. Maybe she’ll even nurse these guys…
When I brought the carrier in and put it on my bed, the kittens were immediately interested in it – and her! They were pawing at the door, trying to get at her. After a while, I opened the door, and a kitten dashed right in.
Much to my surprise, there was no hissing from her at all. The girls had tried to put the two sick kittens in the cage with her, but had to take them out, because she was hissing at them so much.
She comes out every now and then, but the carrier seems to be the spot she feels most comfortable in, and she goes back into the carrier fairly quickly. As I write this, she is napping in it right now.
So far, Butterscotch seems indifferent to her, contentedly sharing bed space with her, Nosencrantz is keeping her distance, and so is Marlee.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
While I was still at my brother’s, the Cat Lady came by to pick up the sick black and white kitty. She asked if there were any other sick kitties, so my daughter brought out the white and grey one.
I took this picture of the two of them napping together, yesterday.
I had not mentioned the second kitten to the Cat Lady because, to be honest, I didn’t think it would make it. Instead, it started to get better, though it’s still very weak and looks a mess. Plus, when I found out they were doing this out of pocket, instead of through the rescue, because donation money had gone to spays and neuters, I didn’t want to add to their expenses!
As sick as the white and grey one is, the black and white one is in worse shape. Before I headed out this morning, I washed both their eyes. The black and white one’s eyes were stuck shut again, and as soon as they started to open a bit, puss started to ooze out. From both eyes. The Cat Lady, however, has already let me know she’s picked up medication for them, and they will be seeing a vet soon for testing. Because she has the rescue, she can pick up medication that I can’t, without first bringing the cats in.
She is also asking if we can catch 4 older female kittens to place at that farm she was telling us about, plus she is going to arrange spays. Catching the mamas is not going to be easy, though! She was in a rush and using her vehicle to pick up kitchen cabinets they’d bought locally, so she wasn’t able to drop off a trap or anything else. She just took the kittens and that’s it.
She will also try to adopt the spayed cats out, but even if they end up coming back here, at least it will help reduce the number of kittens next year!
So that is done for now. I hope the kittens recover well for her. She’d be so heart broken if they don’t make it.
One of the things I asked the girls to do while I was gone was a bit of harvesting in the garden, mentioning what likely needed to be harvested. Which made it a surprise when I got a picture of these guys.
These are squash from the compost pile! I had intended to just leave them until the end of the season, but my daughter wanted to see how they are. She didn’t pick all of them, but I’m still a bit perplexed about it! I guess we’ll be cracking them open to see how they look.
Along with more bush beans, a few summer squash and some Spoon tomatoes, she also picked the largest, ripest Sweet Chocolate pepper. They had it with their supper. I’ll have to ask them how it tasted, since I can’t eat peppers without gagging, no matter how wonderful they look and smell.
I had my own accidental harvest.
While doing my evening rounds, I was checking the squash patch and found a couple of female flowers to hand pollinate. I’m amazed, every time I look at the candy roaster and pink banana squash. They are growing so fast, and there are so many of them! I also took a closer look at our one Honeyboat Delicata. It hasn’t been getting any bigger, but the colours were changing, showing that it was ripening. I moved it to look around and…
… the stem snapped.
It’s so tiny! Ah, well. I guess we can eat is like a summer squash, still. Plus, I spotted a couple more little Delicatas forming on another vine. Hopefully, these will reach the full size they are supposed to get!
So that was most of my day. I know I’m forgetting things, but my brain is pretty fried right now. Especially after I called my mother later on. Oh, right! After dropping her off, I had time to swing by her pharmacy to ask about when her prescriptions needed a renewal from a doctor. I’m so glad I did! It turns out the pharmacist had been trying to fax the paperwork to the doctor’s new office, not knowing that my mother is no longer his patient. He had extended her prescriptions himself, already, but he could only do it for 4 weeks, and only once. Then he gave me a copy of the forms they faxed to the doctor’s new clinic. When I take my mother to see the interim doctor, I can bring them along for her to sign, so there should be no hassle trying to look up what my mother needs renewed.
I waited until I knew my mother would be up from the nap she was going to take after I left before calling to let her know. I talked again about how this is going to be just about the prescriptions. This doctor isn’t taking new patients, so there’s no point bringing up any of the other things my mother wants to talk about. She always brings up the same things, but she’s convinced the doctors are hiding what’s “really” wrong with her and not telling her everything.
Then she started saying my brother should be taking her to the doctor. Because he’s so smart and knows English so well. Nice sideways insult thrown at me with that one. I pointed out that taking her to appointments is part of my “job” in living here. My brother not only has a much longer drive, but he would have to take time off work to do it.
