I like when our Sunday day of rest turns out to be an actual day of rest!
While doing my rounds this morning, I let Potato Beetle out of the sun room. Today, he ignored this personal food and water bowls in favour of the outside ones.
I love how Nosy likes to just sit in the window, napping. :-)
Potato’s wound is looking better as well. He didn’t want to go back into the sun room when I was done my rounds, so I left the doors propped open so he could go in later, if we wanted to. We were at a fairly mild -15C/5F (though with a wind chill of -28C/-18F!), so I knew he would be okay. We’ll keep him in the sun room for one more night, so when my daughters went out for a walk this afternoon and spotted him, the put him back in. Things are supposed to warm up quite a bit, after tonight, and he’s healing up well enough that we don’t need to take extra precautions.
Beyond that, it was just a day of online church (second Sunday of Lent), keeping up with family, and watching the parade of deer visiting the feeding station! It looks like the same group of five came back a couple of times, as well as a pair and a singleton showing up. There were so many showing up at once, I didn’t even try to take pictures with the DSLR set up in the living room. The zoom lens can’t get so many deer at once, I didn’t feel like switching lenses. Too many shedding cats around! :-D
Tomorrow, I bring the van in to the garage to see what can be done about that noise from the power steering pump. We were just going into the cold snap when I brought it home from last time he worked on it, and it hasn’t been driven since. We’ve only run the engine a few times, and the noise was there, so the cold is the only thing I can think of that could have caused the problem. Hopefully, it is something that can be fixed quickly, so we can do our monthly shop, and pick up that warranty replacement hot water tank! I feel like we’re on borrowed time with the current one.
Hopefully, this replacement will last more than 2 years. :-/
After getting teased with spring, the temperatures lurched back downwards last night.
Also, I am SO tired of our intermittent internet. It took me forever to get any of my weather apps to load! We’ll be able to switch back to the primary account soon. Hopefully, that will be better again. :-/
As I write this, we’re still at -24C/-11F, but the wind chill has “warmed” up to -33C/-27. It was pretty steady like that, all night.
I am really looking forward to that 6C/43F two Sundays from now!!
While doing my rounds this morning, I opened up the sun room to let Potato out for a bit, if he wanted. Along with the warm water, I had a treat for the kitties. I’d kept the meat juices and dregs from a roasting pan. Usually, I’d use it as part of the liquid for a soup, or make a gravy out of it, but this was onion free, and safe for cats. The juices had gelled, so I added warm water to melt it and brought it out for the cold kitties.
They were so excited for the treat!!! Cats that would normally stay away from each other were all pushing their way into the bowl, ignoring the container of warm water they usually go for, while I knocked the ice out of the water bowls. With the temperature fluctuations, the metal bowls are in melted depressions of ice, and I had to use a chipper to get one of them out! LOL
I was happy to see that the terrarium heat bulb was enough to keep Potato Beetle’s water from freezing. There was just a bit of ice on the water surface furthest from the bulb.
Once the water was taken care of, I fought some kitties off the bowl of meat juices and split it between the various food bowls. More room for more cats to have a treat! The very last bits in the bowl, which had chunks of meat in it, went into Potato’s bowl in the sun room. He had gone outside after I’d opened the door, but it didn’t take much for him to go back in! We are a bit concerned about him being alone and lonely in there, but he seems to be content over the whole situation.
I tried to get a picture of his wound, but he wouldn’t stay still, so this was the best I could get! Now that the fur is shaved, we can see that it’s a rather large puncture wound – and there is a smaller one, next to it! It’s drying up and scabbing over nicely, though. We’ll keep Potato in the sun room for a few more days. Once it warms up again, it should be okay for him to be outside with his little nekkid patch.
I’m not sure what we’ll do if he wants to stay in the sun room, though! We’ve tried propping the doors open, but then we caught Nicky the Nose in there, asserting his dominance. :-(
I wonder if that old sling shot I found in the garage is still usable… :-/
Since Potato was content in the sun room, I closed him up again and continued my rounds.
I had lots of company.
I had five of them! Butterscotch and Nostrildamus, the spice boys and Rolando Moon, all came along.
Then I turned around and there was number six.
Creamsicle Jr. many not want us coming anywhere near him, but that doesn’t stop him from following me around!
Unfortunately, this lurch into colder temperatures has been very rough on my husband’s pain levels (the added medications are helping, but not much at this point), and this morning, his TENS machine just stopped working. It seems one of the wires has … broken? I don’t know. He’s in a lot of pain, so his tolerance to try and figure it out is out the window. It’s an older machine, so I don’t know if we can get new wires for it anymore. The plug in port is universal, so we should be able to. I’ll have to do some looking.
