Last night, I was able to spend some time on the log seat near the junk pile, and work on getting Butterscotch’s kittens used to human interaction.
I saw all four were out when I was heading to the nearby garden beds, so I left the garden for later. They all ran off, but after I sat down, Butterscotch came over for pets. After a while, she started making some comforting noises, and the kittens emerged.
I had a twig to wiggle at them, and one orange kitten in particular really likes that. Mostly, they just sort of wandered around me, then hid, then tried to sneak around behind me.
I could hardly see the kitten in the above picture, from where I was sitting, but was able to reach my arm around to get the photo.
They really love the collapsed barrel!
Now that I’ve cleared away some of the undergrowth, I realize I was wrong about it. It is a half-barrel, not a full barrel like I’d thought, and I can now see the dirt inside, so it was, indeed, another barrel planter that got knocked over.
The kittens are using the dirt as a litter box! :-D
The one kitten that really likes to play with the stick is also the one that is willing to come the closest.
Yes, I got to touch him. I was even able to pick him up for a few moments! He wasn’t too sure about that and wanted down very quickly, but he also came back again, quickly. Mostly, as long as Mom was around, they were willing to play with me there. So that is some major progress!
Now, if only we could do that Junk Pile’s babies! It’s much harder when the Mom isn’t willing to come near us, herself.
Little Braveheart was willing to come closer for a wiggling flag, than a wiggling stick. :-D
The bit of fur visible at the bottom of the picture is Potato Beetle, who really, really wanted cuddles!
I didn’t stay too long, though. Tabby was hanging around, and I spotted their even more elusive sibling making several attempts to get to the freshly refilled food container. I didn’t want to keep any cats from being able to eat!
While doing this morning’s rounds, I got to see all of Butterscotch’s babies!
My apologies for the terrible picture. :-(
I was zoomed in from the far side of the lilacs in the flower garden to get this. Thankfully, after clearing out the spreading cherry saplings, I had a perfectly positioned window to watch them through. As soon as I moved, however, they were gone!
I was just finishing up and starting to go into the house when I saw Little Braveheart was out, so I sat on the steps and tried to lure her closer.
This was as close as she would get. She was curious enough to come out, but content enough to just sit there!
After I while, I did see a little Tabby face peering at me through the spirea, too. :-) Not quite as brave as Little Braveheart!
I really hope we can get these bebbies socialized, at a little bit!
I headed out to water things this evening, but got distracted.
Junk Pile and two of her babies were out!
I ended up lying right on the ground, in hopes that would make them less intimidated by the tall(ish) human.
Creamsicle took full advantage of the situation.
What a silly boy!
Tabby didn’t come any closer than this, but did spend some time rolling around under the grapes, in between watching me.
Little Braveheart did come a bit closer to the stick I was wiggling, but not close enough to actually touch it.
It was funny to watch Little Braveheart and her mother. They share many of the same mannerisms, and often mimicked each other’s movements.
They also have the same eyes! Even though the markings in their fur are different, they have the same facial structure and many other similarities.
The grapes, meanwhile, did eventually get watered, and are looking really good.
The more shaded ones at the back of the trellis are noticeably darker than the ones that are more exposed.
While tending the rest of the garden, I found this.
The tallest of our sunflowers is starting to open up its seed head! So far, it’s the only one at this stage.
Awesome!!! I can’t wait to see how big the seed head gets.
Meanwhile…
My husband and I had our medical appointments today. Heading out two days in a row was really hard on him. Thankfully, we got in quickly, and didn’t have long to wait.
I learned one thing today that my husband forgot to mention after yesterday’s appointment at the pain clinic. The doctor there was going to phone our doctor here to discuss recommended pain medications.
Another reason I’m unhappy I wasn’t allowed to go in with him yesterday. He forgets things more often, these days. At least he remembered this while with our doctor!
The doctor had a couple of concerns. For one, he will be referring my husband to an endocrinologist, so we’ll be getting a phone call about that. He also wants to adjust my husband’s prescriptions, but will wait until he talks to the pain clinic doctor, go through his current medications, and think about it. Once he’s done that, he will fax any new/changed prescriptions directly to the pharmacy.
As for the rest of my husband’s bloodwork, it was all fine.
Then it was my turn. My bloodwork was fine, across the board. During the physical, we did get a laugh. After testing my reflexes, he did the usual putting his hand on my knee while flexing the joint, as he started to ask if I had any issues with pain, etc. When he lifted my lower leg, he cut himself off in mid sentence with a startled “Oh!!”
