inside cats

That was fast!

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First, the cuteness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn’t close the garage door last night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Feeling better, and critter cam update

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First, the cuteness!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

What a lovely day!

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It is just gorgeous out there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other things…

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

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

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

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

She was like a totally different person.

Meanwhile…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Toni and Snorri (or Hunter?)

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I was able to accomplish something last night.

I got a decent picture of Toni!

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

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

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

This is the best of many attempts.

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

We’ve settled on a name. Almost.

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

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

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

Snorri.

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

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

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

Except…

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

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

As for his first night indoors…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snorri is actually smaller than Tiny. !!!

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

What else could we do?

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

Meet our new baby.

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

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

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

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

It tried to get in, too.

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

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

What else are we supposed to do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

A few updates

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First, the cuteness!

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

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

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

Speaking of taking advantage of the weather…

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

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

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

So Friday should be interesting.

The Re-Farmer

Cuddle pile! and sadness

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First, the cuteness.

Would you look at that fur pile???? That is David, covered in kittens. Clarence on the left – he’s getting big! – Shadow in the Dark on the right, with Tin Whistle above him. On top of David, under his head and front legs, I see the pink nose of Mitzy, and finally, in the middle, with a paw in his face, is Pom Pom.

David is so good with the babies! They just adore him, too. Also, Tin Whistle still tries to burrow in to nurse him at times, which is kinda hilarious. He’s got so much for, she’s usually nowhere near a nip, but burrowing into his hind leg or something, instead.

On a less pleasant note…

When I headed out to feed the outdoor cats, I happened to look into the larger south facing window that is next to the entrance of the cat house. The entrance is an add on, so there is another opening inside that goes into the main space. There was one fluffy black kitten at the big window, in the cat bed near the heat bulb, looking at me, but there was another black kitten lying near the opening into the entrance, and… Something did not look right. It wasn’t moving, even when I knocked on the window.

Damn.

My husband was available, so I got a small carboard box and threw on some gloves, then he helped me open the roof.

There was another black kitten, closer to the other wall, that I hadn’t seen in the shadows. Both were gone.

I tucked the two of them together into the box. Clearly, they’d been gone for at least a day, maybe two. In fact, I’d been wondering about one of them, as I hadn’t seen it this morning, when I normally would have. I’m not sure about the other.

There were no injuries. As they were in the cat house, it wasn’t the cold that got them. It was most likely this year’s strain of herpes virus that has apparently been killing off a lot of kittens all over the province this year. I was talking to the Cat Lady about it, back in the spring, and she was telling me the vets she works with have all been saying, they’ve never seen it this bad before.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to bury these ones, this time of year, so they will be cremated.

Damn. We’ve lost so many kittens this year.

What makes it a bit strange, though, is that I still got a head count of 35 this morning – and there were at least a couple of regulars, including Shop Towel, that weren’t there at the time I was counting. Now I realize we were also down two kittens. That means there are possibly as many as 5 “new” cats that have joined the colony! Considering which ones are the friendliest or the most distinctive that we see, I have to guess that these newcomers are all grey tabbies. The tabbies and the white and greys have been the hardest to tell apart, but the white and greys tend to stay closer to the house and we see them more regularly, so I know there is not more of them. We do have a lot of black cats with small patches of white on their chests, or a touch more white in other areas, that are hard to tell apart, but I know we have had fewer of those, not more. The one that lost an eye, for example, seems to be gone entirely now. So that leaves the grey tabbies and, at least once, I spotted one that seemed unfamiliar. That one was adult sized but, now that I’m keeping an eye out, I’m wondering about some of the smaller tabbies that look more like teenagers. Only one of them is really distinctive, because the colouring around one eye makes it look like the eye itself is darker and shaped differently than the other, so I know that one isn’t new. Then there’s Junk Pile and Slick (Octomom) that we can identify among the adult tabbies.

Oh, good grief. I just remembered we had a grey tabby with distinctive spotting rather than stripes, and realized I haven’t seen that one in ages. So… more than 5 or so are “new”?

Well, whichever cats are “new”, they have certainly been absorbed into the colony seamlessly by the other cats.

The Re-Farmer

Kitties, Cornbread, and 6 years ago today

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First, the kitties!

I’m happy to say, they are recovering nicely. You’d never know they’d all just undergone surgery!

In this photo, you’re being looked at by Shadow in the Dark. The boys definitely seemed to get more energetic faster, which makes sense, since they didn’t have open surgery like the ladies.

