Gosh, this guy reminds me of Decimus so much! That permanently stunned expression is what does it. The white arrow on his head reminds me of Pointy Baby.
We’ve passed on photos in hopes someone will adopt him, but he does have lung issues. We can hear his lungs rattling as he breaths. Unfortunately, we’re out of Lysine, and our Amazon subscription supplier seems to be either out of stock, or no longer carries it? I’m not quite sure which it is, based on the very brief notification. I’ve looked at alternatives, but those in the bulk size I’m after that’s meant for humans seem to all have other vitamins mixed in, while the ones marketed for cats cost almost twice as much, for 1/3rd the quantity! I hope our usual supplier starts shipping again. Winter is always the hardest when it comes to respiratory issues in the cats.
Yesterday, my daughter and I finally lifted the roof on the cat house to give it a cleaning. I’d hoped to be able to brace it somehow, but there’s a large ridge beam down the centre; it’s the beam that extends out the back that the counter weight is attached to, so it’s very substantial. Unfortunately, the roof has such a low slope, it means I can’t attach cross pieces (collar beams, I believe they’re called) to the rafters. The ridge beam it in the way.
Once open, we took out all the bedding and threw away the sheet-wrapped pillow that had been in a box, because it got damp on the bottom and started to mold. The litter box was simply switched out for another with clean litter pellets in it. The smoke detector battery was tested, the heat shield put back around the light fixture, then we plugged in the electrical and tested the terrarium heat bulb. My daughter also found a way to secure the timer so that the light sensor should stay upright and facing the window. It will turn the bulb on when it gets dark, then off when it gets light.
We also cleaned the windows, inside and out! Gosh, they get greasy on the inside. All those cat faces rubbing on them. 😄
We had cats in and out the whole time we worked on it! Once the bedding was returned and it was time to drop the roof, we had to be extra careful to make sure no cats decided to jump in from the top! That roof is really heavy, and even with the counter weight, it drops hard if we’re not careful. With how much the roof has been wiggling around, we’re being extra careful, anyhow. We’ll have to plan ahead for building a new cat house, because this one is just getting too old and the wood too rotten. That and the cats are using the inside walls as scratching posts, and WOW are they tearing it apart!!
That done, we’re also starting to do things like put away the hoses for the winter. We haven’t shut the taps off in the basement, yet, so we do still have access to water for a while longer, but mostly we’ll be bringing warm water out from inside, instead.
We ran out of kibble for the outside cats already! When I got another bag, I didn’t realize we were so low for the inside cats, too. By the time the bin for the inside cats was refilled, plus the one I keep in my room for the kittens, there wasn’t much left. Rather than take from the inside bin, I took advantage of delivering Nosencrantz to her new home by arranging to meet near a Walmart, then picked up another 10kg bag. I’ll be doing our first stock up shopping trip to Costco in a couple of days. Now that we have the truck, I should be able to get the entire month’s worth of kibble in one trip!
While I was driving, I started to get some messages that turned out to be from the Cat Lady. I’d brought up about bringing the 5 kittens to get fixed during the clinic’s cheap day. She came back to tell me she has us booked for 6 slots – all females! We don’t even have 6 females to bring in. There are the 3 older kittens (Tiny is just too tiny), Toni and Tissue. We have had no progress in getting at any of the outside females. It would probably be easier if the males weren’t so aggressively friendly and pushing their way past the ladies and spooking them. But this clinic wants to do only females for their cheap day. The rescue would pay for 4, and she was asking if we could pay for the other two. We were already expecting to pay for one (Toni).
Bringing Tissue, though… Tissue: Destroyer of Cars. That’s a risk!
I’ve messaged the Cat Lady about how many we can do, but haven’t heard back. She’s in the middle of getting her house ready for sale, and to start moving next month, if things go to plan. Thankfully, the new house is very close, but moving is always very stressful. The hardest move we ever had was only half a block. It took us a week and we all were sick with colds. At one point, I just collapsed and was bed ridden for a couple of days. And we had only 4 kids and two cats at the time, too! So she has a lot to focus on that are a higher priority. All that, and she’s still hoping to come out here this weekend to drop off a donated cat carrier for us to keep! With the move, she’s not positive she’ll be able to take Ghosty after the spay. It might be better for her to come back with us for a bit longer, instead.
With us now having car payments, starting next month, finding the money to do spays – even super cheap ones (only $75, instead of $350!!) – is going to take a bit more juggling of the budget than usual. We’ll manage. Especially if we are able to adopt out more cats, and not be spending so much on cat food every month!
This was an unexcepted thing. I was connected with someone last night, we got together this morning, and it’s done.
Nosencrantz no longer has to be constantly stressed out being around so many other cats. She has a new forever home, and she’s already settling in nicely. When feeding the cats this morning, she came out of her hiding places as usual, and I was able to get her into the carrier. She got treated to some wet cat food while I finished my morning rounds, then off we went to meet her new family.
