Havarti does NOT like to be picked up or carried, but gosh, he loves pets!
He also loves wrestling with grommet.
After the heat we’ve been having, daytime highs are finally getting to be more reasonable, but last night?
We dropped to 7C/45F last night. Lower than was in the forecast.
We’re expected to drop that low again tonight, though some apps say to expect a low of 9C/48F which means we might actually be hitting lower, the way the forecasts have been off lately.
Yes, we’re still in July.
Not quite cold enough to cover things, but pretty darn close. Overnight lows are expected to warm up again after tonight, but not by much.
As if the garden isn’t have a hard enough time as it is. My squash and melons still haven’t recovered from that one cold night back in June.
They do like the grass clipping mulch around the winter squash!
This morning, I tried to get some images of the feral kittens at the shrine feeding station. One seems to be missing from view. No idea if it was just behind something, or hadn’t made it to the feeding station yet.
Several of the older cats tend to push the littles away from the cat soup, even though they’ve already had dried kibble. I don’t make a lot of it, since it’s supposed to be just for the kittens, but there’s no stopping the adults from getting at it. All I can do is spread it around as much as possible, so everyone gets at least a little bit.
I have one more quick share for you – an inside cat this time!
I need to get ready to go now. I found a ride to pick up the truck! Yay! We’ll have transportation again! Plus, I get to spend time with an old friend. 🩷 That’s about as good as it gets. 😊
I was definitely wiped out yesterday. I went to bed before 8am and, other than a few cat related disturbances, slept until 6am.
Some time yesterday evening, it started to rain, and was still raining when I went out to feed the kitties. Nothing major; just a gentle, constant rainfall. It was enough to finally refill the rain barrel by the sunroom, though, and I had to add the diverter!
Sprout’s feral babies (and she seems to have all four of them now; I don’t see the other mama around as much) are getting braver. Now that we’ve got kibble again, I’m back to setting out the dry kibble first, then distributing the bowls of kitten soup. As I was going back to the shrine feeding station, I spotted the tortie, loafed in the upper level of the isolation shelter! She ran off when I got too close, but that she was there at all, and just chillin’, is progress.
They were very happy when the kitten soup bowl arrived.
Even Sprout is starting to go in there more often. You can see her in the second image above, with Colby on top of one of the box nests behind her.
I took some kitten soup to the bowl in the garage, just in case the secret kitties were still around. This side of the garage is where we store the lawn equipment, and is accessible only through the main doors. A hole was dug under the door, I believe originally by skunks, so the cats could also get in and out with the doors closed. My brother tried to cover up the hole with a sheet of metal when he stored their big mower in there, but it got dug out again beside it, before we knew there were kittens in there!
After I was able to pick up and hold one of the babies, the mama moved them, and I feared she took them to the barn or one of the sheds in the outer yard. I was still leaving food in where they were before, just in case.
This morning, after putting the food bowl in, I spotted the mama coming up through the garage. The middle is where we park our vehicle, and where my brother’s vehicle he loaned us is currently parked. It has a doorway to the other lean-to side of the garage, and the back door is beside that, so it’s not unusual to see cats cutting through the garage from the yard through there.
She went to eat while I continued on to switching out the gate cam memory card. When I came back, I saw the mom going around into the middle of the garage, making calling noises, while doing to a back corner of the garage. Currently, there is a wrapped and stacked pile of summer tires from the van we no longer have, sort of blocking the space into the corner, between a built in counter shelf on one wall, and a storage shelf on the other.
On a hunch, I moved the food bowl into that part of the garage, and left it in front of the shelf near that corner.
Walking by a few minutes later, I spotted the mama sharing food with her white and grey kitten, which you can see in the last photo above. I didn’t see the smokey one, but it would be in there, somewhere.
The mama had simply moved her kittens to the other side of a wall.
I am so glad she didn’t take them far!
Now, we just have to convince them to come to the shelters in the inner yard.
I was watering the future food forest when I heard some scrambling. Syndol had climbed to the top of the old squash tunnel. He looked so very majestic, silhouetted against the sky, so I had to get a couple of pictures!
Even the shy ones are exploring the isolation shelter. I think that’s their sibling in the upper level, with Eyelet.
When doing the evening feeding, Colby has been getting brave enough to actually start coming back to the food bowls, while I’m still nearby. I almost touched him today! The shy ones in the photo, though, ran off even though I was across the yard from them still.
Speaking of feral kittens, while I was out, my daughter took care of paying the septic guy, then making sure the gate was closed after he left. As she was going past the garage, she spotted the mama that lives there, the white and grey kitten I spotted this morning, and a second kitten! She tried to get pictures, but was too far away, and the ran under the door as soon as they saw her. From what we can make out, the second kittens looks SO much like a Siamese!
We have got to get them closer to the house somehow. The mother just isn’t bringing them. At least they’re going outdoors!
As for my day…
Good grief.
Everything was fine when I headed out. I made sure to leave the gate open for the septic truck, so I didn’t have to stop to close the gate behind me. I got to my mother’s in good time, and did her morning med assist. Then we went over her grocery list and she made sure to give me cash. She just couldn’t resist making a nasty comment about how she didn’t want me using my card again. Somehow, she seems to be blaming the high cost of her inhaler on my using my credit card to pay for it. As if it somehow would have been free, if I hadn’t done that. Very confusing.
Speaking of confusing, I made sure to get pictures of my all my mother’s bubble packs. She has three “active” bubble packs, and one completely untouched one – and her secret stash bubble pack is now in the lock box, thankfully. There’s still one pack that has a single bubble in it with pills still in it from a day no one showed up for her morning meds. My mom made comments about how confusing it all was, as if it was the fault of the home care aids. It old her, it’s a mess because of what she’d been doing!