But it will wait until later. I just got a call from my sister in law. She’s dropped my brother off to see my mother, and is on her way to deliver the pressure cooker! Time to go open the gate. :-)
When I did my rounds this morning, I did let him out of the sun room. I figured it would be good for him to stretch his legs and … do things. (The litter we had for him looked unused, but that plant pot was knocked over again…) He followed along as I did my rounds, but wasn’t looking to happy about things, so I carried him back and closed him up in the sun room again. The fur around his wound was looking damp, but I couldn’t tell if that was from him licking it, or if the wound was seeping.
Shortly before we headed out, I got him into the carrier and brought him into the house.
Which had the other cats VERY interested! He didn’t make a sound, though, and just sat there.
Cabbages and Beep Beep would have been familiar smelling cats. He might not remember Susan, Two-Face, Cheddar, David or Keith, though. Or Fenrir; when she showed up here, he was one of the kittens among the two litters that absorbed her into the family.
He wasn’t too happy with the car ride to the vet. The vibrations from gravel road in particular seems to spook him. My daughter took him in while I waited in the car (I have no idea if the vet honours mask exemptions, and I really didn’t want to deal with it if they didn’t). He was given a thorough examination, the wound was shaved and cleaned, he got a rabies shot, just in case Nicky the Nose (the only cat that we’ve seen that would do this to him) is infected, plus the slow release anti-biotic. Overall, he checked out well. Since he is willing to stay in the sun room, we will be keeping him indoors for a little while. If possible, we are to keep the wound clean with a damp cloth, but that’s it.
He is now back in the sun room and seems content.
Even with the wound shaved, it’s hard to see in the photo! When the light hits it, though, you can see that it is bright, bright red.
We’re expected to get some colder overnight temperatures coming up, and while he’s got a cozy set up in the sun room, we decided to dig out the light attached to a board that my brother used under the kitchen sink, to help keep the pipes from freezing when the house was empty over the winter (the kitchen has no heat running to it, so it was the one vulnerable spot). We later used it to keep the water bowl from freezing when we had the sun room set up as winter shelter for the cats. I switched out the light bulb for the spare ceramic terrarium heat bulb. It’s now set up facing the food and water bowls, and the nearby box nest we made for him. It’ll be just enough to keep the edge off in a small area, but that’s all he’ll need. We could probably do nothing at all; while we are at -8C/18F outside, the sun room is above 10C/50F. His little box nest would be even warmer. But we have the means to safely give him some warmth, so why not?
I’m glad that he checked out okay. Plus, it cost much less than we expected, which is bonus. We’re so used to the high cost of getting a cat fixed, it seems weird that other services they provide cost so much less! The main thing is that he’s healing up nicely, and is doing well. That’s a relief! :-)
In other things, I updated yesterday’s post about the pressure canner my sister in law found for us. Click on the link for more details, but the short version is, even though it was in the canning section and being sold as a canner, when she checked the instructions, there was nothing about how to use it for canning! We’re going to keep it, anyhow. It will be used! Meanwhile, we’ll still keep our eyes out for a pressure canner that is affordable. It’s not a big deal if we don’t get it this year, but we will eventually need one.
Getting a chainsaw is higher on the priority list right now. ;-)
While the inside cats – at least one of them, anyhow – were busily trying to destroy our bunching onion seedlings, the outside cats were far more civil and adorable!
When I headed out to do their food and water, I opened up the sun room door, so Potato Beetle could come out. He was all curled up in the box nest we made for him.
The only reason he came out at all was because I refilled the outside bowls with warm water, before doing the one in the sun room. It had frozen over, but didn’t freeze solid, like the ones outside.
Once he knew there was warm water in the sun room, he was back inside!
The litter box we have for him was unused, though from the smell, he found somewhere to go! I think he (unsuccessfully) tried to use a plant pot with soil in it, as I found it knocked over. The good thing about the sun room is, we can easily clear it out and clean the concrete floor in the spring. He does know how to use a litter box; we used the sun room as a winter shelter for the cats and they all preferred to use the litter boxes we had in there, rather than go out in the snow!
By the time I finished with the deer and bird feed, Potato was back in his box nest, all curled up and ready for a nap! So I closed up the replacement door, leaving the inner door open, to allow a bit more light and warmth in.
While doing the rest of my rounds, I had plenty of company, as Butterscotch, her three boys, Nosy and Rolando Moon, all followed me around!
We had snow last night. A light, fluffy, crystalline snow. I wish I could capture on camera, just how much everything was glittering and sparkling this morning!
This is not frost. This is snow! Every surface that could hold the flakes was glittering in the sunlight. It was an amazing sight!