Then she started complaining that my brother hardly ever calls her or visits her. I know full well he calls her, even though she treats him like crap when he does, and he is incredibly busy. I eventually got out of her that she was talking about how he used to visit almost weekly. This was before we moved onto the property. He would drive out here after work on Fridays, do more work around the property, trying to fix things, and since my mother’s place was along the route, he would stop and visit her, too. Part of our living here was to take that burden off of my brother, so he wouldn’t have to make the long drive out all the time. She didn’t care. She thinks he needed to keep right on making the drive out, just to visit her. She even said he needs to come out more often, because she’s getting older and he has to take care of her. I told her there’s three of us to take care of her, and it was wrong to put the entire burden on my brother, when he is the one least able to do it! He’s got his full time job, his own property to take care of and lives the furthest away. She pretty much told me flat out, she didn’t care.
*sigh*
This, after she betrayed him so badly not long ago. She still can’t understand that there was anything wrong with what she did and has essentially forgotten about it.
So… that phone call wrung me out even more than the drive with her today!
My poor brother. He’s such a good man.
For all the stuff going on, it was good to at least see him and his amazing wife today!
This morning, I took video and will be putting together a garden tour video tonight, after I finish watering the garden. Until then, here is some cuteness!
Inside cuteness…
… and outside cuteness!
I have been finding piles of outside kittens in that bed in the sun room more often.
The inside kittens quite enjoyed the freshly laundered fluffy blanket and towel!
Today was a wonderfully cool day. We had a high of only 18C/64F We had scattered showers in the region throughout the day, but I did eventually get to put a second coat of paint on the folding table and stump bench. I don’t think they will need a third coat. We’ll have lots of paint for other projects.
I also worked on trimming the lumpy bits on the debarked log. I drained both batteries on the mini chainsaw, with only one last large lump that needs to be trimmed.
We did not get enough rain, though, so I’ve been working on watering the garden. As I write this, I’ve got the last sprinkler set up in the main garden area, and a timer running. Once that’s done, I still need to water the front garden beds. I should be able to get that done while the light holds. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to start editing a garden tour video.
My day was almost disrupted completely. Thank God my sister phoned, first. She started off asking if we wanted cucumbers, which I thankfully declined; we still have pickles from last year! I said no to slicing cucumbers, too.
What does it mean that my sister’s call had me feeling slightly suspicious – and that my suspicions proved warranted?
As we were talking, I suddenly heard my mother announcing that they were in our little hamlet. It turns out they had gone to the cemetery to tend the family plot, and were at a nearby park (where they have public washrooms and water available), where they had their lunch. As we were talking, my mother suddenly asked, “are you going to invite us over?”
I was expecting that.
My answer was, no.
I then reminded her that we need to plan ahead for visits. Just dropping by suddenly is very disruptive.
First, she tried to guilt me. “Don’t forget, you’re living in my house”.
“It’s not your house anymore.”
Again, I repeated that we need time to plan visits. Then she threw a real whopper at me.
“Are you afraid of [my husband]?”
That one had me laughing out loud.
She kept trying to find ways to blame my family, but I finally said that it was HER behaviour that’s the problem.
She went silent after that. My sister and I talked a bit more before she finally said that our mother was in a “mood” and it was time to go.
My mother completely cannot accept that her own behaviour causes her own problems. When she comes here, she’s rude and often cruel. She has no interest in visiting us. Her only interest is in seeing what we’ve done and to criticize me for it – and I don’t mean constructive criticism! But she also expects us to wait on her, hand and foot, and dote on her. She treats my family like crap, insults them, then wonders why they don’t want to be around her. My husband is in constant pain, but he’s supposed to come out and pander to her as well. My older daughter works nights, but she’s supposed to interrupt her sleep to dote on her. My younger daughter has pretty severe PCOS, which affects her physical appearance that has my mother being particularly cruel. Today she wasn’t feeling well, either. My mother, however, gives zero thought to how other people might feel, or what they are dealing with. Her world revolves around herself, and she expects our worlds to revolve around her. There’s only so much of that that can be blamed on her age. Frankly, she’s been like this for a long time.
Oh! There goes my timer. Time to turn off the sprinkler and water the front garden beds.
<<< one hour later >>>
I’m back!
Gosh, it’s so gorgeous out there. I didn’t want to come back inside!
Anyhow. Where was I?
Ah… yes. We managed to not get what would have been a highly disruptive and unpleasant “visit” from my mother.
I’m sure she’s going to try and find some way to punish me for not allowing her to abuse me and my family. I’m just glad my sister made sure to phone ahead this time. The last time my mother talked her into suddenly showing up here, it was quite unpleasant and set my weather dependant work back for days, so she promised to always call first!