I am feeling really good about the family she went to. You know how, when you sometimes meet someone and there is this automatic connection? That’s how it was when I was introduced to someone who was looking for a new cats. Nosencrantz checked all her boxes, and she checked all of ours!
This is a hard one for me. Of all the cats, Nosencrantz is the one I connected with the most. She, however, was so stressed out. There’s a reason we also called her Anxiety Bear! Too many other cats. Both inside and out, she had specific cats that targeted her, too.
Now, she has a safe, warm “suite” to stay in for a couple of weeks as she gets used to her new home, before they let her out to explore. She’ll have one other sweet and friendly cat to get used to, and cat loving children to dote on her. They also have other cats that are completely indoors, including a rescued tripod. I have been promised lots of pictures, and look forward to getting to know the family more!
It feels like this family was put in our path at just the right time, too. I am going to miss Nosencrantz, but this was the right thing to do for her.
It occurred to me that these guys are coming up on 6 months old. The Cat Lady was looking into getting 5 slots for the cheap spay and neuter day, including Toni, Ghosty and a couple of outdoor males, but I just asked if her if we could get the 5 oldest kittens done, instead. She still wants to get Toni done, too, so she’ll see if she can get 6 slots. She might be moving next month, though, and things are really hectic for her and her family right now (and their 27 or so cats!!), so she’ll get back to me on that one. I told her I’m less concerned about Toni than I am about having 5 kittens old enough for their first heat (well… three female kittens going into heat with intact males around!). Ghosty, depending on how things go with the move, would not be coming back, as she’s found a home for her.
Speaking of large numbers of cats, I did a head count outside this morning. Including Shop Towel/Sad Face, I counted 38.
As much as we’d like to reduce that population, we really need to reduce the indoor population first. It’s just not healthy for them, mentally or physically. The Cat Lady, once they move to their new home, will be able to convert a heated shed into a place just for cats. That’s something I wouldn’t mind finding a way to do. Too bad we can’t use the storage house for that! We need more sheds, anyhow. The ones we have are either fallen apart, falling apart, or jammed full of junk. Or, in the case of the warehouse that used to be my late brother’s workshop, filled with my parents’ stuff my mother insists we keep. Not that we’d use that for cats. We need a workshop more!
Ah, well. All in good time.
With the temperatures dropping below freezing consistently over night from now on, I pulled the bed of Red of Florence onions, yesterday.
There was enough to half fill the wheel barrow, plus there were a few too small to bother keeping.
Their necks are still too “fleshy”, so we won’t be able to cure them like we did with the other onions we harvested already. We’d had a night and morning of consistent rain, so these were also pretty damp. We have the hardware cloth “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement when we keep the door open in the summer. It does double duty for laying out vegetables. I was able to set it up in the old kitchen and laid the onions out to dry a bit. From there, we will need to process them; some for freezing, some for dehydrating. This is on top of the onions we’ve been able to cure and braid for casual use. We got a very decent haul of onions this year, but only the yellow onions, plus these ones. Oh, and the shallots. We also had the Red Wethersfield onions, but not one of them survived transplanting! I’ve no idea what happened to them, but I want to try that variety again before we conclude that they just won’t grow here.
The high for today, and the next couple of days, is expected to be 3C/37F. After that, the highs will be lower, and reach just above or below freezing. So far, the overnight lows are not expected to drop very far, and remain just a few degrees below freezing, but we will no longer be seeing overnight lows above freezing from here on. It’s still not too bad, though. Nothing severe or extreme. Also, we don’t have the snow that other parts of the country got yesterday, including the city we lived in before moving out here!
There was a thin layer of ice on the outside cats’ water bowls. It’s starting to be time to bring warm water out for them when we feed them. It’s time to put the hoses away and cover the taps, anyhow. The electrical in the cat house needs to be plugged in and tested, so we can plug in the huge heated water bowl in the water bowl shelter, plus the terrarium heat bulb inside, with its timer set to turn it on at dusk. I’ve already set up the smaller water bowl in the sun room and plugged it in.
Still lots to be done, but as long as we get the essentials taken care of, the rest can wait until spring, if necessary.
I counted 37 or 38 this morning. Plus Shop Towel. He came over to the kibble house and seemed okay at first -I was even just starting to be able to touch him – but then one of our friendly males came by and he attacked. I chased him off and he actually stopped to attack another cat that had been startled by the commotion and happened to be running in the same direction.
*sigh*
Also, yes. That tuxedo has a messed up eye. That’s the one that had a badly infected eye, but we could never catch him to clean it up. Not the tuxedo that lost its eye entirely. I haven’t seen that one in a long time.
Today looks like a day where not much is going to get done outside. It looks like it’s been raining for most of the night, judging by how much water is pooling in our driveway, and is still raining now. It’s expected to continue raining until the evening.