Once I was done going over her grocery list with her, I headed out to the truck to go to the store.
It wouldn’t go.
It started fine, but when I went to shift out of part to drive, nothing happened. The lever just moved up and down, freely, with no resistance.
My immediate thought was that something was wrong with the transmission. Which was a worst case scenario, really.
Whatever it was, the truck wasn’t moving.
After turning it off, then on and trying again several times, I finally went back inside, while sending messages to my family and my brother – I knew my brother was coming out to the farm this morning, but didn’t know when.
Once inside, I told my mother what was going on, and finished sending my messages. Then I told her I would just walk over to the grocery store, do her shopping then, when everything was put away, I planned to walk to a garage that was up the street from her place.
My mother suggested that I get them to deliver her groceries, which would have been done after the store closed, but I said it was fine. The store is just a couple of blocks away, and she didn’t have a large list.
As I headed out, I stopped at the truck to get a couple of hard sided grocery bags I knew would fit all her shopping. Of course, I tried the truck again.
Nothing.
Off I went to the grocery store and picked up my mothers items, then brought them back. As I going past her with the bags to get into the kitchen and put things away, she shoved a box of chocolates at me and said to take some. She wanted me to sit down with her and finish off the last few chocolates in the box. I said no thanks for now, I wanted to put the groceries away first. I always make sure to show her what I got, as I put things away, even if I didn’t have to make any changes to her list.
Then I sat down for a bit and did have a couple of chocolates while messaging with my brother and my family, and updating her, before going walking to the garage.
Which is when she asked me to sweep her floor.
Now, I had expected to do some housework for her today, but that went out the window once the truck stopped working. I needed to somehow get it to a garage and find a way home! We only have the one vehicle. I was still thinking “transmission”, even though, after trying to get it out of park a few times, it didn’t seem like the transmission was being engaged at all.
So I told her I needed to work on getting the arrange to get the truck to a garage.
She wanted me to sit down and “rest” for a while.
I really needed to get on this.
“So, you’re done with me, then?”
…
Yes, today, I am done and have to go!
I went to give her another hug before leaving, and she hung on to me, like she was trying to stop me from leaving.
Now, if this were someone else, I’d be flattered, but this is my mother. It wasn’t that she wanted my company or anything like that. It was because I had a problem to solve instead of paying attention to her and doing stuff for her. It was like some sort of test.
Which I’m sure I failed.
We said our goodbyes and I headed out. My brother suggested something to try first, so I did.
Nothing.
They were on the road to the farm, and said they would meet me at the truck along the way.
The cab of the truck was way too hot to sit in, so I dropped the tail gate and sat to wait for my brother.
It turned out that he misunderstood what I meant when I said the truck wasn’t moving. When he tried it himself, he figured it had to be a linkage problem. He then popped the hood and got me to move the lever while he watched inside. My SIL had to actually look around the hood to confirm that yes, I was moving the lever back and forth, continuously.
Nothing.
We now had to get the truck to a garage. My brother suggested I call CAA and arrange a tow, but I told him I needed to find out where to tow it, first. That’s why I wanted to walk over to the garage, first, so see if they would take the truck.
So they drove me over, with my poor SIL squished in the middle seat, and my brother went in with me. We talked to the woman behind the counter and explained what was happening with the truck. Her immediate thought was that it sounded like a linkage problem! I asked about getting the truck towed to them and she checked their schedule.
They wouldn’t be able to look at it until Wednesday.
Today is Friday.
My brother and I talked about it briefly and she suggested we try one of the other garages, in case someone else could look at it sooner.
So that’s what we did.
The other garage is one I’ve been to before, but not in many years, since we now go to a garage in the nearer town. The original owner sold the garage to one of his mechanics, but kept working his towing company, in the same location. When we got there, I was surprised to see the towing guy, but we talked to him about the truck and he looked at their schedule.
Tuesday. Maybe Monday.
Well, that was better than Wednesday!
So we agreed and he wrote my into the schedule. As we were talking about getting it towed, I found he no longer did CAA tows at all, but they would use the garage a couple of blocks away. He suggested I call CAA for the tow, since it’s covered, and that would save me $100.
That done, I started making the call to CAA while we drove back to the truck. The plan was for me to leave the keys hidden in the truck and then I would go home with my brother.
The call continued after we got to the truck and I had it on speaker phone so my brother could hear as well. We also had a hard time giving the name of the garage, as the guy couldn’t find it. My brother finally looked it up on his own phone and it turned out the only name that showed up was the towing company name, so that was the location they put it in as. The entire call was made extra difficult as we were suddenly getting some of the loudest traffic going by, ever!
As we arranged the tow, the guy told me I had to be with the truck when the tow truck arrived.
???
They haven’t required that in years.
Oh, and the tow would arrive at around 1:30pm
It was barely 11am at the time.
I told him, I can’t do that. I don’t live here, and I don’t have transportation. He said, if I wasn’t there, the driver couldn’t tow the truck.
My brother finally just said, we’ll be here, so I confirmed that with the guy.
I was thanked for my cooperation.
Uh huh.
Once the call was done, my brother suggested I hide the keys in the truck, then we would go back to the garage.
So that’s what we did.
Because of the trouble we had finding the place on the map, I made sure to look for the spelling on the sign when we got there.
The sign wasn’t there.
There was the towing company sign.
Looks like the original owner owns the garage again!
Which I’m good with. I liked him better.
So we talked to him about the call with CAA and what they told us about needing to be there when the truck arrived. Now, he used to do towing for CAA, so his reaction was a big WTF?
The towing company was just up the road, so he suggested we talk to the guy about it.
Meanwhile, I already received a text confirming the arrangement with the towing company, complete with reference number.
