Today is supposed to reach a high of -7C or -8C, after which the temperatures are supposed to drop. An Alberta Clipper weather system is blowing its way through the prairies. The snow is supposed to start this afternoon, for a total of up to 15cm over 36 hours.
We already have a light dusting of snow right now. I didn’t get a head count, but the cats definitely prefer to be in the sunroom, or the cat house. Only the super fluffy ones, like Driver, here, are staying out. The sunroom was at just below 0C when I came in this morning, compared to -12C outside.
Today’s jump in temperature makes it a good day for the phone tech to come out! My brother tried to phone me yesterday and, instead of the crackling noise as before, he got a busy signal. Even when I pick up the phone, I now only hear the light crackling of an open line. My brother says we just have a short, somewhere. The question is, where?
I will be taking advantage of the warmer day and heading to town to pick up a few things. I hope the local hardware store has stove pellets for the litter. I don’t want to drive further afield, but we’re running low. We had lots, but have been going through it faster. Using oil in the cat’s ears, and the subsequent grooming, has had unfortunate effects on their digestive systems! Nothing like so many cats having the s***s at the same time!
We’ve taken a break on doing their ears right now. The next time we do them, we need to keep track of which cats still have too much detritus in their ears and keep doing them. Some are nice and clean, so no need to keep doing theirs, anymore.
Hopefully, the phone tech will come in the next hour or so, before I plan to head out. Otherwise, I’ll be leaving the gate open for him. He’s supposed to try and call my husband’s cell phone, first, but who knows if he’ll have enough signal.
Meanwhile, it was nice enough out that I shoveled the outer yard paths, to the garage, burn barrel, and electricity meter. Depending on how much snow accumulates over the next few days, we might need to break little Spewie out and do the driveway. For now, though, the truck can easily clear the snow we have so far.
I have 2 weather apps on my phone. One of them changes every time I open it, leaping from -30C to -16C, then back again! There is a new version of that app, but I ended up unistalling it because it sucked so much. The other one cane with my phone. It reads -26C right now.
We will be rescheduling my husband’s eye appointment. Between not being able to plug in the block heater and the highway conditions, it’s not worth it. I thought we could do it just fine, looking at the earlier forecasts, but boy, where they wrong! I hate canceling on the day of an appointment, though, but when it comes to weather conditions, most places are okay with it.
On the plus side: I got some shoveling done around the house, so the sunroom doors were left wide open longer than usual. As I was coming in, I saw the thermometer, which is against an outside wall, was at “only” -15C. Which means it had been even warmer, earlier. Now that the doors are tied off, it should warm up again.
I counted 26 or so cats this morning. Twenty of them were in the sunroom. I was pleased to see all three of the smallest kittens in there, though they are all super fluffy cats. I saw Adam and Driver today, and they are so fluffy, they look like Siberian cats! They look so huge! I didn’t see Brussel this morning, but when I saw her last night, she was looking equally massive and fluffy. Their winter fur is really doing the job!
I had a chance to chat with the Cat Lady today. They are still settling into the new house, of course. I asked about the idea of officially becoming a rescue.
She did not recommend it!
The only benefit, really, is at tax time. They ended up spending more out of pocket for expenses. Dealing with fosters is hard (she had to drop several fosters), and there is the constant drive for donations. The phone is constantly ringing with people having unrealistic expectations.
Then there are the adoptions. To give an example;
One of the sick kittens they took from us never fully recovered. We had not expected it to survive at all, but she saved him. He’s doing great, but his lungs are damaged and week, do he’s prone to respiratory problems.
He has been adopted out, three times.
He is now permanently back with them.
One woman who took him promised she would care for his vet needs, fully informed of his condition.
She brought him back the next day, after he sneezed blood.
Another woman was told by her vet to euthanize him. Rather than do that, she brought him back and requested another kitten.
This particular kitten had bonded with their dog, and they adore him, so they were happy to have him back, but there’s a reason they have 27 permanent cats now.
Actually, I think it’s more than 27 now.
She just spent another $2400 they don’t have on surgery for another cat, who is currently recovering in a bathroom with an open catheter.
They have several other cats that are unadoptable, due to high medical needs. The amount they spend on special cat food and medications, out of pocket, blows me away.
So becoming an official rescue would not actually help our situation.
*sigh*
I’m glad I talked to her about it, first.
Oh, I just heard my husband talking to the eye clinic. Appointment for today is off.