Which I’m okay with. It’ll be good for the ground to get a lot of moisture before the snow hits and the ground starts to freeze. That will benefit any young trees, like the apple we planted in the spring, and the Korean Pine in the outer yard, as well as the garlic and saffron crocuses that were planted not long ago. A good, deep watering before winter is a good thing.
Oh, I need to remember to contact Veseys about those purple raspberries. I double checked and yes, I was remembering correctly. They are regular cane raspberries, not primal cane. Primal cane raspberries produce berries on new canes every year, so you can literally mow the whole patch down in the fall, and they will produce new shoots in the spring. With regular cane, berries are produced on second year canes, which then die off, leaving the fresh first year canes to survive the winter and produce the following year. What we should have gotten in our order was first year canes, and we should not have had any berries this year at all. Instead, the canes planted this year would have produced berries next year, while also having new canes come up that would produce berries the year after. There were no new canes that came up. Just the ones we planted, that produced berries, instead. It seems highly unlikely, but we either got second year canes in stead of first year canes, or conditions somehow “tricked” the raspberries into acting as though they’d gone through a winter. This can sometimes happen with biannuals like onions or carrots. For example, the year we had groundhogs eating our carrot greens, quite a few went to seed after their greens started growing back. I can’t think of anything that happened with the raspberries that could have simulated that sort of annual pattern, though.
Anyhow…
Days like today – rainy and overcast – always make me feel really, really sleepy. I’m resisting the urge to crawl back into bed!
We have reached a lovely 16C/61F today, with wonderful sunshine. You know what that means!
Time to get work done outside!
Today, I focused on using the last of the soil in the kiddie pool the melons were grown in and soil from the grow bags, to top up our first trellis bed. The potato bags were already emptied and the soil all in a pile, so that was nice and quick to transfer over. Between that and the soil from the kiddie pool, more than half the trellis bed was covered.
Then I started on the grow bags the bell peppers were in.
I think I discovered why the peppers never thrived in those.
I had two shallow “raised beds” from the dollar store, plus two deeper, higher quality bags. As soon as I started trying to break up the soil with the spade, I found it to be remarkably solid and hard to cut through. That bag in the photo was the last of these fabric grow bags. It flipped inside out as I tried to empty the soil, and was still stuck.
Those are tree roots.
It turns out those horrible elms from the self seeded row of trees my mother allowed to grow not only release millions of seeds every spring, their roots will actually grow up into the grow bags and smother whatever else is growing there! The only bags where this was not a problem were the potatoes. Those had a thick layer of straw on their bottoms. I did see a few roots here and there, but nothing in the soil layer like this. These fabric grow bags had some grass clippings added to their bottoms. Those were completely decomposed. I didn’t do the feed bags the hot peppers were in until later. Those had straw on their bottoms, too, but not as deep a layer as the potatoes.
So most of my time ended up being spent trying to break up the soil enough that I could finally shake it from the roots, before it could be dumped into the trellis bed. The four bags the bell peppers were in were just enough to finish topping up the trellis bed.
That left five feed bags; four that had the hot peppers and onions in them, and one that had just onions. I left those and shifted to the high raised bed. The grass clipping mulch was moved and the bed was weeded – leaving two little onions to keep growing.
It’s really amazing, how deep dandelion tap roots can grow!
I found what looked like a couple of mouse tunnels in two of the corners. Grass clippings were used to fill in gaps in the corners, and all along the edges, as well as to chink some gaps on the logs that I found. I also debarked it a fair bit. That’s to keep insects and moisture from the logs, so they’ll last longer.
Once that was all cleaned up, I leveled the soil, pushing some of it up against the grass clippings around the edges. Once that was done, I went back to the remaining grow bags and de-rooted them. All five ended up in the high raised bed.
Last of all, the soil was topped with a light sprinkling of grass clippings before both beds got a thorough soaking. I want the water to soak through all the layers, but don’t want to compact the soil layer, and the grass clippings will help with that at least a little bit.
The beds have now been put to bed for the winter!
When adding soil to the trellis bed, I could see it bouncing! I did stomp on them, but the layers of grass clippings, leaves, kitchen compostables, straw, wood chips and bark, all still have quite a bit of space in them. By spring, I expect the whole thing to have sunk and settled at least 4 inches. The main thing, though, is that it is ready for planting in the spring, even if it takes longer to build the trellis part of the trellis beds!
Now for my happy Butterscotch news!
She’s back indoors!
I’d gone out to feed the cats a bit early, yesterday evening. Butterscotch came around and I got to pet her and cuddle her. She still wouldn’t go near the other cats, and if they came close, she would leave, even from the food I’d put near the storage house for her. Shop Towel in particular was interested in that.
After trying – and failing – to bring her to the kibble house to eat, I tried a different tactic. I’d seen a kitten running around around the front of the house, so I left a pile of kibble on the concrete steps for it. Butterscotch let me pick her up again, and I walked around the back of the house, avoiding all the cats, to bring her to the lone pile of kibble.
I almost got there, too.
