outside cats

Cat crowd and sad sunflowers

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We had another frost last night, and today is going to be distinctly chillier. We’ve already had a smattering of rain, which is supposed to continue off and on.

Then, on the weekend, we’re supposed to go above 20C again!

The outside cats seem to be taking it in stride. In this weather, they will be growing in their denser winter coats.

How is this for a lovely family picture!

Starting from the top left, we have Rosencrantz’s baby. Next to her is the mystery kitten; I am unsure which mom she belongs to! Next is Rozencrantz herself – who as even been letting me pet her! Until the food is out, of course. :-D

Next in line is Tabby, then Little Braveheart (her head is hidden behind her mom), and finally, Junk Pile cat.

Junk Pile cat was the one kitten of Rosencrantz’s that we were unable to catch. Keith and David, with their leaky, glued shut eyes, were caught and treated and are now both indoors.

This means that Rosencrantz’s babies are siblings to Junk Pile, while Junk Pile’s kittens are the grandkittens of Rosencrantz. Which means Rosencrantz’s kittens are also the aunts/uncles of Junk Pile’s kittens! :-D

I did see Butterscotch around when I first came outside and started getting the cat kibble. I have put the container for her and her kittens at the side of the house, near the steps I have been seeing them play around most often, lately. She went past me as I was filling it. Later, as headed towards the old garden area, I could see her kittens, playing among the squash beds.

Which confirms that Butterscotch has moved her kittens again.

Across the road, to the neighbouring property! No one lives there, but there is still the house, barn, garage, and various sheds and equipment used by the current owner.

*sigh*

She has done this before, and when her kittens grew bigger, they did stay at our place on their own, but I don’t like that she and her kittens are crossing the road like that. That one is a main road, and gets a lot more traffic than the one our driveway leads to.

I really wish Butterscotch wouldn’t do that. :-(

The frost we’ve been having seem to have finally done in the sunflowers.

The leaves are drooping on all of them, and even the unopened seed heads are drooping. I don’t expect many of them will ever open, even as we warm up again.

With the ones that are already open, I’m sure they can better withstand the frost. The problem is, it’s too chilly for the pollinators. No pollinators, and the seeds will never develop. I’m hoping they will be out again as things warm up.

Not all of them are tucking down for the winter. The wasps on the tree outside the kitchen window – the tree we need to cut back in hopes of establishing an internet connection for the second satellite – is still buzzing. As chilly as it was this morning, I could see a few flying around, too.

It’s hard to know how much longer it’ll be, before we can safely cut that branch down. Meanwhile, we’ve already got our 90% data usage warning, with 2 weeks before the account flips. We’re still rationing our internet usage, but we’d have to basically stop using the internet almost completely, to avoid going over the limit. Our service won’t be interrupted, but we will be charged double per gig once we do.

I really hope taking that branch down works. The tech already checked everything and replaced everything he could, and it still got zero signal. If it’s not the branch blocking the signal, there’s really nothing else left to fix. Yet, if it was just the branch, we would have had at least an intermittent signal, rather than no signal at all.

Ah, well. We’ll find out, one way or the other, once those branches come down.

The Re-Farmer

Morning surprises, and is the hard cider okay?

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So I had a few pleasant surprises this morning.

And one not so pleasant.

When I headed out to do my morning routine, I had a rush of outside cats come running as soon as I opened the door! And who was in the lead?

Little Braveheart!

She ran right up to me. She still won’t let me pet her, but she’s coming the closest.

While in the sun room, filling a container of kibble at the storage bin, there was a crowd of cats going in and out, including Butterscotch, Potato Beetle, Junk Pile cat and her 2 kittens. When I felt a cat rubbing against my legs, I looked down, expecting to see Potato Beetle, who has been begging for attention these days.

Nope.

It was Little Braveheart! Weaving around my feet.

*melt*

The mystery kitten came out from under the cathouse again. That seems to be a favorite place now. I’m glad she’s willing to hang out so close.

Once he’d eaten his fill, Potato Beetle accompanied me for the rest of my rounds.

He did not want me to put him down, either! :-D

The biggest seed head on the mutant sunflower, with its 20 or so seed heads, is opening up quite nicely!

Once back inside and chatting with my daughters, I noticed a kitten on a side table. They are allowed on this table, but it’s also where the hard crab apple cider is sitting, and the kittens have been going after the airlocks. So I went to move her away and…

… noticed both airlocks were gone.

!!!!

I had checked the temperatures before heading outside, and didn’t notice they were gone. I guess it’s a good thing it’s been relatively chilly; they both read at 17C/62F this morning, while the ambient temperature is 16C/60F. They are both wrapped in a towel to keep the warmth of their own fermentation in, but at these temperatures, there’s not a lot of activity in the airlocks.

