We had some maintenance related issues that prevented me from posting an update as soon as we got home, so I figured I’d just cut to the chase with the title!
We were not able to catch Broccoli, though.
She and Caramel just did not want to leave the cat’s house, even when I started scraping ice and snow off the roof – a noise that usually sends them running.
She did eventually come out just as we were heading to the van with Tuxedo Mask (with a delay I will write about in my next post). We tried again to get her, but she just would not let it happen.
On the plus side, her eye looked much, much improved since this morning, so that’s encouraging.
Even with the delay, we got to the vet early, which gave me time to pop across the street to a hardware store. My daughter went in with Tuxedo Mask.
It’s basically a herpes infection. He was coughing a bit, too, which would also be from herpes. She prescribed eye drops for him. She legally could not prescribe extra for Broccoli, though. Anyhow, he is to get the eye drops twice a day for a week longer than when his eye clears up. Considering that his eye was looking dramatically better by the time we took him to the vet, that should not be too long. And if we happen to be able to catch Broccoli and be able to hold her, well, it’s up to us if we happen to give her eye drops, too!
Honestly, I don’t see that happening.
Once we got home and were let into the house – more on that later! – we set up a nest for Tuxedo Mask in the sun room, along with the extra ceramic heat bulb, similar to how we set things up for Ginger. He will stay in the sun room, where we can easily catch him to treat his eye, until it’s no longer needed, and then we can let him outside again. We were warned to watch out if the eye starts to get cloudy, though, and if it does, to bring him right back.
Considering he’s already recovering, I think that will not be a concern.
On top of all that, the cost of the visit and the prescription was way less than I feared. I keep wildly overestimating how much things will cost, but he didn’t need any Xrays or anything like that, so there weren’t any add on’s to his exam. Just the prescription. Such a relief!
Getting to and from the sun room to treat his eye might be a challenge over the next while, though, depending on how we manage things tonight.
When heading out this morning, I made extra effort to take a closer look at Tuxedo Mask’s red eye.
He even let me pet him, while he was in the kibble house!
The eye is still really gross and leaky, but looking a lot better than yesterday.
Then I saw Broccoli.
Who also has a red, leaking eye.
*sigh*
I was able to get some decent photos, though. Once back inside, I called up the vet, then later emailed them a couple of photos.
I got a response, and they have an opening for us this afternoon, if we could bring them in. My younger daughter and I went out and we were able to bring Tuxedo Mask into the sun room. He remains there now, with the cat carrier, food, water and litter.
No luck with Broccoli, though.
She was in the cats’ house, watching me through the window, but would NOT come out. Not even for treats. She was bundled up with two other cats.
One of which also had a leaky eye.
*sigh*
It turned out to be Caramel. Her eye wasn’t red, though, so at least there’s that. We have more chance of catching Broccoli than Caramel. We’re going to keep trying, but I really don’t expect we’ll be able to get her.
I have, however, let the vet know we can bring in at least one cat, though.
I suppose this is a good time to promote the donation button! If you would like to donate towards the care and feeding of the kitties, you can buy us a Kofi. All donations are for the cats only, and any amount is greatly appreciated.
I will update on how the vet visit went as soon as I can!
This is a picture of part of the lettering on our new sign that I noticed when I was switching the memory card on the trail cam. The paint on several letters is peeling away!
My guess is that the reflective paint on top of the white affected the ability for the blue paint to adhere properly.
I’ll find a way to tack it back on until we can spray the whole thing with a clear coat. Unfortunately, that won’t happen until spring, since it’s too cold for paint to cure.
When I got back to the house, I spotted something rather concerning. One of Tuxedo Mask’s eyes is blood red!
No, I did not get a picture, and if I did, I would not post it!
It looks really gross. It doesn’t seem to be bothering him a lot, but that doesn’t mean much. Ginger had a shattered joint and it barely slowed him down, even as he had to wait for the surgery. The main thing is that he does still seem to be able to see out of it.
My younger daughter and I did our city shopping trip, and when we got back, it didn’t look any better. We need to get him to a vet, but we just finished paying for our StarLink system, so the larder is bare. At least I thought it was until I read my email. I got word from the ranch we’d ordered our quarter beef from. The finished weight turned out to be less than expected (considering how terrible the drought was on cattle, that does not surprise me), so they actually owe me money. The cuts will be ready around the 20th or 21st.
That frees up part of our budget.
We should be able to take Tuxedo Mask to a vet.
If we can catch him! He does let us pet him once in a while, but that’s very different from trying to get him into a cat carrier!
We’ll figure it out. We can call the vet tomorrow morning and see if we can bring him in right away.