For now, the garden is taken care of, the outside cats have been tended to, and now it’s time for me to start on that video! Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it tonight and be able to upload it by morning. We shall see!
I can’t say it was totally unexpected, but… well… not today!
Earlier today, I got this adorable photo.
Question has squeezed herself in between her adopted siblings and promptly had a nap.
She’s been napping a lot lately.
I then went and got to work on a bunch of things before returning to my room, expecting to get some work done on the computer.
I’ll be honest; when I saw Question lying on the bed, I thought she was already gone! But then she moved in a silent meow.
Clearly, she wasn’t going to be with us long, so I wrapped her up in a towel, sat on the side of my bed and held her. I managed to tap out a message to the family on my phone to let them know. My younger daughter came and joined me.
We pet her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. Her eyes wouldn’t close all the way, so we kept them moist with eye drops. When she seemed dehydrated, my daughter dipped water into her mouth, one drop at a time. For a while, she actually seemed to be more mobile, so I put her in my daughters arms so I could go find something to give her fluids more easily but when I came back, she was gone.
My daughter was crying, but I think she was glad to have been able to give Question comfort, right to the end.
Her sister and I buried Question in the little flower garden, next to the bird bath. From now on, she will be surrounded by lush growth and flowers.
I had messaged with the Cat Lady last night about Question and Ghosty. They were supposed to take both when they got back from the US, only to return to a very sick cat of their own. She wanted to give him another week of monitoring before introducing two new kittens to the household (there are no available fosters, and all the rescues have zero intakes for cats right now). Especially with one of them being pretty sick.
After a while, I messaged her again to let her know about Question. The Cat Lady turned out to be at the vet clinic we normally go to – which is not at all close to their place! Another of her cats was blocked and undergoing surgery at the time! Which likely meant she called a number of vets before finding one that could take her cat in right away. She just had a blocked cat that got surgery, and now his sibling is going through the same thing!
She just can’t seem to catch a break!
In a way, I’m glad they didn’t take the kittens. If they had, she would have pulled all stops to keep the kitten alive, and there are times when I just don’t think that’s actually a good thing. Sometimes, I think letting them go is the kinder thing. Which is what I think was the case with Question.
I’m going to miss waking up to that little fur ball tucked up against my neck.
The first unexpected thing of the morning was being awakened by my husband, asking what the current status was for feeding the indoor cats.
With Leyendecker getting his meds morning and evening for 10 days (the next 10 days will be evening only), and having to control what he eats, the girls have been putting food out for all the cats at the same time.
It wasn’t done at the usual time this morning.
Which means Leyendecker’s meds weren’t done, either. I slept right through it.
Why did I sleep right though it? I have reminders set to go off on my phone.
The next unexpected thing was not being able to move. I had a Question asleep on my neck, and several other kittens sleeping on various parts of my body.
I was eventually able to reach my phone, unplug it and check it.
It was off.
I did not turn it off. I have my phone playing soothing music or whatever, to help me fall asleep. It was active when I fell asleep.
I turned the power on, the start up routine began and…
Nothing.
My phone was a brick.
After prying off the rest of the kittens, I was eventually able to find that the charger itself had been unplugged at the power bar. Because of the cats, I actually have the power bar hanging from under my craft table. Somehow, the kittens rough and tumbled enough to yank it right out.
So I did my morning rounds with no phone, which means no pictures!
I’ll just share this picture from last night with you, instead.
Retired Grandma has finally accepted the kittens. I now regularly find her asleep on my bed, with at least Question or Ghosty snuggled up. This is the first time I saw her with 5 out of 6 kittens!
After extricating myself from the kittens again, I was able to give Leyendecker his meds and feed the indoor cats. We’re still not seeing Leyendecker eating. I don’t know what to make of it. He’s certainly drinking plenty, and we are still catching him trying to spray around the house, so he’s not blocked. When he’s getting meds once a day instead of twice, we’ll see if his appetite picks up.
I have yet to see the girls this morning. They both pulled all-nighters, I think. My older daughter was working, of course, but in between working on commissions, she came down to help her sister. My younger daughter was doing some baking during the night, because it’s too hot to bake during the day. One of the things they’ve been working on is the living room. Being a cat free zone now, we’ve been putting way too many things in there to get them away from the cats. We need to organize it and move things around because… !!!
My brother is coming out tomorrow morning with an air conditioner for us!!!
We have not seen it yet, but it’s one of those portable ones that would normally be set up in a window. We have no windows it can be set up in. It also needs a 3 prong outlet, and we don’t have a lot of those in the house.
So what my brother will be doing is making a hole in the wall under the big picture window in the living room to install a vent for the AC hose. To make space for the AC set up, the girls plan to rearrange the living room. It’s as good an excuse as any to finally get to reorganizing the room, and taking out stuff that shouldn’t be in there in the first place!