So we went over to the other garage (this town has one grocery store, but at least three garages!) and got to talk to the tow truck driver directly. We explained what CAA told us, and he was all, WTF? No, I did not need to be there. I told him where the key was hidden, and made sure he knew that the truck wouldn’t go out of park. That was useful for him, because they normally need to put the vehicle into neutral to be able to move it. I also warned him about the missing handle inside the driver’s side door. My brother laughed and joked, “you probably see that all the time.” The guy said yes, yes he did!
In the middle of all this, my daughter let me know when the septic guy came and went, she took care of paying him (with tip. The septic guy always gets a tip) – and about the kittens she saw! All was being taken care of on the home front.
So arrangements with the garage and the tow was finally done. We then squeezed back into my brother’s truck and drove to the farm!
My brother and his wife, meanwhile, were going to lend us a vehicle.
The one that’s stored in the barn.
Now, there are reasons they replaced it, but it still runs and they were pretty sure the registration hasn’t expired yet, either. My brother would get it out of the barn for me and we could use it until we got the truck back.
!!!
Once we got to the farm, they had to rush to get what they needed to do done – and now they had the extra job of getting the car out of the barn! A lot of stuff had been shoved into it and around it, in their hurry to get everything off their property before possession was turned over to the new owners.
My brother and his wife are the best. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
A few hours later, I was in my room folding laundry, my older daughter came in to let me know that she’d heard the storm door open and close. She went to check and found my brother had dropped some peas on the floor and left.
Peas?
Okay.
As we were talking, I mentioned that they were in a huge hurry, but were making sure to have the vehicle available for us.
Which is when I realized my daughter had said, keys. Not peas.
Auditory processing disorder can be really funny, sometimes.
Thanks to the new security camera my brother installed at the gate, I was able to check the live feed to see them leave. My brother drove the truck out with their trailer, and my SIL followed behind with the care they’d loaned us in the past. When she stopped to close the gate behind them, I was able to use the camera to say thank you again, and wish them safe driving, and hear my SIL’s response.
I love technology!
Not long after, I got a call from the garage.
He had a few minutes, so he got the truck in and took a look.
It was exactly what everything thought it might be. A linkage problem. The cable broke.
He was able to use a clip and put it together and it was working, but he couldn’t give any sort of guarantee on how long it would hold. A few months. A few weeks? Eventually, the part would need to be replaced, which would be the entire assembly. It has been a long time since he’d replaced one, but he thought it was around $400plus.
This is our only vehicle. We can’t take chances.
I gave the go ahead. to order the part, asking him to call me back when he knew how much the part would cost. Labour would be $100 an hour, and he estimated about 2 hours to replace it.
I was getting ready to go out and water the garden when he called back.
Was I good with an off market cable for $150?
Uhm… yeah!!!!
So that’s what he ordered for me. The total, with 2 hours of labour and taxes, would come out to less than the part if it came from GM.
So that will be done on Tuesday.
Just in time for my daughter and I to have our joint medical appointment on Wednesday.
Then my eye test on Thursday that she has to drive me home from.
I had completely forgotten about the medical appointments on Wednesday. If we’d gone with the first garage, we would have had to reschedule, and who knows when that would have had to be.
Thank God the problem turned out to be relatively minor and not the transmission!!!
Plus, my older daughter has said she can cover the cost, so it’s not a hit to our budget, either.
That’s a huge relief!
Meanwhile, I’m going to have to use my brother’s vehicle tomorrow, though I was planning to avoid it. It all the fuss, I completely forgot I was going to hit the feed store for more kibble for the outside cats.
I used the last of their kibble to do this evening’s feeding, and even had to stretch it a bit by making a big bowl of cat soup with it.
The cats didn’t complain, that’s for sure!
After all that, I finally headed out to water the garden and baby food forest, which I’ll write about in my next post.
On the one hand, this was a pretty stressful day and another expense we just don’t need.
On the other than, things couldn’t have worked out better, under the circumstances.
The problem didn’t happen until after I got to my mother’s, and I could still do her grocery shopping.
My brother happened to take the day off today so they could get their trailer set up and out for the rest of the summer, so stopping to help me out was on their way.
They still had their hold vehicle, it was being stored here at the farm, and it’s insured (though they did have to run into town to make sure of that).
We went with the second garage that could work on the truck a day earlier than the first one, which meant we don’t have to reschedule medical appointments I’d forgotten about.
I mean, if something’s going to go wrong, it couldn’t have happened under better circumstances.
As my SIL said, someone is watching out for me, and I totally agree – and give thanks!
Something weird has happened with my traffic stats again, today. I have no idea why this is happening to my little Canadian blog. From about 4am to 10am today, I have gotten hit with over a thousand views, with the highest number at about 8am. Most are from Lansing, Michigan, with a significant portion from Ashburn, Virginia. This has happened before, and the hits are from the same two place, artificially inflating my stats. These are obviously bots of some kind, and they do nothing good for my blog. Whoever is doing this, I wish they would go away and not come back!
With that out of the way, here is our kitten fix for the day!
It took some doing, but I managed to get a shot of the little calico.
Big brother Colby is fluffy enough that he completely hid the calico from view until he moved to the other side of the kitten soup bowl. I’m glad to see Little Sprout getting some kitten soup, though she ran away while I was taking pictures, and didn’t get much. It would be great if we could lure the babies closer and socialize them, but we seem to have very little success with the calicos. I thought we’d be able to socialize Brussel, when she had her babies in the sun room, but now she’s almost as strange as her sister, Sprout.
While working outside today, I just had to pause and snap this picture of Eyelet.
He is so, so small! Absolutely dwarfed by the rhubarb leaves.
Those incredible eyes. Wow.
Much later in the day, as we were approaching our high of the day, I was finding cats splattered all over the place, trying to find any cool spot. The kittens especially like this spot.