I found the airlocks, upside down, between the towel and the wall. The bungs were quickly covered with plastic wrap. The main concern is that we have a fruit fly problem right now, and we just can’t seem to get rid of them all. Another reason to be glad the cooler temperatures mean slow fermentation, I guess. They weren’t attracted to the open holes in the bungs! There were no fruit flies in the jugs. *phew*

They can’t have been without airlocks for long, but even so, could this be a problem? Will they be okay?

I have no idea.

We need to find a way to warm them up. For the mead, we used an electric heating pad, but there is no electrical outlet anywhere near where we have them now. We were thinking of wrapping something warm around them, like those microwavable neck warmers, but we don’t have any.

Hhmm… I could warm up a towel and wrap them in it.

*sigh*

Well, we will just have to keep a close eye on them and see how they turn out!

The Re-Farmer

Success!

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It was a gorgeous evening tonight, so I headed outside to move the metal ring back to the taller apple tree stump and burn it away, along with more of the branches we’d pruned away, earlier in the year.

Before I set up there, though, I topped up the various containers we use for cat food. With all the kittens getting so big, the amount of food that used to last until the next morning, is pretty much gone by evening.

As I did the ones near the old dog house, mystery kitten came out from under it. It didn’t run away completely, though. It just went behind the doghouse, then peeked back at me.

When I came back from topping up the container by the junk pile for Butterscotch’s kittens, I saw this.

Mystery kitten (the one with it’s head above all the others) started to run off as I came closer, but came back. Much progress, there!

I’m starting to think this must be Junk Pile’s third kitten. It’s hard to say for sure, since we only ever saw glimpses, but I was sure it had even more white than Little Braveheart. But it seems to be most comfortable with this little group.

I found Butterscotch and her kittens playing among the squashes! Which, by the way, seem to still be surviving, so I haven’t picked the last of them yet.

While tending the fire, I had Potato Beetle with me the whole time. Which did make things a bit difficult, since he insisted in being in my arms!

Also, he is very sharp.

He doesn’t hang around as much, lately, and I think Butterscotch has something to do with that. While she will tolerate Creamsicle around her kittens, she has all out attacked Potato Beetle, even when he was just sitting on a log, nowhere near her kittens, minding his own business!

Speaking of Butterscotch’s kittens…

I had all 4 of them playing with me!

I have a log set up as a seat next to this old planter. It was cut at an angle and, the way it’s set up, I can’t sit on it and face the planter, because it’s tilted the other way. It makes it a bit awkward to play with the kittens when they decide to go into the planter, but there is one benefit to having to twist around to face them.

One of the orange tabbies has discovered I have a braid. A couple of times, he made a leap up at me, to try and get at it! He also kept trying to get my hand and fingers, batting with his claws retracted.

Not even our inside cats do that! :-D

Finally, as I was heading to put things away in the sun room, I had my biggest surprise.

Success has been achieved!

The tabby kitten was contentedly INSIDE the doghouse, watching me go by.

Though I have seen Creamsicle inside it, none of the other cats seems to want to go in, other than to reach the food bowl in the entrance. I am sure adding that big blanket we used for them in the sun room made the difference. I think they just didn’t like the flax straw inside very much.

I think we can now officially start calling this the cat house, instead of the dog house!

The Re-Farmer

Getting bigger

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Yesterday evening, while doing my rounds and walking around the back of the house, I startled some babies!

Butterscotch seems to have moved her kittens from the junk pile to under the garden shed.

Her kittens are getting so much bigger and more adventurous, wandering further afield in the yard.

I suspect this has something to do with why Butterscotch as moved them. Wherever they are inside the junk pile, it must be getting a bit tight for her and the 4 of them to fit!

Which means that, with the wasp nest gone and the kittens elsewhere (though they do go back to the junk pile to play), I can continue cleaning up in that area.

Now, if only Butterscotch had been willing to move them to the other side of the house, where the food bowls and the old dog house are!

When topping up the kibble, I put one of the containers in the entrance to the doghouse. Recently, I was noticing a definite skunk smell in there, so yesterday, I lifted the roof, fluffed up the straw and left it open to air out for a while. I am trying to think of other ways to encourage the cats to go in there for shelter, but I think it’s going to take winter temperatures to finally convince them!

As for bigger things, look what I found this morning.

It’s the only one that got big like this!

It seems we had a light frost last night (there were no frost warnings), and some of the little squashes actually look a bit frozen. At this point, I don’t think they’re going to get much bigger. I will check them later today, and might just pick what’s left, then start cleaning up the beds in preparation for winter.

This morning, I got a shipping confirmation for part of the fall plantings we ordered. Unfortunately, the garlic was among the things that are back ordered, so they will be shipped later. Still, we will be able to get started on the varieties of flowers we will be naturalizing in the maple grove. I can also leave the beets and carrots in the ground a bit longer, while we wait for the garlic that will be planted there once they are harvested.

