inside cats

First, the fun stuff

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Forecasts for today were for a high of 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F, with afternoon thunderstorms. So I wasn’t expecting to accomplish much outside.

In the end, I wouldn’t have been able to, anyhow. Pain levels are pretty high today. As long as I’m just walking on level ground, I’m okay – I’m just limping and hobbling like a decrepit old lady ;-) – but any sort of step sends shooting pains in my right knee.

I’ve been using my husband’s bath chair more than he has, lately! :-D

I was still able to do my rounds, as usual, though.

Rolando Moon has been hanging out in this tree, and on the roof, lately! She is so deceptively adorable. :-D

She even joined me when I was switching out the trail cam memory cards.

We have some new flowers I wasn’t expecting yet, this morning.

My mother has had a small flower garden along the East side of the house for as long as I can remember. This iris is near where we now keep the bird feeder. They and some lilies were completely crowded out by other greenery (I’m not sure they those were planted deliberately or not) and chickweed, but I managed to weed them out at least a bit. There were no signs of buds anywhere, then suddenly, this morning, there were two flowers!

Still no signs of other buds, though!

In checking the garden plots, it seems to me that something might be eating our beet greens in one of the plots. I’d thought at first that the cats were digging in the garden again, and that’s why it looked like there were fewer beets, but as I weeded, I noticed bare stems. It might be deer, but while I have been seeing deer at the gate in the trail cams, they don’t look like they came from the yard at all, but more like they’d come from the direction of the barn. Plus, I would expect deer to do more than nibble a few leaves here and there. I suppose hares are another possibility, but with the presence of yard cats, I don’t think we actually get them in the yard. So I’m not sure what’s going on there.

With no plans to work outside, I made a trip into town. I wanted to pick up a Dremel tip so I could finish my spoon, as well as pick up another litter pan for the basement. The kittens are getting bigger, and one pan isn’t enough for them anymore! The kittens were thrilled, which is pretty funny. Who knew litter pans could be so much fun for kittens?

I’ll post about how the carving went, separately. While I was working, however, I did have company!

Two Face and David joined the kittens, too. Between playing with them, and crawling all over me, the kittens got tired right out! :-D

When I was done and started up the stairs, I found someone looking at me!

David found one of the kittens’ favorite spots!

Then he “pounced”. :-D

What a funny boy!

While uploading photos to write this post, we lost our internet as a thunderstorm rolled by. From the looks of the weather radar, there is a very long, narrow storm system heading our way, so I think I’d better get to my other post, then shut the computer down, while I have time! :-D

Uh oh. Looks like we lost internet again… oh, it’s back. For now.

It’s going to be an interesting evening!

The Re-Farmer

They do make life interesting!

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Today is looking to be a slightly warmer, hopefully drier, day. One of my goals is to finally get some outside work done that had to be delayed. We shall see how that works out.

Yesterday evening, I was able to spend some time with the kittens.

That was an adventure!

They’ve taken to launching themselves at my legs as I walk past them, so in the space of a few steps, I’ll find myself with 2 or 3 kittens hanging off my pant legs. Then they’ll start climbing! :-D

These kittens are thoroughly socialized. :-D

Once I settle at my work table, they are all over me. Then things like this happen.

Turmeric settled right into my elbow and was ready for a nap!

Mostly, though, they were clambering all over me, but eventually I was able to get out my carving supplies and continue on my practice spoon.

They love the protective glove.

Saffron and Leyendecker were particularly cuddly.

Generally, though, I am able to continue carving while they clamber around me without too much trouble. Sometimes, it can be a problem. At one point, I had a kitten on my shoulder, eating my hair and tackling my ear. Another jumped up and they started to tussle. One fell off, but managed not to fall to the floor by dangling on a single claw.

From my ear.

Thankfully, kittens are very light. It didn’t even bleed. Having a kitten swinging off the side of my head was still rather uncomfortable! I didn’t even really do anything about it right away, since I had a spoon in one hand, and a knife in the other.

Eventually, though, I paused for kitten cuddles, which is when Beep Beep decided to get in on the action, by jumping directly on her kittens.

They retaliated by immediately starting to nurse. :-D

Just look at Saffron’s face!!!

I’m happy to say that, in the middle of all this, I did get some decent progress on the spoon. I’m slowly managing to get the bowl deeper and the handle in the rounded, swooping shape that I want. I also started cutting details into the morel at the end. Thankfully, the “holes” in morals are very random in shape and location, so I can put them wherever I feel they will create the overall shape that I’m after. Because the spoon blank already had a handle rough shaped out the way it did, the mushroom was very flat on two sides. As I cut in the details, it’s starting to look rounder, and more like an actual morel.