The like that roll of mosquito netting, too! There’s another one that they ignore. This one is smaller and lighter, and I often find it knocked off the platform.
When it’s not being used as a bed or pillow by kittens!
On a completely different note; one thing about this time of year, when tending things outside, is there are more and more little things I can pick to snack on. The radish pods are getting prolific and there are many, many more tiny pods developing. Currently, we also have some wild saskatoons to enjoy!
With how dry things have been, they are not as big and juicy as they could be, but they’re not dried out, either. One of the jobs in my list over the next while is to clear the underbrush so we can better access the saskatoon bushes – and get rid of the stuff that’s crowding them and competing for water and nutrients.
It isn’t a lot, for July, even in our short season climate, but things are progressing. Hopefully, we will have another long, mild fall for an extended growing season.
Ha! I just checked the Government of Canada average first frost date for our area. I’ve been going by September 10. According to the updated map, if I go by the town to the north of us, it’s now between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21. If I go by the town to the east of us, it’s between Sept. 21 and 24. Yet another source has it between Sept. 21 and 30.
The Farmer’s Almanac still has our last frost date at June 2, and first frost date at Sept. 10, for a 99 day growing season. Frankly, I think the Farmer’s Almanac is the most likely to be correct.
We shall plan accordingly – both for the garden, and for taking care of the kitties!
We didn’t need to leave until 11, so the morning was our normal routine. As usual, I started off feeding the yard cats, and got to see these two again.
Colby looks like a real scrapper! That white and grey is so big, I’m starting to mistake it for one of the three from last year that are really small!
Yesterday, I happened to be in the right place to see Sprout lying in the grass in the outer yard, nursing these two, plus the tortie. The calico is definitely the shiest of the four. The orange one, Colby, is the bravest. Last night, I saw him at the top of the ramp into the isolation shelter. Just a little while ago, while gathering bowls for the evening kitten soup feeding, I spotted the tortie inside the cat cage, inside the big no-longer heated water bowl that’s been repurposed as a food bowl in there. I didn’t see it when I brought out the kitten soup bowl, though Colby, was back again.
Last night, after I mused about how far behind parts of our garden is this year, I did go and look at last year’s photos. Wow, are we ever behind this year! At least with the winter squash and melons. At this time last year, the winter squash in particular were getting huge, and by the middle of the month, I was taking pictures of the developing squash with my hand for a size reference. I get a strong feeling we won’t have any winter squash or melons this year! The transplant shock, plus those bugs on the winter squash, followed by that one unpredicted cold night, has really done damage. The eggplants were set back, too; last year, they were in full bloom by now. The peppers are going okay, though, compared to last year, at least.
I’ve also definitely lost at least two of the summer squash that got transplanted out, including one of the White Scallop squash. Last year was a bad year for summer squash, but I think this one might be even worse!
I was done my rounds early enough that I took a quick nap before we left. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be falling sleep while waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery!
We ended up on the road shortly before 11. My poor daughter was fasting, and was so very hungry! The surgery was booked for 12:30, and we got there shortly before 12. We went to the outpatient clinic first, where she registered and got her paperwork. Then we went to the day surgery section on the second floor. The staff found that, while she was on their list, for some reason her chart wasn’t printed out yet, so we sat down in the waiting room while they took care of that. Which took no time at all, and she was soon passing my her glasses and phone, etc. as they took her in to be prepped for surgery.
She told me afterwards that everything went very smoothly. She was even complimented for not being at all nervous about it, as they strapped her down to the “crucifix” operating table. The staff and the surgeon were all really nice, too. She REALLY appreciated the pre-warmed blankets and towels they used on her, too!
While that was happening, I made a quick trip to the nearby Walmart to get a few things. It started to rain while I was inside. I always bag my purchases at the truck, so I was standing in the rain, filling an insulated bag, when my phone started ringing.
My first thought was that it was the hospital, and why would they be calling me so soon? Did something go wrong???
Nope.
It was the home care office. Not the usual coordinator, but someone who was covering for her at the moment.
She told me that this morning’s home care aid got to my mother’s place 10 minutes late. When she got there, my mother told her she’s already taken her pills. The aid opened up the lock box and this morning’s beds were still in their bubble, of course. I told the coordinator, my mother has a secret stash of her pills somewhere. The coordinator told me something like that had been reported. As for my mother taking them herself after the aid was only 10 minutes late (which means she arrived at the time she was scheduled to leave, rather than the time she was scheduled to arrive), she would have decided the aid wasn’t going to show up at all. I told the coordinator that my mother believes that the aids don’t show up sometimes, because they want her to die. That’s something I’d already told the regular coordinator before, so it’s probably somewhere in the file. This is why she snuck out and hid one of her bubble packs.
I asked if my mother treated the home care aid all right, and was told nothing was reported about any such behaviour. After clarifying with me about the medications, she said she would make notes for the file, then follow up with the aid.
Meanwhile, I got a message from my older daughter. The land line had rung, but she never got to it in time, and she was worried it was the hospital. So I quickly told her it was home care, then finished bagging things up and got out of the rain so I could explain further.
That done, I quickly updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to the hospital. I still had about 2 hours to wait, and I just stayed in the waiting room.
Where I dozed off again!
Why am I always so sleepy during the day, but can easily stay up all night?? It’s not like I’m in my 20’s anymore!
After about an hour or more – my daughter would have been out of surgery and in the recovery room by then – I started hearing a strange noise from the bag of my daughter’s stuff beside me. Her phone was ringing! So I answered it, using my hotel receptionist voice. 😄 Even though I identified the phone as my daughter’s, and that I wasn’t my daughter, the person on the other end launched into their reason for calling. I don’t think she caught on that I wasn’t my daughter!