To which I responded to his half-finished question, “yes. Arthritis. You felt that, did you?” :-D
Yeah, both my knees do some interesting things when they’re flexed!!
One thing with both my husband and I was, what we thought were heat rashes turned out to be fungal infections. !! So we both got prescriptions for creams to treat that. When we were done, I dropped my husband off at home, picked up a daughter, then headed into town to get the prescriptions filled before the pharmacy closed. A stop at the mail on the way out found a letter from the heart clinic, with my husband’s rescheduled appointment, early next month.
I’ll have to remind him to phone them about it right away, to arrange some sort of accommodations, like having a stretcher available for him, for an appointment they say might take up to 2 hours.
So while nothing much changed at today’s appointment, steps were taken and others are being put in place, for the near future.
Last night, Little Braveheart was willing to come close to me.
But not as close as this little guy I found on the rain barrel, when I lifted off the screen cover.
He even came closer and posed for a picture, with the phone just inches away!
Then he went down the outside of the barrel, much to my relief. The screen cover did its job in keeping critters out, as well as debris, but it only works while it’s on! :-D
I remembered to check on the caterpillar last night, too.
Alas.
It is gone!
So are the berries that were left on the tree, next to it. Stripped clean!
I am thinking a deer had a snack of berries, and knocked the caterpillar off in the process.
Dang.
I was really hoping to be able to see its transformation!
It was a lovely evening to do my evening rounds last night, so I found myself sitting in the sunroom, Potato Beetle curled up on the swing bench beside me, fiddling with my phone and enjoying the quiet.
When I suddenly realized there was a tiny tabby in front of me!
One of Junk Pile’s kittens was exploring through the open door, saw me, saw Potato Beetle and ran off, before I could get a photo.
Alas!
With where the bench is set up, the open inner door blocks my view of where the cat food is set up, but I could hear some crunching – and an almost non-stop, low growl.
That would be Junk Pile. Even as she sometimes comes a bit closer to give us a sniff, she keeps up that growl.
I ended up moving to the steps of the storage house to see if I could lure some kitties closer – or at least get them more used to me.
The food bowl I’ve put there for them was empty, but the ones by the house still had kibble in them, so I didn’t add more. I wanted to encourage them to go to the house.
Little Braveheart and her tabby sibling were willing to come out and play nearby. More Braveheart than Tabby, who often ran back into the spirea.
Unfortunately, Rosencrantz was in there, too, and she does not like Junk Pile’s babies. Any time one of the kittens went in there, I could hear her growling at them.
In the end, I think they felt my presence was safer!
Little Braveheart was even almost-kinda-justabout-willing to play with the stick I was wiggling around.
After a while, the kittens took to ignoring me and just running around and playing – which, in itself, is progress – before going to the house to eat.
Junk Pile, however, has three kittens.
Eventually, I spotted the shy one, peeking at me from the spirea. It never came all the way out, so I left, so as not to stress it too much.
Instead, I went into the sun room and dug up a baggie with a few cat toys in it, tossing some outside for the babies. Potato Beetle was with me again, and he went running after the toys, too. I was pleased to see that he and the kittens would sometimes play with the same toy together, with no animosity between them!
As I was walking back and forth around the front of the house, the kittens stopped running away immediately, and would either just ignore me, or pause to watch.
More progress!
Meanwhile, I went over to the junk pile, and was happy to see and hear some of Butterscotch’s kittens. She came out for pets, too. Earlier in the day, though the living room window, I saw one of her orange babies playing in the collapsed wine barrel that I’d cleared beside. I had hoped they would find it a good place to play, and they have! Now, when they do, we can see them from the house. :-)
It will take time, but I am hoping we can socialize these babies better than we were able to with Junk Pile and Rosencrantz. The biggest problem with working on that, however, is mosquitoes. I was being eaten alive while out there! I didn’t want to put on bug spray, as I’m sure the smell would be unpleasant for the kittens. Unfortunately, the times when the kittens seem to come out the most are also the times when the mosquitoes come out, too!
I had a much more pleasant surprise this morning, besides finding myself face to face with a wasps nest.
While walking past the junk pile, I suddenly saw a white, orange and black face looking at me!
I quickly grabbed my phone to take a picture, but by the time I looked back…
There was an orange face staring at me.
A playful little orange baby that did not run and hide from me.