I plan to cheat, though.

The holes I’m making are pretty ragged on the inside, partly due to the small spaces I’m trying to work a knife tip into. There’s no way sandpaper can be used to smooth it out, so once the details are all roughed out, I plan to use a Dremel to smooth things out inside the holes. The last thing I plan to do, before oiling the wood, is take a lighter to the cap of the mushroom, to darken it like the real thing.

It’s slow going, but I’m rather pleased with how it’s turning out so far.

Later in the evening, while my daughter and I were chatting, she had a chance to cuddle with Keith.

What a face! :-D

Meanwhile…

When tending the kittens this morning, they were just as eager to climb me.

With the kittens now waiting at the top of the stairs before we can even open the door, and the upstairs cats trying to get down, all while I’m juggling things like a pitcher of water and a bucket of cat litter, my daughter has been trying to come down and help whenever she can. That usually involves using a spray bottle to keep the adult cats away, while I struggle down the stairs, trying not to step on kittens. Sometimes, she even manages to get down the stairs right after me, though this morning we had to close the door first, and she couldn’t come down until I was able to come back and carry away the 3 kittens that were on the top step, waiting for her. :-D

Having her there did mean she could get this picture for me. :-D

While walking across the basement, I had a couple of kittens making their flying leaps at my legs and hanging on while I walk, like I’m some sort of carnival ride. At one point, I had a kitten on each leg, and another hanging off my butt. :-D I believe that was Saffron, who made her way up to my head, soon followed by Leyendecker, attacking her tail. :-D

Once I got outside to do my rounds, I had Junk Pile cat and Rolando Moon already waiting for me.

I think Rolando spent the night in the tree outside our kitchen! The other cats are really after her, for some reason. :-(

Butterscotch and Rosencrantz were already quick to show up for food. Once I started going around the yard, much to my surprise, it was Rolando that followed along.

Butterscotch did start to head my way, but as soon as Rolando spotted her, she started growling. Which is what is happening in the photo above.

Rolando can be pretty mean herself! I’d be petting her and she’d be all happy with it, then suddenly turn and attack my hand. Even when I paused to do some weeding in the garden, she came over, just to attack my hand!

Nasty girl.

Ah, cats. We have way too many of them, but they do make life fun!

If sometimes painful, too. :-D

The Re-Farmer

More felines, and a bit of a switch

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I just had to share this picture of David, as we discovered him this morning.

He does love that sink!

He fits perfectly, too.

While doing my rounds, I had some Creamsicle company. :-)

What a cutie!

He likes to follow me while I do my rounds, and especially when I switch out the trail cam memory cards.

Unfortunately, with the new camera, I found the batteries had died. I didn’t think I’d need to bring any with me, so I was going to go back later to take care of that.

Then I checked the files.

There wasn’t a single file on the new camera’s card. Not one. Looks like the batteries should have been changed yesterday. :-(

I did, however, see our vandal on the gate camera again, making passes on his ATV, driving up to the gate or giving the finger as he passed by.

So I decided to switch the new camera to another location, opposite the old camera. It means using a fence post instead of a tree, which sucks, but it should still work. I’m hoping the wider angle of the new camera, as well as the angle of where it is located, will result in more detailed files.

What a pain.

Ah, well. It is what it is. We just have to deal with it.

The Re-Farmer

Kitten Chaos

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This morning’s tending to the kitties was truly an adventure!

It started when I opened the door and found Leyendecker and Saffron lying on the top step. Just chillin’! They didn’t even try to run upstairs right away. Unfortunately, in my attempts to step over them, Beep Beep and the other kittens had time to run over. It took a couple of minutes to get everything under control so I could close the door, with Two Face and David also in the basement.

Note to self. Do not visit kittens while wearing shorts.

Both my legs ended up rather bloody, by the time I escaped. Then one of my daughters slathered me with antibacterial cream, after I washed all the blood off.

I tried, and failed, to get a photo of Nicco in a sun spot, up on his back legs, trying to catch dust motes. Two Face was her usual aggressive groomer. The kittens also love climbing that piece of maple tree! :-D Big Rig going after David was just hilarious.

Then, I made a mistake.

I sat down.

It started with Leyendecker and Saffron. They climbed up on me and played for a while, then settled down for a nap.

Then Beep Beep jumped on top of them, pushing them around while settling. Saffron squirmed her way out from under Mom, found a nip and sleep nursed. Leyendecker passed out, until Big Rig jumped up and joined the fray. Leyendecker ended up pushing Saffron aside to find his own nip to sleep nurse on.

At some point, I felt a kitten clamber up my leg and settle on my lap. That left some damage!! It turned out to be Nicco.

