kittens

Glad to be home

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First, the cuteness!

The cats are quite enjoying the box I found to better stabilize the platform I rigged up for them as a way to store the wire mesh door we made to keep cats out of the old basement in the summer. The one that reminds me of Nosencrantz so much especially likes to just be a loaf in it! I’m constantly seeing cats milling around under there, though, and they do like that rigid insulation!

Also… I’m not 100% sure I recognize the cat on the left. It’s getting so hard to tell some of them apart!

I counted “only” 34 outside cats this morning.

As for the inside cats, Tiny, aka: The Beast, is now big enough that it’s safe to let her out of isolation. With the loss of Snorri, we no longer have to keep the door to my bedroom/office closed, even overnight. Tiny has been thrilled with her new freedom to explore the rest of the house.

The rest of the cats are thrilled to be able to go into my room again. As I write this, there are currently 8 of them asleep on my bed, with all but one of them in a single, huge pile of fur!

Gotta get more adoptions done!!!

Anyhow…

The plan for today was to help my mother with errands so, while doing my rounds, I took the time to open the doors to where her car is parked and give it a quick check.

I almost immediately noticed the back tire on the driver’s side looked awfully low. The tire that had gone flat before was the front driver’s side tire, so this was not expected at all.

The car barely fits in this addition to the garage, so I backed it out, then checked the tire pressure.

It was only 10psi!!

So I pumped it up, but saw no sign of a leak anywhere. I checked the front driver’s side tire, and it was really low, too, though not enough to be noticeably flat.

Of course, I checked the other two, and they were slightly on the slow side, too.

The bizarre thing is, when I took the car in to get that tire checked, the employee that worked on it thought it was the passenger side tire that was leaking and was done checking it when I returned to the garage. I told him it was the driver’s side tire, so he took that one off. He could not find a leak in either of them. All the tires, however, were topped up with air, just in case. I was there to see it done.

So why would all four tires be low, with one practically flat? We even used the car a few days ago, when we had to pick the truck up from getting its new battery.

I’m so glad I took the time to check on her car, so far in advance of needing it! With all the driving around I did with my mother, the tires have held their psi. No evidence of leaks, anywhere.

Very strange.

If it weren’t for the fact that we have snow on the ground that would have given evidence, I would be concerned that a certain “someone” made their way into the garage and let the air out. As it is, the only foot prints in the snow have been our own.

Another reason I am glad I checked the tires.

Road conditions sucked.

But only the gravel roads, and only those sections shaded by trees. They were sheer ice! Even though I was driving slowly and cautiously, ever now and then, the car would suddenly start fishtailing. Not much, thankfully, and not for long, but enough to be a concern. The last thing I’d want is to hit either ditch on the sides of these roads. They are very deep and very steep! The chances of being able to drive out, even with 4 wheel drive, are very low.

We got a light and fluffy snowfall overnight, which didn’t help matters.

Even on the highway, for the first while, I was not confident driving at the speed limit for quite some time.

Oh, how I wished to be driving the truck, instead!!!

Thankfully, today turned out to be warmer than forecast – again – and the paved roads melted clear by the time I was heading home.

Except the gravel roads, where were even slipperier!

As I was reaching the intersection by our place, though, I saw the grader coming through. Our section of the road had just been done. He had to move aside for me to be able to turn in, so at least the last 200 ft or so was good!

This should have been done long ago. People are really upset with our current municipal counsel. For some reason, they didn’t go with the usual company for road maintenance – a local company that has all the equipment and storage facilities on hand, and had done an excellent job of keeping our roads cleared and safe as quickly as possible, every year we’ve been here. Instead, they’ve decided to lease a grader, rent someone’s space to store it, for a ludicrous monthly fee – and a 125 hour limit. Oh, and they’d have to hire a driver each time, too. They only got the grader today, which means for the past while, roads like ours have been just left as they were. It got so bad in areas that the school division would not allow buses to drive on them, for safety reasons.

Which means parents on these dangerous roads had to drive their kids, however many miles, to meet the bus at the highway, instead.