As I will likely be in the city for our Costco shop, my brother plans to come out quite early in the morning, so we can get it done before I leave.
My brother is a morning person.
I am not.
Anyhow. That’s now arranged, and having that AC is going to make live much more comfortable in the house!
So that will be done tomorrow.
After taking care of Leyencker’s meds, I headed outside to do my morning rounds. My husband had already put food out for the yard cats, which was much appreciated. There are a couple of kittens that allow me to clean their eyes, so I check for them right away. One white and grey one was looking much better this morning, which was a relief. I’d done its eyes last night, because one was stuck completely shut. as soon as I cleaned it to the point that the lids become unstuck, goo absolutely poured out, completely covering the damp paper towel I was using to clean it. It took me three sheets of towel to get its eyes and face cleaned up. Its nose is also really sticky and last night it was so bad, there was even kibble stuck to its face! Thankfully, it did not need any eye washing or nose clearing at all, this morning.
In checking the garden beds, I took extra care to check the Black Beauty tomatoes. Last night, I found several branches bent over from the weight of the tomatoes, in spite of their supports. I was finding and tying supports to those, even adding another bamboo stake at the end of the bed, when the girls came out for an evening walk. They helped me add more support lines to the melon bed trellis, as those are getting long enough to need training up the trellis.
This morning, the bent tomato branches I tied off are looking good – no wilting to show they were badly damaged. The melon vines were holding out on the trellis, too.
In checking the bush beans, I was able to actually harvest a handful of both green and yellow beans! They are recovering quite nicely from being eaten. I expect to have plenty more to harvest, soon.
Oh, speaking of unexpected things; I was looking over the squash growing in our compost ring, and a couple of new female flowers were blooming, so I hand pollinated them, just in case. On one vine, the developing squash look pretty usual; just round, green balls, as I would expect from a pumpkin. Another vine, however, is clearly some sort of hybrid. The developing squash are more elongated, but had flat parts on the surface. Completely unlike anything we’ve grown before.
It should be interesting to see what we get out of those!
There is also a developing Caveman’s Club gourd on the chain link fence trellis that’s looking pretty good!
In the main garden, the G-Star patty pan squash have exploded in huge flowers – but only one female! Previously, it was female flowers blooming, but no males. Checking the other squash, I have been finding developing fruit that point to successful pollination. There is still just the one Honeyboat Delicata that I hand pollinated, though that variety has the most transplants of them all. I was checking the label on another and saw we have some Red Kuri/Little Gem squash developing. It’s a good thing I label these, because I forgot we had any of those germinate at all. I’m also seeing some Candy Roasters and Winter Sweets developing. There are even some summer squash starting to show up. We have no surviving Madga squash at all, but there is one each of the yellow pattypan, yellow zucchini and green zucchini, and all of them are showing both male and female flowers.
The African Drum gourds seem to be doing well. I was able to hand pollinate another female flower this morning. Still no female Zucca melon flowers, though.
I spotted a hidden female flower among the Crespo squash, too, but I’m really wondering about those. The plants look completely different from the first years we grew those.
We’ll find out, eventually! Praying for a long mild fall, so give all these time to fully mature on the vine!
While it was still cool, I started working on that water pipe to the garden tap. I moved off the rocks around the tap base, then started digging a trench. I’ll have to go back later with the loppers, as there are so many roots to cut away from over and around the pipe.
What I found so far is even more of a mystery. I will be sure to take photos to show what I mean, now that my phone is no longer a dead brick. I wish I knew what was going on when this pipe was laid, because I’m just even more confused than ever. Perhaps when my brother comes out tomorrow, he’ll be able to look at it and remember something.
Now, the easy thing would be for us to simply run a hose from the house tap to the garden tap on the surface, then put the hose away for the winter. But I really like the original, more permanent set up. Once we get this old hose cleared out, I want to have another buried line, but I want to learn from what we’ve got going right now. I plant to lay down pipe large enough to accommodate a garden hose. The pipe comes in sections, so if for some reason there is damage, only a section would need to be dug up and replaced, not the whole thing. I also plan to drill drainage holes, in case the hose somehow gets damaged, or in case water gets in some other way. We can buy pipe with drainage holes, but the extra cost for something I can do myself isn’t worth it. They won’t even need that many drainage holes. At each end of the pipe, I want to have 45° fittings. At the garden end, I plan for the end to go into the support pillar the tap and pipe will be fitted into. At the house end, the opening will be closed/filled around the hose end to prevent dirt, water or critters from getting in, but something easily removed.