It looks like I’ll be able to accomplish more in a few weeks in the fall, than I’d been able to over the past few months, with this summer’s heat! :-)

The Re-Farmer

The cute, the creepy and the awesome

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First, the cute!

Lately, when I open the doors to the sunroom to get the cat kibble during my morning rounds, I have had company.

Little Braveheart has been dashing in and out as I load up on kibble. Even Tabby has been coming closer, but not quite as close as Braveheart.

Right now, I’ve put several of the kibble bowls by the old dog house shelter, to encourage the cats to go into it, but I do still have one near the sunroom door. This morning, Little Braveheart was eating at that container – and I was able to gently pat her back! It took her a few moments to decide she didn’t like it after all, and moved away.

Awesome progress!!!

Then there was the creepy.

Part of my rounds includes switching out the memory card on the trail cam. Something weird started happening with our first one, where it the motion sensor would get triggered, but it wouldn’t stop. So I’d come by the next day to find the red light blinking, the batteries almost dead, and nothing on the memory card. So the newer camera is now set up near that same area. It has a wide angle lens, which is great, because it not only picks up the gate, but the fence on both sides, too. I did end up moving it to a fence post instead of the tree it was on, since the wide angle was blocked by other trees on one side.

Since it’s on the post, I don’t need to go through the trees to reach the camera, and can use the driveway. Since our vandal had glued our locks, before vandalizing the gate itself, over the months, I make a point of checking the lock to see if it’s glued, or for anything else that might be vandalized.

When I got to the gate this morning, the lock was on the wrong side of the gate. As I locked the gate behind me yesterday, the lock was left on the inside of the gate, and the excess chain was wrapped around the bars so as not to dangle. This morning, the chain was turned to the outside of the gate, and the extra length was dangling under the lock.

When I checked the files, sure enough, there was our vandal. In one video, he was just standing right at the gate on one side, looking down the driveway and from side to side. At a couple of points, he seemed to be looking at the camera. In the next video, he had moved to the middle of the gate and was moving the chain around so he could look at the lock. Then he let it go and walked away.

Creeper was creeping again.

Of course, it’s the weekend. As he has been repeatedly told to stay away by the police, I would normally call the non-emergency number to talk to someone about it. The RCMP offices are closed on the weekends, though, and I’m not about to call 911 for this, so it will have to wait until Monday.

*sigh*

I really don’t get why our vandal is so obsessed with this property.

I did make sure to pass on the files to my brother before we headed out to visit.

Which brings me to the awesome.

It was a fantastic visit! We were able to just relax and chat. When he comes here, it’s usually because there is something that needs to be fixed or, as most recently, for a family gathering, so we don’t really get much chance to just be with each other. It was just fantastic. He and his wife are some of my favourite people, and I don’t spend anywhere near as much time with them as I would like!

On top of that, my mother’s car handled the drive very well! No more alarming noises, coming from anywhere! :-D It’s amazing how quiet that car is, now that everything’s fixed! :-D Plus, it has working fans and air conditioning, too! Rather nice to not have to drive with the windows open. :-)

My brother has helped my mother with this car for many years, so before we left, he popped the hood to show me some things. I’m glad he did, because I was wondering about some of it. I knew he had a trickle charger as well as the block heater attached to an extension cord. It also has a battery warmer. He had the extension cord all neatly laid out so that it was tucked safely aside, all three could be plugged in, and the plug for the extension cord could be left hanging outside the hood to plug it in, in the winter. It seems that every time the car was worked on, even from when I’d taken it to the garage near my mother’s place, things got moved around. Only the trickle charger was still plugged in but, of course, the clips were no longer on the battery, since it had been pulled out to be charged, just a few days ago. I don’t know when the extension cord was first moved to where it is now, but when I popped the hood to take the end out so I could plug it in in the garage, prior to last winter, I found a loop of it was touching the serpentine belt, and was starting to get worn. It never got put back under the hood before I left it at the garage, several months ago, for the mechanic to check it as he was able. My brother had tucked it away, so I showed the worn out part to my brother. As we looked closely in the sunlight, we could see the layers had broken and we could see exposed wire. !! So I will have to replace that (along with a burnt out bulb in one headlight) before plugging in and tidying up all the cords again.

Changing that light bulb is going to be so much easier than our van. You can just reach in and pop it out. With our van, we have to unscrew and unfasten the entire headlamp unit, and pull it out completely.

I’m so glad to have my brother to turn to for advice and information! When we moved out here, we were just sort of plunked into the middle of things. We would be pretty lost, without him!

I have the best brother! <3

The Re-Farmer

New bird feeder support, and adventurous kittens

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The girls and I made our trip into the city. While I didn’t need anything myself, I did take advantage of the trip – and summer clearance prices.