Almost as amazing as this… ;-)
We had an adorable gatekeeper of cuteness! :-D
Creamsicle Jr. is a shy one, so I had to zoom in to take photos while trying to get closer.
He didn’t like that too much. :-D
I really hope we are able to better socialize him – and the rest of the semi-feral kitties that won’t let us near them! – over the summer. :-)
Today was a day of moving forward on a few things, and even accomplishing some! :-D
First, the most important thing.
Potato Beetle status.
No, this is not Potato Beetle. Nostrildamus was posing so sweetly for me, I just had to take a photo.
Also, his eyes are quite clear. He’s just got them comfortably half shut as he enjoys the relative warmth of the cat house roof under his paws!
The Potato was not up to letting me take his picture, but he was very much up to showing up for warm water, following me as I did my rounds, and letting me carry him back to the house! :-)
I tucked him into the sun room with food and water, which I put on a scrap of rigid insulation, so he wouldn’t have to be on cold concrete while eating and drinking. He had quite the appetite!
Once back inside, I called the vet. I mentioned the photos I sent, and she went looking for them. Someone else had checked the email yesterday, so she didn’t know where it was at first. The only opening they had was for Friday, at which point, should we even bother bringing him in at all? It’s not like he’s going to get any stitches with the wound having had this long to heal on its own. She said she would get a doctor to look at the photos and would call me back.
When she did, she told me the doctor thinks it looks pretty good, from what he could see (which, admittedly, isn’t much!), but since this is an outdoor cat… well, they get pretty dirty, and that increases the risks of infection. We decided to book Potato Beetle for Friday, early afternoon, for a check up. They will likely not have to do anything, though I would not be averse to some slow release antibiotics, like they gave Butterscotch. One thing they will be able to do is examine Potato for other wounds. While carrying him, I tried to feel around as I pet him. I think I was feeling scabs through his fur in a few places.
So, that appointment is made. Since he would not be going in until Friday, I went into the sun room and opened the doors to let him out.
He had no interest in leaving, and just started eating some more.
I noticed the water bowl was starting to ice over, so I warmed up some water in the kettle and brought it over. He was still eating when I came in, but as soon as I added the warm water, he switched right over. Because the water in our hot water tank develops a smell after a while, we don’t use warm tap water for the cats. I had tried that, and they didn’t seem to like it, but they LOVE the water that’s been warmed in the kettle! When I come out with the container and set it on the ground so I can knock the ice out of the metal bowls and clean out the heated bowl, Ginger used to be the one I’d find drinking out of the container. He’d stop as I came over to take it and fill the water bowls. Now, it’s Potato Beetle that goes straight for the container, and he even keeps trying to drink while I pick it up to fill the bowls! He seemed to really, really like having food and water bowls all to himself.
Seeing how quickly ice formed on the water bowl – and that Potato wasn’t interested in going outside – I grabbed a box and made a little house for him, with an old pillow for a bed. We already have an old pillow on the floor under the swing bench that he has claimed, but the box would get warmer, just from his body heat. I set it up right next to the food and water bowls, so he could go from being on a pillow to walking on the piece of rigid insulation, and never have to walk on cold concrete, if he didn’t want to.
Then I headed out to do our shopping, along with my younger daughter. While we were gone, Potato’s water bowl got topped up with warm water a few times, and he still had zero interest in leaving the sun room!
Since we were using my mother’s car for our shopping, I didn’t get as much of the heavy stuff as we normally would, but I did get some kibble to top of the bin in the sun room. I added some of the new kibble to Potato’s food bowl, just to give him something different. He ate with gusto!
And wouldn’t leave the sun room.
So… he’s still there.
I wasn’t planning on keeping him locked up until his appointment, but he’s very content where he is now. We can look out the bathroom window and see him sitting on the swing bench, napping. Or looking back at us!
This wasn’t exactly the plan, but we’ll take it, I guess!
I also called up the garage about or van. Sure enough, he’d tried to return my call while I was with the tech service call for so long, trying to figure out what was going on with the software I’d just bought.
The van will be dropped off on Monday morning for him to check out. The only thing he suggested was topping up the power steering fluid. He seemed pleased when I told him it was full. At least we know there’s no leak! Once the van has been checked over and any repairs get done, I’ll finally be able to do a real monthly stock up trip. We haven’t been able to do one since the end of November!
As for the shopping, we only went to the Walmart in the nearer small city. My daughters had made their own shopping list, too. Aside from the stuff we usually get, I was able to pick up some Jiffy Pellet refills for our second tray, which is one of those self-watering pellet trays with a domed lid. I also picked up a plain tray, that will work well for when I use the repurposed K-cups to start seeds. They will all have drainage holes, and the tray will allow them to be watered from below.