Hopefully, it will no longer be an issue for the rest of the winter.

Anyhow.

Since I was there with the car, my mother wanted to do as many errands as she could, so we stopped at quite a few places. For all that my mother is 92, uses a walker, frequently complains about how bad her knees are (but won’t wear her brace), and is clearly struggling at times, once she gets going, she is really hard to keep up with! At the grocery store, we’ve switched from her using the shopping cart as a walker, to her using her walker and me pushing the cart, so that she has the option of sitting down if she needs to. Once she gets going, though, she just races off! Unfortunately, she’s one of those people who doesn’t really watch out for others or, if she does see them, all but barrels right through them. Yikes!!

We got it all done, though, and she was quite glad to get home and finally rest!

For me, it was just a stop at the gas station, then home, and I was sure glad to be home, too!

I thought I could look forward to taking it easy for the next while, but…

There was an answering machine message when I got home. A reminded for my eye appointment on Monday. I was very glad to get it! I have my phone set to send me a reminder 1 day in advance, so I wouldn’t have forgotten or missed the appointment. However, my eyes will be dilated for a field of vision test, which means I have to get my daughter to drive me home.

Other than parking in the garage, she has yet to drive the truck.

So tomorrow, we’ll be heading out for her to do some practise driving. Pretty much everything is in different places from any other vehicle we’ve driven. It’s also just a few inches wider and longer than the van – just enough to really affect getting in and out of parking spaces, or taking turns. It won’t take long for her to get used to it, but better to do that in advance, then when I need her to drive me home because I’ll essentially be blinded.

I just checked my calendar and see I have a reminder to get my bloodwork done on the same day my husband’s CPP Disability comes in, before Christmas instead of after. That, at least, is not an appointment. I just need to show up at the clinic and ask for the requisition for that should be on file, then step across the hall to the lab to do the tests. Since I will likely be doing our first January stock up shopping that day, and don’t usually have breakfast until I’ve reached the city, I can swing by on the way and get the bloodwork done while still technically fasting.

Then there’s the extra city trip that my daughters will need next week.

Good grief. I try to keep the winter months as close to home as possible, but this year it looks like our December is going to be filled with outings!

I just want to stay home and hybernate!

The Re-Farmer

The breakfast crowd, and technology frustrations

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Today is supposed to be a chillier day. We’ve already reached our expected high of -9C/16F Which wouldn’t be too bad – especially with how bright and sunny it is – but the wind chill brings it down to -19C/-2F The wind is just whipping around the house, too, so areas that would typically be more sheltered, aren’t.

We got a light snowfall overnight. Just enough to cover the ground. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a high of -10C/14F, then reach 0C/32F and 1C/34F over the next two days! So much of it will probably be gone before we dip below freezing again.

No surprise, that the cats were preferring the sun room to have breakfast in, rather than the cat house roof, or the kibble house!

This is 10 cats eating out of 2 bowls! There was another 5 eating behind me as I took this photo. All total, I counted 33 or 35 cats this morning.

When I was about to head in after finishing my rounds, I spotted a whole crowd of heads in the cat bed, watching me. A couple ran out as I stopped to get a picture, but I did manage to catch the runners in the shot.

I cropped out the second one that ran off. I don’t think anyone really wants to see that particular side of his anatomy. 😂 That calico in the back won’t let us come near her, but my goodness, she is not at all shy about telling us it’s feeding time! She is an unusually talkative cat. Especially for a yard cat.

We can sometimes pet that orange and white cat. There was a second orange and white kitten, but it disappeared a couple of months ago. The fluffy black kitten with the white blaze on its face is also getting better at letting us pet him, and even pick him up.

Barely visible behind the orange and white’s head is the little tortie. She won’t let us just pet her, but if we manage to pick her up, she will allow us to cuddle her. Being one of the only females we can actually touch, we have plans to bring her indoors as soon as we can. The calico is a priority, though, as she’s old enough to go into heat. Something that might actually happen earlier in the season, with our milder temperatures. That one, we just can’t get close to at all. Not even while they are all eating. With some of the other stand offish cats, I’ve managed to pet a few backs while they are eating before they run off. All seem to be males, of course. It’s hard to tell at times, because they move around to fast, but the older ones are a bit easier to spot.