Poor little Tuxedo Mask! His eye looks just awful. :-(
It’s been difficult to get a really good picture of the new addition to our outside cats, but my daughter managed to get one with the DSLR outside our living room window a while back.
The Distinguished Guest is such a beauty! Here, just looks like she’s all black, but she has a white blaze on her chest, making her more like a tuxedo.
She is still with us, though I haven’t seen her yet, today. In fact, I haven’t seen any of the outside cats. I had a rough night last night, so my husband was sweet enough to take care of the critter feeding this morning. I’m even postponing the city shopping trip to tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll actually get some sleep tonight. We’ve brought the storage bins of Christmas decorations up, and the inside cats are having a blast exploring the new smalls and knocking things over.
One thing about feeding so many yard cats. Especially in the winter.
Sometimes, they make you feel really, really loved and appreciated!
In between trying to chomp my fingers. :-D
Butterscotch in particular likes to strrreeetttcchhh out for pets. Or stand in her back legs.
She’s so sweet, when she’s not vicious and mean! :-D
I had a small addition to my morning rounds, and that was to check on the van. I have a habit of leaving really, really early for things, and yesterday was one of those days that got me into that habit. I was just about to leave for my course, and the van wouldn’t start.
The battery was dead.
I don’t know why. It was working fine on Friday.
Well, my husband was a sweetheart and put it on the charger while I too my mother’s car to my course.
Having to pay expenses for two vehicles may be hard on the budget. Especially when one of those vehicles isn’t really mine, but out here, having a “spare” is pretty necessary. It’s not like we could just hop on a bus or take a taxi or something!
This morning, I made sure to start the van and check the battery level, and it was just fine.
Which is great, but it’s still a mystery that the battery would suddenly die like that.
Depending on how things go, I’ll be making our city shopping trip in the next day or two. We’re actually supposed go above freezing again, in a couple of days. It’ll be messy, but I prefer that to making these trips during a deep freeze.
Which, thankfully, is not on the horizon. The long range forecast are showing December will start to get colder at about the middle of the month, but even then, it’ll still be pretty mild for this time of year.
Still holding out hope that The Farmer’s Almanac will the the accurate one in predicting a mild wet winter for our area, and not the other long range forecasts I saw that predicted another severely cold winter. Either way, though, we plan to be prepared!
Including prepared to keep the outside cats warm and well fed. <3
Rolando Moon followed me around while I did my rounds.
She even let me pet her a bit, before trying to chomp my hand.
She is so mean. :-D
It’s a good thing we were doing a shop today, because we ran out of bird seed yesterday, and used the last of our dry kibble for the outside cats this morning!
Normally we would have gone to the city to do our Costco shopping today, but our budget got a bit switched, so it was a smaller Walmart trip at the smaller, nearer, city. The electric company changed the dates to report our meter reading, which meant the due date changed, too. Normally, we can pay all our utilities when my husband’s disability payment comes in on the last business day of the month; that would be the one with his private health insurance that we live on. He also gets CPP Disability from the government, which is a top up of sorts, on the third last business day of the month. That allows us to do the bulk of our shopping a few days before the end of the month. This time, however, we had to make our electric payment out of it, and it was a few days late. We haven’t had a late payment on any bill since we’ve moved here! Thankfully, though, I was able to get explain our situation to the electric company and they were able to change it for us, so this will be the only month where it is an issue. Still, it left us with only about a third of our budget for this trip.
Which is okay. We’ll just do the big trip next week.
We had another change to our budget this month. We signed up for StarLink quite a few months ago. The initial down payment was made and we were just waiting for the service to go live in our area. Once that happened, they would send us an email to let us know before taking the rest of the funds out of the account. That would give us time to transfer the funds from our savings account to cover the bill.
Last night, my husband showed me an email from them, saying they’d tried and failed to make the payment.
!!!
It took a while, but my husband eventually found several emails from them, in his spam folder. Not only did they send as an email in advance, but they had tried to take the payment out a couple of times already!
Thankfully, today my husband was able to make the payment manually. Which means the equipment will soon be mailed out to us. He did have to update our address to our driveway marker number, because they didn’t consider a box number a valid address. Which is silly. There are plenty of people in rural communities that don’t get mail delivery. Considering rural internet is the whole point of what StarLink is doing here, you’d think they’d clue in.
No matter. With the shortage of computer chips delaying their roll out by months, if not years, we weren’t sure when we’d get our system. Thankfully, we signed up long enough ago that we are still high on the list.
The only down side is, even once the equipment gets here, we may not be able to install it. There is an app that will help us locate the strongest signal from our roof, and that’s where the dish will be installed.