Thank goodness, at least his cell phone works.
Tomorrow, the tech from the phone company will be coming by to check our lines. Hopefully, by the end of the day, the landline will be working again.
Well, it wasn’t how I hoped to set it up, but it’s pretty much the only option.
I took the platform out completely to work out how to hang the heat lamp, as well as to reach where the power bar is hanging. This gave me the opportunity to remove one of the shop lights, as it will be needed in the living room, when we start our seeds.
All the possible places to attach the lamp were too far to the sides, and too close to stuff being stored. I tried to set up the metal saw horse in the middle of the space, but that put the lamp way too low. So the platform got put back, and the lamp was hung directly to the side of the frame. No need to make holes in the insulation.
It was first secured with garden twist ties, both on the hanger, and the clamp, so it can’t swing around. Then zip ties were added, for extra security.
The platform bounces a lot when the cats jump on it, so that needs extra support. I think we have long enough boards, salvaged from a shed, in the basement. A pair of those under the platform should be sufficient.
I think this location is best, too. If I’d put it on the other side, it would be right over the cat beds, which might actually get too warm. We don’t want to mess with their ability to acclimate to the outside temperatures. Plus, that would put it close to the windows. The temperature differences, inside and out, could lead to glass cracking. That’s already a concern.
The insulation under the platform mesh will help keep the warmth under the platform, even with the lamp to the edge like that. It is over where some of the food bowls are, which I’m sure they will appreciate at feeding time! This room does not need – and should not have – a lot of heat in the winter. I think this set up will be just enough for the coming cold.
I just checked the critter cam my SIL gave us, and I can see a pair of cats almost directly under the lamp, while others are on the cat beds, as usual.
By the time I finish my morning rounds, the outside cats are done eating and settling into their cuddle piles. The three smallest kittens are in this one.
I want to snuggle the fluffy tabby so much! S/he will not allow it. The white and grey is friendly. Once in a while, I manage to sneak a pet on the grey tabby with white, on the left, but rarely do. The other two littles do allow me to pet them, and sometimes pick them up. The tortie does not like it, but tolerates it a bit more.
I ended up heading to my mother’s, today. My brother was planning to visit her and set up a call blocker, to stop the scam calls my mother gets, as well as the abusive calls she gets from our vandal. He was going to start while she was in church, as her place is so tiny, it’s easier that way. I came over to help him out.
He has a much longer drive than I do, and we ended up meeting elsewhere, then going to her place together. I’m glad I was there to help out, even if it was just passing him things. Before we started, though, we checked my mother’s answering machine for her. She can listen to messages, but can’t figure out how to delete them.
There were two messages from our vandal.
He was quite upset that I answered her phone while I was there. Had all sorts of nasty things to say about me, of course. Apparently, he’s poor because of “what [I] did”, and his $7000 in legal fees. Of course, no taking responsibility over the fact that he was caught vandalizing the gate and that’s why I pressed charges. Or his stalking behavior, etc. No mention of his trying to sue me for $13,000, for stuff I never claimed to own. He’s lucky my mother and brother aren’t up to doing him for all the stuff he took from here, over the years. That total would be over $40,000, and that’s just for the stuff my brother could remember, and that we know is at our vandal’s place.
Oh, and apparently, I have lots of money, and cameras all over the place. Well, if he thinks we have more cameras than we do, I’m good with that. Those cameras are probably the only thing keeping him away. Also, apparently God says he should be allowed on the property.
My mother has been getting these abusive calls for at least 10 years. My brother has copies of hundreds of them. It will be so good for my mother to not have this anymore. The only thing is, she will probably still call him, eventually. She does not understand why she should not do that.
Setting up the call blocker took more time then it should have, of course. The device itself was easy to do, and our vandal’s numbers were already programmed in. To block the over 5000 known scam numbers, however, required going through a process to link and turn on through the phone system.
It didn’t work, of course. Even though my brother made the arrangements and paid for the service already. The numbers should still be blocked, but that’s something he has to work out with the phone company. They should be able to set it up remotely – he used to work IT for them, years ago, so he knows they can. But they insist he has to do this from my mother’s phone.
Still, we got as much done as we could.
My SIL had packed a lunch for my brother to bring, so by the time my mother came back from church, we had tea made and lunch out and ready for her. She did not know I was going to be there, do that was a surprise, too.