It just happened that the girls decided to come outside, and as soon as the doors started rattling, Butterscotch got spooked, and I couldn’t hang onto her anymore. Once the girls realized what happened, they worked with me to encourage Butterscotch to come to them at the steps, and got her eating.
My younger daughter stayed with her while her sister and I played interference with the other cats. Several of them suddenly decided they needed to check out what she was doing at the steps!
Including Shop Towel.
Shop Towel has become an enigma. He’s been hanging around and eating with the other cats, and they are mostly okay with that. Driver and Judgement have not been targeted by him, nor have any of the other males. Mind you, he’s clearly the father of most of the adult males, but I don’t know how much of a difference that would make.
The problem starts when he seed Butterscotch and Nosencrantz.
He hasn’t really targeted Nozencrantz, but he has in the past, and she’s clearly nervous around him. When he goes for the food, she leaves. At least she’s not running up a tree anymore, but it means she doesn’t eat. This morning, I left kibble on the red bench for her, just so she could have something!
Butterscotch, however, has his attention, and he wants to chase her.
Between him, and her not wanting to go near any of the other cats, this was a problem. If only we could get her inside, but she wouldn’t let us take her close to the house!
Well, we found a way.
It started with my younger daughter going over to Shop Towel as he was milling around the storage house. She squatted down (oh, to have functional knees like hers!), held her hand out – and he came right over! She was able to pet him as he purred and rubbed against her legs! We were all pretty stunned by this.
That gave us an opportunity.
The cat carrier was in the sun room, in hopes we’d be able to catch one of the adult females for spaying and adoption. While my younger daughter kept Shop Towel distracted, I got the carrier and her sister and I managed to get Butterscotch in.
She was not happy about that.
The carrier also allowed me to get her past all the indoor cats and bring her into my room.
She was not happy with the kittens. She snarls at them, and spent the night hiding under my printer table. She still came out for pets and cuddled, though, and she was very happy to have wet cat food!
The kittens are curious, but we let the big ones in and out, so she’s not overwhelmed by them. The three tiny ones are still too small to let out.
After I finished up in the garden, had a shower and came into my room, I was able to persuade her to come out for pets, and even go up onto my bed for cuddles. The kittens still in the room were all asleep, so there was no snarling involved.
As I write this, she is still on my bed, curled up and having a nap!
I feel much better having her inside. She probably would have been fine outside, but that whole thing with her not being able to get food because she wouldn’t come closer to the house or other cats was a concern. Plus, she’s one of the originals that my late father cared for. Grandma deserves a warm and comfortable retirement!
I really hope this works out for her.
Once we get some of those kittens to the clinic for spays then adoption next month, I’m hoping we can convince Nosencrantz to come back in, too. I miss her nightly cuddles!
I forgot to mention this less than happy surprise I found while doing my rounds yesterday morning.
One of our highbush cranberry trees has been eaten. Again! This is the one that has an old saw horse over it to protect it, yet it still got eaten! The other, unprotected one was ignored. Why are the deer so determined to eat this one cranberry bush??? It was left alone all summer, too. With the damage being done so late in the growing season, I doubt it will survive. We shall see in the spring, I guess.
I had another surprise when I headed out to feed the outside cats for the evening.
Butterscotch emerged from wherever she’s been hiding out and came running for pets and cuddles. She still wouldn’t go near the other cats, so I ended up leaving some food on the ground on a cat path near the storage house. She did eat some, but then other cats came to investigate, and she took off.
One of those cats was Sad Face (aka: Shop Towel).
Sad Face has been around a lot more often lately, and he has NOT been going after the other cats. In fact, I’ve seen him eating along with them. Nosencrantz doesn’t like him, though, and takes off when she sees him, and so does Butterscotch. He and the other cats seem to be starting to get along; still not sure about Judgement, but Judgement tends to stay in the sun room more often then not, curled up in a cat bed and covered in kittens.
Eventually, Butterscotch just left entirely, disappearing into the maple grove, which meant there was still kibble in the grass that Sad Face was very interested in. As he was eating, with his back to me, I slowly started to approach him.
I’m sure he’s at least partially deaf. Likely due to ear mites.
Then came the surprise.
When I reached out and put my hand on his back, he flinched a bit – then kept on eating!
So I started to pet him, and he still kept eating.
After a bit, with other cats coming over to see what was going on, he did move away and turned to face me – but didn’t run away. Instead, he started eating again, with me and 8 other curious cats around him. I moved forward and he backed off slightly, until I reached my hand out.
He came over to sniff it.
Then he came closer for pets.
And more pets!
He actually started purring, and rubbing around my legs!
We have never been able to approach him before, and have actually had to chase him away because of how aggressive he was to the other cats. I’m sure he’s the one that killed that poor long haired ginger I found in one of the old dog houses by the outhouse. I’ve broken up a number of fights between him and The Distinguished Guest, and TDG was usually on the loosing side. We don’t see him anymore, just as we don’t see any of the other visiting toms anymore. I’m pretty sure he’s why Gooby is gone, too.