Then Butterscotch came over and let me pet her before jumping up on the junk pile herself. I got to pet her some more before she moved further away.
There is the little calico beauty!
So adorable!
Oh? Is that orange movement behind the calico?
Why, yes it is! Hello, orange baby!
The babies ignored me and started going for Butterscotch and climbing to the top of the pile.
I just switched to video when another orange baby showed up?
They are so big and fluffy!!! They would be quite a bit younger than the other kittens, and yet they’re not that much smaller!
Oh? Did I hear something scrabbling around in the junk pile?
Number four!
They just hung around at the top and played while I stood just a few feet away. I got closer to these guys than with any of the other kittens, except Little Braveheart.
Just look at the smug expression on Butterscotch’s face! She’s all like “see… I don’t kill ALL my babies. I’m a good mama… when I’m outside!”
Going past the junk pile later, I saw the calico and an orange baby playing at the top. With Mom not there, they ran off when they saw me.
That makes 3 litters of yard cats. I’ve only seen one of Rosencrantz’s 3 babies lately, so that makes a total of 8, for sure. Possibly 10.
It’s a good thing Beep Beep is content to stay indoors. Otherwise, there would probably be another litter on the way!
While I was outside this evening, I found Junk Pile and all three of her kittens, playing in front of the storage house.
When I had the chance, I tried to see if I could get one of them to come close.
It almost worked.
Almost, but not quite! This was as close as little Braveheart would get!
It’s hard to see, but there’s a kitten behind the grapevines in the background. :-)
They love playing on those stairs!
I’ve been keeping that insulator on the steps filled with water lately. Junk Pile and her kittens seem to prefer drinking out of that, over the wider, shallower container by the food dish.
I would love to have stayed longer to try and play with them, but I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes!
Meanwhile, I had this on my bed…
At first, it was David, Cheddar and Big Rig, but then Keith pushed his way in between and settled in, too!
We had a really hot day today, so when things cooled down enough, I went out to water the garden plots and sunflowers.
Which is when I found this.
All the leaves on one side of this one have been eaten!
This is the first of the large sunflowers that has had this kind of damage. :-( At least the top didn’t get chomped off.
One of the more recently chomped smaller ones is showing signs of recovery.
It also had a friend!
We’ve got a lot of grasshoppers and locusts this year, but this is the first green one like this that I’ve seen. :-)
When I was done and dragging the hose back to the house, I found Creamsicle napping on top of the straw bale. :-) My coming close for a picture woke him up…
I caught him mid stretch. :-D
Meanwhile…
Today, my husband and I had our doctor appointments that we should have had back in March. They were supposed to be physicals, but the doctor wasn’t expecting that. Which is when I found out he does physicals in the mornings, when, as he put it, his mind it still fresh. Which was not a problem, since we had lots to catch up on. He hasn’t seen my husband since December, and has seen me only while I was accompanying my mother.
Us all having the same doctor is coming in handy.
Before doing a full physical, he wanted us both to get fasting bloodwork done. For my husband’s part of the appointment, we updated the doctor on his upcoming visit with the pain clinic. Even though he hasn’t seen my husband in more than 6 months, he remembered that we’d already been waiting for almost 2 years, so he was a bit shocked that this was going to be a first visit. We also told him about the appointment at the cardiac clinic to discuss my husband getting a defibrillator implanted. He had questions about that. Mostly, why does my husband suddenly have such a low ejection fraction? It turns out that the cardiac clinic has not been sending any files to our doctor, so he had nothing. He still has nothing, really, because the cardiac clinic has not been able to find why my husband’s ejection fraction is so low, and are openly perplexed by him. The doctor has requested for us to remind the clinic to send the files to him, so he can see what’s going on. Same with the pain clinic, when the time comes.
In our previous province, all medical files were electronic, and could be accessed by any authorized doctor. So my husband could go from his GP to the specialists at the pain clinic (all 4 or 5 of them that were assigned to his case), to any other specialist, and they would all have access to the same information. Here, there is no connectivity. When our previous doctor suddenly moved out of province, we had to pay to have our files sent to the new clinic. A GP can access the electronic files at their own clinic, but not the files at the heart clinic or the pain clinic. They all have to send their files to each other, as needed. All of the specialty clinics should be sending everything back to the primary caregiver every time, so that at least that one person has all the information. Why that isn’t happening for my husband, we don’t know, but the doctor was not happy with having so much information missing.