It turned out to be a clinic in the city. My daughter has been referred to an endocrinologist about her PCOS, and they were calling about an appointment they have for her. I was in no position to take anything down, and explained that I was in the hospital, and my daughter was coming out of surgery just then. We eventually worked out that they will send my daughter a letter with the information, plus they will call back to follow up tomorrow. The appointment is in October some time, so there’s no rush on that.
Not long after, my phone rang. It was the surgery staff, letting me know my daughter would be ready to leave withing half an hour. When she found out I was already in the waiting room, she asked me to go to the main entry, where they have wheelchairs available for patient transport to the vehicle. Standard procedure, and I already knew where the wheelchairs were kept, so off I went.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options. There was the extra wide bariatric wheelchair. I wasn’t going to use that, because they only have one. There was another wheelchair that was so low, it had to be for a child. Then there was another, but it was so narrow, it was probably also for a child, but at least her feet wouldn’t be dragging on the ground. So that was the one I took.
When I got there, the person behind the desk immediately asked who is was for, and I told her. She then went to take it, to go get my daughter. When she saw it, she commented that she didn’t think my daughter would fit! I told her, I wasn’t sure, either, but I didn’t have much choice.
When they brought my daughter out, she was in a completely different wheelchair. 😄 She had her discharge papers in hand, and a package with a couple of cookies in it. She inhaled those as soon as she got into the truck!
As I was pushing her out of the hospital, she showed me her incision site. I couldn’t believe how tiny it was! She said she was also feeling really good, but for safety reasons, she wasn’t allowed to walk out on her own. She had to be careful not to use the hand or arm, because it wasn’t hurting at all, and her mobility was really good.
Once at ground level, we made a side trip so she could use the washroom. As I was looking out the windows, I spotted something moving around.
Interestingly, it was only eating the thistles, not the flowers. We had one summer where we had about 5 or 6 groundhogs in our yard, then they basically disappeared. It was really nice to see one again. I did pause at the reception desk on the way out to let the staff know they had a groundhog in there, just in case they didn’t already know. They buggers are adorable, but they can do major damage!
I brought the truck around for my daughter and, once she was settled in, checked to see how she was feeling. Was she up to eating? I knew she would be hungry, but straight out of anesthesia is not always a good time to eat. She said she was famished, so we headed over to a nearby Subway I knew the location of. Just a few bites into her food, and she told me she was feeling SO much better. Post op, they had told her a number of things to watch out for and, if she had any of those symptoms, to get to a doctor right away. This included feeling light headed or nauseous. Which she was feeling, but she was pretty sure it was because she was hungry. It was. Once she started eating, it all went away!
From there, it was straight to home. As we were driving, I updated her on the calls I got on both my phone and hers. As we talked about her referral to endocrinology, I remembered to asked about her referral for a reduction mammoplasty; I knew she had a call about that, and that is why she has an appointment with our regular doctor on the same day that I do, next week. Since I had my own done in this province, I was curious to know how much things have changed. It turned out there are only two doctors in this province that does them. One has his own clinic, while the other is new to our province, and is in one of the city hospitals.
The one with the cardiac clinic that wouldn’t accommodate my husband’s disability, then ghosted him on the phone appointments.
So… I’m thinking going to the doctor with his own clinic would be worth the extra time on the waiting list.
Which could be a year or two!
When I had the ball rolling for mine, the clinic told me they wouldn’t even book appointments past 6 months, and anything before 6 months was booked solid. I was looking at a long wait for surgery, but I was also put on the cancellation list, and my doctor at the time flagged my file as urgent, because of how much pain I was in. I ended up getting in due to a cancellation, within a couple of months. Hopefully, they will be able to do the same for her, but I don’t know that they’re allowed to flag files like that anymore.
It’s good that my daughter is finally getting all this stuff done. Now, if I could just talk her sister into starting to see a doctor, too!
My daughter may have been feeling good after her surgery, but it still took a lot out of her, and she dozed off on the ride home. When we got to the gate, she started undoing her seat belt to open it. I just looked at her, asking, are you up to that?
Nope. She wasn’t. But she was in the passenger seat, so it was automatic! 😄
Now that we’re all inside and settled in, she decided a nap on the couch would be a good idea!
I’m so glad everything went smoothly. She’ll probably start feeling pain more as things wear off, but for now, she’s mostly just feeling drained. I’m still wildly impressed by how small the incision is. Squidly has been evicted! Once it all heals up, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, to be able to use that hand without pain.
Meanwhile, it has still be raining, off and on today. It isn’t a lot, but enough that I don’t need to water the garden this evening. The yard cats got fed as soon as everything was settled in. I’d picked up more pumpkin seed, so I’ve been able to add powdered pumpkin seed to the kitten soup lately, though the adult cats are certainly getting their share. Hopefully, that will help get rid of any worms they might have. I suspect that’s why some of the really small cats and kittens are as small as they are.
Eyelet is so much like Button was in that respect. I have been putting the 4 friendly kittens inside the old kitchen to get a chance to eat the kitten soup before the adult push them away. Only Eyelet and Sir Robin like to stay and eat. Havarti and Grommet will eat a little, then they want out. Eyelet has discovered the plastic couch that’s in there, so when he’s done, that’s where I’ve been finding him. When I picked him up today, his pupils were so dilated, it concerned me. That’s what Button’s eyes started to do, to the point his irises are almost completely hidden. So I used the flashlight on my phone to test, and was happy to see his pupils slowly undilate, before he started blinking and trying to look away. That was a relief.
So that’s where were are at now. It looks like the rain has stopped for now, and it’s been blessedly cooler. It’s supposed to get really hot again in a few days, but I should have at least one cooler day to get some manual labour done outside! Thankfully, I don’t have any scheduled outings for the next while. Unless I get called to do my mother’s med assist, I should be able to get some decent progress in.
We shall see.
