kittens

Goodbye, Bitty, and the kindness of strangers

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Well, it’s done.

Cheddar was willing to cuddle, but when Bitty started trying to get under him to nurse, it was a bit too much!

The cat lady now has the bitty baby. She plans to put him on antibiotics right away, since his eyes are leaky (I don’t include the lysine with the inside cats’ kibble). She showed me pictures of his siblings, which is when I discovered even more good news. When she told me she found someone who worked in a vet clinic willing to adopt Bitty, I figured this was someone different, but it turned out that this is the same person who is adopting the other two! This is someone who had lost her two cats after 18 years, not long ago. For her to now adopt three yard kittens from the same litter is just amazing! I had sent photos to the cat lady, so I’m guessing she at least saw pictures of him, but that’s it.

I had an extra surprise when the cat lady and I met up in town.

Another donated cat bed, more blankets, and 6 bags of kibble! Plus treats.

The cat bed will go into the cats’ house. Maybe the blankets, too. Those are knitted and donated by volunteers.

As for Bitty, he settled into the cat carrier and never made a peep until just before he got transferred over.

I gave him the hat he likes to sleep in to keep. I can make another one!

Previously, we had talked about getting the last 2 indoor females done, plus one outdoor male. The cat lady would have come to our place, driven them to another city, further away, to get done, then hung on to them for a week to recover, then bring them back here.

Clearly, something had happened, and she never got back to me on that.

It turns out that she’s been having issues with vets cancelling appointments, lack of communication, and even people she’s trying to help making it harder for her. Plus, vet costs are getting astronomical. There isn’t much we can do to help, but I can at least drive the cats to the local vet, or meet her in town like today. Apparently, this is not common. 😥 However, our sun room is now winterized, and our nearest vet has moved to a new, bigger, location, so we can take care of things like driving the cats to and from, and have a recovery room for them.

She also has funds left from a generous donation specifically to have cats spayed and neutered in the area – and where we live is considered “in the area” because we are willing and able to drive them to town. It turns out there is a sports celebrity that has a cottage in the area, and after she was the only person willing to come out to help a stray in -40C/-40F, this is his way of saying thankyou. As long as she spends the money on spays and neuters, he will be making monthly donations!

I brought up that, because we had so many kittens this year, we really need to focus on getting outside females done. Once she was assured that we had a place for them to recover, and that we could drive them in, she said she would try the nearest vet clinic again. If all goes well, we will get two females, then two males, done before Christmas – and before the real cold is expected to set in! I’m still holding out for a mild winter, but January and February are typically the most several months (and the reason we work to have at least a couple months of supplies in stock, in case we can’t get out!).

So she will work to arrange that, then get back to me, and we’ll have to work on socializing more of the females! Calicos and torties are almost always female, but they won’t let us near them. The white and greys are getting friendlier, but we’re having a hard time telling them apart, and only a couple are confirmed male. When the girls were tending the fire pit yesterday, they had cats all over them, and every now and then would pick up a white and grey kitten, only to realize it wasn’t one of the friendlies they were expecting.

A good excuse to get the fire pit going more often! 😁

The only down side is, certain mystery health issues came back with a vengeance. My breathing issues came back a few days ago and it doesn’t seem to matter if I’m sitting or standing, lying down or leaning. Even when I was helping my mother with her shopping yesterday, I had to pause a few times because I was starting to get dizzy and ill. I made sure my mother never saw it, though! Then last night, the mystery pain in my side suddenly hit me while I tried to get into bed, making it difficult to sleep even after the spasms were under control. The pain hasn’t gone away, and at times I am having trouble standing upright.

I should go to the doctor about it, but I don’t see the point. Clinics still have to demand masks, and I can’t wear a mask. I mean, who thinks making someone with breathing difficulties wear a breathing barrier makes sense? Never mind that it’s been repeatedly demonstrated to have no benefit, while causing plenty of harm. The other thing is, I was referred to a respiratory specialist over 2 years ago, and have still heard nothing. My mother hasn’t heard from the kidney specialist she was referred to, either. Unless it’s the Vid, or an emergency, people just aren’t getting health care right now, and those testing positive for the Vid are being badly damaged or killed by the treatment protocols. Frankly, I don’t think it’s even safe for someone like me – old, broken and fat – to go to a doctor right now. I could barely get taken seriously even before all this BS. Nothing like being sent to test after test, scan after scan, procedure after procedure, with all the tests coming back normal to have doctors start looking at you funny and suggesting it’s all in your head. If they can’t find it, it must not exist.

