I counted 18 cats while doing their kibble and warm water this morning.
Look who was amendable to pets today!
While resizing the picture before uploading it, for a moment, I thought there was some sort of digital goof at his back end.
Nope.
The black fur with the white snow behind it is giving an excellent view of both his undercoat and overcoat of fur! It’s really quite remarkable how thick that undercoat gets in winter.
And look! There’s a tiny little face peeking up at me through the window!
There’s actually five. It’s hard to see, but there are three cats along the bottom of the window. When I took the picture, I could see the one on the far left moving around. It wasn’t until I uploaded the picture to my desktop and used the auto photo fix to see if it would be any clearer, that I spotted the one way in the back!
It feels so strange to look out our bathroom window and see only a couple of cats on the swing bench, instead of dozen or more. In fact, yesterday I actually looked out once and saw NO cats in there at all! The cats are definitely enjoying the relatively mild temperatures, and using the cat house instead of the sun room. This morning, I counted only seventeen cats, and only two of those were adults. Junk Pile and Caramel. I still can’t get near Junk Pile but, every now and then, I’ve managed to sneak a quick pet on Caramel, while she’s on the cat house roof.
She doesn’t like that, though.
In other things, my husband and I were supposed to be out today. Last month, we had consecutive appointments with our doctor (having the same doctor saves a lot of time and travel!) that got rescheduled to today. Just a little while ago, we got a call from the clinic. A very apologetic receptionist was calling to reschedule us again! She was able to book us for the earliest appointment she could find next week, though, so at least we won’t have more than a month to wait!
So that opens up my day. A trip to the doctor is about 40 minutes on the highway, plus town driving and usually a stop at the gas station along the way, too. We like to arrive early which, at this clinic, often meant actually getting in to see the doctor early. They’re good about that. We’re both going to be getting our regular blood tests done. Lab and X-ray is right there, so what usually happens is, my husband and I go in together for his appointment (I’m there to keep him honest! LOL He has a terrible habit of making light of what he’s going through, which is not a good thing to do with the doctor), then he goes to do his more extensive lab work while I have my appointment. Then I get my lab work done, which tends to be much faster. This way, we get home as quickly as possible, with the least amount of time for my husband painfully sitting in the waiting room.
Between the driving and the appointments, adjusting to make it as comfortable and least painful for my husband, it takes up quite a bit of time, and most of that time is spent driving “gently”. He feels every little bump and vibration, painfully, so I am a lot more careful about things like how quickly I accelerate or decelerate, taking turns, etc.
Gosh. Now I have a whole day freed up! What shall I do with myself?
I guess I ought to clean out the litter boxes in my office I’d asked the girls to do while we were gone.
Would you believe this kitten is about 7 or 8 months old? It’s from the same litter as Walnut (who is now named Peanut!) At this age, it would be at pretty much adult size. That second litter of white and greys are all much smaller cats, but this little boy is the tiniest!
With the warmer temperatures, we’re seeing a lot less of the cats. When checking the sunroom through the bathroom window, we no longer see the swing bench covered in kittens. Now, we are seeing only two are three at a time, and none wandering around. I am seeing them inside the cat house more often, when I come out with the kibble. Head counts have been as low as “only” 14 cats at a time, and they are eating so much less kibbled, I’ve started to feed them only once a day instead of twice, and there’s still lots of kibble left in the trays and bowls in the morning.
On the one hand, this is a good thing. The milder temperatures are less dangerous for them, and we’re going through less kibble. On the other hand, if they’re wandering around more, they’re more at risk from predators, and the females are more likely to go into heat earlier. With the Cat Lady going through major health issues right now, trapping the more feral females for spaying might not happen as originally planned. 🙁 Ah, well. We’ll deal!
Yes, they’re all getting lysine. While it helps them fight off the respiratory infections and recover faster, it doesn’t stop them from still getting stuffy noses and coughing. They probably won’t recover fully until spring.
Because I completely forgot I hadn’t made a post today!
I counted “only” nineteen outside, this morning.
It’s been an almost disorienting day today. The pain in my neck/shoulder area is actually making me feel kinda nauseous and a little bit dizzy. I wasn’t up to doing the third batch of lard. It can wait another day, in its semi-frozen state. Not much productivity for me today at all, and the day seemed to be gone before I knew it.
This morning, I was able to do a head count while feeding the outside cats.
Including this little Pointy Baby, who decided to climb up my back.
It’s a good thing my parka is so puffy, otherwise it would have been a very painful climb!
The first time I counted, I got 21, but when I counted again, I got 28!
Then I saw Sad Face skulking away in the distance.
I think I know why he’s skulking. He’s been a bad boy again.
I found a couple of spots like this one, filled with tufts of black fur and spots of blood. There were also blood trails up some of the paths, and more tufts of black fur.