And yet, when given the chance, he was incredibly friendly with me and loving the pets!
Also, that cat is a solid brick of muscle.
That was yesterday. What about this morning?
Well, as I brought the food out, Nosencrantz was in among the other cats, but – as usual – waited for kibble to be left in the bowls under the shrine. That was always her favourite spot to eat, before we brought her inside, and she doesn’t like eating closer to the house. By the time I was done putting food out, I saw Butterscotch come running from somewhere beyond the storage house, so I made sure to leave a bit of kibble on the path again, just for her. She was more interested in getting pets, though, which was fine.
I counted 36 cats, cattens and kittens. No Sad Face, at the time.
I did the rest of my rounds and when I got back to the house, there was Sad Face. He was milling around with the other cats, going into the old kitchen garden as I came closer. When he had his back to me, I was able to approach him again and start petting him. That was going well, until he spotted Butterscotch near the storage house. I tried pushing him around to face another direction, but he was utterly focused on Butterscotch.
Yeah. He went for her.
Butterscotch already saw him and went straight up a tree. I had to chase Sad Face out of the yard. Unfortunately, by the time I finished up and was ready to come inside, she was still up the tree.
I really want to bring her back inside, but even when I’ve been able to pick her up and carry her, she doesn’t want to go near the house. Not even for food.
Maybe as things change with the kittens, we can bring her back in. I’ve been chatting with the Cat Lady, about the discounted spay day next month. The vet really wants to do females, not males, if at all possible. Which makes sense for population reduction. Toni is booked for sure, which we will be paying for ourselves, and she will be coming home with us. The rescue would have paid for 2 yard cat males to be done, and they’d have come home with us, too. However, she has found a home for Ghosty, so she’s asked us to bring Ghosty to get fixed, along with the two males, and Ghosty would go home with her. Which makes a booking for four cats instead of three! And these bookings have to be used, or the clinic will be less likely to accept appointments from her on these discount days in the future.
As we talked about the clinic wanting to do females, I mentioned that Tin Whistle and Mitsy could both be done. If they were done, she would be taking them to adopt out, as she has people wanting female cats. They’d take the adult yard cats, but we can’t get hold of them.
So we will have to figure that out as the time gets closer. We only have 3 carriers, with two of them soft sided carriers that a yard cat could probably tear out of pretty easily. With the kittens, we could easily put two, or even three, into one carrier without any issue, but there would be no sharing of carriers with the adult cats.
I’ve also shared photos of some of the yard kittens with her. She may have found a home for the little black puff ball – one of Soot Sprite’s, Pom Pom’s and Tiny’s siblings that we’ve been able to socialize quite thoroughly, just recently. There’s also a friendly black and white catten that looks so much like Decimus. Mostly by his permanently stunned expression. He would be a good one to adopt out, but I had to remember to let the Cat Lady know that he is probably not a well cat. His lungs rattle when he breathes. I made sure to tell her that this is probably a deal breaker, and not to feel she has to take him in. Some of the people who have adopted cats from her work in vet clinics, though, so I thought perhaps one of them would be willing to take him in, as they would be in a better position than most, to find what’s going on with him and give him the right care. She will pass his picture around and let people know.
As for Decimus and the others, I’m told that Decimus is getting quite fat from all the mice she’s catching, and is the best cat the woman has ever owned! Phantom, however, has no interest in the outdoors anymore, and is now an indoor cat. Turmeric (they all have new names now), on the other hand, is making strange. She’s staying outside, even at night (the woman keeps them indoors at night, but hasn’t been able to with Turmeric). She’s very sad about not being able to make friends with Turmeric, but at least Turmeric is staying there.
Meanwhile, it turns out she has a neighbour on a farm nearby who has no cats, and is interested in getting some. I am amazed by this, to be honest. I’m used to cats just showing up on the farm, but that isn’t happening where they are. The Cat Lady joked with her that she should move to our area; she’s have lots of cats show up!
If this neighbour wants outdoor cats, it would be nice if they would be willing to take some males. We have four of five adult males that we could bring over right now, and probably another 3 or 4 friendly kittens and cattens, if they wanted youngsters from this year. I’ve even been able to start petting Driver regularly while he eats on the cat house roof, and he’s only been back about a week.
I’m trying to think of ways to lure the female cats over and try to socialize them, but every idea I can come up with would lure in the friendly males even faster and they mill around so much, the females wouldn’t be able to come any closer. The only exception is Caramel, and she’s often even pushier than the males, while also trying to bit the hand that pets her! Trapping is always a possibility, too, but you just never know what cat would end up being trapped, with so many around. The friendly males would be more comfortable investigating the bait in a trap than the females! Of course, once I have a cat in a trap, I’d have to take it somewhere right away. With how we have the sun room set up as shelter this time of year, we can’t use it as an isolation room anymore, and we certainly couldn’t bring a mostly feral yard cat indoors until we could get it out. At least with the Egg Lady, if we catch a cat, we can bring it straight to her place. She has a chicken coop set aside for them to get used to their new home, and to stay in until she gets them to a vet to get fixed.