The other kitten is Pom Pom, who is just getting big enough to be done. He’s quite a bit bigger than his siblings, The Beast and Soot Sprite! Hard to believe they’re from the same litter.

Also, he is getting some very distinctive white fur on his sides. I’ve noticed that in some of the outside kittens, too. Pointy Baby was the first cat we’d see to develop that pattern, which suggests there’s some paternal genetic connection between them.

Anyhow. All is good with the post-op kitties, and they are so very happy to be allowed out of the room again!

Today, I had a chance to experiment with cornbread again. Last time, I did a strawberry version. This time, I did the exact same thing, except with bananas.

It’s still cooling as I write this and oh, my, does it look good! I can’t wait to try it! This time, we have enough extra that if it goes over well, we can make another one.

Next time I experiment, I think I’ll try apple.

On a completely different note, as we come up to our 6 year anniversary of all 4 of us finally together again, here at the farm, I went looking at some of my posts from back then.

Oh, my.

My husband and younger daughter were already here, and today was the last day my older daughter and I had to get things done, before the movers arrived in the morning.

We had no idea just how bad that would turn out.

Reading over those old posts again makes me shudder.

I know at some point, my husband and I will likely have to move somewhere that is more accessible for limited mobility, but at this point, I’m still thinking, I never want to move again!!!!

Thank God my brother now owns the property. If my mother were still our “landlord”, we probably would have thrown in the towel and found a way to move out, years ago.

The Re-Farmer

All done!

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Talk about a fast turnaround!

I got a call to pick up the cats shortly before 11:30am. I was told they’d be in the room I dropped them off in, with post op care instructions. When I got there, I didn’t even see anyone! They had several other cats waiting for pick up, too, so they were really going through them, assembly-line style!

Normally, the cats would have stayed at the clinic for observation for several hours first, but that part was to be done at home. Today was just grab and go!

In the instructions, it was recommended to keep them in the carriers for a few hours, though the risk was from possible injury if they jumped down from somewhere. Since we are keeping them isolated in my room, we let them out right away, and will let them out into the rest of the house later on.

The carriers fit very well in the truck, and I didn’t even have to remove our emergency supplies or collection of hard sided grocery bags.

Once at home, Toni didn’t really want to leave her carrier at all! Even with kittens came in with her. In the end, she didn’t leave until David was allowed in the room, and he decided to go in. Not into the biggest carrier next to her that he could fit comfortably in. Nooo… He went into one of the smaller carriers and squeezed her right out!

She is now curled up on the heat vent.

They seem to be recovering very well! I’ve had to stop Mitzy and Clarence from licking their surgical site too much, but not often enough for it to be an issue. Most are being very playful right now. Oh!!! I just had to stop Shadow, who was on top of one of the soft sided carriers, clawing away at it. It turns out Tin Whistle is inside, jammed against the back where the door is still zipped closed and holding it up. These carriers collapse if their doors – one at each end – are zipped up. So basically, he had her trapped in there and was trying to get at her from outside, and she’s just staying hunkered down in the carrier, contentedly ignoring him. 😄

The good thing is, I am home to see my brother. My SIL has already let me know he has stopped at a hardware store along the way, and then coming over to see why we have a leak in the bathroom ceiling.

I have no idea what he would be picking up, if he hasn’t found the cause of the problem. Unless… Oh! I see him on the security camera. I’ll have to follow up on that later!

The Re-Farmer

The adorable, the funny and the ugly: thoughts on Tumblr

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Well, I won’t be going to help my mother today – we’ll be doing that tomorrow – which means I can get work done outside while it’s “warm” today. Yay!

But first, the adorable:

David is so good with the kittens! He’s also a great ball of fluff, and the kittens love to snuggle up to him. At one point, Shadow, here, was completely engulfed in David’s fur, but moved before I could get a picture.

Now, the funny:

As the day warmed up yesterday, the snow on the metal roof of the water bowl house started to slight off – until an icicle stopped it! Yes, that overhanging piece of snow is being held in place by the tiny tip of the shorter icicle.

And now the ugly.

Tumblr.

Fair warning, I guess, that some people might have issues with what I’m about to say next. That’s okay. I’m not offended by people disagreeing with me. Also, a warning for later on, for those who don’t want to hear about war crimes.

