Ah, life. The things you throw at us.
While, thankfully, my husband did not injure himself when the kittens tried to kill him, and he ended up falling, it did not leave him entirely unscathed. As time went on, it became clear he did pull some muscles (I guess that should count as an injury?), and now he’s in even more pain than usual. Continue reading
Doom Guy and Beep Beep kept me company while I was cleaning up around the garage and fence line this afternoon. When I got to where I had to figure out some way to lift the post hole pounder, to free up the bikes under it, I went into the lean to on this side of the garage, to find something to help.
Since I was going in and out of it, I left the door open.
Of course, the cats went in to check it out. This is the only part of the garage they can’t squeeze their way into, so it was all new to them!
While working on the junk pile, I could hear meowing from the garage. I went in to see, and from the direction of the sound, figured Doom Guy was exploring under the counter. After a while, though, the meowing started to sound decidedly distressed.
So I went back to look again.
Which is when I discovered Doom Guy was trapped behind the counter.
The counter has open space under it, but it also had a back to it. Above the counter are boards covering the wall joists; likely to prevent things from falling off the back of the counter, where they could not be retrieved.
Doom Guy was somewhere in the wall joists!
Now, while we’ve been using this lean to for storing the riding mower, and a few other things, we were not going to start sorting and cleaning up the garage any time soon. So stuff that’s in there have been there for years.
Lots of stuff.
I ended up getting one of my daughters to come and help me. She came into the garage, just in time to see the top of Doom Guy’s head, before he fell back down again. He could climb to the top, but couldn’t get over the edge of the board.
So we cleared the end of the counter, my daughter climbed on top of it, and ripped the board that was there off completely.
The blue on the left is another section of board, blocking the space.
This is some of the stuff that was on the counter.
The shadow is Beep Beep’s tail. :-D
The wooden things on the ground are shelves, filled with nuts, bolts and other small items. All metal.
I’m glad the two parts were separate, because it took two of us lift each of them off!
The noise and bustle we made spooked Doom Guy into squeezing over to another space. I could only see him by using my phone!
We even put some cat treats at the top, to tempt him to climb up again.
At one point, I could hear him purring!
I even managed to move the counter away from the wall by a couple of inches. It couldn’t be moved too far, as that end is resting on a bit of concrete foundation. It would fall right off, if moved too far.
We left the garage to give Doom Guy some quiet, so he would try and climb again. After a while, my daughter came back. We could hear some scrambling, so she hopped onto the counter. As soon as he was close enough, she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him the rest of the way out!
He was just covered in dirt and cobwebs!
He does not look happy. :-D
When he got down to the ground, she tried to give him treats there, but he was more interested in attention.
So his mom ate them.
My daughter took the treat container and, shaking it to make some noise, tried to tempt him away from the garage. Instead, he kept sniffing the spot where the treats his mother ate had been. So I picked him up and took him to my daughter, who got him over to the house.
I’m glad we were able to get him out of there. For a while, I was seriously considering cutting a hole in the wall, from the outside!
I haven’t put anything back on the counter, yet. A lot of what’s there might just get thrown out (why are there so many empty tool and tool accessory cases?). At the very least, I want to clean the end of the counter before putting the shelves back – and getting rid of all the dead Asian Lady Beetles that fell out when the board got pulled off!
I supposed the board should be put back. Maybe not nailed and glued in place again, though!
While fussing with things on the counter later on, though, something caught my eye, in between some pieces and parts, boxes and cases.
Was that a glass?
With liquid in it?
What on earth?
Oil.
Dirty oil.
Why is that there?
How long has it been there?
We’re going to have our work cut out for us, when we finally get to cleaning the garage.
Hopefully, no more kittens will need to be rescued!
The Re-Farmer
One of the dad cats showed up again this morning, cooperatively posing for me outside our living room window, so I could get some photos! :-)
Dad cat is looking a little rough around the edges!
While he seems to be coming around more regularly, yesterday I saw – and heard! – him being driven away by Rolando Moon. Who can be just as mean to the other cats, too, we’ve noticed!
