our cats are crazy

Yikes, Tissue! What’s gotten into you?

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But first, let’s take a moment to admire this handsome boy.

This one will sometimes let us pet him, and it more tolerant of us coming close in general.

Which makes sense for a semi-feral cat.

You’d think it would be different with a house cat.

This morning, I started getting some rather frantic messages from the Cat Lady. It seems Tissue has been acting full-on feral! She’s been hissing at them and even attacking, and so stressed out, she’s been panting and drooling. So I was asked if I could pick up Tissue straight from the vet today, because they were afraid she would harm herself during the recovery period.

Of course, I said yes.

Then I got more wild messages, and things got really crazy!

In a nutshell, they got her in the carrier and were loading her into their vehicle to take her to the vet, along with the littles (who are apparently right as rain), when she ripped the door off the carrier and escaped into their garage.

Yeah.

Ripped the door off.

That carrier had a crack at one corner, but still! The whole thing came apart.

So, as of right now, Tissue is still somewhere in their garage – which is in the middle of renovations! The Cat Lady is so worried she might hurt herself on something. They’ve set up a trap to try and get her.

They took a different vehicle to take the littles to the vet, so they wouldn’t have to open the garage, and gave the renovators the day off. Their kids continued to try and find her while the littles were dropped off at the vet. The vet gave the Cat Lady until noon to bring Tissue in. After that, it’s just too late to do the spay.

I’m just amazed by Tissue’s behaviour. I know she didn’t like being in the carrier when I brought her to the cat lady – she was upset enough that by the time we got there, she’d thrown up in the carrier. Still, even that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Even after we snagged her and brought her inside, she never behaved like this. However, she’s also never been out of the house since then, and hasn’t really been around other people. When we have company, she is one of the cats that heads upstairs and waits until they are gone. This is a cat that loves to cuddle with my daughters, and sleeps with my younger daughter at night. During the day, she likes to sleep on my husband’s hospital bed, and will often demand attention from him, too. I don’t see her as much, since I have to keep my door closed, and she’s not one of the cats that has any interest in checking out the new additions.

It’s just crazy! I feel so bad for the Cat Lady. She’s so worried Tissue might hurt herself!

Well, whether she gets fixed or not, we’ll bring her home. It’s just a matter of how and when that will happen!

What a morning!

The Re-Farmer

Bitty Baby update, and… that’s a new one!

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The bitty baby seems to have developed a bit of a routine. After I’ve put the kibble out, I check inside the entry to the cats’ house, and usually see the bitty at the kibble, with one or two other kittens. Then I do my rounds and when I come back, I’ve been finding the bitty here.

He’s come out for some water, and taking a break.

The poor thing’s eyes are so gooby right now. The inner eyelids no longer look red and inflamed, so they no longer look like they’re bleeding, but now the eyes tend to be more stuck shut. I’ll have to get the girls to go out later in the day and give the eyes a good cleaning.

I was able to pick it up for some cuddles. It definitely didn’t like being picked up, but doesn’t fight me off anymore, either. After some cuddles, I put it down inside the entry, where it’s warmer. We got a mix of snow and rain last night, and while doing my rounds I saw snow still on the ground in the more shaded areas.

He is so incredibly tiny for this time of year, but I had a reminder that this is not the first time we’ve had such tiny kittens so late in the year. In fact, we had one show up even later. I popped onto Facebook while uploading pictures, and got one of those “X years ago today” things. It was a video of Dah Boy, who moved out here with us from the city. We had two stray cats show up on our balcony, having climbed the fire escape stairs to peek at us through the living room window. They were starving, so we started putting food out. One of them had a collar, and both were very friendly, wanting human attention as much as food and water! Then one day, the collar was gone and we could see a sore around the neck; the cat had been on its own since a much younger age, and outgrown the collar. We were able to take them to a vet to check for microchips, but there were none – and the one with the collar turned out to be a pregnant female. We tried to make a nest for her using a carrier we had, but when she disappeared for a while, we figured she had her kittens somewhere else. Soon after, we were able to put a patio table on the balcony, over the carrier, with a vinyl table cloth covering the space. That turned out to be what she needed. Somehow, that mama managed to drag her one kitten from wherever she had her litter, up two flights of stairs and a landing in between, under the gate onto our balcony, and into the carrier.