I also picked up a case of 750ml, wide mouth canning jars. We currently have 250ml and 500ml jars with regular size mouths, plus more 500ml wide mouth jars. Little by little, as we are able, we will add to our stock of jars, plus get more snap lids. There was a water bath canner in stock, but I ended up just getting the metal rack for holding jars that will allow me to use one of our stock pots. It’s designed so that, if we were canning small, short jars, a second one can be placed on top of the jars and we could can two layers of small jars. I don’t expect to do that, but it’s an option. My daughters got me a set of canning tools for Christmas, so with the purchase of this rack, I now have all the tools needed to do water bath canning.
So, another area of progress!
I was unable to find a pressure canner, though. They didn’t seem to have any in stock anywhere. We have time to find one, though.
I have no idea what kind of harvest we will end up with at the end of the season, but I hope to be fully prepared to can plenty! We also intend to freeze some things, and dehydrate others, so we will have a variety of options, even if we don’t get a pressure canner. I did find myself ogling a dehydrator, but decided against it. For the amount I expect to be dehydrating this year, we can use our oven well enough. It’s not worth spending the money on, at this point, and we don’t have the space to store it right now. That is a purchase that has no urgency to it.
After we got home, I had one more thing that we can finally move forward on, though it’s far less pleasant to think about. I called the court office.
We finally have a court date for the restraining order we filed against our vandal.
It’s just a general session date, and there is a lot of backlog. Chances are, it’ll probably end up booked for a future hearing, but… I don’t know. This is for a restraining order, not a civil suit. Will the court just fly through the docket, like they did for the teleconference call for his vexatious litigation against me, that he clearly filed in retaliation for my applying for a restraining order? After all, my application is a criminal matter, not a civil matter.
Our vandal would have to call the court office to see if court dates were started up again or not. If he had called yesterday, that may have been the triggering event for him calling my mother three times, yesterday. One of his “usual” things that he rants about now is that my mother is trying to put him in jail. She has nothing to do with my application for a restraining order, though, so he’s just lashing out at her because he can’t lash out at me. I’ve had no direct communication from him for something like 2 years. He can’t intimidate me, but he can try and intimidate my mother. Thankfully, he doesn’t call her anywhere near as often as he used to. My siblings and I have been working to put a stop to that, which includes helping my mother understand some of her self-sabotaging behaviour. This is someone who was so very close to us, and she still feels she needs to treat him like family. She owes him nothing. He owes her (and my late father) everything.
Anyhow. The court date is in March, so that’s another step forward.
And now it’s time to check on Potato Beetle and make sure he’s settled in for the night. Something far more pleasant to think about than court dates!
We never took him to the vet, because we couldn’t find him!
I did see him this morning, and should have locked him up in the sun room, but I didn’t want him have him locked up like that for almost 6 hours. A couple of hours before we were planning to leave, we went looking for him. He was nowhere to be found!
So I called the vet and explained the situation. Whenever we manage to snag him, we are to give them a call and they’ll fit him in. Unless, it turns out not to be needed. I took some photos this morning, and offered to email one in, and they were good with that.
I still couldn’t see his wound this morning, but I can often get photos at angles that let me see more than I could manage otherwise, so I took a bunch of shots while he was eating.
You can tell from this first one, why the wound was so hard to see. If it had not been so matted and had dry blood in the fur, yesterday, I would not have noticed it. Today, it looked much cleaner.
This is the best look I’ve had of the wound itself, ever. It’s not actively bleeding, and does not appear to be infected. In showing the photos to my older daughter, she told me she had seen what she thought were puncture marks on either side of his leg, where the fur goes white, but I could see no sign of anything like that. Likely, they are small enough for the fur to hide completely.
He was chipper and active enough to follow me as I did my rounds, when he helped me demonstrate perspective on some tracks in the snow.
My brother’s dog has huge paws! :-D With yesterday’s warmth, followed by the overnight freeze, there were a lot of his tracks sunk deep into the snow during the warmth of the day, then frozen overnight. :-)
There were lots of other tracks. Mostly from deer. Probably including these ones!
I spotted them outside our north facing window. Only one of them went to the feeding station by the living room window, though from the lack of feed on the ground, I think the herd was leaving rather than arriving.
When my daughter and I went outside to try and find Potato Beetle, and he wasn’t in the usual places, we decided to do some noisy chores. If he were at my younger brother’s place, or the empty farm yard across the other road, he would likely hear us and come over.