Bah. I’m just venting right now. I’m having trouble sitting up in my chair and breathing properly as I type this, and it’s distracting.

So, back to the topic at hand!

The Bitty is now away with the cat lady, and will be reunited with his siblings in a wonderful new forever home.

I’m going to miss him, but I’m so very happy for all the bitties!

The Re-Farmer

Just too much cute!

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Before I headed out to help my mother with errands, one of my daughters came over to do bitty baby supervisor duty while I was gone.

Bitty was curled up on my bed, napping at the time. My daughter had had a sleepless night, so she took advantage of the situation.

Bitty responded by being even cuter, and took advantage of having a warm human to cuddle up against!

Later on, I got a message from my daughter saying that he was twitching and making nursing motions in his sleep!

We reached a high of 0C/32F today, though as I write this, we’ve started to cool down a bit. It’s still sunny and feels warm out there, and things are melting in various places. A perfect day to help my mother with errands. I’m happy to say she is well stocked up on quite a few things now. Especially the heavier things, like laundry detergent, or bags of potatoes, that she can get while I’m there with her car to help.

It’s also a perfect day to do a burn. Just before I headed home, one of my daughters got the fire pit going. There is a branch pile near the fire pit that we we’ve been adding to faster than we’ve been able to use it up – it’s separate from the logs we use when doing a cookout, and just getting too big. So the girls are planning to get as much of that cleaned up as they can. Now that I’m home and on supervisor duty (Butterscotch really, really does not like Bitty, but Bitty really, really wants to cuddle her!), they are both outside and tending the fire pit.

This is what I found when I came back into the room.

I mean, can he get any cuter? 😄😄😄

He really, really likes that hat! Gosh, he’s so tiny. And most of that is fluff. He’s actually smaller than he looks.

I’m going to miss him when the cat lady picks him up!

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, however, will be very happy to see him gone! 😂

The Re-Farmer

The cuteness is off the scale!

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We’ve been keeping the bitty baby isolated in my room for now, with someone there to supervise at all times.

Life can be so hard, sometimes. 😉

I was expecting the bitty to go into hiding or at least be very nervous at first.

Nope.

After filling his belly with wet cat food, he started to explore, with Cheddar and Leyendecker following him around like lost puppies, trying to figure him out.

He’s an excellent climber.

He’s also ridiculously tiny!

Butterscotch is not happy with a kitten around and would growl and hiss at him.

Bitty gives no F’s.

Eventually, Butterscotch came off her window ledge, and the next think I knew, they were curled up near each other on my bed, sleeping.

Ginger has recently become one of the cats we can allow into my office with Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, without a fight breaking out, so we allowed him in, too. He didn’t like the bitty, and would hiss and growl at him, but was still willing to lie on the bed for a nap, too.

When I first brought Bitty in, I didn’t have a chance to take off my parka and hat where I usually do, and had just dumped them on the bed.

He found my hat.

So. Very. Smol!!!!

For a while, I lay across the bed so that I could reach cats to calm them down. Yeah. That’s why. Not because I wanted to snuggle the baby and take pictures. Nope. Not at all.

Ginger was very curious about my phone.

I managed to get a few of him, too. 😂

After a while he planted himself against my leg and tried to nap. Bitty, however, crawled out of the hat and decided to check him out. Ginger was NOT happy, was laying his ears back, snarling and hissing.

Bitty gave no F’s, crawled over him and squeezed into a crevice between him and my leg.

Poor Ginger looked ready to have a massive anxiety attack! He finally left and lay down on the heat vent. 😂

For now, the cat lady thinks she can be out here to pick him up on Wednesday, at the latest. That’s only two days from now. That actually works out better for us, since I am now scheduled to help my mother with her grocery shopping tomorrow.