Normally, the Cat Lady doesn’t pass on personal information, like where people live, other than a general sense, but with the way things are… I wonder if we could work something out? From what I know, the lady that took in our three isn’t all that much further away than the Egg Lady, and has an isolation ward set up, too. If I could get the cats directly to her, where they could stay in isolation under they get fixed, that would also give her time to socialize them in a more controlled setting – something we just can’t manage with our set up.
Hhmm… I’ll run that idea by the Cat Lady.
If things work out – if we could just catch these cats! – we could potentially adopt out 6 or more outdoor females to homes where they would get spays and vet care right from the get-go. Plus, there is interest in some of the kittens, indoors and out. That would make a HUGE difference in our own population issues, and be much better for the cats, too.
We shall see.
Plus, if we can get friendly with Sad Face, we should be able to get him fixed, too! Hopefully, that would make him less aggressive with the other cats, and we could finally make him one of our own. I really hate having to chase him away.
I found out last night that, when my daughters headed outside while it was still light out, they got visited by Butterscotch! She came right up to them, wanting pets and cuddles, so casually, they assumed she’d been back for awhile.
When I found out, I headed outside to see her, but there was no sign of her.
There was, however, a massive racoon sitting on the threshold between the sun room doors that were tied off partly open. No surprise that all the kibble was gone.
This morning, while feeding the cats (I counted 36 or 37), I looked for her, but still no sign. As I continued my morning rounds, though, I started hearing meowing in the distance. Of course, I went looking. I had gone into the outer yard by the fire pit, when she came running!
I was even able to pick her up and cuddle her as I walked. I brought her to the food and set her on the cat house roof, but other cats were still eating, and she ran off. I caught up with her again and cuddled her, but she won’t go near the other cats.
Hopefully, that will change, and she will stay close, like Nosencrantz now does
Meanwhile, this gives me hope that Marlee will come back, too.
So this day turned out completely different than planned!
The morning was pretty routine. While doing my usual morning rounds, I did a harvest. We are dropping close to freezing tonight – every time I check the forecast, it keeps changing, but not enough to make a difference. Even if we don’t get frost tonight, the few things that are not cold hardy out there are unlikely to continue to ripen, with a few possible exceptions.
One thing I was hoping to do was get one of our few friendly female cats, probably Beep Boop, into the carrier. If I’d managed that, I would have taken her straight to our egg lady for adoption. Of course, this would be the morning when she didn’t show up! In fact, “only” 17 cats showed up this morning, which is a little unusual these days. Caramel showed up and was being friendly, but when I tried to pick her up to put her into the carrier, she would have none of that!
So I let her be and did the rest of my rounds and the harvesting.
I harvested all the remaining melons. Most of them are probably not ripe, but we won’t know for sure until we cut them open. There’s also the last couple of patty pans that were large enough to be worth harvesting.
We had only three of the purple Dragonfly peppers, and I grabbed them all. All the other peppers in the grow bags, I left. The Sweet Chocolates in the old kitchen garden had a fair number of ripe peppers, but I also harvested most of the green ones, too. There are still a few on the plants that I didn’t bother with.
I didn’t harvest the eggplant, and I hoped to be able to put up the one hot pepper in the wattle weave bed, as it seems to have the most mature peppers on it.
I also picked through the last of the ripening tomatoes and brought them in, along with the yellow onions that were curing beside them.
Once inside, I had breakfast, then started on some dishes. With the hot water tank dead, we’ve been heating up kettles of water to use for everything. I was starting to heat more water for another batch of dishes when my mother called.
I’d mentioned to her that I was taking her car in to the garage, so her first question was, how was the car? Turns out, she thought it was still at the garage. Why, I’m not sure, since we only have her car now, so I’d have no way to get home if I left it at the garage!
Once she knew it was running find, she asked what my plans for the day were…
*sigh*
Yup. Even though I ask her repeatedly if she’d need a shopping trip, every time we talk, she always tells me no, she’s fine, she doesn’t need anything – even when I try to preplan a shopping date. She refuses to, because she still has food, so she doesn’t need to. And she doesn’t want to shop before she runs out of things, because then it’ll all go bad unless she eats it all right away…
*sigh*
Honestly, I think she just likes the idea that she’s messing with my day when she does this. It’s a control thing. Of course, part of the reason we’re living here is so that I’m available to help her with this stuff, and she’s not making my brother book time off work to come over (with my sister, she goes out of her way to only call on the days she knows my sister isn’t working).
So I was soon on the road to her place, earlier than usual, as she also needed help with some household chores that are getting too hard for her to manage on her own.