He didn’t. Which tells me he went further afield. I suppose that’s good news, since it would mean he was feeling strong and healthy. My daughter, of course, was fretting that he might be hurt in a ditch somewhere.
We never saw Potato, but I did get this job done.
When the girls shoveled snow off the roof, before things started melting, the snow covered my path to the feeding station, and no one had a chance to clear it until today. After the melt and freeze we had, I ended up having to use a metal garden shovel, instead of our plastic snow shovels, because it was the only thing strong enough to break through the hard packed top layer. My daughter, meanwhile, used the ice chipper to clear the sidewalk. As things warm up, the paths will melt away and clear faster.
With all the chopping and scraping, we were making more than enough noise to attract curious kitties. Just not the one we were after!
I was thinking that, tomorrow morning, I could put him in the sun room with some food and water – I’m just not sure what I can use as a litter box – and we can keep him tucked away. I won’t be able to take him in to the vet tomorrow, because tomorrow I will be doing a big shopping trip. Not quite our monthly shop, since I will be using my mother’s car, but enough to stock up for at least a couple of weeks.
And why will I be using my mother’s car?
Well, I ran the van today, and it’s still making that whining noise that I thought was the serpentine belt, but now think is the power steering pump, next to the belt. I checked the fluid level, and it’s full.
So when I had the chance, I called up the garage and left a message about it, asking him to call me back.
Which he probably tried to do, but would have gotten a busy signal.
You see, I did something else today. I purchased and downloaded this year’s TurboTax and started the tax returns for myself and my husband. Because of our internet connectivity problems, I made sure to get the desktop version, not the online set up, like we used last year. Our returns are pretty basic, so I finished them this morning. Tax returns are easy when your incomes are “nothing” and “better than nothing”. I was able to file mine electronically, but when I tried to file my husband’s, I got a message saying I’d used up all the available returns and it wanted me to buy more. Considering the software I bought allows for up to 20 returns in total – and the checker even showed I still had 19 left – it should have worked. After several failed attempts, it was time to contact TurboTax!
After not being able to find contact information of any kind on the website (they route people to the community, instead), I finally went to their Facebook page and sent a message briefly explaining what was happening. While my daughter and I were outside making noise to try and attract Potato, I got a response with a phone number to call.
I made that call after calling the garage.
I ended up on the phone for about 2 hours.
Among the problems we had was the software simply not opening. It kept “not responding”. We were using a sharer, so the tech person I was talking to could see my desktop, and my computer decided that today was the day to get all sluggish on me. I ended up reinstalling the software and trying to open it again, and it still wouldn’t. After several more failed attempts, we tried restarting my computer.
Which stalled during the restart. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and trying again.
Once I finally got the computer itself started, I tried opening the software before linking up with the tech, only to have it want to restart the computer again, because changes were made.
*sigh*
Eventually, we did get it going. I was able to open the software, our tax returns were still there, with my husband’s ready to be sent, and the tech person could see my desktop. I tried to file my husband’s return, and it sat there, spinning for a while. On that one, I did assure her that it was our unstable internet that was the problem, this time!
The screen telling me I was out of returns popped up and she finally got to see what was happening. She got me to check a few things for her, she asked all sorts of questions, before finally settling in on her side to find a solution.
I was not at all surprised when she told me it was passed on to someone in Tier 2, and she was waiting for a response.
There was a lot of waiting. She was very apologetic. I told her I didn’t mind the wait. I just needed it fixed. Particularly since we have to more people who need to file! So I didn’t have a problem with the wait.
I ended up being put on actual hold a couple of times before we got to the end, and it was pretty much what I had suspected would happen.
The problem is going to the next level.
It’s a bug, and there’s nothing that can be done about it at our end. Someone will get back to me, possibly within 24 hours, as they fix the bug. I should be able to file my husband’s return tomorrow.
Well, I won’t be holding my breath on that, but we’ll see.
By the time I got off the phone I had no doubt that, if the garage had tried to call me back, he would have given up rather quickly.
So, tomorrow morning, I will try calling him again, before I head out. Hopefully, he won’t be too booked and I’ll be able to bring the van in, soon. Depending on how early I can get the shopping done, who knows. Maybe we can still get Potato Beetle in to the vet! Unless they look at the photo and say not to bother. It’s possible, I suppose.