As for the hose itself, having it run through the pipe will make it easy to remove for repair or replacement. The support pillar box I plan to build for the garden tap end will have an access door that opens on one side (unless I go with a different design; it’s still flexible). There will be room enough to store things, including a length of cord that can be tied to the hose end. If the hose needs to be repaired or replaced, the hose, with the cord attached, can be pulled out at the house end, get taken care of, then the cord can be used to pull the repaired or replaced hose back through the pipe to the garden tap. If we wanted to, we could even remove the hose for the winter, though it shouldn’t be required.
Done right, this should last at least another 50 or more years, and allow for easy access for repair or maintenance, and not have a hose or pipe on the surface to have to work around.
Well, I sure got distracted! Here, I was supposed to be just writing about my morning. LOL
Aside from digging up more trench this morning, I also harvested the garlic. They are currently outside in the sun to dry a bit, then I will tie them off to hang in the old market tent to cure. Maybe. The humidity levels may be too high for that. I might have to find somewhere else to hang them to cure. We’ll see how the weather turns out.
We have quite a few soft neck garlic, but they are not very large. I probably should have left them longer, but so many have been broken flat by cats lying on them, I just went ahead and pulled them all. The hard neck garlic from saved cloves – the Porcelain Music – are the biggest we’ve ever grown! One is just huge. I can’t remember the other variety that we bought along with the soft neck garlic, but they are also quite large.
Once the bed is clear, I will do the fall planting I intended to do where the peas are. The peas have started blooming again! So I will just leave them. After talking with my daughters, we will do a fall planting of spinach, a few radish (turns out my younger daughter likes radish!) and some beets. All of these should grow fast enough that we’ll have something to harvest before first frost.
But first, I need to organize my garden supplies in the living room, move things out and make some space, so my daughters can rearrange the furniture.
This was the first time she nursed the babies in the comfort of my bed. She is so tiny!
And filthy. Especially her belly. Those kittens get her very dirty! She has gotten to the point where she actually enjoys being held and cuddled, so chances are pretty good we should at least be able to take a damp washcloth to her.
I spotted the two kittens in the junk pile, without mom around, playing. When it saw me, the black one went and hid, but the other one stayed and watched me while I took photos. The black one has a single small patch of white on its chest that I could see.
The third photo is of a kitten I’ve never seen before. I saw it again this morning, with two other kittens of similar size that I didn’t recognize. I have no idea which mother they came with. There are several of the more feral mamas that had kittens quite early in the spring, and I was wondering when their babies would start showing up.
Beside the main garden, there is an area we’ve allowed to grow wild that is now tall with what I thought was a type of alfalfa but, when I tried to look it up, I couldn’t find any images with white flowers like them.
Whatever it is, it was just buzzing with bees last night, and I managed to get a decent picture.
I also got a picture of our first fresh garlic – after cleaning it off with the hose!
The squash is our first Honeyboat Delicata. The one I hand pollinated from a different type of squash, as there were no Delicata male flowers blooming. There still aren’t. So far, it looks like the cross pollination took. Hopefully, we’ll have at least one Delicata to try and see if we like them, and if the Honeyboat variety really does store well. If so, we will plant them again – with purchased seeds, though, since the seeds from any we grow this year will likely all be cross pollinated.
And finally, a handful of Royalty raspberries I picked this morning! Most of those were from one plant, with a few from a second. The third is the smallest, and its berries are still unripe.
I’m still amazed we got any at all in their transplant year!
I forgot to get a picture, but one of the African Drum gourd female flowers was blooming this morning, so I made sure to pollinate it with one of the male flowers from another African Drum gourd. If it works out, it should be interesting to see just how fast the gourds develop, and if we have a mild enough fall for them to reach full maturity.
In other things, we’re concerned about Leyendecker. He’s getting his medications, but he’s still refusing to eat. We even mixed the new food with the food he’s used to, and he won’t eat either! He also spends most of his days just lying around, but that could be from the medications. This morning, while staying with him in the bathroom, trying to convince him to eat, he just sprawled tragically at the closed door. I took the opportunity to palpate his abdomen. He not only tolerated it, but shifted so I could reach better as I was pushing around where his bladder is. He had just gotten his medications, so it would have been too soon for the pain killers to kick in. If he were having blocking issues, my poking around would have been very uncomfortable for him, and I would have been able to feel an over full bladder. Neither was an issue. So we’re not sure what’s going on with him right now. 😟 We will continue to monitor him.
For now, I’m going to go help my daughter with juicing those cherries we picked. By request, we will be making jelly with them!