I’m so happy my daughter was able to get this surgery done so quickly! It’s going to make a big difference, once everything is healed up.
As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.
That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!
It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.
It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.
When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.
Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.
It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄
That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.
My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.
It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.
The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.
There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.
So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.
That was the encouraging part.
The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.
After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.
Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.
As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.
We shall see how it pans out.
Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!
I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.
When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.
I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F
I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.
Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.
We have a couple of long haired tabbies that look very much alike, that are quite feral. A while back, I spotted one of them with a strange thing on her back. It turned out to be a mat of winter fur, still stuck to her.
It finally dropped off! It’s a good thing I saw it on the cat first, because that was one heck of a thing to find on the side walk in front of the sun room. 😄
I was able to get a picture of the cat’s back this morning.
There’s a bit of a bald spot where the mat was dangling. It must have been such a relief for her to finally get that off!
As I was finishing my morning rounds, I came up on Sir Robin. He had discovered the clump of fur and was having an absolute blast, attacking it! I got a little video of that, which you can see if you click through, above. We have toys available, scattered around in the sun room and the isolation shelter, but I’ve never seen them being played with. A clump of fur, however… 😂😂
Today is supposed to be ridiculously hot (for our area). Our Costco shopping trip has been postponed, so I tried to head outside earlier, to take advantage of the cool.
It was already hot. Or, perhaps, it never really cooled down during the night. We had some thunderstorms blow through, but it was still muggy out there.
When it came to feeding the kittens, I set bowls up in the old kitchen for them, but only found three. Havarti was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Caramel, and I was afraid she’d managed to move him somewhere else. Thankfully, I did see him later one.
These four kittens really enjoy their cuddle puddles together!
It took a while, but I did spot one of the new kittens at one of the bowls under the shrine, but just the one. My brother was already up and about by then, so perhaps they were spooked by the activity closer to wherever their “nest” is.
After cleaning the isolation shelter out, I moved it closer to the shrine and left it to dry out from being hosed down, before putting the food and water bowls back. I’ll be putting bowls of cat soup into there for the new kittens, regularly now.
This morning, I was able to get one of the cat beds out of the cat house and set it up in the shelter.
After some fiddling about, I ended up putting both box nests into the bottom half, along with some of the cat toys found during the clean up. Later, I added a fresh litter box, too.
Of course, the regular cats immediately came to check it out!
I set the box nests facing each other so they’d block each other from wind. Later, I’ll add some cat blankets inside them. They may be a bit small for it, but I’m hoping a mama will find the shelter suitable to have kittens in, if they’re too feral to use the sun room set up.
After that was set up, I cleaned out the patio the shelter has been in all winter. The amount of elm seeds blown around, under and behind the shelter was insane! I ended up using the ice scraper to get it loose from the patio blocks, so I could sweep the bulk of it away before hosing it down. Once it was as clean and clear as I could get it, I moved the folding table into the area, against the wall under the kitchen window. Once I can get organized with my daughters, we need to move our jade plants and aloe vera outside, and we can set them up there. Some will need to be repotted. They apparently do like to be in smaller pots, but some of them are getting really massive!
Just out of curiosity, I looked jade plants up online. In commercial sites, the largest I could find were in 6″ pots, selling for about $50. I found some bigger ones, though still smaller than ours, on kijiji selling for up to about $75-$80. The only one I could find that was bigger was actually larger than ours, 35 years old and selling for $800. !!!
We’ve had to hide all our plants in the cat free zone in the living room, but the light there is poor, unless something is directly in front of the East facing window. They are not thriving, so I’m hoping they’ll enjoy a summer outdoors. They’re poisonous to cats, though, so we’ll have to find a way to keep them away for the pots. Being up on the table will help, at least.
The table set up, I could hear thunder in the distance, so I moved on to my next project in the garden, which will get its own post, next.
So today ended up way longer than originally expected. But the, I originally didn’t have anything outside of home planned for today at all. I even offered it up as my one day that I could do my mother’s grocery shopping for her this year, and she said no, so I expected to have another day to work outside.
Then I got the call from home care last night, saying there was no one to do a med assist for this morning, so that got added on. When I called my mother to let her know, she told me she had a grocery list started, so that got added on. Then I was in contact with the rescue that would be taking Poirot’s orphan babies, and that got added on, which would get combined with a trip into town to refill our water jobs.
I still expected to get things done at home.
Ha!
First off, my body let me know in no uncertain terms, I needed to back off. While sitting at my computer shortly before going to bed last night, I got hit with another Charlie horse. This time, the back of my right thigh. I managed to stand up and grab the tube of tei fu lotion, then stagger over to my husband’s room. My husband, darling that he is, caught on as soon as he saw my face, what was going on. Even with his door closed, so I could draw my drawers for him to work the lotion into my leg, my older daughter could hear me and came dashing over as fast as she could so see if I needed help. So she was able to assist me with getting around and eventually to bed.
So… definitely not a day to overdo things, today!
I found myself up at 5am, though, and unable to get back to sleep, so I did my morning rounds pretty early. The outside cats were quite happy with that. I got kitten food bowls set up on the kitchen floor before I headed out with the dry kibble and had a whole row of kittens already ready and waiting at the door, and went straight to the kibble!
While doling out the dry kibble, I had a little fuzzy surprise at the shrine!
Two, actually, but one ran off immediately.
Sitting on the box nest was a little orange baby. The one that ran away looked to be a tortie, but it was such a short glimpse, it was hard to be sure. The orange one ran off a short distance when I came to put kibble in the bowls. As I came around later, I found a white and grey, too!
From what I could see, the orange kitten and the possible tortie are Sprout’s babies, and the white and grey matches the feral mama with no name. They have finally brought their babies to the yard!