As if all that wasn’t enough, I got a quick phone call from my older brother. He had just talked to my mother but was about to start a meeting, so he wanted to let me know that our vandal had called her today. Three times! She let it go to message, thankfully. So while he went off to his meeting (which will be 3 hours long!), I called my mother to see if she was okay. She did sound upset. Our vandal had said “the usual”, but I had to clarify that. There are several “usual” things he says. He had been ranting at her about “giving” the farm to me and my brother (why he still thinks I have any ownership of the farm, I have no idea), apparently brought God into it (he knows she’s deeply religious, so one of his things is to tell her she won’t go to heaven to be with my late father and brother, because she’s not doing what he thinks she should be doing). There was a new one in there – at least new to me, though it’s possible he’s used this before and my mother never mentioned it. Basically, he was telling her to talk to him – as in pick up the phone, rather than letting it go to machine. Of course, anytime she does try to talk to him, it’s very much a one way conversation, as he doesn’t let her get a word in edgewise. Then she ends up hanging up to him. We’ve been working on getting her to let calls go to the machine, unless she can see who is calling. If that means my siblings and I ended up talking to a machine and calling her back later, we’re good with that. Better this slight inconvenience than her being verbally abused.
I have no idea what triggered him to call her today. Especially three times! It does remind me that I should call the court office this week, and see if a court date for the restraining order I applied for will finally happen. It’s already been pushed back three times because of the shut downs. :-(
So… It’s been quite the day, today!!
If I were a drinking person, I’d be pouring myself a stiff drink right now! But I’m not. So I will brew myself a pot of tea, instead. :-D
Oh, my goodness! It is so incredibly warm out there right now!
The Weather Network app on my desktop has not been working well with our intermittent internet connection, and often will not update at all, but the weather app that came with my computer seems to get through better. (Even while writing a post, I’ll get the red bar across the top, telling me the autosave didn’t work because I have no internet, several times before I’m done!) Between those two on my desktop, plus the one on my phone, we have three different forecasts at the same time. :-D They would be linked to different weather stations. None of them tell me which weather station they are linked to. Ah, well. They tend to be close it enough, it doesn’t matter too much.
We have all sorts of melt happening right now! This is the diverter from our rain barrel; it’s mostly full and frozen right now, so I’m not letting the melt go into it for now. I did empty it in the fall, so all the water in it – minus what I was able to bail out several times over this winter – is from when things got warm enough to melt. A demonstration of how, in spite of the polar vortex we’ve been under for the past few weeks, this has been a very mild winter!
While doing my rounds I, of course, checked on the yard cats. Nosy’s eyes are still leaky, but they are more open. He’s spending much of his time in the cat house, with the white cat with calico markings. I was looking through old files and confirmed that she is Rosentrantz’s baby. I have some photos and video from last spring of her and her orange sibling, being groomed by Rosencrantz, outside the pump shack. We never saw her orange sibling again, and have no idea what happened to it. I am just sort of assuming this cat is also a female, but we really have no idea. She runs off too quickly.
It was Potato Beetle I most wanted to check out. He had looked really messed up, just a few days ago, and had blood on his fur at his back legs, but we weren’t able to see where he was hurt. Yesterday, I saw him and, while he was moving around better than before, he was still messed up. Plus, there seemed to be some (frozen) bloody mucus on his fur on a back leg. I tried to see where it came from and thought there might have been some swelling inside a back leg, but he wouldn’t let me get a better look.
This morning, when he came out for food and water, I was happy to see he seemed to be moving normally again. He was eating with good appetite, and followed me around as I continued my rounds. He even let me pick him up and carry him, at the same time as Butterscotch. When I got back to the house, I was able to put Butterscotch down and try and get a look at Potato Beetle’s back legs and belly. I saw no sign of injury or swelling. There was no longer any dried blood, either. So I put him down and watched as he went into the kibble house.
When is when I saw the matted fur on his hip. I tried to get a closer look, and found it was a wound. My touching the area obviously was uncomfortable and he moved away, but I was able to see the fur was matted with blood and getting into the wound. I am guessing this is from a bite. It’s not a clean wound, like the gash we found on Butterscotch, but a messy hole. From what I can see, he just needs to be cleaned up and will likely need a stitch. Getting him on an antibiotic would be good, too. He would probably be fine if we did nothing at all, but… why take the chance?
So… time to dip into the emergency funds and take him to the vet. Thank God we actually have emergency funds! Before moving out here, we would never have been able to set money aside for any sort of contingency fund or savings. It’s amazing what a different not paying cash for rent makes, even if we have much higher expenses in other areas. :-)
I am going to my mother’s to help her with shopping today, so we will be bringing him in tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already called the vet to arrange it. At least Potato is one of the more socialized cats and will not be a problem to catch. I should still probably close him up in the sun room when I do my morning rounds tomorrow, just to make sure he’s in the area when it’s time to get him into the carrier.
Meanwhile, all the cats seem to be really enjoying these warmer temperatures! Including Potato Beetle with his injury. The younger cats are very rambunctious, playing in the snow and wrestling. They are such fun to watch!