This whole, “go to bed early to wake up early” thing seems to be backfiring. I didn’t finally fall asleep until past 6am, which was when I was intending to be outside and working! Then my daughter came in for Leyendecker’s 8am medicine and all round cat feeding. After he got his meds, she stayed with him in the bathroom to make sure he ate his new UTI food. I fed the rest of the cats inside, then went to feed the other cats, but skipped my morning rounds, going back to bed to try for another hour or two of sleep. So here is a picture from yesterday!
The mystery squash in our compost pile are doing amazing! There are at least two varieties in there; one can be distinguished by the whitish patterning on the leaves.
I did manage to get about an hour of sleep when my daughter came in at the time I asked her to, because we needed to go to the dump. Thankfully, today the dump is open long hours, so I got another hour or so of sleep, if sleep it could be called, before finally giving up and getting up.
Mind you, only part of it can be blamed on simply not being able to fall asleep. I can’t actually say how much of it is because of that. Last night in particular, it had more to do with being turned into a jungle gym! A couple of times during the night, the kittens got very playful, and decided my legs were the perfect place to play. It was a hot night, so I wasn’t under the covers, which made my toes fair game for nibbling and nuzzling. I had at least three kittens wrestling on my left leg and my ankle ended up completely covered with the tiniest of scratches from the tiniest of feet. Just enough to start itching!
The kittens did sleep most of the night, though, so they can’t be entirely to blame, either.
Then there was Decimus, who wanted in and out a couple of times. She’ll come in long enough to nurse the babies, then leaves. At least she is very polite when she asks to be let out. Especially at night. She knows that when the motion sensor light turns on, I will check to see why it turned on and let her out. Only if I’m asleep does she actually scratch at the door.
Then, once the kittens quiet down, Nosencrantz creeps over to try and have her nightly snuggles and face rubs.
Marlee is quite unhappy with the kittens, so I often hear her snarling and growling, night and day, even if she just sees them and they’re ignoring her. Kittens being kittens, however, they are starting to want to go over and play with her, and she’s not having that! Her solace has been to go to the door and scratch at it as if she wants out. But she doesn’t want out. She wants attention. So when I sit up to see who is scratching at the door, she jumps up on the bed for attention. Given her abandonment by previous owners, and 2 years surviving harsh conditions, I’m not about to turn her away. She’s gotten comfortable enough with me that she will actually curl up on the backs of my top leg, using my bottom leg as a bed and go to sleep!
The only one that’s not keeping me up at night is Butterscotch. Retired Grandma has no interest in such things. She has, however, gotten to the point that if a kitten comes near her, she not longer hisses in alarm, but will actually give them kisses, and let them share a food bowl with her.
Almost the entire time I’ve been trying to write the above, I’ve also been fighting off Question, who would climb up my leg, then try to climb onto the keyboard!
Or do this.
Believe it or not, we do wash her face often!
I am finally get a break from her, as she tries to nurse on Decimus while she is at the food bowls. Oh! She managed to twist around and get nip! 😄
When my older daughter finished her work for the night, she came down and we chatted for a while. She suggested I try sleeping in the cat-free living room. That couch is quite comfortable to sleep on. I might just try that.
Anyhow.
After a few disjointed hours of sleep, my younger daughter and I loaded up the car and did a dump run, then continued on to town. We picked up some cranberry juice to try Leyendecker with. I’m still not sure how to give it to him. There were no supplements that we could mix into his food, instead. We also swung by the vet clinic to see if they had puppy pads. I need to put some under my desk, because at least a couple of kittens have decided right up against the wall is THE place to make a mess. They actually seem to wait until I’m out of the room to do it. I’ve caught them going for the spot and repeatedly put them in the litter box, and they still managed to sneak in and make a mess. Cleaning it up requires lying down on the floor and reaching, which is incredibly painful. My daughters both have damaged knees and joints, so it’s not like it’ll be any easier for them to clean it up. I want to lay puppy pads down. The clinic turns out to not sell them. Which means a trip to the nearest Walmart, I guess. Not something I’m up to, today. I did have some disposable diapers, though. We got them to have on hand for a friend with a baby and a less than ideal home situation, who would sometimes need them. Her children are much older now, but we just left them, and even brought them along when we moved. I had intended to open them up to collect the liquid absorbent crystals they contain, to try mixing them into potting soil, but never got around to it. So, I just cut off the elastic parts so the absorbent part could lay flat, and spread them out under my desk where the kittens go. It did make clean up MUCH easier, but I didn’t have that many to begin with. They will do for now, I hope (as I look under my desk and dread using a flashlight to check if there’s a mess on one of them or not).
Oh, my goodness. Everything has been quiet behind me, so I turned around to look. Decimus is lying on the floor with all 6 kittens contentedly nursing. What a good little mama she is!