What a mama!

We already had two cats – the limit for where we were living – but we got permission to bring the mama and baby in. It was November, after all, and there was no way that baby would survive the winter without help. He was even younger than our bitty baby is right now! Once he was old enough to wean, we were able to adopt the mother out. A year later, she showed up on our balcony again! Pregnant again, but that’s another story. In the end, we found ourselves with Mom and Son (over time, our other two cats passed away), and they moved out here with us.

Dah Boy is now eleven years old.

Wow.

Which gives me hope for the bitty baby.

The bitty might be just tolerating attention so far, but the fully socialized cats are something else. Especially Plushy! Once she decided humans were good for something, now she won’t leave us alone.

Also, apparently I’m a tree.

The three of them were fighting for real estate when Plushy decided to take that open spot on the top of my head! This is a first!

Also, apparently my face is delicious. All three of them kept trying to like my face. Especially my nose! It is a rather large nose, so I guess it’s just easy to reach. 😉

Well, it looks like we’ve reached our high of the day already. 3C/37F. I’d better head outside and get some of the more temperature dependant stuff done!

The Re-Farmer

Of course…

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I recently crocheted pairs of fingerless gloves for my daughters, to help keep their hands warm while at their keyboards upstairs – the little ceramic heaters my husband got for them do keep things warm up there, but fingers still get chilled! Especially my older daughter’s drawing hand.

That left me with a few little balls of leftover yarn. I had a few things in mind to possibly make with them, so I kept them in a bag of yarn I keep by my office chair.

Tissue discovered them.

For nearly two weeks now, I’ve been finding them all over. I’ve followed trails of yarn down to the basement. I’ve unwound yarn from around the dining table and chairs. I’ve had to untangle them from the wheels of my office chair. I’ve discovered yarn barfs in cat hair dust bunnies the size of Alberta. I’ve repeatedly had to untangle the yarn and rewind the balls. Any potential projects I had in mind went out the window, as there was just no way to get all the cat hair out of them.

While Tissue has been the one so dedicated to pulling out these balls of yarn, no matter how covered or hidden they were, once the yarn was out, there was usually several other cats involved in the destruction by the time I find them.

I couldn’t let the yarn go to waste, so I figured, what the heck. They want the yarn that badly, I’ll make a mat for them and they can have it. It’s not like it can be used for anything else than cat toys, now!

While I was working, I had the two balls of yarn at my feet while stitching and watching a video on my computer. Part way through, my husband wanted to look up some information about my video card, so I put the mat aside by my keyboard and stepped away for a bit. There was just a couple of minutes in between my husband leaving my computer, and my returning to it. In that time, I found I had to unwind the red yarn from the wheels of my office chair again, and both strands had been chewed through. I had to knot them together to be able to continue. Which I normally wouldn’t do with crochet, but it’s for the cats, and they don’t care if there are knots.

I finished off the leftover yarn and gave the cats their new mat.

Which they are now completely ignoring.

I have made a number of mats and cat beds for them. Usually, the moment the item hits the floor, there’s a cat on it, checking it out. I’ve never made one out of yarn they’ve been so eager to steal and play with before.

Not one came over the check this one out. Not even to sniff at it.

Because, of course.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

The crazy and the calm

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Heading down to visit the kitties was certainly a wild and crazy ride, this morning!

The kittens were waiting for me.

First, I had to shoo away the cats from the door in the entryway. Then, when I opened it, Beep Beep was ready to rush through, which would have been fine, except Leyendecker dashed through, too. Turmeric was at the top of the stairs, too. She was just a bit more hesitant about actually going through, so I was able to keep her at bay.