My goodness, it’s feeling like spring out there! As I write these, we are at -8C/18F and expected to still warm up a bit! Not even the wind chill of -15C/5F can put a damper on it. :-D It’s so warm that, while doing my morning rounds (at about -15C, before wind chill), I was actually starting to overheat in my parka!
I’m also excited to say that we are seeing new sprouts in our aquarium greenhouses. Not only among the shallots we planted 5 days ago, but even the bunching onions that were planted four days ago! Talk about excellent germination speed!
While doing my rounds this morning and changing the cats’ water, I found this adorable sight.
Nostrildamus, getting some cuddles!
The other cat he’s with is one that is incredibly shy and we rarely see. We think it is either his sibling, or Rosencrantz’s kitten. They were so skittish, we never quite figured it out.
Nosy did come out as I was doing the bird and deer feed. Both his eyes are still gummed up. He can open them enough to see a bit, at least, but not well. My brother’s dog had come to visit, and he couldn’t see well enough to know the dog was around until he was being sniffed! When he climbed up a rail in front of the sun room, I took the opportunity to give his eyes as good of a wipe as I could, with a dry tissue. By Monday, we’ll be above freezing temperatures, so that would be the time to give his eyes a wash with a damp cloth. Meanwhile, in his semi-blindness, he is at least discovering that my brother’s dog isn’t actually trying to hurt him, but just sniff him. :-)
This afternoon, I made a trip into town to pick up a package that Purolater had left at a drop off station there, since they don’t deliver to our area at all. It’s been a few weeks, trying to get this thing! When we got a call saying it would be dropped off in town, I was told it would be there for only 5 business days, and then would be returned to sender. That’s when the deep freeze hit, and we weren’t going anywhere, so I called the store that serves as a drop off point about it. That’s when I found out they hang on to packages for 28 days before sending them back! So I don’t know what Purolator was talking about.
We had no idea what the package was, and now I’m glad we went through all the trouble! It turned out to be the hard copy of a book we ordered back in December. I’m excited to read it, because it was written by a friend of ours. You can check it out here (not an affiliate link).
Since I was in town, anyhow, I picked up a few things, and even remembered to pick up more deer feed, so I pulled the car into the yard to unload.
Which is when I found another adorable sight.
The brothers are enjoying the sun together, as well as the warmer surface of the insulation lining the shelves! I had to zoom in with my phone to take the picture, so the quality sucks, but they’re still cute!
Also, the cats love to bite that insulation. Those edges used to be smoothly cut. You can even see teeth marks! All over the ground in front of the shelf are little bits of insulation that they bite off and spit out. LOL
The ice chunks in the foreground are from my using the sawhorses to bash the water bowls against, to clear empty them.
My brother’s dog was visiting again when I got back, and I was pleased to see the cats were all running around and playing, instead of hiding from him. It looks like they are starting to get used to him! My brother’s dog used to come here all the time to visit my late father. This place is was like a second home to him, so I’m glad the critters are starting to get along.
I am really looking forward to the next few days! I’ve seen the forecast for Monday as high as 5C/41F !! though right now, it’s back to “only” 4C/39F
It’s amazing how uplifting the warmer temperatures are. :-)
With how bitterly cold it has been for the past while, I have been doing my morning rounds much later in the morning. It may only have been a couple of degrees warmer, but I was taking anything I could get! Usually, by the time I came out, the outside cats were hovering around the door, looking for me to come out with warm water.
This morning, I headed out at a more usual time, even though it was -31C/-24F with a wind chill of -33C/-27F
Absolutely none of the cats came out to greet me! LOL
The only cat I saw was Nosy and, other than lifting his head to look at me, he did not move! Considering that he is curled up right under where the terrarium bulb is, I’m guessing it’s still working.
My brother’s dog was visiting again. He’s loving this cold so much! :-D I didn’t have any cats joining me for my rounds, but I did have him to keep me company! You can even see him in the photo below.
We have deer paths all through the garden area and the East yard, but none are as well worn as these, here. We used to have a trail cam facing where they would cross the road from my brother’s place and jump our fence. One of these days, I’d like to set one up again. I miss seeing how many deer used to cross here!
What I found this morning, however, is that the top barbed wire is loose from one post, and it was twisted around the middle wire. It had been torn loose when a deer didn’t quite clear the fence! I’m going to have to find some U nails and head out with a hammer to fix it.