There isn’t a massive amount of snow on the roof – the girls would have gone out to shovel it, if there was – but there is enough snow to make it dangerous to go out there, while lugging around the parts and pieces of a satellite dish and tools!
No matter. It’ll get here when it gets here. It’s still in beta, so once we do have it set up and running, we will close the larger of our two satellite accounts but leave the second one as a back up, just in case something goes wrong. After about a month, we’ll see about closing the second account. Just closing the one account, while paying for the new StarLink account, will save us about a hundred dollars a month. If it works as promised, we should have more reliable internet, with no data limits. Our current service keeps going up in price, but connectivity has been getting worse. Meanwhile, if we go over our data limit, the cost per gig is double. The StarLink satellite signals shouldn’t be affected by weather to the south of us, the way our current service is.
Once we get to the point where we have just the one, new account running, it should save us at least a couple hundred dollars per month, and with the way the price of basics, like food and fuel, are rising, that will be a big help. Plus, with more reliable service and no data limits, I’ll be able to do things like participate in Zoom calls and meetings that I’ve had to skip. I tried doing a Zoom call with my brother once, and it was barely functional!
So that is good news. :-)
My husband was able to take care of that while I was doing the shopping. We haven’t been able to clear enough or the yard to drive up to the house, though, so I had to pull up as close to the gate as I could. Thankfully, it all fit in the wagon we’ve found so handy, though it was heavy enough that the wheels were sinking in the packed snow of the driveway!
As soon as everything was unloaded, I fed the outside cats again while the girls put stuff away. You’d think they hadn’t been fed this morning at all, the way the little buggers were begging! After taking a couple of kibble bags into the house for the inside cats, I came out to get the last two bags for the outside cats, and found a cat in the wagon, looking ready to tear one of the bags open, right then and there!
Once all that was taken care of, I headed out again to the post office, where I also picked up a bag of deer feed this time, instead of the black oil seed I get in the summer. I was also able to refill the suet feeder. I’ll have to pick up more deer feed next time; for the past couple of winters, we went through about a bag of deer feed a week, but with the extended fall we had, and the current mild temperatures, the deer aren’t in as much need for supplemental feeding just yet.
While going back and forth, I usually have several of the adult cats following me around. Among the kittens, it’s been Nosencrantz and Agnoos – until now! This handsome boy has joined the party of cats determined to get stepped on and tripped over! :-D
More importantly, he lets me pet him regularly now! He even lets me pet his belly while he’s rolling around on the ground, though he does look awfully confused when I do! :-D
I just love those golden eyes!
I’m settling on this one being Chadicous. Aside from Bradicous, with his distinctive white tail tip, we’ll have to settle on which is which for the other ‘icsouses. :-D One has a distinctive black mark on its nose, while another has a lot more white on his hind legs. There’s still a third one that doesn’t stay still long enough for us to spot any distinguishing features.
I’m happy to say we are now good for the next while; it was mostly critter food we were running low on or out off, but we’ll be good until we can do the rest of the shopping next week. After that, we will be avoiding shopping as much as possible! I expect one last trip to the city in the middle of the month, then not again until after Christmas and New Years, at the earliest. Hopefully, the weather will remain mild, but if we end up in a deep freeze or snowed in again, we should be stocked up for a couple of months by then, if necessary. Especially once that quarter beef we ordered is ready!
I really look forward to when we are at the point of self-sufficiency where these trips to the city are just for topping up, not a major necessity as they are now.
Potato Beetle is looking downright malevolent! :-D
It was a very chilly morning today, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed down the cats, any! I tried to do a head count, but never got the same number twice, as they milled about, so I gave up. :-D
We had a first, yesterday evening, though I was not able to get a photo. While it was clear that deer have been visiting our feeding station for a while, yesterday was the first time I actually saw any.
I saw one out the window, but it saw me moving about through the glass and soon left. A moment later, I saw another – and a second one beside it! I’d hung a sunflower stem, with about 5 little seed heads, off the hook that should be holding a bird feeder (we never did find the missing pieces). One of the deer discovered it and started reaching up to nibble on a tiny seed head, breaking off the branch. The other deer promptly went after a leaf on the branch, breaking the stem from out of the deer’s mouth! The first deer went after the rest of the sunflower branch and pulled the whole thing down.
There was no trace of it, this morning.
Meanwhile, a third deer showed up and hovered nearby. I think I even saw a fourth one coming through the trees. About then, the phone rang. It was the pharmacy delivery guy letting me know he was in the area, so I quickly started to bundle up to meet him at the gate – which is when I saw another deer come in through the little gate, walking up the sidewalk, towards the side of the house!