Leyendecker managed to get through the door three times before I could finally close it. Meanwhile, Beep Beep had run back down, with David and Two Face making a dash for it, too. By this time, all of the kittens were on the stairs, and with the door closed, they decided my feet and legs were fair game.

They continued to attack my feet, jump up my legs, and try and eat my shoelaces, as I very, VERY carefully made my way around.

Once I started taking care of the food and water, they started to get distracted by other things, thankfully.

Not one stayed still long enough to get a decent picture! :-D

I was eventually able to get all the adult cats upstairs, which meant I could give the kittens some wet cat food, and they’d actually get some!

By the time I was done, I was more than ready for the relative calm of doing my rounds outside.

I just had to deal with hordes of mosquitoes. Which was an improvement. !!

Checking the garden plots, it looks like more cat damage to the one plot of carrots. We won’t be getting a lot of rainbow carrots this time around. :-(

The grape vine I accidentally clipped is starting to look at bit droopy, higher up, but the lower leaves still seem quite strong and healthy. Fingers crossed that it will survive.

While walking around the spruce grove, switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, has been interesting. I didn’t do a lot of clean up here, yet. Mostly, I just focused on clearing the fence itself.

The improved like has resulted in all kinds of things popping up.

These are Saskatoon berries, and there are SO MANY little tiny bushes growing, all over the place.

I will be keeping an eye on these new ones. When I was cleaning up, a lot of the larger ones were not looking very healthy. The drought certainly didn’t help. We do plan to buy Saskatoon bushes at some point, and plan out where to put them, but if these are strong and healthy, we might end up also transplanting some of these to better locations.

I had cut back the wild roses along with all the other undergrowth, quite a bit as we cleaned things up. I know they will grow back, so I’m not too worried about them. After we’ve cleaned things out, the wild roses and the dogwood are the two things I want to encourage as undergrowth in some areas.

Even with what little clearing we’ve done so far, we’re already getting more wildflowers.

There are a few of these Lily of the Valley, scattered about, in between another one with sprays of white, star-like blossoms. My attempt at getting a photo failed, though.

The goal for the spruce grove is to open it up, get rid of the dead trees, plant some new spruces to replace some of them, have paths we can walk through, with grass or moss, areas of wild roses and dogwood, and lots of wildflowers. Here and there, I’m planning to put various types of seating around. Not boards nailed to logs, like I’ve been finding all over! Those don’t do well, over time.

But first, it needs to be cleaned out, and that’s going to involve a lot of hard physical labour!

And chainsaws. Definitely chainsaws. There are some pretty big trees that need to be cleared out of there.

I probably won’t be back at that today, though. It’s cooler, if not any less humid, and still insane with mosquitoes, but my husband is encouraging me to take a day off, and give my wrist more time to recover. The problem is, it feels pretty good. Right up until I start using it. I shouldn’t need two hands to pick up a glass to take a drink. :-/ His concern is that I’ll just keep re-injuring it. He has a point. We are both notorious for that sort of thing. I just hate wasting the time. :-(

We shall see how it goes.

The Re-Farmer

Destructive cats, and a winter tree casualty

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So… that didn’t take long.

In re-arranging the living room, the girls and I also moved around the plants. The living room is the only space we have for our bigger plants – and some have gotten very big since we’ve moved out here! – so it’s a bit of a challenge.

One of the things we have a lot of is jade plants. The jade plant that we thought might not survive the move is now a massive, healthy beast of the tree. We also have lots and lots of aloe vera. I knew that aloe propagates itself easily, but I didn’t realize how easily jade plants do as well. It turns out any leaf that breaks off can grow into a new plant.

Leaves break off easily. Especially with our cats. They keep trying to get into the pots, lying in the dirt, and generally wrecking havoc. I recently ended up using the extra legs of the plastic utility shelf we got as supports for the big one, because it was almost completely flattened. (As a bonus, because these are tubes, I can now water the plant through the tops.) This is not a good thing, since jade plants are poisonous to cats.