I think we are slowly but surely getting The Outsider used to us, faster than the other kittens! Yesterday, my younger daughter was using a stick to play with him (her?), and even managed to pet him briefly.
I played with her a bit, too, and she was willing to come close to my feet, but then seemed to realize how close she was and would run off a bit. Then come back again, to play with the end of the stick.
While all the kittens and their moms seem to have accepted him as one of their own, he and Doom Guy are getting to be quite the pair! I wasn’t able to get any good photos, but they snuggle up in the sun room, regularly. Earlier today, while taking something out of the freezer, I looked out the window to the swing bench. Much to my surprise, there were no kittens on it. Then I found the two of them. They were on the old dresser I use to hold the tools, snuggled up and looking out the window. That space is normally covered with bags of cat food, but we’re on the last bag right now, so it’s available.
I think, from now through the winter, we’re going to have to start buying 4 big bags of cat food a month, instead of the 3 we did last year. We could get away with 2 in the summer, so I would have an extra bag left over from month to month, but this month we’ve already gone through 3 and are into the 4th – though some of that was due to the cats dumping the bucket onto the floor and eating it all night!
Cat kibble in bulk. Bird seed. Deer feed.
Not quite what we were expecting to be doing, when we first moved out here!
Hard to believe, in just a few days, it’ll be a year since my husband and younger daughter flew out.
It’s been quite a year!
The Re-farmer
After coming back from checking the new Christmas lights I’d added to our fence line yesterday, I noticed the outside cat food bowls were empty. I went through the Old Kitchen to take care of that, and disturbed the pile of kittens, sleeping on the swing bench.
This is what I saw when I opened the door to the sun room, plus The Outsider, who jumped down when I opened the other door to get the photo.
It occurs to me that I have not seen Corvo for some time. Also, it’s been quite a while since I’ve both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the same time.
It’s getting cold enough that, along with the food, we’ve started to put warm water out for them, too. They seem to be liking that!
We’re going from highs of barely above freezing, to 16C tomorrow, then right back down again. One last day to get that last of things finished up and put way outside. I don’t expect we’ll get another warm day like that again until next year.
I wonder how many of the cats we had over last winter will come back this winter?
The Re-Farmer
Some time back, my older brother and his wife generously passed on items to me that used to belong to my brother’s late MIL. Among them were outdoor LED Christmas lights, and a timer. Today… er… (glances at the time)… yesterday, I took them out to add to the stings of white lights we already have at the fence line near the gate.
I had two areas I was considering to put the timer. One was in the garage, where the main power cord is plugged in. I figured, if I were able to get the timer to sit at the window, I could set it to turn on from dusk until dawn.
Turns out, I can’t do that.
The timer’s plug in area is slightly recessed and rectangular in shape. The power cord’s plug is round and rather large. It doesn’t fit into the space.
The other possibility was to put it between the new strings of lights and the set of white lights I was adding them on to. This way, the white lights would be on all the time, while the Christmas ones would only turn on at night. I even had a clear plastic bag to put over the timer to protect it from the elements, while still allowing the sensor to detect light levels.
Nope. I could plug a string of lights into the timer, but the timer’s plug has three prongs, and the light strings can only accept two prong plugs.
So I just added them on, as is.
It turned out to be 4 strings of lights in total, already plugged into each other. Which was just fine by me! I strung them out and affixed them to the barbed wire with zip ties. Though they had power running to them, there was too much sunlight for me to see how they looked. I waited until dark to go back and see them, since there’s too much brush in the way for us to see them from the house.
So… they look just fine…
Except for the gap.
I did test these in the house a few days ago, when I was deciding what to do with them. They were all working fine. I was all set to put them up in the sun room and had even started to unroll the bundle a bit, before I realized I didn’t have a way to affix them the way I had in mind. Finding an entire string of lights out was a bit of a surprise! Checking it out with a flashlight, I could see nothing to tell me why it wasn’t lit.
So I’ll be going back tomorrow with something to cut the zip ties, and remove the string that’s not lit up.
I was rather impressed by how much the white ones light up the area around them. I definitely want to pick up more of those, when I can.