We spent some time talking about my husband’s medications, and the problems he’s been having getting refills for the painkillers. So that’s been updated but, after we get the bloodwork done, he wants to look at switching my husband to morphine, and focus on pain management a lot more. There’s one medication in particular that he was wondering why my husband is on at all, and he just didn’t know anymore. I suspect the total number of prescriptions my husband is on will be reduced.
I’m happy to see him being pro-active about it. The previous doctor didn’t want to change anything until after my husband was seen by the pain clinic, but that took so long, the doctor moved out of province before that could happen!
My own part of the appointment was short. I have only one prescription, and I’ll see him again after my bloodwork is done. We ended up chatting a bit about my mother, since I’ll be bringing her back to see him tomorrow.
As for our follow up appointments, he started to ask if we could book them in the mornings when I mentioned I’d asked for the afternoon, because of the drive. When he realized how far away we live, he completely back tracked and said to make the appointment for whenever works best for us, and to book another “joint” appointment, and he will accommodate us. Since our bloodwork requires fasting, we will book the appointment after we get it done, which likely won’t be until Monday.
So we’ll have at least one more medical appointment this month, on top of the others.
With this doctor wanting to work proactively on managing my husband’s pain, I suspect we’ll be back fairly regularly.
By the time we were done, my husband was at his limit – and we still had the drive home to do. He was worried about his appointment at the cardiac clinic next week. The letter said that there have been a lot of delays, and to expect to be there for as long as 2 hours. That’s after a 1 1/2 hour drive. We’ll have to make sure to call in advance so they can have a stretcher available for him to lie down on; something they were able to arrange to do for him before, after a previous appointment was so late, he ended up walking out because he was in just too much pain. They’re a cardiac clinic. They don’t take into account any other issues a person might have, unrelated to the heart, unless it’s brought up directly.
Another reason why not having central files is a problem. When he goes to any specialist, he has to explain everything else to them. At the cardiac clinic, he could see any one of a team of 5 that works together, so he has to explain his disability, and why he uses a walker, all over again with each one. Otherwise, they assume that his use of a walker is related to his heart condition.
It’s frustrating, to say the least.
At least now we’re able to actually get appointments and treatment. The months of delays because of the pandemic shut downs have really messed things up for him. Our province has once again had more people testing positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus, and people are freaking out and demanding things shut down again. What the media isn’t including in their reports (though it’s on the provincial government website, for all to see), those new cases are from 5 days of testing, and represent only .9% testing positive. The total number of positive and presumptive positive cases for the province since March is .03% of the entire population. A person is more likely to get hit by a car than test positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus. People don’t seem to understand risk factors at all anymore, and the panic means people like my husband are having a hard time getting medical care. During our appointment, the only time it came up at all was when I mentioned we were supposed to have today’s appointments back in March, when everything got shut down. My husband’s appointment at the cardiac clinic got cancelled. While my husband did get one appointment rescheduled at the cardiac clinic, for a test in nuclear medicine, next week will be the first time the cardiac team will be seeing him. He’s had a couple of telephone appointments, but that’s it. He had also finally gotten contacted by the pain clinic just before the shut down, which that added a few more months to his wait.
If things shut down again, lack of treatment would certainly mean his condition degenerating further. Lack of treatment is more likely to kill him, than any of us coming in contact with the Wuhan strain of coronavirus.
He is certainly not the only person in this position.
It had been a while since I’d seen the outside kittens, so I was happy when they showed up this evening. Little Braveheart had follow Junk Pile to the food bowls by the house, but ran off when I came out. They hung out by the steps into the storage house, before hiding in the grape vines, so I decided to sit on the steps and see if I could tempt them to play.
Braveheart was immediately curious!
Just look at that intense gaze! :-)
And who’s that back there?
Another baby, chewing on a grape vine! :-D
Junk Pile, meanwhile, came over and lay on the mulch, growling at me the whole time! That seems to be her default attitude these days. :-D
I broke off the spent flowers of a spirea growing under the stairs to wiggle around on the step. It worked a bit!
Braveheart pounced at it! :-)
Her sibling even came a bit closer.
I saw no sign of the third kitten, though. I hope it’s all right.
After this, they ran off with Junk Pile into the spirea, so I let them be.
Once indoors, I got entertained by more kittens.
The cats love the base of the washing machine packaging so much, we don’t have the heart to get rid of it, yet! :-D
Layendecker had been napping on it when Turmeric crawled on and woke him up. :-D
The Re-Farmer 