One of the treats I’ve started to get at Costco are these large plastic containers of Cheese Balls. I’ve been keeping the containers because I thought they’d make great cloche coverings in the garden at some point. When the cats were determined to use one of the plant pots as a bed, mashing the jade plant flat, I put one of these over the plant to protect it. It worked well, but when we arranged things, I figured the plant was big enough to not need it any more and took it off.

Well… they did leave that one alone.

Another smaller one, not so much. The pot was knocked over, the poor little jade plant was on the carpet, and there was soil all over.

I’m glad we thought to put that plastic over the shelves to protect their tops!

I put the soil back and replanted the jade plant. It should actually survive this, but we’ll see. Meanwhile, this and another pot are small enough that I cut the tops off of two of those plastic containers, so that they are not straight sided, and they can completely cover the pots and their plants, with room to grow.

This morning, I ended up using the cut off tops to put over a couple more plants that showed signs of cats bashing their way through them.

Meanwhile, while doing my rounds this morning, I remember to check on the pair of trees my mother planted right against the chain link fence. One of them had looked like it was dead, but I wasn’t up to slogging through the snow to check it. The snow is mostly gone now, so…

Yeah, that is one very dead tree. Both of these were fine in the fall.

I had wanted to transplant them away from the fence, but my mother demanded they stay right where they are. When I pointed out that they would eventually grow big enough to damage the fence, and were too close together, she said they were exactly where she wanted them to be, and she didn’t care if they damaged the fence.

Now that one of them has died, knowing my mother, she’s probably going to think I killed it because I didn’t want them there.

Ah, well. I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

One of the things that has really hit home for me as we’ve been cleaning up around the yards, is how incredibly important it is to think years ahead when planting trees. We intend to plant many, many trees, with a focus on food trees, and this gives us an opportunity to learn from what my parents did 10, 20, even 40 years ago.

The Re-Farmer

You WILL pay attention to me, says the cat

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Walking around the yard in the mornings, it’s not usual for me to have a cat or two, following me along.  This morning was no exception.

Butterscotch, however, was much more demanding of attention than usual!  Especially when I stopped to try and get some photos.

I did manage to get a couple photos of lichen on some trees that were worth posting.

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I just love those textures.

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Even when I was a kid, I was fascinated by the look of lichen!

When I started walking around, Butterscotch was her usual self.  Dashing around my feet, trying to trip me, then running ahead.

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When I paused for a few moments, she started rolling in the dirt, being thoroughly entertaining.

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The Outsider followed along for a bit, though when he got close to Butterscotch, she started to hiss and bat at him.

Even Rosencrantz or Guildenstern started to follow along, though he hid behind a crab apple tree, when I tried to get a picture.

As I continued along between the spruce grove and the apple trees by the garden, Butterscotch got more insistent.

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Yeah. She started climbing the back of my leg, too.

I ended up picking her up and carrying her for a while.

Her little feet were damp and cold.  Maybe that’s why she wanted up?

While I stopped to get photos of tree bark, this happened.

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That is a very trusting cat.  If I so much as leaned backwards, down she would have went!

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Look at her twisting and turning!

Look at that expression on her face. :-D

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Then she decided to eat the bottom of my zipper.

Silly kitty!

The Re-Farmer

See my toe beans?

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We have had a house guest for the past week and a half, which made for some creative sleeping arrangements that involved our king size mattress on the dining room floor.  We drove her to the airport in the wee hours of the morning, which meant we could clear it out again.  We won’t be able to lean the mattress against the dining room wall, as we had before, though, as we will be having guests tomorrow, and need to get it out.

For now, it’s leaning against the wall in the hallway.

The inside cats are loving it there as much as they loved it in the dining room.

Especially our mama cat.

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She was rolling around up there in pure ecstasy.  It’s better than cat nip!  She paused in her rolling just long enough to show off some toe beans. :-D

She’s so funny!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s Critters

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Not a lot of photos today, as I made it in to church at the next town – the church of my childhood this time.