Yeah, I know, it’s not even Halloween yet, so it’s early for Christmas lights. I figure, better to get them up now, before the snow arrives to stay. :-)
The Re-Farmer
We try to keep Sundays as our day of rest. It has been made easier by colder temperatures and a continuous, if light, snowfall.
Last night, I found a way to prop the doors into the sun room so we could let the kittens in overnight, but the skunk should not be able to squeeze in and leave a mess for us in the morning.
It seems to have worked, though I suppose we can’t really be sure that the skunk didn’t come in and out without us seeing. All I can say for sure is, no “presents” on the floor for me to clean up!
My husband wasn’t up to doing the cats this morning, so I took care of it. Here are the moms, three of Butterscotch’s kittens, and one of Beep Beep’s, plus The Outsider.
I’m fascinated by the markings on Rosencrantz or Guildenstern.
Bob has filled out so much, he’s almost as big as Jim, now!
It seems the kittens have decided today is a day of rest, too!
I’m not sure if this is 6 or 7 kittens. There’s that ear behind Doom Guy’s back. I can’t tell if it’s attached to The Outsider or not. :-D
I am appreciating being able to rest today, as tomorrow is going to be a long one for me. I will be taking my mother to a follow up appointment for her surgery at the smaller, slightly closer, city. Then I plan to go to the RCMP and file a report about the vandalism on our lock. Whoever is doing it may think it’s just a nasty trick to play on us, but this is a potential safety issue, if we ever had to evacuate suddenly. There’s nothing the police can do at this point, but as long as there’s a file, there will be a past record, for when it happens again.
What a pain.
The Re-Farmer
You would think, living in the middle of nowhere, we wouldn’t have to worry about things like vandalism and security as much as when we lived in the downtown area of a major city. In many ways, that is true. However, we are certainly not immune, and in some ways, folks in the country have more to worry about.
I won’t get into the reasons here, but having to put locks on our gates has been quite disheartening. It is what it is, however, and we just deal.
Like today.
My younger daughter and I loaded up the van to go to the dump, then she walked ahead to unlock the gate while I drove over.
She couldn’t unlock it. The key wouldn’t even go into the lock.
This would be why.
What you’re seeing is after my daughter used a knife to try and clear it, to no avail. Not that it would have made a difference. Even if she had been able to get the key in, the glue would have prevented it from turning.
(The black, by the way, is from a graphite lubricant I used when the weather was making the lock a bit stiff, about a month ago.)
While we were at the gate, a candidate for some local elections came by to drop something off, so she saw what we were dealing with, too – and later saw my daughter getting into the van with the bolt cutters, after we got through.
So our trip to the dump was followed by a trip into town to get a new lock.
This is the second lock we’ve had to replace. I don’t expect it to be the last, unfortunately.
Frustrating.
The Re-Farmer
I did my rounds around the yard this evening, and it’s really something to see how everything is settling in for the winter.
While I have been fighting those invasive vines all over the place all summer, there is one area where I am keeping them. They are, after all, quite pretty, when under control! They have gone to seed, now, and are all covered with lovely little puffs.
I spent some time going around the yard, picking up the fallen branches, and going through where I cleaned things up in the maple grove.
When talking to my family about what I was finding, I mentioned the rows of trees that were planted too close together, with many dying because of it, and how I wanted to eventually transplant the three poor little tamarack trees. One family member told me to just cut them down to give the other trees space.
Nope! Not going to do that. I really want to save these trees.
This is one of the reasons why.
They turn a most glorious golden yellow in the fall!
In the future, I would really love to plant more of them!
It’s not unusual, when I make my way through the yard, for me to have a cat follow me. That’s typically when Rolando Moon makes an appearance. Otherwise, it’s Beep Beep or Butterscotch.
Today, I had two cats following me!
Beep Beep and her boy!
Later, my younger daughter helped me move some leaf piles onto the flower garden by the Old Kitchen. The girls have been raking the grass, but with the latest drop of leaves, it’s rather yard to tell in some places! :-D We are starting to use the leaves as mulch in different areas as well as adding more to the garden – and that’s without doing any raking at all in between the trees! Those will be left to decompose where they are. We’ll just stay on top of picking up fallen branches in those areas.