As I write this, Bitty is curled up on my bed, snoozing again.

He is so, incredibly tiny!

The cuteness meter has overloaded. 🤎🖤🤎🖤

The Re-Farmer

A double whammy of good news!

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The cat lady contacted me last night. After finding homes for the two bitty babies we found in the field, she now has someone who wants to adopt the last surviving bitty!!

Which meant, of course, that we had to bring him inside as quickly as we could. I wasn’t able to do that last night, as it was too dark to see, so we left it until this morning.

When I first topped up the kibble and water bowls, I couldn’t see him anywhere, but I’ve often seen him out after I’ve finished my rounds, so did those. Making my way back around to the kibble house, I was greeted by an orange tabby.

It wasn’t Rolando Moon.

Nutmeg is back!!

At least I assume it’s Nutmeg. I suppose it could be Toesencrantz, but I was able to pet him, and Toezencrantz was never socialized.

The kibble was already mostly gone in most of the trays, so I topped a couple of them to make sure Nutmeg got a good meal. He wasn’t too friendly with the other cats, but food was a higher priority for him! He looks really healthy, though. Usually, when the wayward males come back for the winter, they look like pretty starved.

Then, I spotted the bitty baby! He had finally emerged from the cat house, so I snagged him.

He’s now in my office/bedroom with me, and has had his first meal of wet cat food. As I write this, he is exploring the room, climbing things – especially the little cat tree we have in here – and checking things out.

Cheddar and Leyendecker were immediately curious about him and followed him around, sniffing. Bitty sniffed right back and there was lots of purring.

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are not too sure of things. Butterscotch is perched in the window sill, and I’ve heard her growling at him. Nosencrantz is on her top shelf by the ceiling, watching him from above, looking shocked, but has not tried to come down.

And I just had to pause typing the above because he climbed up onto my desk. Now he’s climbing the shelf to Nosencrantz, but he’s too small to get very far.

I think I’m going to be very busy supervising a baby today!

The Re-Farmer

I started, then I couldn’t stop!

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With today already being so much warmer, my morning rounds ended with extra outside activities, like doing a burn, and then some shovelling.

I was going to do the vehicle turn around space and leave the paths to the girls, but since I was going through the paths while doing my rounds, I just grabbed a shovel and started clearing a path to the garage, while on my way to the gate camera.

Then I cleared a path to the burn barrel and the electricity meter.

Then I started to clear the path around the house before going to the sign trail cam way out in the corner across the old garden area, and ended up clearing a path to the sign cam.

Then I finished making a path around the house, and since I was on that side anyhow, I went ahead and did the the fire pit area.

I was going to leave the turn around space for the girls, but it was a balmy -7C/19F, with no wind, and lovely sunshine.

Yeah. I cleared that, too.

What can I say? I like shovelling.

The kittens were very excited when I was done. Well… these ones, anyhow.

From left to right, we have Princess, Judgement, Plushy trying to climb my legs, and Gooby.

Who isn’t gooby anymore. That lysine really worked! There’s a few kittens with eyes that look a bit leaky, but that could just as easily be from the cold winds. I didn’t notice any leaky eyes today.

I did notice a little, bitty ball of fluff, though.

The bitty baby was out and about, running around, stalking its bigger cousins, and generally having a blast in the snow. When I came close, he ran off and I was only able to pet him while we was under a step to the storage house, where I could just barely reach. He most definitely did not want me around, though.

He’s doing great, which makes me happy. We’ll still keep an eye on him (along with the others, of course) but with the warmer temperatures we’re supposed to be getting, he should be just fine out there.

Oh, my goodness! I just went looking at the AccuWeather website for our area. The app that came with my desktop is now saying that we will hit 3C/37F on Friday, instead of Saturday, but AccuWeather is saying we should reach a high of 5C/41F on Friday! That’ll feel downright tropical!

We’ll see how things work out, but if the long range forecasts I’m looking at are in any way accurate, we’re going to have that mild winter I’m hoping for. Here’s hoping!

The Re-Farmer

Cold, but the kitties are okay, and meandering thoughts

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We did eventually warm up to our predicted high of -12C/10F, though it came with wind chills colder than -20C/-4F at times.