By this time, I’d been trapped by them for about an hour, before I was finally able to alert a daughter for assistance. Which is when Two Face joined the party. Turmeric had earlier climbed onto the work table and played with Leyendecker over my shoulder for a while, but didn’t have any interest in joining the pile in my arms. You can just see her in the background of one of the photos, under the platform bed frame.

It took quite a while to extricate all the cats, but we managed to do it without shredding my clothes too badly, nor adding any new scratches.

Tending to the babies may be adorable, but my goodness, it can be painful, too! :-D

Next time: wear pants.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties

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Some smiles to share with you!

My daughter joined me this morning, to help with crowd control. Leyendecker promptly scaled her and settled on a shoulder.

Saffron, on the other hand…

… claimed her spot, getting her way with sheer adorableness. :-D

Turmeric and Nicco, meanwhile, had themselves a wrestling match!

Big Rig settled down to eat and be completely non-photogenic, this morning. LOL

What a great way to start the day.

The Re-Farmer

Well, that didn’t quite work out

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Today, I finally made it down to the basement to do some practice carving, using the spoon blank that came with the carving kit.

While talking to one of my daughters about my mother’s request to carve her a mushroom, she had a brilliant suggestion.

Make a spoon with a mushroom at the end of the handle.

Well, that sounds like a great way to get my practice carving in!

The first problem was, kittens.

All of the kittens. :-D

Plus Beep Beep, of course.

It took several minutes just to open the storage box, and probably another 15 or 20 before I de-catted myself enough to get started.

The first thing to do was mark off the spoon blank.

Pretty basic.

It’s typically recommended to carve out the inside of the bowl, first, which meant I could finally break out the curved sloyd knife.

While fighting off kittens.

That… didn’t quite work out.

I realize I got a cheap kit, but I was quite happy with the other two knives when I first tested those out. The sloyd knife, however, seemed to be completely dull.

At one point, I figured maybe it was because I was using a different wood. My previous practice carving was on lilac, which I’ve read is really great to carve. So I tested one of the other knives on the handle.

It cut beautifully. You can see where I made a few quick cuts to start removing excess material on the handle. What little I got out of the bowl took a surprising amount of effort. Mostly, the curved blade wanted to just slide across the surface.

The kit came with a leather strop, suede on one side, smooth on the other, and a polishing compound. Which doesn’t work too well on a curved blade, at all, and certainly isn’t enough to create an edge, when there barely is one.

I have since brought it to my husband, and his significant collection of sharpening tools. He did some research on how to sharpen a sloyd knife, and while he was able to get an edge on it, it would be a lot easier to make sharpening tools out of dowel.

After I gave up trying to carve with a dull knife, I let the kittens go wild. The basement is nice and cool, but I think the kittens were enjoying the warmth of a human to crawl all over and snuggle into.

Until, that is, there was a mom available…

And what a good mom she is! Here she is, loving on Nicco.

As you can see, Leyendecker decided to get in on it, as I was taking the above photo!

He had ulterior motives, though. Nicco was blocking access to Leyendecker’s nip! LOL

Big Rig joined in, too!

While all that was going on, Saffron and Turmeric were crawling all over my shoulders and attacking my hair.

David had come downstairs with me and had jumped to the top of some shelves to get to one of the windows.

Then he fell into the giant plant pot I’ve got waiting for our umbrella tree.

I’m pretty sure his getting in was an accident, but he seemed to like it in there!

Even when I took the pot down so he could jump out, he wouldn’t! I had to tip him out. :-D

So, anyhow. That was my attempt at using the curved knife to practice carve a spoon. Hopefully my next attempt will go much better!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s roundup: they want out!

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I’m glad we got as much of the mowing as we did, yesterday. It has been raining on and off since last night, and today they are predicting thunderstorms, with possible hail and tornadoes (?!?!) this evening and overnight.

We may get high winds, but tornadoes are not an issue where we live. Water spouts on the lake, maybe, but these weather systems tend to move to the south of us. I checked the weather radar and it looks like we’ll probably get hit by the edges of the system. So I am expecting rain and high winds, but the main body of the system looked like it’ll hit the city. Which means my brother and sister’s places will likely get hit harder than us.

While doing my rounds this morning, I spotted a Rosencrantz.

We think she has a litter of kittens, somewhere, but so far have seen no sign of them. She comes here for food, then disappears.

I had both Creamsicle and Potato Beetle joining me this morning, but they were not happy with each other. Moments after I took this picture, Creamsicle attacked Potato Beetle! I actually had to break up the fight. :-(

I checked the gardens, and the sunflowers. There are now about 26 sunflowers sprouting, that I can see.