Earlier today, we made a trip into town to get some prescription refills. When they were ready, the pharmacist went through the three bottles with me. There was supposed to be four, however. So she went back to check what happened. It turned out that, for some reason, the insurance wasn’t coming up to cover that one at all. They figured it was a glitch in the system.
They ended up giving me the refill, without charging us for it now. When I come back in about a week, for some other refills, they will charge us for it then.
Which kinda blows me away.
When we had issues with insurance, shortly after moving here, the Costco pharmacy my husband had set up with wanted to charge him full price. We didn’t even know there was a problem until they wanted some $400, when we should only have been paying $40 or so. It was a most frustrating experience, and my husband went without some of his medications for a long time before the mess was fixed – and then even longer, because the fix put him at the wrong rate, which meant we still couldn’t afford it.
I’m rather glad we are with this pharmacy, now!
One of the benefits of going with a small town pharmacy, instead of one in the city!
Something to be thankful for, for sure!
The Re-Farmer
After I finished my last post (just before midnight! :-D ), I tried once again to see if I could close up the sun room for the night. The last I saw, all the kittens were outside eating, and the skunk was settling into the corner of the sun room.
I came in to find this.
Do not let the little furry heads fool you. This is not a pile of six kittens.
It is a pile of seven kittens!
As I went in and the pile broke up, the seventh kitten emerged, having been completely buried by the others!
Bob is really filling out and looking so much healthier, now! Glad to see that. Also, the markings on one of the calico/torties is looking more and more like a grey tabby! Much less orange than her sibling.
As I was persuading them to go outside, I saw the skunk was already out and eating, so I was finally able to close up the outside doors, then start heading in through the Old Kitchen.
Then I went back to let out Jim, who had been hiding and accidentally got closed in. !!
So that worked out in the end, and no turd bombs that I could find.
Today, I was slated to go to my mother’s to help her with some errands. I used her car, so that it would be easier for her to get in and out, but it doesn’t really fit her walker in the back, so she used a cane. I must say, she is recovering really well, has grown noticeably stronger since I last saw her, and quite mobile. She still tired quickly, of course, but did fantastic. Not bad for someone who’s 87 and just had major abdominal surgery!
We had an excellent visit as well, and while we were talking, I mentioned that we were letting the kittens into the sun room. I wasn’t sure how she would take that, since she vacillates from telling me we shouldn’t have cats because of the litter box, to happy about the outside cats, because they keep the rodent population under control, and loving how cute the kittens are.
I showed her the above photo, and she was loving it. She questioned about them being all from one mom, but I reminded her that there were two from one mom, four from another – and that another kitten showed up from somewhere and has moved right in. She loved that!
Then she commented that we might have a problem with them pooping in the sun room. I wasn’t sure how she would take it, but I told her that it’s not the cats we have problems with pooping in the sun room, but…
Then I showed her a picture of the skunk I’d taken last night.
It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing and where, but when she did, she was so excited! I showed her some more photos and the short video I took of the skunk sharing cat food with one of the kittens, and she loved it! She thought he was so cute, and how great it was that it comes regularly.
I had thought she might be upset about the skunk coming inside the sun room, to be honest, so this was awesome!
She also suggested that we might end up with more of them showing up. I figure it might depend of whether we have a he or a she. Who knows; by next spring, the skunk might show up with a row of little ones, following along!
Meanwhile, my darling husband did a bit of research. Apparently, cat kibble is not good for skunks. Fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables is recommended. Well, this skunk seems to be doing just fine with the kibble, along with whatever else it finds on its own. It’s not like the cat kibble is the only source of food it has. I think it’ll be just fine.
I’m just happy my mom is happy about our stinky kitty, too!
Also, I think I will make a point of shutting up the sun room now, before our smelly friend returns!
The Re-Farmer
The plan was; head out in the late morning to get the tires torqued, then keep on going for a quick trip to the city.
Seven hours later, we finally get home!
But before I get into that, here’s what we got to come home to.
The Re-Farmer 