When I fed the yard cats in the morning, I counted “only” 24 or 25, including the bitty baby – who never came outside!

You can just make him out through the frost, near the bottom of the window.

Thankfully, the south yard is pretty sheltered from the winds coming mostly from the north. Though we had blowing snow all night, there wasn’t anywhere near as much on the ground as it had looked like there should be. I started shovelling the more sheltered walkways, then got a bit carried away.

I used the tire tracks from when I lasted back up to the house as a guide for where to clear away the snow. You can even see the packed down snow under the tire tracks. I didn’t feel like bringing out the ice chipper to break those up, and the shovel I was using already has a crack in it, so I wasn’t going to bash around with it any more than I had to.

As we warm up over the next week, things should actually start melting a bit, and I want these high traffic areas to clear away completely. I think tomorrow, I’ll keep working to clear the space we use to drive into the yard and turn the vehicle around. I’ll leave the paths around the house, and the fire pit, for the girls to do. They’re planning on getting the fire pit going, just because they can, in the near future.

Meanwhile…

Not too long ago, I was outside again and did the evening feeding.

I counted 30 this time, including the bitty baby. He was in the larger window by himself, and even tried to play with me through it, before going to the entry where the food tray is. He never came out, but he’ll have to if he wants the water. If he had come out, I probably would have snagged him and brought him inside. To be honest, though, the next youngest litter of kittens, being all short haired, are probably colder than he is! It isn’t stopping them from playing in the snow, so their undercoats must be well developed for the winter already.

As I write this, it’s -13C/9F, and that’s as cold as we’re supposed to get, including overnight lows, for at least the next 10 days. In fact, the forecast has changed to predict even milder temperatures than before!

Not only are they now predicting three days with highs of 0C/32F, but we’re looking at 3C/37F a week from now! The last time I saw temperatures that high was in the long range forecast, in December.

Of course, it depends on which app I look at. Another app I have shows the first two of those 0C days as reaching 1C/34F, while another shows two days at 0C, then lower temperatures than in the image, though the Saturday is still supposed to be above freezing. All of them are predicting conditions well within average, though.

There is a saying, that a man with two watches, never knows the time. It’s much the same having multiple weather apps! Each company is linked to different data sources, so while one of them might be linked to data from the weather station at the nearest town to the west of us (one that is much closer to the lake, where conditions can be very different from where we are) another might be linked with a station to the north of us (which would probably be the one with conditions closest to what we get here, even though that station would be further away than the others), and yet another might be linked to a station to the south of us.

Well, at least between them all, it gives us a general idea of what to expect. I had been hoping that we might have the roofers coming out during that warm spell we’re supposed to get, but now I’m not so sure. My brother wanted to be here while they are here, and he’s the one that has Power of Attorney for our mother, to make sure they get paid – something my mother would have difficulty understanding how to do anymore. However, he and his wife are currently out of province due to a medical emergency. I got a call from them while they were still on the road, but they should have arrived by now. Hopefully, all will go well, and they will be coming home soon, but I know that they will want to stay there as long as possible, to be able to help. There is going to be a long road to recovery involved. My SIL might be able to stay longer, at least, as she is now officially retired, but not my brother. We are definitely keeping them all in our prayers right now! At least the roads should be good and they should have safe driving.

With my husband’s health, we are well aware of how suddenly everything can be turned upside down. All it takes is a moment. A car accident. A trip and fall. A heart attack or stroke. A bad reaction to medication. One moment, you’re able bodied and doing fine. The next… you’re not. A friend of mine in the disabled community has a term she uses for those who aren’t disabled: TABs. Temporarily Able Bodied. She says it tongue in cheek, but really, she’s right. At some point, we’re all going to start having issues, even if is just from getting old and the body wearing out. Not something we tend to think about while in our prime. For us, after all we’ve been through, we now work on the assumption at, at some point, we’re going to be dealing with stuff like this even more than we are now. So when we plan things like garden beds, or chicken coops, or repairing/replacing sidewalks and doorways, accessibility and mobility needs are part of the plan. I mean, yeah, I can slap together a perfectly functional chicken coop rather quickly, but what good is that, if we don’t have the mobility to get in and clean it? It takes longer to get things done, but at least when they do get done, it’ll be with “age in place” and future mobility needs in mind.