I don’t know that I’ll be going back.  I’m not surprised that things have changed after all these years, but some of it came off as rather creepy – and that was just with the announcements before service even started!  The weird birthday blessing with outreached hands is something I’ve never seen before, and the community greeting before service started, where everyone was expected to go around shaking hands, was another new one for me.  It was enough to make ME uncomfortable, and I’m the sort of person who will happily greet strangers I’m introduced to with a hug and a kiss on each cheek.

It didn’t help that I could understand the priest half the time.  I have an auditory processing disorder, which means that while my hearing is fine, the message gets sometimes gets scrambled.  Sometimes I, literally, hear gibberish.  Other times, I get gaps.  I know words were spoken; I know my ears heard the sound, but it just didn’t make it to my brain.  Most of the time, I hear enough that I can figure out what I missed, but if there are visual distractions, strong accents, or if a person doesn’t enunciate clearly, it can be a struggle.  This priest seems to have an aversion to moving his mouth when speaking.  Between that and how the responses have changed since I went here as a kid, it made it difficult to follow the service.

I’m really hoping we won’t have to go to the city for church!

At least I should be able to go there to get our Easter baskets blessed.

Anyhow.  Back to the critters!

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First up, we have another cheeky blue jay with a seed in its mouth.

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The red squirrels were certainly enjoying the fact that the deer are too skittish to hang around.  Doesn’t this one look like the most polite little gentleman? :-D

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The Beep Beep came by and plunked himself into a pile of seeds, and for a while, only the brave little chickadees and redpolls were willing to dive bomb the seeds around him.

Shortly after I took this, I noticed he’d moved to another pile of seeds.

Except… there was something odd about the way he was sitting there.

Something very… tense…

That’s when I realized he wasn’t sitting at all.

He was taking a dump.

In the seeds.

Which he then buried with snow.

What a jerk!

Later on, the girls called to me from upstairs, telling me to get the camera and look at the top of the dead spruce tree.

I got this next shot from the second floor.

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That’s either Nasty Crime Boy or Trüllbus the Crime Eater.  Just hanging out, enjoying the view! :-D

Unlike Butterscotch, he had no issues getting back down again!

Too funny!

The Re-Farmer

I have floor space!

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After much procrastinating, I had a chance to work on unpacking stuff in the office today.

With one large bin, I unpacked a only few things, but the rest of the items in it are van stuff, so that went out to join the growing stack of boxes along the wall in the dining room that need to be either put into storage or otherwise dealt with elsewhere.

I unpacked another medium bin, two small boxes of books and office stuff (I found my notebook with my passwords!  Yay!), and a medium box of crafting materials.  My crafting table is chaos, but at least the stuff is out and accessible. (Beads! Findings!  Glue guns! Yarn! Office supplies! … … … Stuff!)  Another small box of books got moved to another room for later unpacking there.  I was able to re-arrange things in the process, having cleared out some space on my storage shelf, giving me room for bins of inventory and supplies.

I’m nowhere near done, but the end result is…

More floor space!

I can actually back up my office chair and not bash into the bins that were behind me before.  It’s amazing how much bigger this tiny room feels now!

Also…

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Bin Cat.

This happened.

After I removed the last items from the bin and took them to the room they belonged in, I came back to find DaBoy had hopped in.  He loves to go into boxes and bins and hard sided reusable grocery bags, and just sit there.

I wanted to move the bin out, so I popped the flap lids over him and carried him out with it.  I put it on top of the bin of van stuff and let the girls know that the bin was now available for any use it might be wanted for, as I opened the flaps.  Of course, they got a giggle out of my special delivery, as this furry head popped out.

I figured he’d leave after that, but nope.  He ended up sitting there, just as he is in the photo above, for probably an hour.

He’s such a chill dude.

The Re-Farmer

Crochet Buddy

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Our younger daughter has been working on a crocodile stitch shawl for some time now.  She has set up her own crochet corner on the second floor.

DaBoy likes to keep her company.

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He is so tolerant.  She draped an end over him, and he just stayed there.

Also, he likes this yarn.  He keeps trying to eat it.

The Re-Farmer