It was a very good visit. Plus, there were a few little fixes she got my brother to do. I dud have to laugh when she started telling us how, when our sister had been there, she fixed the glass shade thar came off her bedroom lamp, but she had no idea when she did it.
It was funny, because I was the one that fixed it, the last time I was there. She’d stepped out of her apartment and, while waiting for her, I saw the shade and reassembled it. Then I went to help her with things and forgot about it. She did not notice it was fixed until after my sister left her place, the next day. 😄
I’m glad I was able to be there. Not only to help my brother, but with both of us there, she was on much better behavior. She tried to go off on a racist tangent only once, and was easily deflected.
The only downside is, both my brother and I forgot to pick up some milk for her, before heading home. So maybe I will be heading back, tomorrow.
I’m happy to say that I have no errands to run, no unexpected outings, nothing. Just a day to stay home, inside and out of the wind!
We’ve had a very mild winter so far, but as we head towards the end of January and into February, we are expected to get more average temperatures. Not so much that we need to worry about the vehicles freezing, or even plug them in. Which is good, since I discovered the truck’s block heater plug end was ripped off and never repaired. Clearly, it wasn’t an issue for whomever owned it before. This thing can handle the cold much better than the van could.
We do need to try and get the garage door closed, though. One corner wheel came off the track. I’m hoping that, if one person is able to push up the opposite corner, it will move the loose corner close enough to the track to be able to get it back on. This is something to do on a warmer day and will require taking the truck out, setting up a little ladder at one corner, and the folding scaffolding set at the other. It will take three of us to manhandle the thing. One to push up the opposite corner, one to move the loose corner towards the track, and one to try and get the wheel back on the track. It’s an unusually large door for its type.
The outside cats are appreciating being out of the wind. This morning, I counted 33 of them. Last winter, we had a ceramic heat bulb set up for them, but the old fixture we were using stopped working. We currently have a replacement on the way. What we had before was something my brother had put together to set up under the kitchen sink, so the heat from an incandescent light bulb would help prevent pipes from freezing, while the house was empty. The kitchen has no heat vent, so it was the one area of concern in the house.
What we are getting is a clip-on lamp designed for chickens. It has a heat reflector shade and comes with a ceramic bulb. I plan to set it up facing under the platform, which will have the added benefit of the sheet of insulation above, to help keep the heat in their favorite sleeping spot. If it gets too warm, they can go on top of the platform. The only thing I’m not sure of is how I will attach it securely. I’ll figure that out, once it arrives, and I can see exactly how the clamp is designed.
Meanwhile, we are still figuring out our phone problems. I spoke to my brother, through Messenger, and told him we thought the problem was the jack in my husband’s room. My brother suggested we simply detach that jack and see. I never even thought of that! So I went into the basement and traced the wire to the hub, and removed it.
Nothing changed.
My brother said it sounded like moisture got into a jack, which is what we think, too. Likely due to our two fixed males that still spray! There are two other jacks on the ground floor, but there is no way cats or moisture could get to either of those. That leaves the one jack upstairs, which we’ve never used, which could have had damage to it. So, one of my goals for today is to find and trace that wire and remove it.
If that doesn’t do it, then the problem is something else, and we’ll have to call someone in.
The main problem is, either how we have things set up, it’s hard to access all but one of the jacks. We will have to clear things for a tech to reach them, if he needs do.
Speaking of clearing things, once Christmas is over on Jan 6, and we store away our decorations, we need to rearrange parts of the living room again, so I can access the big aquarium greenhouse. We need to get our onion seeds started!
Then we will need to bring other things in from the sun room, including one of the shop lights, to set up our growing zone again. We won’t be able to do the same setup as we did last year, but I think we might not be starting quite so many seeds indoors this year. We shall see.
Sad Face’s nose is still looking messy from a fight a few days ago. No new injuries. It’s always a bit distressing when I tend to the cats and find fresh blood. Most recently, on the fur of one of the friendly white and greys. Friendly to humans, that is. Friendly with most of the other cats, too, but they do get testy with each other, at tumes. To be expected, with so many maturing males. From what I could tell with the blood I saw, it wasn’t his. There were no injuries!
It is turning out to be a gorgeous sunny day. Our temperature has even gone above freezing, which is a few degrees warmer than forecast.
I got to enjoy the sun and warmth during a quick trip into town. Three of our four 18.9L (5 gallon) water jugs for drinking water needed refilling. We usually do it when two are empty. Of course, I picked up a few more little things, but will be doing a larger trip, once pay comes in.