The one on the left is an Early Russian, the one on the right is Giganteus.

Then there is this one.

Deadeus.

Looks like something just bit the top off!

Back in the house, I had to help my daughter with the kittens.

They can climb to the top of the stairs, now, and they want out!

So we spent some time, distracting them.

Dave came down to babysit, while Beep Beep went upstairs. :-D

They really like the lilac branches, and my box of wood chips. This, it’s okay for them to get into. I have a separate, sealed, container for sawdust.

So it looks like today will be an inside day. Time to catch up on little projects I need to finish. Maybe even spend some time with the kitties, and practice carving on that spoon blank that came with the carving kit. :-)

And mabye playing a bit of Civ VI. I used to play Civ II, years ago, but didn’t like the newer ones. Loved Alpha Centauri. Then I moved on to Age of Empires, and others in the series. I stopped playing completely for a while, because the games user interfaces changed so much, I couldn’t figure out how to to the most basic things. The tutorials were no help at all. Civ VI became available for free recently, and I am finding it has become user friendly again, and actually fun to play. Perfect for a rainy day.

Well. Until it starts storming, and we shut all the electronics down! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning critters; a bird attack?

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As usual, in my morning routine, I visited the kittens.

David dashed downstairs to visit them, too.

It’s so funny to watch how he interacts with them! The kittens are quite happy to include him in their play, while he seems torn between “I wanna play, too” and “stay away from me, you strange creatures.”

Speaking of strange creatures…

… Creamsicle was in fine form this morning! What a drama queen. :-D

After dropping my daughter off at work this morning, I decided to play a bit of Pokemon Go before heading home. I was parked by a gym and playing the game when I heard something hit the side of the van.

It was a goldfinch, at the middle window.

Now, my first thought was that the bird was disoriented by reflections in the window and accidentally flew into the glass.

But it stayed, fluttering away at the glass, making its way across to the front door’s window, and sat there, at the bottom of the glass, looking at me.

When it seemed to be staying there, I opened the camera on my phone. I thought I’d lost my moment when it seemed to be flying away, but nope.

It went to the front windshield and proceeded to try and peck its way in!

This went on for several minutes! I did try and get video, but my phone’s camera does not do zoom well, and the video was horribly pixelated.

I don’t know why the bird did this, but it certainly made my morning! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning smiles – and kisses!

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I had some extra company when I visited the kitties this morning.

Both Two Face and David came down with me. It’s the first time Two Face has been in the basement for a while.

She immediately began grooming kittens.

They, however, were far more interested in climbing me, and wrestling each other, on my knee!

So she started grooming Beep Beep, instead. :-D

Also, that’s all 5 kittens climbing one leg. Only Leyendecker kept climbing, so he could tackle my hair. The other 4 battled each other with kitten ferociousness, all at once, on my leg.

:-D

The last while, I haven’t seen the outside cats much while doing my rounds. With so many of the cats ending up indoors, I suspect they are going where there are more cats around outside.

This morning, Creamsicle came to join me, and boy, did he want attention!

He was very affectionate.

I got Creamsicle kisses! :-D

What a beauty he is!

Just look at those gorgeous eyes.

He even let me carry him around as I continued my rounds. He’s such a sweetie. We’re still hoping to adopt him, but once they get big, no one is interested in cats anymore. :-(

Today has turned out to be a much cooler day. Downright chilly, compared to the last few days! Perfect weather to work on the lawn. :-)

Time to get outside and make some noise! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning smiles

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Here are some kitten antics to brighten your day! :-)

The ferocious beast likes to climb into the lilac branches. :-D

The like playing with the sun spots, too.

I let David come down with me, and he is very interested in his little doppelganger!

The other kittens and Beep Beep were just too fast moving for me to get any pictures of them. :-D

Outside, meanwhile, the some of the lilacs are reaching the height of their blooming period.

These ones are the first bloomers. The white lilacs and the double lilacs take a bit longer, then there are two other varieties that bloom in succession. So we have lilacs of one kind or another, blooming for quite a long time.

I really appreciate the things that make me smile. Particularly on mornings like today, when I check the trail cam and find our vandal has come for another visit. Twice in the past week, he’s come to the gate, only to make rude gestures down the driveway. Last Saturday, he walked over and stood there, giving the finger with both hands, in multiple directions. I think he spotted the trail cam, but I’m not sure. Either way, he was mugging for the camera. Last night, he drove over on his quad, pulled up alongside the gate to gesture down the driveway with one hand. Almost lost control of the quad. Pretty sure he was quite drunk, both times.

Rather pathetic, really.

Ah, well. At least he’s not trying to vandalize anything anymore.

The Re-Farmer