Sad Face seems to be earning all those scars and scratches on his face – and it looks like he’s the winner of this battle!
I think the fur tufts are from The Distinguished Guest. I saw him briefly, yesterday. With the amount of fur and blood, I would not have been surprised to find a body somewhere. 😥
Thankfully, none of our own cats look at all injured. Sad Face seems to be leaving them alone. Including this handsome boy.
I forget what name the girls gave him, but he actually came over and allowed me to pet him! Of last summer’s long haired kittens, he has the most black, and he has no injuries at all.
I am not happy about this, but I am happy that Potato Beetle is inside. The visiting toms would always go after him, and he’s had more than a few injuries over his 4 years of life.
When we brought him in, he explored for a while, then disappeared. Yesterday evening, while I was walking back and forth in the hallway, working on something, I started tripping over a cat that decided it was a good time to start weaving around my feet. It turned out to be Potato Beetle! He was wanting attention, so my husband took him for a bit. Later on, he claimed one of my daughters and would not let her do anything but hold him and pet him! This morning, he was out and about while I got ready to head outside, and continued trying to kill me by weaving around my feet!
While some of the other cats have hissed at him, there have been no altercations. He’s completely accepting of all the other cats, and most of them are just curious about him.
Which really makes me wonder why they still won’t accept Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. They haven’t really been exposed to Marlee, who hisses at everyone, so there’s nothing to say there, yet. So bizarre!
While in isolation, Tissue would hiss at the other cats whenever she saw them. Sometimes, even Cheddar and Leyendecker, when they came in. If Nosencrantz – who seemed to actually want to make friends! – came closer, Tissue would start spitting, and even lash out.
Yesterday, we gave Tissue one last doze of pain medication, which she took so very well. Soon after, I let her out of isolation. Since she’s been out, there has been zero hissing or lashing out from her. She made her way upstairs and reclaimed her favourite place on my daughter’s bed!
My office/bedroom is much quieter now.😊
Tissue still has some recovering to do. Her tongue looks healed up, and she’s been eating dry kibble, so her jaw must be healing up well, too. She gets a bit snorky at times, and walks a bit oddly. I can’t blame her for that at all! She had some frost bite on her foot pads. As it heals, her pink foot pads have all gotten a very dark red in patches, and the dead skin is starting to slough off. I can’t tell if her feet actually hurt, or if the healing/sloughing is just really uncomfortable to walk on.
Now that Tissue is back, Marlee has joined us and Potato Beetle has been brought inside, we’re back up to 16 cats in the house.
*sigh*
Sixteen inside, at least 28 (not counting the visiting toms) outside, and I didn’t see Rosencrantz this morning. This is after we’ve adopted out a total of nine kittens from outside.
Before I headed out to do my rounds this morning, I checked on the sun room kitties though the bathroom window.
I saw this, looking back at me.
That’s Sad Face, aka Shop Towel, on the bottom.
His face is looking rough and even more beat up than usual!
I want to feel sympathy for him, but yesterday I had to chase him off from attacking Junk Pile, repeatedly. Even when I managed to come in between them enough that Junk Pile ran off towards the house, he actually ran past me to try and get at her, and attacked her again, near the kibble house!
He doesn’t seem to have a problem with the kittens. Does he recognise that many of them (there are more, outside the photo) are clearly his progeny?
I really want to love on this cat, but he can be so aggressive towards some of the other cats! He’s one of the reasons I was worried about Potato Beetle being outside after he got fixed. He’d be more of a target and less prone to defend himself.
I can’t say how Potato Beetle is doing inside right now. Once we let him out of the carrier, he explored the house… and then disappeared. He found some hidey hole to sleep in, and I’ve yet to see him. I’ll have to ask the girls if he came out when they did the evening feeding in the basement.
While I was doing my rounds and coming back from switching out the memory card in the driveway trail cam, Pointy Baby came running up the driveway towards me, as if he hasn’t seen me in ages and was excited by my return from beyond. 😂
Then he gave me nose kisses when I picked him up!
Such a sweet little baby he is!
Once back inside, I started putting the solidified lard into the jar box for storage, remembering to get a picture, first.
I find it interesting that the darker coloured cracklings lard became so much lighter as it solidified, while the pale yellow fat became darker. I think if I’d taken the fat off earlier, it would have been more white than yellow. The solidified fat on the spoon rest I used when stirring the crock pot was certainly much lighter in colour. It should still be pretty neutral in flavour, though, compared to the cracklings’ lard.
Or, as my daughters call it, the pure, sweet fat of the hog.
Which is apparently something that became quite the viral meme on reddit and Tumblr. You can even get T-shirts with it.
I don’t recommend looking it up, though. Some of the people who ran with it went a bit… creepy on the theme. One of the t-shirt designs is funny, though.