Before I left, I checked the tires on the truck, and none of them needed topping up. That’s a good sign. Especially since we will probably have to wait until the end of January/beginning of February to get those valves replaced, depending on what the status is with my computer.
The check engine light was on again, so after I got home and unloaded, I hooked up the OBDII scanner. I got the expected codes for rich fuel mixture but, lo and behold, there was a new one.
Not an unexpected one.
Yup. There’s a code for the oil pressure sensor. Our new reader even gives extra info, including the fact that this code is very common for our make, model, and year, plus the top fixes. Those included changing the filter, doing an oil change, and even replacing the sensor. The most common fix being a simple oil change.
I really like having this other OBDII reader my husband got me. The first one we got just gave the codes, and that was about it.
This one also allows me to clear the codes. The rich fuel codes are permanent codes, but I’ve found that, after clearing the codes, then tanking up, they would clear themselves. The most important thing is knowing what’s going on, and getting an idea of how urgent or not something is.
I found myself waking up way too early this morning. That’s what I get for going to bed before midnight!
It has been warming up all night, and is supposed to stay above freezing for most of the day.
I think the yard cats are liking it. Only 25 came around for breakfast! They don’t get as hungry when it’s warmer.
The fog is still here and expected to stay for a while longer. The resulting frost on the trees is quite gorgeous – and I’m happy yo not have to drive in it!
I did get some good news of a sort, this morning. Our oldest cat didn’t show up for breakfast this morning. When my husband came out, I told him about her being missing, and that was why we’d come knocking at his door after we couldn’t find her during the ear cleaning session. I feared we were now looking for a body. He told me that she did turn to be in his room! He thought all the cats were out before closing his door. She may have been under his hospital bed, far enough that we couldn’t see her. Or maybe under the table that holds his little medication fridge.
While I’m glad she was around after I’d gone to bed, the fact that she isn’t coming around for food concerns me. For now, I hope she is in her usual spot, cuddling my daughter in bed!
The Re-Farmer
(This post will be published late: it seems we lost power, while I was writing it!)
Today is the third Sunday of Advent; the day of Joy.
For me, at this point in my life, Joy is having a quiet, boring life!
We don’t have any running around and errands to do, so it’s another day of domesticity. I am considering whether or not to run an errand today or tomorrow, as it looks like we don’t have quite enough kibble to wait until I do the city shopping on the 20th; my husband’s CPP Disability comes in early in December, so we’ll be doing the bulk of our stock up shopping for January before Christmas.
We are at -4C/25F right now and might warm up another degree. We’re getting light snow every now and then; just enough that it looks like fog in the distance when I check the live feed on the garage cam.
I’m happy for the milder temperatures, for the outside cats.
The older and larger ones are fine. It’s the youngest ones that would probably not have survived this long, if we had more typically average temperatures for this time of year.
I counted 35 this morning, I think. It could have been 34. As I was finishing my rounds, I spotted Sad Face by the old dog houses near the outhouse. This is the closest thing to evidence I’ve seen that those old dog houses are actually being used for shelter.
With the inside cats, we’re having a “fun” time. Though we had spent well over $600 on medication for ear mites to treat all 16 cats we had in the house at the time (not counting the kittens, yet), it seems it didn’t take. We had two types of medication. One type was drops squirted into the ear, but they didn’t have enough doses for that many cats on hand, so the last few doses were the (more expensive) type that is applied to the skin between the shoulder blades.
We’re pretty sure those were the ones that didn’t take.
So now they all have ear mites again, including the kittens. Plus a couple of the cats just have a really hard time cleaning their own ears. Poor Ginger. He’s got it the worst. Particularly in the ear he can’t clean at all, on the side he’s missing a leg. Somehow, Toni is managing it with just one front leg – for now. Then there’s our old grandma that moved out with us. She’s getting on in years, and we can see she’s starting to show her age. So she’s not doing as well with cleaning her own ears, either.
We certainly can’t afford to buy medications for all of them again. The clinic wouldn’t even be able to sell them to us without seeing at least one cat first, because it’s been more than 3 months since we’ve brought a cat in to that clinic. The kittens that got fixed recently would have been treated for ear mites while they were getting spayed/neutered if the vet saw any, but those would come back rather quickly if all the other cats have them.
I’ve been told that an alternative is to treat their ears with mineral oil, every day for 10 days, and that should kill off the ear mites.
Which means doing all the cats, every day, for 10 days.