You can see the little one with the cloudy eye. The pupil seems to be dilating the same as the good eye. There’s just that cloudy patch across it.

With the racoons being such an issue, I asked my daughter to give the cats their evening feeding earlier in the day, after we loaded the truck so I could make a garbage run. Sunset these days is around 4:30, so this not only got the cats away from the truck so I could leave, it meant they could finish eating while it was still light out. At night, I “arm” the motion sensor recording on the critter cam. When I checked the files this morning, I did see a couple of racoons go in, but there was no food left, so they didn’t stay long.

Meanwhile…

Yes!! I finally made it to the dump! It was even still open. I got so busy working on something else, I lost track of time. Thankfully, on Saturdays, they are open for 8 hours instead of 4.

After I tossed all the household garbage into the pit (they have bins for recycling, and various sheds and storage areas for electronic waste, paint, batteries, oil, etc., as well as separate areas for tires, large appliances, construction waste and other large stuff like that) and was closing things up, the woods on the other side of the pit suddenly started screaming. There had to be at least a dozen, probably more, coyotes back there! Coyotes have such a piercing howl, and some of them really did sound like they were screaming. Then there’s that yipping noise they make. Yikes! I’d hate to have a farm with livestock in this area. We do have coyotes here, of course, but I’ve never heard that many, all at once!

On a completely different note, yesterday evening I got to get some more progress on my garden analysis series of posts. I’ve got them planned out and organized into drafts, but each posts takes a lot of time to work on, as I go over my old posts and photos in the process. This year, I also have a number of videos to go over, as well. With my WordPress storage so close to maxing out, some things only got covered in video, or images are on my Instagram page, instead.

I think WordPress was having issues last night, Thankfully, it seems to not be happening today, as it hasn’t happened while I’m working on this post. As I was writing in my drafts last night, every now and then, it would simply disappear. Everything in my browser window would suddenly go white. The rest of the browser was still visible and uneffected; my tool bar was still there, the URL was unchanged, my tabs were still up. Just the contents of my WordPress editor would disappear. I’d have to reload the page to get it back.

Thankfully, WP automatically saves draft quite frequently, so I didn’t lose more than a sentence, but when it started happening more and more often, I had to stop for the night. I’m hoping to get more progress done on the drafts tonight. I’ve got the first completely post scheduled to post on Tuesday, and if all goes well, there will be a new one posted every morning for 10 days, altogether.

Which means I need to get my butt in gear. These analysis posts can take hours to write!

It does, however, help me get my thoughts together and make plans for next year, so it’s worth it.

The Re-Farmer

A closer look, and my daughters are funny

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As I was finishing up my morning rounds today, I spotted that kitten with the strange looking eye. I still can’t get close to it, but it was at some food, so it didn’t run away when I stopped to take a picture. I still had to zoom in on my desktop to see. This cropped image is the best I was able to get.

It’s still hard to see, but it looks almost like it has a cataract. Most likely, this eye got infected with the unusually bad strain of herpes that hit so many cats in our province this year. Whatever the cause, it was over with by the time this litter started showing up at the house.

I counted 36 cats this morning.

That critter cam we have set up in the sun room kept me busy last night. Those racoons are very persistent! They no longer really pay attention to my using the microphone to shoo them away.

Racoons make the strangest, snarling, piggy noises.

One of the first times I went into the old kitchen, I was surprised to find several cats in it! The outside door to the old kitchen from the sun room has a screen window. It’s old and torn and needs to be replaced. There is a window that slides down over it, but the slide locks have broken off, so the only way to move the window is to jam something like a screwdriver or a knife into the space, slide the latch and try and hold it in place while adjusting the window, so we just keep it all the way open.

Well, with the racoons making them rather nervous, the cats tore a hole in the corner of the screen in the door. The inner door was mostly closed, just to keep the cold out a bit, so they had no problem getting through.