Long term, we’re going to have to find a way to stop the deer from entering our yard around here at all. As much as I like them, I don’t want them eating the garden! Privacy is also a goal, and not just from our vandal creeping about. Even with the lilac hedge and other trees along the fence like, people driving by like to slow down and peer into the property. Particularly if there are deer at the house. The fence posts around the garden area all need to be replaced, and I want to get away from barbed wire completely, so building a privacy fence around the garden area that the deer can’t jump over is right in line with our goals. When we can do that is another question entirely! :-D
Speaking of gardens…
This morning, I noticed that the label for the bunching onions in the small tank had been knocked over. Though I had blocked the opening in the lid, a cat had still managed to reach in and bat at things. When I lifted the lid to fix it, though, I could feel it was noticeably colder than the room!
Clearly, lining the inside of the tank with insulation was not enough. The above picture is from when the trays were first put into the tank. Not only did a cat knock over the label, but I found one of the peaks of cardboard in a corner had been torn off!
The light on this tank is LED. It provides no warmth. The light on the big tank is fluorescent (I had thought it was LED, too, but was remembering incorrectly), so it does help keep the seedlings warm. The little tank was way too cold for the seeds!
After thinking about how we could warm up the inside of the tank, I remembered something. Years ago, I’d bought a small, recessed bulb, light fixture to provide spot lighting while I was working on crafts, etc. I stopped using it because it had a tendency to get very hot, even with an LED bulb. The bulb would be cool, but the fixture would get hot. I kept it and we even brought it along when we moved here. So this morning, I dug it out, then went through a bag of bulbs we have. We replaced almost all of the light bulbs here with LED bulbs, plus we still had some that the movers accidentally included when packing our stuff. Lo and behold, I found a full spectrum incandescent light bulb in the mix.
Perfect!
So I set the light fixture up on the edge of the tank, with the lid propped on it to hold it in place. I also dug around our aquarium supplies and found the little tank thermometer. The suction cup doesn’t work anymore, but I could still set it up inside the tank so that we could monitor the temperature.
It worked. In only a few minutes, I could feel a significant difference! (The thermometer will need more time to read accurately, since it was in the old kitchen, where it’s below freezing temperatures.)
We can only have this light going while someone is there to supervise, since it could literally melt the plastic of the lid. Since the tank is lined with insulation, once it warms up inside, it will stay warm for quite a while, so a few minutes here and there will be adequate.
On the down side, the cats still try to jump on the lid, even when it’s propped up over the light fixture.
I did not expect the small tank to be less cat proof than the big one!
Okay, so it looks like our internet is working, at least somewhat, so this is a sort of test post!
Today was a beautifully warm day! We reached -13C/9F, which was awesome! They are now forecasting Monday will be 4C!! (40F) It’s going to be amazing! The girls will be going out onto the roof to get as much snow off the second level roof as they can. There isn’t a lot, but once it starts melting, we don’t have to have water leaking into the house at the window again.
As I was doing my rounds, the spice boys and Creamsicle Jr. were happily rough housing in the snow. Creamsicle Jr’s eye looks all clean and healthy now, which is good to see. There was quite a crowd of cats this morning, and I even saw Rosencrantz. I haven’t seen her in weeks! Nosy was on his warm spot on the tire in front of the garage side doors, meowing plaintively. He’s looking better, overall, but now both his eyes are leaking. Poor thing.
While checking the trail cam files later, I was most impressed. The new camera, which includes a temperature reading along with the time stamp, had an internal temperature of -3C (27F) at a time of day when I knew it was about -16C (3F) outside. Moving it out of the shade has made a huge difference. It got below -25C (-13F) during the night, but it still kept shooting stills, even when the batteries got too cold to be able to record video. The older camera, meanwhile, had no problem with the cold.
I used my mother’s car to go into town and pick up a few things, then we later made a much needed dump run. Somewhere in between there, something happened to Potato Beetle! He had been fine this morning, when he joined me for my rounds and I carried him around. He came around while we were unloading the car, and was looking a mess. Literally. He had dirt all over, and his fur was matted. He was also walking as though limping with his back legs. We found dried blood in the fur on the inside of his ankle, but could see no wound. We’ve been putting our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where they can freeze, but no animals can tear apart the bags. I went through the sun room to load bags into the car, and he followed me in. By the time I was done, he’d settled onto a old pillow under the swing bench – his favourite spot in there – so I left the doors partly open and let him be. Unfortunately, this evening, my younger daughter heard a commotion, and found Nicky the Nose in the sun room, going after Potato Beetle. :-( I think we can guess who messed Potato Beetle up!
We’ve got to do something about Nicky the Nose! We’ve had quite a few other toms, from who knows where, come by but none have been as aggressive towards our yard cats as Nicky.
Well, time to see if we have a stable enough internet connect for me to post this! :-D
The Re-Farmer 