I just had to make a list to count and, unless I forgot someone, we’ve got 21 cats in the house right now, including 8 kittens. This, after losing three kittens, Marlee escaping and disappearing, and adopting Nosencrantz out after her escape and unwillingness to come back indoors.
We’ve decided to give it a try. If nothing else, it’ll help clean their ears.
So my younger daughter and I have taken on the task. She holds the cats down while I use mineral oil and some paper towel to clean out their ears. It’s only been a few days, so far, and I can already tell the difference. Some cats actually looked really clean and clear from the start. Others… it’s rather horrible!
Some of the cats are good about it. We have a couple that fight us off quite a bit. Then there are the ones that complain loudly, because their ears are so bad, it’s uncomfortable. Ginger has started to connect the unpleasantness of being manhandled with some relief, afterwards, so he’s already becoming more co-operative.
All of the cats look hilariously bedraggled, with their oily ears and heads.
The mineral oil we have is pharmacy grade (we’re going to need to pick up more, before we’re done!), so it’s safe for them to groom it off. It’s sold as a laxative, though, so… we may have some explosive results after a while!
Between the cost of food, the lysine, vet treatment, etc., is getting ridiculous. Yes, we do have a rescue that’s helping us, but it’s basically just one person running the show. There is the huge rescue in our province that the Cat Lady left that will work with rural communities like ours, but there’s a reason she left them. It seems the bigger the organization gets, the less they become about the animals, and more about the money and the politics. 😥 That and it turns out, when the Cat Lady was still with them (and paying out of pocket for things they were supposed to cover), they had issues with us, and claimed we were just “breeding cats” – as in, on purpose, instead of doing the best we could to prevent just that. Heck, population control is one of the biggest reason we’ve got so many cats indoors! And why we sought help to adopt cats out, get them fixed, etc. Nothing like connecting with a rescue, only for them to get upset with us for having cats that need to be rescued… When they tried to adopt out a pair of kittens from us to someone in BC that turned out to be a hoarder, she left them, started her own rescue, and found local homes for them, instead.
With the Cat Lady in the middle of moving right now, plus it being a time of year with so many holidays, we can’t expect to accomplish much right now.
So what options do we have? I’m not prepared to call the municipality had have them send someone out with a gun.
One option has come to mind.
We could become a rescue, ourselves.
I’m not entirely sure how it works, but if we could start a non-profit rescue, we would have access to resources we don’t have, on our own, including funding and tax benefits, and maybe being able to support fosters, etc. that would help us find forever homes for the cats. Not all of them, of course, since we do need yard cats out here in the boonies, but they need to all be fixed!
Oh, my husband just came by and reminded me of another cat I forgot to count.
We have 22 cats inside.
Once things have settled down for the Cat Lady, I will talk to her about it and see if that is a reasonable option. Perhaps we could even become a branch of her own rescue or something like that.
Well, time to get my butt off the computer. It’s almost time to oil up some ears!
We are having a quiet day of domesticity today, so not a lot to write about.
I like boring days. Very restful!
I did have to share this photo, though!
How many can you find?
I counted 13, but there is a single ear that I can’t quite link to a body, so there might actually be 14 in there.
Little Patience is barely visible! Just a tiny face.
There is one cat “missing” from the pile. Hypotenose went into old kitchen while I was doing the kibble and warm water, and disappeared under the couch. Rather than try to dig him out, I finished my rounds, thinking he’d be at the door, wanting out, by the time I was done.
I couldn’t see him when I got back, nor could I hear anything. I checked again some time later, and still nothing. I started to think maybe he’d gone out while I was going in and I just didn’t see him, but then I checked another time and found some stuff knocked over.
Currently, there is a little pile of kibble in the middle of the floor that will hopefully lure him out, but so far, he seems to have found a place to hide and nap or something.
There is a reason we use the old kitchen as a buffer zone between indoors and out! 😄
Well, it took a while to make a dent in clearing storage space in my computer. It seems to have made a difference already. It looks like most of the volume wasn’t even photos or video I take casually. It’s all those trail cam files. I keep way more than I need to! At some point, I’ll have to go through a major delete session. Especially with the files going back a few years. I really just need to keep any files that have our vandal in them, but he has so many vehicles, I don’t recognize them all. Plus, I do like to keep the files that caught wild life, too!
I have some morning cuteness for you to start with, though!