Once the racoons were out, the cats left the old kitchen, but once they knew they could get through that screen, they kept at it! We tried closing the inner door completely, but that just meant cats got stuck between the doors. I opened it to chase racoons out again, and there were three cats between the doors! So we left the screen door open and closed the inner door. The last thing we needed was for the racoons to discover they could get through the screen and tear into the garbage bags stored in the old kitchen until we can finally get to the dump.

Which is open again today. With the battery replaced in the truck, we can finally get the garbage and recycling out!

We are going to have to do something about those racoons. Several times, it wasn’t enough to just chase them out of the sun room. I went outside and chased them out of the kibble house – then chased away the other three that were eating kibble under the shrine! From the noise, some were running under the storage house, so they weren’t going far. The time I chased away the ones by the shrine, I’d counted 8 of them altogether.

*sigh*

Ah, well.

One a completely different topic, my daughters are funny.

This is how they mark off the days on our calendar.

Every month, it’s something different. Sometimes, it’s geometric patterns. Sometimes, it will be a theme based on the month. Flowers in the spring, vegetables at the end of summer, that sort of thing. This was started off as marine life, then went with a food theme, and even some kelp!

I love the axolotl at the top. And the coelacanth! Two of my favourite sea creatures!

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

Well, that worked out

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Of course, we must have the cuteness, first!

I missed getting a picture of Judgement curled up around the kitten. He moved when I stop to get a picture.

Every once in a while, that kitten lets me pet it, and even pick it up.

Today was not one of those times.

It’s been really nice outside today. According to the weather apps, we hit 6C/43F instead of the predicted high of 4C/39F. We hit 6C yesterday, too. The forecast is for 4C tomorrow, then 7C/45F! All the paths we shovelled are melted and green, and there is water pooling in parts of the driveway, visible in the tire tracks.

A perfect day to walk around!

The guy that was interested in the old vehicles has come and gone. He came with his wife, his son, and two of his son’s friends. Really nice people! We started off looking at vehicles in the old hay yard, then made our way to the car graveyard, then back into the outer yard to where there are some vehicles by the storage shed, and even the ones by the old threshing machine. The son and his friends were really excited when we went past the old Farmhand tractor. Turns out one of them has one, that runs. They were so thrilled to see that it still had the original hand crank! 😄 In fact, they were geeking out all over the place. The wife, meanwhile, was just following along with her coffee, slightly bemused. Cars are definitely not her thing. 😁

In the end, they identified three vehicles they want to make offers on, and the son and his friends asked to include the tractor, too. That actually made me happy. I’ve already talked to my brother about having someone take it. I was thinking one of my nephews, perhaps. This is something that has historical value, and can still be restored. The longer it sits out there, though, the worse its condition will become.

They will talk it over, then he’ll call me with an offer to pass on to my brother.

I know my brother asked me not to let them in, but I hope he can trust me enough to understand why I did, anyhow. We’re already talking about selling this stuff for scrap, and we won’t get much money for them. Not the cars, anyhow. The old farm equipment would get more, since they don’t have things like vinyl dashboards and padded seats that need to be removed. If there is someone willing to buy individual vehicles for parts and restoration, I see that as a better option. We’d get a better price per vehicle that way, too, even it’s not by much.

We shall see how it turns out! I was very happy to meet them all and we had a great time walking around and chatting. They were excited like kids in a candy store at times! There were even a couple of vehicles they’d never heard of before, and would be all giddy about things like window shapes on an Epic, and the fins on the back of one old car from the 50’s.

The only downside I can think of, is that I don’t think my brother knows just how bad a shape most of these vehicles are. He thinks anything can be fixed, which may well be true, but who is going to fix them? Not us, and he sure doesn’t have the time to do it. He’s already got way too much to deal with! I even feel bad that he took so much time to come out here to climb up on the roof, then into that tunnel, and finally to replace the light fixture. He was here for 4 hours, plus another 2-3 hours driving time, plus time at the hardware sore, plus the amount of money he spent on the supplies. He really went above and beyond! He always does.

He is protective of his baby sister, too. Perhaps a bit over protective! 🧡😁

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