This house will never be fully accessible, though, which is why our long term plans include the possibility of building a smaller, fully accessible, house for my husband and I, while also acknowledging that at some point, we might simply not be able to live here anymore. We may have to move into a place like where my mother lives – but even her building is not fully accessible! They dropped the ball when designing that place, that’s for sure.

I’m digressing, to be sure, and yet this is all very much a part of things we have to think about. What we do with this place now is setting up for the future, for when our daughters will take over and, eventually, my nephew’s sons inherit the property. But even that isn’t written in stone.

Nothing ever is, is it?

The Re-Farmer

Tiny fruit!

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Look at the itty bitty fruit I found in the mock orange this morning!

He was not impressed with my shoveling the paths after doing the food and water!

Also, it is confirmed that he’s a he. I was able to pluck him out of the tree and cuddle him for a bit, and finally got a chance to check.

We are all sort of dancing around when we will be bringing him inside. He is so tiny, it’s actually startling to come out with the kibble in the mornings and see him there in the snow, so small he looks like something one of the older kittens coughed up rather than another kitten!

We want to leave him with his mother as long as possible, or at least with whichever of the mamas is nursing him. So far, I’ve only seen Junk Pile nursing him with her own kittens, once – and I haven’t seen her nursing even her own kittens since! So it’s entirely possible that he’s on his own, weaned early, and getting only the food and water we’re providing. However, we can’t be sure of that.

So when do we bring him in? We have one cold day coming up, with a high of -11C/12F, in a couple of days, then it’s going to warm up quite a bit after that. We definitely want to bring him in before the winter temperatures really kick in. So far he doesn’t seem to be having any trouble with the temperatures we have now, and seems quite happy to run around and play in the snow. If I look at the long range forecasts, including those that extent to January, we are looking at a very mild December but, of course, the further ahead the forecast, the less accurate it is, so who knows right now.

Do we assume his mother has weaned him and bring him in now? Or do we give him a couple more weeks, to be sure?

Well, we’ll probably made that decision in the next couple of days, before we get that one day cold snap that’s been forecast.

In other things, my younger daughter and I headed out today. I was originally planning to go to the nearest Walmart, but my daughters had their own shopping list for the international grocery store, so we hit the city, instead, where we could do both very handily. Mostly, I needed to pick up more kibble. The difference in price on that alone makes it worth the cost of gas to go into the city. I was able to get 10kg bags for just over $25 each. Locally, the biggest bags they carry are 7.5kg or 8kg bags, and they cost almost $35 each – if they even have them in stock.

Of course, we picked up a few other things while we were there, then headed to the international grocery store for my daughter’s shopping. They have take out food, too, so we picked up some steamed dumplings in a dim sum combo for the drive home. I was leery of doing that, as the last time I got dim sum there, not only was the service terrible, but the dim sum was way over cooked and tasted horrible. I’m happy to say, I had no problems at all this time. Service was immediate and, oh my goodness, did those dumplings ever hit the spot!

Things like this are the treats we allow ourselves to make up for creeping out of our hermitage, making the drive to the city, and putting up with other humans. 😉

Once at home, I backed into the yard to unload. We used my mother’s car today, and one of the snow piles I made from clearing around the cat shelters was almost too deep for it! 😂 I think maybe tomorrow, I’ll shovel out a lane for driving into the yard and backing up to the house. May as well do that while the snow is light!

Once everything was unloaded, we gave the cats their evening feeding as much to get them away from the car, and out of the sun room, as anything else. After I finished parking the car in the garage, my daughter was still trying to get one last kitten out of the sun room! I never saw the bitty baby while we were doing all this, though. Which may be a good thing. Now that we’re all pretty much in agreement about bringing the bitty in (which will bring the number of indoor cats up to 15), it’s hard not to just up and grab him! But more time with the mamas is better for him right now.

Must.

Resist.

The bitty!

The Re-Farmer