When I first took the cat bed out of the cage and set it next to the one the cats were all crowding into, they ignored it for quite a while. Eventually, though, the cat puddle spilled over, and now they are using it. As I was coming in from my morning rounds, I spotted these two on it and had to take a picture! The black and white has now named Patience. The tortie still needs a name.
Anyhow. Time to catch up on yesterday!
I headed to my mother’s early (checked the truck’s tires first; they’re down a bit, but not enough to need topping up), stopped long enough to go over her shopping list, then did her shopping for her.
I usually bring food for us to have for lunch, and my mother insists on paying me back, even though I tell her she doesn’t need to. She’s been increasingly fussy, though. The best fried chicken and wedges she loves so much, she’s decided are the cause of her “heart” problems (it’s not her heart, but she doesn’t understand anatomy and refuses to believe all those test results showing her heart is incredibly healthy and strong), so she now refuses to eat them. The Chinese food she loved, she now refuses to eat because she’s decided they serve cat meat, and the family that runs it is… well… Chinese. There’s a chicken restaurant that she used to go to regularly, but she said their food always gets to her cold (not an invalid complaint; at least for their chicken dinners). She did love their pizzas, but the last couple of times I brought pizza, she was aghast at the price. Which has gone up quite a bit, and she is convinced it’s because they’re cheating people and the government should make it so all pizzas cost the same. She also thinks restaurants all buy their pizzas frozen from the same place, apparently. Basically, all the options in her town have been slowly eliminated for one reason or another. The last time I was there, I brought a couple of croissant sandwiches and a Chef’s Salad from the grocery store for lunch. I asked if she wanted me to do that again, and she said no. It costs too much (it didn’t cost much at all), and she had food.
Well, I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and I don’t want to eat her groceries, so after I picked up what was on her list, I was going to pick up a submarine sandwich. It was big enough to share, if she changed her mind. Then I remembered the have a hot food display with whole rotisserie chickens, chicken pieces, nuggets and the like, so I decided to see what was in there, thinking maybe there was some hot food I could bring back.
I’ve never seen these in the display before, but they had complete meals available! A big piece of chicken and thigh, a generous quantity of mashed potatoes and a generous quantity of vegetables, for $6.99 !!! I put back the sub sandwich, then grabbed one meal with beans and carrots, and one with peas and corn.
When I got back to my mother’s, I found she had been busy heating up leftovers and putting together a lunch for us – breakfast, for her also! I’m glad I picked up the dinners. Her list was short, but as I put things away, I found her fridge pretty empty. It’s not that she can’t afford to buy groceries. I think it’s more because she keeps cutting more and more foods out of her diet, because she’s suddenly decided they are bad for her! At least she did have some hamburgers made with beef my sister gave her (beef is one of the foods she’s decided to stop buying, opting instead for more processed meats!), so I sure as heck didn’t want to be eating a protein she needs for herself!
She actually did seem happy with the dinners, too – especially when she saw the price tags on the containers. So we had ourselves a good lunch, and she was all set for supper, too.
My sister had visited my mother yesterday, and changed her bedding for her. I got an email letting me know she found bed bugs. *sigh* My mother’s building is run by the province’s public housing department, which subsidizes rents, so there is one provincial number to call. They did have a separate maintenance number, which I made sure to add to my mother’s phone list, since calling the main office is an exercise in frustration. The automated system just punts you to voice mail, but the voice mail boxes are always full, so you can’t leave a message, anyhow. The maintenance number gets you to a real, live human being – eventually.
The head office for public housing is located in the smaller, closer city, rather than the big city, where the legislature and most government offices are. When I mentioned that this office is for the entire province, my mother refused to believe me, saying it had to be just for our region, because if it was for the entire province, it would be in the bigger city. She simply could not accept that a government department’s head office could exist outside the capital city of the province. I tried to explain, but she was getting herself worked up, so I dropped it. A very strange thing to get upset over!
It was shortly after noon when this was all done, which means we had a couple more hours before her phone appointment with the doctor. I knew where was a chance she’d call early, though, and sure enough, she did. In fact, from the time, I think she was making these calls on her lunch break!
I set us up on speaker phone, and the first thing the doctor asked was, why did we have this appointment? I told her about the tests results that were supposed to be sent to her, and she said she had nothing on file. The last tests results she had for my mother were from September. !!! Then she said she would check online. Our province’s patient medical records are all digital now, but they’re sort of all over the place. She had to log into a system outside the clinic to find the test results.