Well, it’s time to do the afternoon feeding of the cats, with Leyendecker being fed separately in the bathroom. At least this time, we don’t have to try and shove meds down his throat! It’s too early for them to be making a difference, yet, which means we’re still finding and cleaning up big puddles.
*sigh*
It’s a good thing we’re such sucks for the cats!
I still need to go outside and check the garden beds. I was intending to set up the sprinklers and soaker hoses, but when I fed the cats outside, it did seem like we got rain at some point. I don’t think it was enough, though. Still, after yesterday’s heat, and today being just as hot, the garden could use a good watering! At least we’re only slightly above average temperature for this time of year. The 30 year record high was 32C/88F in 2007, while the record low was 10C/50F in 2004. I’m okay with what we have now! I just can’t tolerate the heat as much, as I get older.
Okay, Re-Farmer. Time to stop procrastinating and get something useful done!
My daughter and I loaded Leyendecker up and took him to the vet, today. I wasn’t able to get a picture, so here’s one from last year.
This is from when we were taking him to the vet and found out he was blocked.
He is too big for that carrier! The carrier can be opened from the top, where the handle it. Seeing my daughter carry him to the car, I could see the top door bending from his weight! Once we got to the clinic, I carried the box with both arms, rather than the handle.
Once he was in the carrier, he started howling and yelling and wailing! I heard sounds coming from that cat I’ve never heard before! We even popped up the back seats (I’ve had them flat, so I can put my mother’s walker in the back without having to fold it) so that the carrier could be in one seat, and my daughter in the other, trying to comfort him. He yelled the entire way. Even as I was carrying him into the clinic, he was wailing.
That’s one way to get right into an examination room, even though we were half an hour early!
So it’s not good news, but not really bad news.
Also, that boy did NOT want to give a urine sample, and he’s so big – just under 22 pounds! – they couldn’t take a sample from him via a needle directly into his bladder. We could see in the ultrasound that things were cloudy. He even conveniently tried to pee while lying in the V shaped pillow on his back, and we could see the muscled contract, cloudiness going through his urethra – then going back into his bladder!
They were able to collect barely enough urine from him to get it tested. There were the expected high readings due to stress – and he was massively stressed out! – and some bacteria. Not that it was a clean sample, since she literally collected it as he leaked. When he was blocked before, one thing they did NOT find were crystals. This time, he did have crystals in his urine.
Crap.
But, he is still able to urinate, if uncomfortably and all over the house, so we caught it in time.
He’s now on the same medical regime he came home with last time, after he’d had his hospital stay. Onsior for cats, an anti-inflammatory, Clavaseptin, an antibiotic, and Prazosin, a smooth muscle relaxant. He’ll be taking half pills twice a day for 10 days, then once a day for another 10 days, with just one of the medications. We got extra of the Prazosin, just in case he needs it for longer.
We also picked up some anti UTI cat food. A 2.72kg (about 6 pounds) bag cost over $50. It actually cost more than 20 doses of Prazosin. We’d had some before, but he didn’t like it, and the cost was prohibitive. We tried a different brand that we hope he’ll like better.
The problem is going to be the food. We normally just have food available for the cats to eat at their leisure. For most of the cats, this is not a problem. Leyendecker, however, is going to have to be fed separately, which means we can’t have other cat food around all the time.
So from now one, we’re going to be feeding the cats – and giving Leyendecker his meds – at 8am and 8pm, with a third feeding (no meds for Leyendecker this time) at 2pm. With his special dry cat food, he’s supposed to get 1 1/2 cups a day, so half a cup each feeding. We’ll give him some of the wet cat food, which we do every evening, as well, but it’s never a large amount.
It was also recommended to try giving him cranberry juice, to increase the acidity of his urine. How, we’re not sure. The vet only knew of one person who gave it to their dog to successfully treat a UTI. It won’t harm the cats, so we could try adding it to their water fountain, but more likely we will get some cranberry supplements and add the powder to his food.
We’ll figure it out.
Meanwhile, we are now $345 and change poorer. It meant going into the money we were setting aside for a downpayment on a new van.
*sigh*
It could have been worse.
Ah, I hear the girls coming down the stairs. Time for the evening medications and feeding!
Wow. Things have lurched from great to not-great pretty severely, today!
But first, kitten updates!
All six of the inside kittens have figure out how to get out of baby jail. When I was up and about this morning, they got all excited and started wailing, so I put them on my bed with a bunch of toys, and they were happy!
The new kitten, Question (who, it turns out, is female) is definitely more lethargic than the other kittens. I had to wash her eyes out this morning, and throughout the day, we were more likely to find her sleeping somewhere by herself, rather than running around and playing with the other kittens.
They can get out of baby jail, but then they want to get back in and seem to have more difficulty, so I moved the little scratching post over. They can now climb up it and access the top of the “door” to get back in.