I don’t know that my mother was all that happy with me today, to be honest. I helped her with her household stuff, then we sat for a bit to chat. She started going into her usual manipulative rants, and I was having none of it. At one point, she started off on how everything is so expensive, and it’s because all the stores are cheating people. I tried to explain inflation to her, but nope. It’s because all the stores are cheating people. She knows this because, years ago, someone at the grocery store helped her with her shopping, and when she checked her receipt at home, she found she had been charged for a watermelon she didn’t buy. This happened probably 10 years ago and frankly, I don’t think it happened the way she claims. The grocery store by her place prints receipts that include featured specials. One time that she went through her receipt while I was there, she thought she was charged for a pie she didn’t get, but when I looked at the receipt, I found she was looking at the featured sale on pie and thought it was part of her purchases. Or, the maybe guy made a mistake about the watermelon, and punched in the wrong code. She got mad at me for not agreeing with her, then tried to blame me for her being cheated “last week”. I’d helped her with shopping and she wanted to get a case of mushroom soup. They’d been on sale the week before, but they’d run out. There were no cases, but I found a staff member and asked. She found one for my mother in their stock room. The cheat? My mother looked at the receipt and the price was not the sale price she wanted it to be – a sale that was over already. I’d even told her it was over, but in her memory, she now thinks I told her the price was the sale price from the previous week. I never told her a price, because I never saw a price for cases, only singles. This also happened more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, not last week, as she claimed, because my brother had visited and helped her with shopping last week, not me.
Then, after going on about how this guy had cheated her over a watermelon she never bought, she turned around and tried to make excuses for our vandal, of all people. She still tells me how we all need to get along and forgive each other, yet still allows him to talk to her in spite of all he’s done, and his open expression of hatred for me in particular, not to mention blatant lies to her about me. Somehow, my siblings and I are at fault that we all don’t get along like we used to.
Things even went sideways when I made the mistake of telling her about the truck we have been trying to get financing for. This was her cue to say that my FIL, who lives on a pension in an assisted living building, should be “helping us”. She’s got it in her head that he’s got a “good pension” (whatever she things that is; I don’t care to find out), and if she can help us out, he can, too. He does help us in other ways, but when I said that, she demanded to know in what ways. I told her it was none of her business, just like his finances are none of her business. Oh, and she even tried to use the fact that she paid for the new roof as ammunition against me! We’ll be getting that one rubbed into us for the rest of her life, I’m sure. She never does anything good, without finding some way to use it as a weapon. She and our vandal are very much alike in that regard.
Things went down hill from there, and instead of rising to her bait on so many things, I pointed out that she was being psychologically abusive, and I wasn’t going to accept that. She then tried to gaslight me, and I called her on that, too. Finally, she just stopped talking and sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, apparently praying. Then she started doing a few other things in preparation for running errands, and wouldn’t answer me when I offered to help or asked her questions.
Then we just went and did the errands, and everything settled down. We even went out for lunch part way through. I made sure to pay, because she never tips.
By the time we were done, my mother was quite tired. I did stay for a little bit of a visit after everything was put away. Since I’d gone to her place to much earlier than usual, though, I decided to do our last stock up shopping trip. I needed to go to Canadian Tire and Walmart, and her place was already half way there.
Before heading out, though, I messaged my family about the change in plans. That’s when my husband updated me on the plumber situation.
He’d called our usual guy again, and it went straight to voice mail. So, he called another company we’ve dealt with and left a message there. That company called back.
I think we know why we haven’t been hearing from the first place.
This is the time of year when everyone is getting their cottages ready for winter. Which includes draining the plumbing, so nothing freezes and bursts pipes over the winter. This second plumber is fully booked draining cottages for the next two weeks. Given how many cottages there are around the lake, every available plumber would be booked solid right now.
We are going to be without hot water for a while! Over Thanksgiving, at the very least.
I have not told my brother we don’t have hot water at the moment. I didn’t want him to worry as they go to visit their son and grandsons for Thanksgiving. If we don’t hear anything after Thanksgiving, though, I’m going to have to ask him if he can come out and install the new tank. The frustrating thing is, it’s really not a difficult thing to do. We just don’t have what we need to do it. Particularly with the electrical part of it.
Ah, well.
On that note, I headed out and did the final shopping I needed to do, and even picked up a couple of treats for Thanksgiving dinner. The only other stop was to get gas on the way home. It doesn’t look like getting the air filter and new sparkplugs done are helping with the poor mileage my mother’s car has been getting, though it does seem to be running noticeably better! Also, that tire with the slow leak they couldn’t find is still holding air, so that’s good. Mind you, it took about 3 weeks before it leaked enough to be noticeable, last time, so it’s really too soon to say, and I need to keep an eye on it.
When I got home and drove up to the house to unload, the yard was just filled with cats! All the ones that didn’t show up for breakfast were very hungry.
Beep Boop was among them.