I got a Tumblr account, quite a few years ago. Mostly because my daughters got accounts, and it was a way of sharing things and so on. Just another social media account. I’ve got quite a few of them, most of which I rarely go to. My older daughter uses it for her online business, and it’s the source of many of her commissions. Frankly, with her skill and talent, I think she could do much better if she marketed herself elsewhere, but it’s her business – literally – not mine. When I started this blog, I set it so that my posts will automatically share to a Facebook account I created for it, and to the Tumblr account I created under the same name.

At the time we started our account, Tumblr was still a pretty sane. It was a lot of younger people, who wanted something other than Facebook. The joke was that Facebook was all about middle ages wine drinking women. It isn’t, but I know enough of them that I found the joke funny.

In its early years. Tumblr went through the same struggles FB did, with the usual p0rn bots and explicit material inundating people’s feeds. They did eventually solve that one, and things settled for a while.

Social media, in general, is a cesspool. The anonymity of the internet tends to bring out the worst in people. People throw out threats of death, rape and violence at the drop of a hat, as well as vile insults, instead of having actual… you know… discussions about things we disagree with. Limitations on how long comments can be make it harder to hold those discussions, but people don’t even try. Instead of “I disagree with you, here’s why”, it’s “You are a terrible, evil person and deserve to die” or whatever. Twitter in particular used to be really bad for that. It’s why I never started a Twitter account. I probably still won’t, now that it’s X, but since Musk took over, he’s actually done a pretty good job of cleaning it up.

Which brings me back to Tumblr.

Over the past few years, the content on Tumblr has gotten increasingly worse. We’ve got an entire generation of people who have been indoctrinated into far left extremism from kindergarten through university. They can barely read, can’t spell, can barely formulate a coherent sentence, know nothing of history except for revisionist history, can barely do simple arithmetic, and couldn’t logic their way out of a paper bag (there are exceptions, of course, but they are the minority), but my goodness, they sure do think Capitalism is Eeeevil, all white people are racists, and of course, riddled with gender ideology.

Then Musk started cleaning up Twitter, and all the p0rn bots, child s3x traffickers and g00mers moved to Tumblr and TikTok. They were already there, of course. There was just suddenly more of them. Right after the takeover, a lot of leftwing extremists, who think “freedom of speech” is a bad thing, left the platform for Tumblr and TikTok (the garbage took itself out!). For a while there, my Tumblr account was being inundated with new “followers” that were bots and/or p0rn, which I would block and report – hopefully before I saw some animated gif … activity, shall we say.. Eventually, Tumblr seems to have gotten control of that, but not quite. They have this think in the dashboard with recommended Tumblrs to visit, including “live” streams. From the thumbnails, every single one of them I see looks like it’s p0rn. I could report them, as p0rn and sexually explicit material is not allowed, but in order to do that, I have to click on them, first, and I’m not about to do that.

Things have really exploded since Oct. 7. No, not because a terrorist group with the explicitly stated, charter written goal of genocide against Jews attacked Israeli civilians – a war crime in itself. Not because these creatures (I wouldn’t even call them “animals”, because animals would never stoop to this level of degeneracy) murdered, tortured, raped and abducted civilians, degrading women in public and desecrating bodies. Not because they murdered entire families, from infants in their cradles to the elderly. No.

They support the bad guys.

As with so many other things, they’ve redefined things. Evil becomes good. Lies become truth. Wrong becomes right. Even words are redefined. For a group that hates “capitalism”, they don’t even know what it is. Likewise, words like “colonizer”. They only know the meanings they’ve been indoctrinated into. Then, because they live in a very loud bubble, they have come to believe they are the majority, and that anyone who disagrees with them is evil. Not just wrong.

A kicker was when I saw some “art” being shared, purportedly done by an artist in Gaza that was killed by an Israeli air strike. If this were true (and there was no reason to believe it is), this would have been suicide by Israel, and I said as much. There was plenty of warning. Civilians could have left. Or at least, they could have, if Hamas hadn’t blocked their routes out of Gaza, but that’s another issue. Anyhow, I was accused of having “no empathy”.

So now we have Tumblr awash with Palestinian propaganda, with absolutely nothing about what was done to Israel. As far as these people know, Israel just up and decided to commit genocide against Palestinians for no reason. They either have no clue, or justify, the fact that Palestinians supported with Hamas did, and were celebrating and dancing in the streets, not just in Gaza, but around the world.