Of course, my going disturbed the deer. I saw the delivery car reaching the gate and, as I started up the driveway, a deer suddenly came FLYING over the south fence of the spruce grove, across the driveway, and over the fence into the old hay yard. It touched ground twice, maybe three times, over the distance. My goodness, when deer go all out, it’s like they have wings!
The delivery driver missed it entirely. He had been rummaging for our package in his back seat by then.
The delivery was a bit of a surprise. My husband had ordered more insulin, but he got a refill on is bubble packs, too. He still have at least a week’s worth, left. It used to be that, because some of his meds are restricted, he couldn’t order refills until he was within 3 days of running out. That restriction went away when the government started shutting things down, and now he’s able to get his medications refilled even when he hadn’t asked for them yet! They don’t even make the bubble packs locally, anymore. He’s the only one on those meds out here, so they had to special order them from the city. Now, his bubble packs are made in the city, and shipped to the pharmacy. I have no idea how they decided to do a refill for him so soon, when they hadn’t been asked for.
What fun. We can’t go into the pharmacy because they don’t recognise medical mask exemptions, but we can sure get our opiates in advance, whether we ordered a refill or not!
Looking at the bill was a head shaker. His bubble packs, with a 4 week supply of about 10 different medications in it, including some pretty rare ones, cost less than half what his one box of 4 slow-release insulin pens cost, and the box of insulin lasts for less than a month. I know this type of insulin is more expensive, but sheesh!!!
On a completely different topic, I got an email from our vandal’s lawyer yesterday. It seems our vandal is agreeable to the conditions we came up with during Case Management, and will be stating this in court tomorrow. Of course, it’s entirely possible he’ll change his mind at the last minute, but assuming he doesn’t, that means we will have a Peace Bond against him. For one year, we will have no contact with him, and he will not be allowed to be under the influence while off his own property (I don’t care if he gets drunk at home. I just don’t want him getting drunk, then coming over here to set fire to the house or something). I’m supposed to get a copy of the court order, so I’ll get the precise wording of it, then.
It’s just a piece of paper, but it’s a tool the RCMP will have, if our vandal ever does decide to do something stupid again.
Now we just have to deal with his civil suit against us. The court date for that is at the end of January. Hopefully, the judge will see just how stupid it is, and throw it out. Even if our vandal did have some sort of claim on the junk he thinks is his, it makes no sense for him to go after me for money, when I don’t own anything here!
We shall see how it goes.
Until then, I will enjoy caring for the yard cats, as my late father did. :-)
What a contented expression, as Rolando Moon enjoys her spot in the sun after breakfast!
I was able to do a head count this morning, and all 20 are accounted for! I even got to pet a few of them, as they rushed into the kibble house, including the Distinguished Guest.
The heated water bowl was almost completely empty when I got to it. A bit of frost on the inside showed that it is functioning properly, and shutting itself off when it’s not needed. This time, I filled it completely, rather than dividing the water between all the containers, so they will have liquid water for longer. Later today, I’ll come back out with more warm water and knock the ice out of the other containers, and maybe switch to using a couple for kibble, instead. There is more need to spread out the kibble than the water.
We got a fairly steep drop in the temperatures today. Yesterday, we actually reached 2C/36F, very briefly, which was a few degrees warmer than forecast. This morning, we are at -14C/7F, with a wind chill of -25C/-13F! Tonight, we are supposed to reach a low of -20C/-4F, but the wind chill is supposed to reach -29C/-20F. Which isn’t too bad for this time of year. The weird part is that on Saturday – just three days from now – we are supposed to reach -1C/30F, or possibly even 3C/37F, depending on which weather service I look at!
The outside cats have plenty of food, water and shelter, including the heated cat house, so they will be fine, either way. The younglings will learn from experienced cats like Rolando Moon, and enjoy their sheltered sun spots while they can!
Yesterday, my daughter and I opened up the cats’ house and set up the extension cord I found that is safe to use in there. The heated water bowl had been knocked over again, by the time we got out there, which meant the cats had no liquid water available. They hovered around us the entire time we worked, then when everything was set up and the bowls refilled, they came running! They were so thirsty. I made sure to put water in all the bowls, so more could get at water at the same time.
Then I topped up the kibble trays and even more cats came running! I counted 19. Only Ghost Baby was unseen.
Not this morning!
I counted 20 furry butts this morning! All are accounted for.
Also, the heated water bowl had just an inch or two of water in it when I came out this morning, and no ice. Awesome!
I decided to leave the chimney insert where it was. The cats like to climb up and sit on it, plus the little ones can even go inside it for extra shelter, if necessary.