They came back normal.
All of her tests and scans, including the one the test that needed 5 days to complete, came back normal.
My mother is ridiculously healthy, as far as their tests go.
So we went over my mother’s symptoms again, and mentioned the prescription she gave my mother to test out made no difference. We talked options and possibilities. One of them is to have my mother referred to a specialist, which is my mother’s choice.
The doctor, however, would have to see my mother in person and do a physical exam before she can make a referral.
My mother was starting to lose it at this point. With so many holidays over the next while, it was either making an appointment very soon, or in January.
Given the test results, this is not an urgent situation, so we’re going with January. I will call to make an appointment, later.
The whole call took less than 10 minutes.
As soon as it was done, my mother was all “I don’t want to see this doctor! I’m not going back there!” This time, however, her reasoning was legitimate, and not just her racism emerging again. She even said, she’d apologize to the doctor, but between her own English and the doctor’s strong accent (plus, she talks fast), my mother simply can’t understand what she’s saying. As it was, I was struggling to understand her at times, too, and kept having to ask her to repeat herself, and I can’t even blame my auditory processing issues for it, this time. I had the same problem when we were talking to her in person.
I still need to find myself a new doctor, too, so I’ll have to make some phone calls to various clinics and see if any of them have doctors open to new patients that would be willing to take both me and my mother.
My mother was also frustrated that we had two days with this waiting, for just a few minutes call!
As we were talking after the call, I got a 1 hour reminder from my phone, for the appointment.
I’m glad we set the new appointment for the afternoon instead of the morning, so that this time I was actually there when she called early!! My mother could not have handled this call at all, on her own.
But it was done, and we have some next steps to take.
I spent some time looking things up related to some of the other options the doctor mentioned that she can do herself at home. Some of what I found, she physically cannot do, but there is enough that she can do, that it’s not much of a concern. Then she started to talk about what other foods she should stop eating, and I had to play interference on that one. For starters, there is nothing diet related when it comes to her symptoms, but in her mind, everything comes back to whatever food issue she’s developed, based on something she saw on TV, read in a “women’s” magazine, or hear from her neighbours. It’s all pretty messed up. Even now, she will sometimes randomly tell me, I need to eat more soup (she has no idea how much soup I do or don’t eat). Why? So I will lose weight. She saw some guy on a daytime talk show, decades ago, saying something about eating soup to lose weight. I recall that particular fad, and this was a very long time ago! But it’s in her mind and, because some self proclaimed expert said it on TV, that magically makes it true, and she believes that if I just ate soup, I would lose weight.
Funny. She complains about her own weight, but doesn’t apply this magical advice to herself!
The thing is, she hears and reads all this stuff and latches onto it, and has decided that any ache or pain or whatever she’s dealing with, is directly related to a food of some kind, therefore she must cut it out. She could break her leg, and think that means she ate the “wrong” thing for breakfast. Very frustrating! Especially since she should know better. A lot of stuff she now believes is “bad” is stuff she helped grow, raise and process for almost her entire life. We butchered our own cows and ate lots of beef when I was growing up, but now beef is bad?
Anyhow. I’m getting distracted.
Once we were done talking about the call and next steps, I was more than happy to head home, and my mother was more than happy to send me on my way, so she could go for a nap!! She did give me some Christmas cards to mail for her at our post office, because she no longer trusts the staff at the post office in her town. I was okay with that, as I turned out to have a parcel in the mail, anyhow. I’m glad I looked at her cards, though, because she had a wrong address for my nephew. I’ve since confirmed the correct address, fixed the envelop, and need to go back to the post office after I’m done this.
As for my parcel in the mail, it was a different brand of lysine for the cats. The previous brand we tried was more granular, instead of the fine powder we were getting before, from a supplier that seems to no longer supply lysine at all anymore. The granular is fine if it’s being mixed into wet cat food or dissolved into water, but it doesn’t stick as well when tossed in dry kibble.
This new brand is a fine powder, and I’m quite happy with it. It dissolves very quickly in their water, and when tossed with the dry kibble, sticks to it much better. Hopefully, this means the outside cats will actually eat more of it, instead of it falling off the kibble when I set it out! It’s working out so nicely, I think we’ll be putting this brand on a subscription. It came in a 500g bag, which is bigger than what we had found previously. We’ll see how long a bag lasts, first.
Now it’s time to grab a food of some kind, and see what other maintenance I can do on my computer!
The Re-Farmer 