We have to keep the door closed and severely watch our feet, now!
When I went to feed the outside cats, I found several kittens curled up together and sleeping on the cat bed we brought in with the trio of kittens I found yesterday. I did not see the trio and hoped the mama had come by and got them, but as I was finishing my rounds, I spotted the two orange ones. Looks like they were just hiding under the counter shelf. The problem is, there’s still been no sign of Caramel. At least Gooby did show up last night. I was concerned about him. When I told the girls about not seeing him, they told me he’s been up on the roof, looking plaintively into their window, and batting at the screen to get in!
One important thing is that I was finally able to catch the kitten with one eye that’s been stuck shut for days. It took the longest time to gently moisten the gunk. It was completely dry and rock hard. The entire eye area was quite swollen. When it got to the point that I could finally, ever so gently, pull apart the lids a bit, all I could see was red tissue. I feared the eye may have been lost, but when I saw the kitten later, the eye was still open, and I could actually see the eyeball. So maybe I got to it in time. I sure hope so.
It’s been hot today, so all the cats and kittens outside are mostly lying around in the shade, sleeping! We were getting severe thunderstorm warnings today, too, but all we’ve got outside here is high winds. I’ll be dong my evening rounds pretty soon, so I’ll be sure to check on the eyes as best I can.
I have a birthday this month, and one of the books my husband ordered for me as gifts arrived today.
Click on the contents image to see the whole thing. The other two books are being shipped together, and are on the same general topic.
My husband knows what I like! 💖💖💖
Oh, I just checked the tracking, and apparently the other two books came in today! I may have gone to the post office before they had a chance to finish processing the parcels. I’ll have to go back tomorrow to pick them up. 😊
The girls, meanwhile, treated us to take out. Normally, the birthday person gets to choose what restaurant we get food from, but this time I told the girls to use the money to get their driver’s licenses for my birthday – or at least get appointments made. The last time my younger daughter was able to book a road test to get her full licence, the nearest appointment was 3 months ahead. She has to book 2 hours with a driving instructor before she can book a road test, though. That got delayed by the lockdowns, and just hasn’t happened, since. Who knows how backed up things might still be. Her sister needs to do the written test to get her learners licence.
The girls still wanted to treat the family, though, so my younger daughter drove me into town. We got a bucket of fried chicken, then hit the grocery store for a few other things, including the cheesecake I chose for a birthday cake. It was very delicious! Last month, the girls picked up the entire Columbo series on DVD, so we enjoyed the food while watching Columbo.
Anyone else remember when TV shows were actually good? It’s been so long…
There was one major downside of the day, though.
I got word on the van.
That noise I was hearing from the back?
It was the brakes. They all need replacing.
Which… considering how long it’s been since we had the brakes done, is pretty fair. However, it’ll cost almost $730 to do them. The power steering pressure hose that needs replacing will be almost $270. So we’re looking at just under a thousand dollars in repairs.
We don’t have that, even if we dip into savings, which is supposed to be going towards a down payment for a replacement vehicle.
The van isn’t even worth that much.
I saw the message letting me know the cost just before the garage closed, so I don’t expect to hear from him again until tomorrow, but I was honest and said as much regarding the repairs. He knows our situation, so I’m sure he was expecting something like that. Then I asked if he thought it was too soon to apply for financing on that Caravan his still has for sale! For all I know, the price on that has dropped again. I haven’t looked at it since I brought my mother’s car in to get it looked at because the check engine light had turned on. There wasn’t anything serious and he cleared the codes but, yesterday, it turned back on again. *sigh*
Talking about it with my husband, he brought up the possibility of asking if we could pay as much as we can for the brakes now – they would be the higher priority – and pay the rest off next month, then do the power steering pressure hose another month. As he pointed out, the van may not be worth much when it comes to dollar value, but it’s a vehicle that runs, and a vehicle that runs is worth a lot more than one that doesn’t! That’s something I can talk about with our mechanic tomorrow. The thing is, we plan to try and replace the van before winter. If we spread out the cost of repairs over several months, we’d be done at about the same time I’d be applying for a replacement vehicle anyhow – but we’d have nothing for a down payment except the “trade in” value of the van. Which would be going for scrap. So all that money we’d be paying would basically be throw away. When we did apply for financing before, it was with no trade in and no down payment, so maybe we can do that again, too. Either way, I’ll talk to the garage about it tomorrow.
Oh, I just thought of something. If we don’t fix the van and sell it for scrap, we’d be cancelling the insurance on it – and that will free up some budget that can go towards a replacement vehicle… Hmmm…
Well, what will be will be.
Time for me to head outside and check on the kitties!