When I started setting out the containers with cat soup, I made sure to leave one under the shrine for the newbies. Later on, I saw both cats and mamas – and very round soon to be mamas *sigh* – enjoying it. Lady Hypotenose and Ink are both heavily pregnant now.
*sigh*
After the cats were fed, I did the rest of the morning rounds, and made sure to grab a carrier for Poirot’s littles.
Then it was time to head over to my mother’s for her med assist that home care wasn’t able to do this morning. I got there a bit earlier than they had her scheduled for. When I walked in, though, the first thing I saw was a laundry basket.
Her time slot on the shared laundry calendar is for Friday afternoon, not the morning.
Thankfully, the unit’s marked in for the morning were not using the laundry room today!
There was also a bouquet of artificial flowers. When she’d gone to the cemetery with my sister to leave fresh artificial flowers and family gravesites, they didn’t have enough, so her mother’s gravesite didn’t get any. My sister got more flowers and left them with my mother, and could I put those in the cemetery for her?
Thankfully, it was very much on the way for us, but I’ll get to that, later.
While doing my mother’s meds, she gave me the usual hard time about how I’m doing it instead of them. She’s angry at home care for calling me to do her meds, but she takes her anger out on me. Then she demanded I leave out her other two meds of the day, because on the assumption no one was going to show up for her two evening med assists. Which I refused to do.
I was able to get her to focus on her shopping list, though, and went over that before heading out. I was going to start her two loads laundry (there are only 2 washers and 2 driers for the entire building. It’s a small building) before I left when she told me there was something written on one of the machines she couldn’t understand. It turned out to be a hand written note saying the machine wasn’t working, and what it was doing that it shouldn’t, and that it was going to be replaced.
So that doubled the time for her washing.
*sigh*
Today’s errands included a stop at the pharmacy for a couple of things. She had called them about her refills and was told they weren’t ready, so she arranged delivery for Monday. Which is her last day of meds in the bubble packs. Her inhaler was also out, so she as getting a refill on that, too. So once at the pharmacy, I checked if her meds were ready first, just in case. The bubble packs weren’t, but her inhaler was. Since she was out completely, I decided to take that.
That little thing cost almost $200!!!
I paid for it myself, since that was more than all the cash she gave me for her shopping – and it was more than enough for the day’s needs. I made sure to call her before I went to the grocery store to let her know, so she wouldn’t be surprised by it when I got back with her stuff. She got all angry because it was supposed to be delivered on Monday, and why did I pick it up?
…
I told her, because you’re out completely! This way, she would have it for her last med assist of the day.
She was still upset even when I got back with her groceries. I think it was partly because she was going to pay me back with cash, and she’s been increasingly weird about that. After I put everything away, she started digging through her purse when I suggested a check, so I could do a mobile deposit rather than driving to the nearer city to deposit it, and she could hang on to her cash. She was quite happy with that suggestion.
So I stayed around for the next while, waiting on the one laundry machine to be done. As we were talking, things went back to the homecare situation. I ended up calling the case coordinator and, much to my surprise, actually got her instead of a machine! 😄 I let her know about the missed meds yesterday morning. She looked up my mother’s file, and there were no notations for that time slot. They’ve got some new people – but were still short staffed for this morning! The person that was on the printed out schedule they leave for my mother, with the names for each time slot, was not supposed to come that morning. A new person was. There were other issues related to the staffing changes, including shift confusion that lead to my mother having someone show up twice in the mornings.
After the call, my mother had her usual unfortunate things to say about the case coordinator, and the home care workers. She can’t understand that the case coordinator is not the shift scheduler, and they don’t all magically know everything about her file, including things they were not told by the home care aides!
*sigh*
Because of the broken down washing machine, I was still there when my mother’s Meals on Wheels was delivered. I used that time to go back to the laundry room, where I could fold things, though I didn’t have time to put them away.
Once the laundry was brought in, I soon made my goodbyes. My mother must have been seriously tired, because she made no effort to get me to stay!
From there, I headed home, but was soon heading out again, this time with my daughter and Poirot’s kittens in the carrier.
I’d been messaging my contact at the large animal rescue about the times, but they hadn’t seen the most recent one. My messages weren’t even being seen at that point. We brought the kittens, anyhow and swung by on our way out. My contact took the kittens, but not before I was able to get one last picture.
When we got there, they were in the middle of unloading a horse, so we didn’t stay long.
I’m going to miss those babies!
Our first stop after that was the local cemetery to take care of the flowers for my grandmother. Then we visited other family members laid to rest there. I noticed that my aunt and uncle did not have any flowers at all. My daughter ended up making a little bouquet of wildflowers she found nearby for them. That was very sweet of her!
From there, we went to the cemetery my MIL is buried in. We had tried to go there, at my FIL’s request, as he physically cannot visit the gravesite anymore, but never found the stone. My daughter had accompanied my husband to the funeral as his mobility assistant, but she was so sick that day, she barely remembered anything, never mind where it was. What we did find was a sign saying that, due to flooding that spring, some of the stones were damaged, so they had been removed for repair and would be returned another time. We figured that’s what happened to her stone!
So this time, we expected to be able to find it.
We didn’t.
I finally messaged my husband, asking if he could remember, and he gave me an area that I’d already gone through. Then he messaged her exact plot coordinates.
I had walked right past it and never saw it! It’s a very low profile stone, but I’d actually noticed the one next to it, because of the interesting solar lights around it.
My daughter stayed by the stone while I went back for the truck, which was parked at the opposite end of the cemetery!
We had brought a solar powers light up cross along with the flowers and vase we’d picked up and made up a pretty bouquet. While we did select the heaviest vase available, it was clearly not going to be heavy enough to stay upright with flowers in it. So we went into town to a dollar store – the only place that would have was we were looking for – and got several bags of decorative glass beads to weight it down. My daughter thought the bouquet was looking a bit sparse, so she looked at the floral display while I headed over to another section. I picked up a set of solar powered fairy lights, while my daughter got some greenery, then back to the cemetery we went.