While we had cleaned and painted the old wooden bird feeder and replaced it on its metal post, not a lot of birds are using it. I believe it’s just too crowded by the novelty lilac, next to it. I’ve seen some of the smaller birds around it, but the larger birds, such as the mourning doves, are still trying to find seed on the ground by the old platform feeder (where we stopped adding bird seed, since our supply filled the newly painted one).

If I could get that metal post out of the ground without having to dig, I’d transfer it to the other end, where the platform feeder and bird bath are. It seems the better location for it, plus we can see them from the living room. We can’t see the metal post set up from inside the house.

The platform on the platform feeder, however, is in really bad shape. So today, when I spotted supports for bird feeders or hanging baskets on clearance, I grabbed one.

I’ll… go back and straighten that out, later. :-D

It’s a lot shorter than the platform feeder. Perfect for short little me to reach!

The old one was constantly being blown over in the wind, until we stopped actually hanging a bird feeder on its hook. One of the hanging feeders hit the ground so often, it no longer holds together very well. The base wasn’t very stable and, as you can see, where it was touching the ground is rotting.

The platform is also a complete loss, but the hook itself, and the pressure treated 2×4, are just fine.

I am thinking of removing the rotted platform, the pieces on the bottom, and cutting off the rotten end. If I can figure out a way to make it more stable, it might be worth making a new platform and setting it up again. Having hanging feeders is good, but some types of birds prefer the platform to feed from. Plus, with two hangers, we can have the suet feeder out again, too.

We shall see.

Meanwhile I wanted to share a really terrible, zoomed in photo I took this morning, before we headed to the city… :-D

The kittens were playing on the steps at the other door! I had started to move their food bowl further from the junk pile, to encourage them to come closer to the house, but Butterscotch beat me to it. :-D

Ultimately, I’d like the kittens to start coming around to the south side of the house. I’ve started to place food bowls near the entrance to the old doghouse my brother brought for them to use in the winter. It would be great if the whole little family would just move into there. As this litter is so much younger than the other kittens, they are more at risk when the cold weather hits. There is enough room in there that all of the yard cats can fit in there and be nice and warm, just like they used to all pile up together on the swing bench in the sun room. Petty differences between the cats seemed to disappear when it came to staying warm!

It was very encouraging to see the kittens playing by the house. What an adventurous bunch they are! They were just loving those stairs. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Cryptid kitten

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For a few times now, when going about the yard, I would see a cat among the trees. First glance, and I would think it was Junk Pile cat, only to realize that this cat looked slightly different. More white in the fur, and more the size of her own kittens – though they are almost as big as she is, now!

Last night, all possible doubt about whether or not this cat was really Junk Pile cat were cast away. While walking around the house, I startled a cat away from the food bowls by the sun room. It dashed off towards the storage house and disappeared under the lilacs at one corner – just as Junk Pile and two of her kittens came out from under the spirea at the other corner.

This morning, I finally got photographic proof of our cryptic cat’s existence. :-)

I stayed well back and zoomed in as much as I could, so this was the best my phone’s camera could do.

The kitten on the steps is Junk Pile cat’s tabby kitten, and they are very much the same size. Another kitten – possibly Junk Pile’s third kitten that is so very shy – had already run off.

This mystery kitten is most likely one of Rosencrantz’ kittens, but I honestly don’t know where it is from.

I’m glad that the shy ones are at least getting some food.

The Re-Farmer

The kittens disapprove

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Butterscotch’s kittens disapprove of me.

Or maybe they disapprove of the dropping temperatures!

Especially this one.

We get quite the giggle over how all four of Butterscotch’s kittens – including the camera shy calico – have these matching expressions!

The Re-Farmer

First treats

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Last night, the outside kittens got their first taste of cat treats!

It got their interest, but not quite enough to come close. ;-)

They were enough to keep Tabby from running away, though!

If Little Braveheart got any of the treats last night, I never saw it, but she has been increasingly less jumpy around me in the mornings, and preferring to eat by the house.

Even Tabby is not running off quite so quickly.

As for Little Braveheart and Tabby’s sibling, we still hardly see it at all. It’s the same with Rosencrantz’s baby – and it appears there’s just the one left from her litter. I have not seen any sign of the other two, since that one day I spotted them at the pump shack. :-(

Another reason to socialize the outside cats as much as possible. They’ll stay closer to the house, where their chances of survival are higher.

One of these days, I want to break out the big guns.

Wet cat food! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Good morning, Baby!

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I was a little late in doing the outside part of my morning routine.

Which meant there were hungry kitties wondering where I was!

Little Braveheart was not only willing to let me come fairly close, but she kept going for the food bowls by the sun room, even when I added kibble to the bowl near the spirea they like to hide and play in.

Oh, those beautiful, beautiful eyes! :-)

The Re-Farmer