So after everything was unloaded and the girls were putting them away, I fed the outside cats, which lured at least three of them out from under the car! The carrier was in the sun room, and Beep Boop was among the cats eating kibble in there, so I put some in the carrier, then picked her up and dropped her in through the top (I love that this carrier opens up at the top!). She immediately started eating again, so I closed it up, then messaged the egg lady to see if she was home.
She was, and eager to welcome a new cat!
So, off I went again! Beep Boop was not happy once she realized she couldn’t get out of the carrier, but she did eventually settle in for the ride.
She now has one of the chicken coops, all to herself! It’s roasty toasty in there. Food and water were already waiting for her – and she’ll have all the mice she can catch! Just getting into the coop, which has a small vestibule with some feed storage in it, we saw several mice running around. Beep Boop (who will surely be renamed!) will get to stay here for a while, and arrangements will be made to get her spayed right away. My friend’s mouse problem is so bad, she thinks she might need three more cats! So we will work on trying to get some of the other females, as she doesn’t think her one male would be happy with more males around.
By the time I got back from delivering the cat, it was getting dark. I was just able to get the eggplant and the nearest peppers covered for the night. I had a couple more covers, so I went ahead and covered the peppers in the grow bags, too. As I write this, the forecast says we will stay above freezing, but the “RealFeel” will be below freezing.
We shall see what we get for real!
Oh, and while all this was happening, I started getting messages from the cat lady. One of the last kittens will be going to her new home tomorrow. There were 17 people interested in that one tiny kitten – but none interested in the other that’s not so tiny. That one doesn’t want to leave them, anyhow, it seems. There’s also someone interested in Ghosty, but that person wants a male, and Ghosty is female. I’ll find out tomorrow, if it’s still a go. I passed on a picture of Tiny, Pom Pom and Soot Sprite to pass on – make sure to mention Soot Sprite is not up for adoption, and she’ll put the word out for them, since the tiny ones seem to have more interest.
So not only are we looking at having as many as 3 more female yard cats adopted out soon, we might have some kittens adopted out, too!
She’s also going to let me know when one of the clinics has their neuter discount day, to start getting some of the outside males done.
And now it’s almost 10pm, and I need to see about some supper! I just realized, I haven’t eaten since having lunch with my mother at noon. Nothing involving the oven, though. My daughters prepped the ripe Sweet Chocolate peppers while I was gone and now have them dehydrating in the oven.
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to do the work outside I’d intended to do today!
Nosencrantz was eagerly among the other cats when I came out to feed them this morning! She even let me pet her, but she was far more interested in food.
I counted 37 again this morning. Unfortunately, that includes Shop Towel. As soon as Nosencrantz saw him in the yard, she did this.
She was still up there when I finished my rounds and came inside. The kibble under the shrine, where she prefers to eat, was already gone, though there were still some in the kibble house. I shooed Shop Towel away, but I know he’ll come back.
I so wish he weren’t aggressive with the other cats. I hate to have to chase away a hungry animal, but he’s already chased off the other toms permanently, and I think some of our own males that have moved on have been driven off by him.
Well, we might be down a few more yard cats, soon. The homesteader we have been buying eggs from has only one cat. Quite a lovely gentleman, too. However, with having feed for so many animals around, she has a lot of mice, and he can’t keep up with catching them all! I’ve offered some of ours. Depending on how her schedule is, I’m hoping she can come over to choose. She would rather have females, as she thinks her cat (yes, he’s fixed, and yes, she’ll fix any cats she takes) would be more accepting of females. Of course, males are the ones that are the most socialized around here! However, there are a couple of females that we can pet fairly regularly. I would much rather we reduced the population of females here, too, since it’s so difficult to get them fixed. I was able to pet Beep Boop this morning, and even feel under her belly, and she has no active nips, making her a good candidate. Adam and Broccoli would also be great to go. I have been able to pet Broccoli while she’s eating, though I couldn’t check to see if she was nursing – she did bring her second litter to the house, and I’ve seen them together, but I’ve never seen her actively nursing them. They definitely are old enough to be weaned. As for Adam… she won’t let us near her at all. She was creche mother for so long, along with Beep Boop, I don’t think she would have gone into a second heat, like Broccoli did. Then there’s Caramel. She’s been an odd one, lately! If I’m going around the cat house, for example, she will run around on the roof, following me, meowing for attention and even grabbing at me to pay attention to her – but when I do, she attacks my hand, scratching and biting! Yet if I pull away, she starts meowing for attention again.
Nosencrantz is another possibility, now that she actually comes up and lets me pet her. She doesn’t want to go indoors anymore. I don’t know how good of a mouser she is, after being indoors for so long, but she would be much happier around fewer cats. Especially to get away from Shop Towel. Plus, she’s already fixed.
I miss her nightly cuddles!
Well, time to get to other things. I’m taking my mother’s car in to the garage today, so I’m leaving much earlier to stop at the clinic and drop off my husband’s medical files, first. Then grab “breakfast” somewhere. Maybe the new Dairy Queen is open by now? If it is, I’ll definitely give it a try.
The Re-Farmer 