Anyhow…
While putting the jars with canning lids on them away, I took the rings off and tested the lids. All of them are sealed tightly. I’m still keeping the one with the plastic lid, and the not-quite-full one aside to use right away.
I made a cast iron skillet corn bread with breakfast this morning. I added some of the cracklings to the dry ingredients. They want to clump together, of course, but I broke up the clumps while stirring them into the dry ingredients. They tasted really good in the corn bread!
Later today, I’ll start cutting up more of the leaf lard so I can run the slow cooker overnight. It should be interesting to see what the final tally is, when all the fat has been rendered.
So my progress on rendering lard has seen a few delays. Thankfully, using the slow cooker means I can leave it on warm for quite a while, if I need to. I did add several more hours on low, too.
The first delay was while I was preparing the soft cat food before my daughter came to help medicate Tissue. While I was doing that, I heard a strange sound coming from my bed.
Tissue was digging around my pajamas, near my pillow.
Yup. She’s just peed on my pajamas!
I guess that confirms it really was her that did it last time.
So I had to strip the bed and start another load of laundry, use paper towels to soak up as much pee as I could (thankfully, it was much smaller than last time! Or maybe it just didn’t have time to spread, yet.), and set up a fan, then help my daughter with the meds.
Tissue is very good about taking her meds, at least. When the syringe comes close, she opens her mouth and lunges at it! She does try to bite it a bit, but mostly, she just happily takes her medication.
Today is supposed to be her last dose, but it looks like there’s one dose left. Based on her behaviour, I am thinking we’ll keep her isolated a bit longer and give her that last dose tomorrow. It’s a pain killer, and while she is clearly doing very well, all things considered, she does still seem to have some pain issues at times. She’s also still not eating as much as I would like, so her tongue and jaw may still need a bit more time to heal up.
That done, my daughter stayed to cuddle Tissue while I headed outside.
While doing my rounds this morning, I was very happy to see a furry face that’s been missing for at least a month, now!
Rosencrantz is back! Rolando Moon was around, too, though she’s been disappearing for only a few days at a time, lately.
Seeing Rosencrantz gave me some hope that Potato Beetle would show up.
I was wrong.
After doing my rounds, I headed out to finally get that Purolator package. I was just backing out of the garage when I started getting messages from the Cat Lady. The local vet was trying to reach us, but they were trying to use my cell phone number, so I wasn’t getting anything. Instead of trying the land line, they contacted the Cat Lady, whose information is on file as the emergency back up number. From what little information she could give me, it sounded like the needed another update on Potato Beetle, the last cat they neutered for us through the rescue. I mentioned my daughter was near a phone, so the land line would be the most reliable option, then continued on my way.
I was able to confirm the new Purolator drop off depot, got the package and had an excellent chat with the guy that runs the place. After a quick stop at the grocery store, and then the post office, I got home and was able to finally start prepping space to sanitize jars for the lard.
I didn’t get very far, when the phone rang.
It was the local vet.
They were, indeed, calling about Potato Beetle.
Someone had found him and they matched his tattoo on file!
They gave me the name and phone number of the person who had Potato Beetle, so I called him up right away. After getting directions to his place (gotta love country directions: “go down the road that says “no through road” until you see a driveway….”) I grabbed a cat carrier and headed over.
My goodness, they are so nice and far from the road! We may be in the boonies, but the house is right near a surprisingly busy intersection. It does mean less driveway to clear, but I’d rather have less traffic!
Just look at me, complaining about traffic, after living downtown in a major city for so many years! 😂
After finding the house and managing to turn the van around, the guy came out and we started chatting. They’d seen this new cat for quite a while, but couldn’t get near him at first. When they finally did, he was incredibly friendly, and they could finally check for a tattoo.
Turns out, he’s been inside with them for some time, and would actually sleep with the guy! They already have nine cats, though.
The cat had gone outside again, though, so we went around to look for him. They built a cat shelter against the back of the house, and sure enough, up popped a familiar face! It was, indeed, Potato Beetle. Once he recognized me, he came right over for cuddles!
We spoke for a while, while one of his cats kept jumping in and out of the cat carrier, which was open from the top. Aside from their own cats, they get others that show up from the neighbours. Potato was a new one to them, though. While relatively close for driving, it’s quite far for a cat to wander beyond their own territory.
When he mentioned growing up in the area, I had to ask his last name. It was a very familiar one. It turns out I went to high school with his aunt! We were very good friends!
Small world!
Potato Beetle is now back again, though not at all the way I expected.
He’s inside the house now.
We figure if we let him out, he’d just disappear again, and since he did so well indoors at out neighbour’s place, we’re trying him indoors.
Yeah. We’re sucks.
We left him in the carrier for a while, as other cats sniffed at him, then let him out to explore.
So far, so good.
Maybe now, I can finally get back to finishing with that first batch of lard!
After I make lunch… It would be a very good idea to actually eat something today!
The Re-Farmer 