Where we found the vase already fallen over!
Not broken, thankfully.
I helped my daughter with redoing the whole thing, as she added the fairy light string into the vase, then added some of the decorative glass beads, and kept on going. The light string was long enough for plenty to be inside the vase, and still have enough to be wrapped around the bouquet, as the pieces were put back in.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t test it, even to see if we had turned it on or not. It had a mode setting, too, but the solar charged batteries needed much more time before we could test it out. We’ll just have to come back later, when it’s darker and the batteries have had time to charge.
My daughter did a great job making it all look pretty.
At this point, I was realized I hadn’t eaten anything since my very early breakfast – and my daughter hasn’t eaten at all – so back into town we went, this time to get something to eat! Meanwhile, my husband had messaged me with a request, which meant going to a store across the street from where we eat.
Then, finally, we could get the water bottle refills we’d gone into town to do in the first place!
That done, we could finally heat home, with only a brief stop at the rescue to retrieve our carrier. The rescue is officially open to the public this weekend, so they were really busy, and we didn’t get a chance to see them where they were set up for now.
By the time we got home, it was well past time for the outside cats to be fed again. Once we were unloaded by the house, I went to do that, and was able to distract cats away from the truck so my daughter could park it. Sir Robin likes to run under the truck!
Once again, I made sure to leave a bowl with the cat soup under the shrine for the new kittens, though I when I finally did see one, it was just the orange one.
Around this time, I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting us know they were on their way here, to spend the weekend in their trailer.
With the new kittens in mind, I sort of skipped my evening rounds and instead focused on getting the isolation shelter out for cleaning. The plastic around the bottom for winterizing was removed, along with everything inside it, so I could start hosing it down. When building it, I tried my best to have it open and accessible enough to reach inside for cleaning. Some corners are still had to get to.
I was still working on that when my brother and SIL arrived. They had lots to set up so, I left them to it.
The isolation shelter is now set up near the shrine and catio. What I’m hoping is that the new kittens will discover it as a place with food and water and shelter (the beds and cat blankets were hosed down and will be returned later). Which would make it far easier to catch them, if necessary!
Once my brother and SIL had settled in, and I popped over for a good, long visit. While I try to keep them up to date with messages, when it comes to my mother, some things just need to be talked about in person. Especially with some of the things she sometimes says. It’s a good thing we keep the lines of communication between us as much as we do, because my mother has a habit of saying different things to each of us, and trying to play us against each other.
By the time I headed back to the house, it was starting to get dark. The yard light is nice and bright, though, so I could see where I was going…
… and activity in the grass!
Yes, I saw kittens.
There are at least four of them in total, and one of them appears to be a calico.
I get the impression Sprout and the other feral mama have been co-parenting the litters together, too.
Well, I hope they discover the cat isolation shelter.
Tomorrow, I was expecting to do our Costco shopping, but my younger daughter is dealing with a lot of pain right now and wouldn’t be able to come along to help me. My arm is much better today, but clambering in and out of the back of the truck would certainly not be a good idea! With the stock up trip we’ve already done, we can get away with waiting until Monday. That’s the day before Canada Day, so Costco will likely be insanely busy. We’ll deal!
Which means that tomorrow, I get to stay home. One of the things I want to do is set up a fresh litter box and clean cat beds inside the isolation shelter. I spotted Ink dashing around in a way that made me think she’s looking for somewhere to have her babies. If I can set up a nice, cozy “nest” for her in the isolation shelter, that would be idea! Well, not as ideal as having them in the sun room, but she’s too feral for that, I think.
We said goodbye to three kittens today – and said hello to at least four, by the end of the day.
I’m hoping things work out with this other rescue, with the one that’s been helping us shutting down, soon, and that Poirot’s babies will get lots of love and attention, and get adopted soon!
As my daughter and I headed out today, I saw a cat crossing from the unoccupied farm across the road from us, stopped in the middle of the road.
Sniffing at another cat on the road, before moving on.
At which point, I stopped and walked over to take a look.
Sure enough, it was a cat that had been hit by a car. It had been there long enough for there to be… damage, shall we say… making it hard to identify the cat, but it looked an aweful lot like Poirot.
We saw Poirot yesterday, but did we see her while doing the morning feeding? I couldn’t remember, but if we had seen her this morning, it was unlikely she was this cat. My older daughter had helped, so we messaged her and she couldn’t remember early, but promised to keep an eye out while her sister and I continued with our errands. She did confirm seeing her kittens sleeping in the sun room, but did not see Poirot.
We got back late enough to do second outside cat feeding of the day. It was, as always, a commotion of hungry cats and kittens. I managed to close up all the kittens in the sun room so they could have their cat soup without being pushed away by larger cats.
Miss Lemon, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp had their fill, along with Grommet, Eyelet, Sir Robin and Havarti. We have gone from 11 kittens to 7, and we know what happened for sure with only one of them.
I messaged the Cat Lady about the potential situation during one of our stops. I’ve been sending her photos of Eyelet as well, because he reminds me so much of Button – and is very photogenic! She is going to try and find a home for him. The chances might be better with a kitten with such striking eyes.
Once I was sure enough, I also messaged the large animal rescue that was going to take in Poirot and her kittens. I’m sure they will still take her kittens. At more than 7 weeks, they can be weaned pretty safely. They are so tiny, though, I’m sure they’ll have vets thinking they are much young. I do, however, have photographic proof that they were born on May 4th.
Crud. We weren’t able to completely socialize her, but Poirot was such a sweet cat. She would have made a great ambassador for colonies such as ours at the rescue.
The Re-Farmer 