Which makes being accused of having “no empathy” truly ironic, since these people clearly have no empathy for things like a baby being put in an oven and roasted alive, while the mother was repeatedly raped, and after the father was murdered. Or about how families in their safe rooms (imagine living in a place where you need to have a safe room in your home!) had their houses burned around them. Some survived. Some roasted to death in their safe rooms. Those that tried to escape their burning homes ran out, only to be shot to death by the waiting Hamas. Or the people who got tortured or raped in front of their loved ones, before being executed. There was even a Hamas terrorist that phoned his mother from the home of one of his victims, bragged about the atrocities he had just committed, and was praised by his family for it.

But nooo…. these are not the bad guys. The “zionists” are the bad guys, and the Palestinians that were so happy about what was done to Israeli civilians are the victims.

Tumblr is just oozing with anti-Jew hatred right now – and the people engaging in it actually try to say that “the Jews” agree with them.

Yeah. Logic is not their strong point.

Anyhow.

So I started going something I haven’t been doing for years.

I’m starting to use my Tumblr account.

More specifically, I’m sharing accurate information to Tumblr. Historically accurate, evidentially accurate and truthful information. Yes, I vetted this stuff first, and if something is a mix of both (the best lies have at least some truth in them), I won’t share it.

One of my sources is someone who grew up with the ideology of the region. He knows it because he lived it and believed it. Today, he made a video about a statement made today by the Palestinian Authority – not Hamas – that explicitly stated their intention of exterminating the Jews, complete with koranic verses about it, that was being preached in mosques in sermons. It even showed how these “leaders” are lying to their own people. I shared it, and lo and behold, I actually got a comment (“notes”) on it (I don’t promote my Tumblr account, so I don’t typically get any reactions from there).

I also shared an unrelated video talking about Canada’s insane and bizarre gun “buy back” scheme that got delayed. This is what I got under the gun control video.

As you can see, I don’t have any patience with idiocy.

Note that the person did not say anything to counter the actual claims in the post. They just went straight into an attack on me – and my crops. I doubt they even watched the video to see what it was about. Also “say it to my face” is hilarious, considering they’re the ones that started off attacking me.

As for the video about the PA declaring their intend to commit genocide on Jews?

That’s right. Under a video about how the PA – not Hamas – has made a statement explicitly saying they intend to wipe out all Jews in all the world, I was attacked for not having “real empathy” for people.

Again, I doubt this person even bothered to watch the video. Especially considering how quickly after I shared it, that they commented. Also, for this person to then claim to speak for “Jewish people” would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that Jewish people were so horrifically slaughtered.

This is pretty typical. They don’t even try to argue their position. They just go straight into the personal attacks. What you WON’T see is any sort of proper argumentation or rational debate. It’s all pure emotionalism and pure, unadulterated hate. These comments are pretty mild. I’ve seen much worse, elsewhere.

I didn’t bother screen capping the rest of my response, which was a bit of a history lesson. Which is probably talking to a wall, but I don’t expect people like this to have the cognitive ability to process the information. Someone reading it might, though.

So Tumblr is a cesspool, and it’s gotten much, much worse of late. The things my daughters are being exposed to is bad enough that it’s affecting our relationship. I’ve even seen one daughter sharing “art” that was essentially p0rn featuring surgically mutilated bodies, under the guise of a particular s3xual identity. Recently, I was telling a daughter about a Mary Pickford movie I’d just watched, that had a particularly well done and moving scene involving the death of a child. I mentioned the name “Jesus” and my daughter had a visceral reaction of disgust. Keep in mind, that my daughters were strong Christians, based on research, evidence and logic. But reason, evidence and logic holds little sway against emotionalism. One of the first things the “gr00mers” and indoctrinators do is divide their targets away from their loved ones, and that means viewing them as the “enemy” and shunning them. We used to be able to talk about anything, even when we disagreed. Now, they just walk away or make snarky, gaslighting comments. I’ve considered deleting my Tumblr account, but that wouldn’t actually solve anything. It’s gotten to a point where my husband and I are seriously considering blocking certain sites, using parental controls (ironic that we never needed to consider this when our daughters were younger!), but that won’t solve the problem. Just cause new ones. We’d have to cut of the internet completely, and that would end my daughter’s online business, end this blog, and end a primary means of communication (we’d have to cut off the data plan on our cell phones, too. Though we do live in a cell phone dead zone, some signal does still occasionally make it through and, of course, would be an issue anywhere we go).

So what, realistically, can we do about it? Not a whole heck of a lot that will actually be useful.

Well, hopefully, things will improve. Right now, am about to go outside with my daughters to get some physical labour done. We all need to spend more time outside, and less time on our computers.

The Re-Farmer