While doing the rest of my rounds, I noticed deer tracks all over the yards around the house. In some areas, it seems they are checking out the different crab apple, and even the plum trees. There is no fruit on any of them for the deer to find, this winter.
They are even digging into the compost pile. I would not have expected them to try and eat the potato plants in there! Do deer normally try to eat things in the nightshade family???
You can see from the tracks that they’re walking right through the half-finished low raised bed. That one was left with a trench down the middle, where we will add more compostable scraps before the bed gets finished in the spring. That’s where most of the frost damaged aloe vera plants ended up, though there are kitchen scraps in it, too. The deer are not digging in this bed, though. Just walking through it! The garlic beds, at least, are being left alone.
I had an unfortunate surprise, though. While looking at the deer tracks in the trees at the south fence along the spruce grove, I saw them going past the little cedar tree we’d found, and the remains of the mulberry tree we’d planted in the spring (only for it to get killed by that one cold night in May that is also why we had no crab apples, plums, chokecherries or Saskatoons this year). I’d asked my mother about the cedar tree, and she knew nothing about it, so I don’t know who planted it there or when, but it had clearly been there at least few years longer than we have been living here.
This year, for some reason, the deer decided to eat it. The twigs and branches are completely stripped. Not only that, but it looks like they even ate the remains of the mulberry tree! We had left it alone, so it was still in between support stakes, but the deer still managed to get at it.
Even the pile of bush bean plants in the garden that was waiting to be buried in garden plots next spring has been dug into more. There doesn’t seem to be much left at all.
We’ve had such a long, mild fall and, even with the one blizzard we’ve had, things have still been very mild and there’s not a tremendous amount of snow, by any means. This early in the winter, there is still lots of food available for the deer that is easy for them to get at. We haven’t see the deer in our yard, just their tracks, but we do see them along the roads or the occasional trial cam file, and they are still quite plump and hearty looking.
So why are they acting like they are starving? And going for things like the cedar, which they completely ignored for years?
I suppose it’s possible the cedar will still survive and regrow in the spring, but it seems so strange that they would have gone for it now.
One thing is for sure. When we finally do start planting our fruit and nut trees and berry bushes, we’re going to have to make sure they are well protected from the deer!
Also, it gives us even more incentive to plant forage trees, beyond the outer yard, so the deer will have less reason to come after trees closer to the house.
My husband was able to bring food and water to the cats this morning. He found the heated water bowl had been knocked over again, even with the improved set up. Which means, of course, it is unplugged again. It’s just too close to the entrance of the cats’ house.
When I headed out later and went to put bird seed out, I found this handsome bird watching me!
Tuxedo Mask has such owl eyes, too! :-D
It’s rare, but he does sometimes let us touch him. More often, if I hold my hand out for him to sniff, he tentatively bats at it, instead. :-D This morning, however, I had a lovely surprise. Chadicous (I think) kept flopping onto the snow in front of my feet while I was trying to move around, pausing to pet Agnoos and Nutmeg. I’d reach out to Chadicous and he’d move away a few inches, before flopping on the ground again.
Then I got him!
Before he had a chance to move, I was able to start skritching his ears. Not only did he stay and let me keep skritching for a while, but he was actually purring!!!
Yes, progress!
As I continued my rounds, I went into the garage and did some digging. I found the extension cords we use to plug in our van, and the old one that used to be inside my mother’s car, to plug in the block heater, battery warmer and trickle charger, set up under the hood. Her old one got replaced because it was damaged, but I half remembered having an extra.
I was right. Not only did we have an extra cord that was only 8 ft long (still longer than I need, but better than the next size up we have, which is 30 feet!), but I could see no damage to it at all. I brought it to the house and asked my husband to check it for me while I finished my rounds, and he tested it out, too. It’s one of those that has a light in the female end to show if there is power on or not. It is in perfect working order, and has no damage.
Which means we have a suitable, safe extension cord we can set up inside the cats’ house, long enough that I can run it along the frame, away from the straw bedding and any gnawing teeth, up to the entry. We will then be able to reach the plug through the opening, instead of having to lift the roof every time. When my daughter and I opened the cat house to plug in the water bowl yesterday, I discovered it moving away from the wall near the hinge on one side. That roof is very heavy, and the shelter is pretty old. One of the pieces of wood in the frame had split, right near the corner. After we were done, I added a couple of screws from the outside to stabilize it. When we open it again today, I’ll give it another look and see if I should add more.
Once that’s done, we will no longer have to keep the heated water bowl so close to the entry, and can have it directly the ground.
The Re-Farmer 