outside cats

Running around

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Today is the first morning with actual sunshine instead of fog for quite some time!

It’s been sunny all day, but while the high of the day is supposed to be warmer than yesterday, it doesn’t seem to be happening. According to the hourly forecast, we’re supposed to be -7C/19F right now, but in reality, we’re -14C/7F, with a wind chill of -26C/-15F Quite the difference!!

A while back, my husband told me he’d ordered a new heater. I had just picked one up to replace one of the heaters the girls use upstairs that stopped heating. The fan still works, just no heat. So we talked a bit about letting the girls decide which they wanted to use. He mentioned setting a heater up in the sun room, but personal heaters aren’t supposed to be left unattended, so that didn’t seem likely.

Well, it came in, and it turned out to be something entirely different. Why he didn’t correct my assumption, I have no idea, but he’d picked up one of those radiant “chicken coop” heaters we’ve been seeing on Amazon. I’d already looked at them and decided against getting one, but… well… now we have one.

I wasn’t up to setting it up at the time, having had a bunch of things to deal with already, so he ended up setting it up himself. Except he didn’t notice the open plug in the old kitchen wall, so when he ran the cord through the window, he use a power bar he’d taken from the kitchen, which we have to keep the breaker from tripping if we have two things being used at the same time. He unplugged the extension cord to the cat house so he could plug the power bar into the power bar on the wall, then plugged both the extension cord and the heater into the power bar he took from the kitchen.

Heaters aren’t supposed to be plugged into power bars at all. That was even in the instructions.

Then he set it up in the sun room, turned it on and left.

Without securing it.

I found out about this when he told me to go into the bathroom, leaving the light off, so I could see into the sun room. The heater was lying on it back, and there were three or four cats trying to crowd onto it.

Nothing is supposed to be on the surface, which the sheet that came with it warned could get as hot as 75C/167F

!!!!!

Needless to say, I went out and changed things around.

*sigh*

There’s a reason I’d decided not to get this, and now there are more reasons.

For starters, it’s really small. The images all have chickens photoshopped beside it, with no perspective, making it seem larger than it really is.

But that would not be a problem if it actually worked.

I’ve got that thing set as high as it goes, but when I touch the surface, I feel only low warmth in one patch off to the side.

The instruction sheet, meanwhile, is in pretty bad Google Translate. Especially the “Profile” part at the time. As for the operational instructions…

  1. Turn the switch clockwise to turn on the heating panel
  2. Keep turning the switch clockwise to raise up the power and it will heat up faster
  3. The heat-sensitive sticher will turn red when the panel heated up
  4. Turn the switch anti-clockwise to reduce the power or turn off the heating panel.

Oh, and in the other warnings and instructions, it says to “Keep out of the water or wet area” and “Keep out of children.”

It’s number three that has me perplexed the most. First, I don’t know what a “sticher” is supposed to be. I figured I would see something turn red and that would tell me, but there is nothing that turns red. Anywhere.

There is so little warmth coming off that thing, the cats only go in front of it because I’ve moved a food bowl over.

So that was a waste of money. Yeah, we could probably try to return it or something, but considering the janky email included, I wouldn’t expect anything to come of that. Mind you, it wasn’t exactly cheap.

Ha! I just looked up the order. Check out this picture!

So… the panel itself is supposed to start glowing? Bahahaha!

And look at how big they try to make it look, behind those chickens. Some of the other pictures are even worse! Like this one!

Bahahahahaha!!!!

According to the listing, 50% of reviewers gave it a 5 star rating, with a total rating of 3.8 stars. It’s also supposed to be suitable for chicken coops, dog houses, or under your desk.

Oh, too funny. I’m looking at the reviews. There are quite a few from Canada, saying “no heat” and “would never buy again” – but those reviews have 5 stars on them!

Several say they had terrible customer service and weren’t able to get refunds.

Why did my husband buy this again? 😄

Anyhow…

Today I headed out to help my mother with shopping. Normally, I buy lunch first, but she told me not to, so I made sure to eat first, but still headed over early. I needed to run some errands, and also wanted to get a visit in, since I had to drive to another town to pick up a package at a Purolator depot. More on that, later! I wanted to get a visit in with her before we did the shopping, since I would need to leave once we were done.

I got there just after she finished calling me to come over sooner, because she was hungry. She was waiting for me, before having her own lunch! I reminded her she’d told me not to bring anything, and she was all, no, I made lunch! I told her that, because she said no to lunch, I ate before coming over. I’d just have a cup of tea.

She made me eat.

There’s a reason I prefer to bring take-out.

*sigh*

At least we had our visit. My mother wasn’t feeling up to the trip, though, so she had a list ready for me. I headed out and got everything on her list, which makes for a much faster shopping trip!, and was soon back. After helping put things away, I started to head out, only to get the usual lecture about how we’re always in a hurry, and if we come to see her, we need to not be in a hurry and be prepared to stay. I reminder her that I’d told her from the start that I needed to go somewhere else. That’s why I came early; to get a visit in, first.

She was not mollified. She simply cannot accept that we aren’t retired like she is, and have things that need to be done. She also can’t appreciate that we *do* take time for her – the fact that we’re there at all (my brother gets this lecture a lot, too) demonstrates that. In her mind, I guess we’re supposed to stay with her all afternoon. Of course, she is completely unwilling to reciprocate. She also expects us to call her frequently, but if we happen to call while Joel Osteen is on or something, she cuts the call off completely. Meanwhile, she does the guilt tripping thing, with how we won’t have her around forever, and when she’s gone, we’ll remember what she said! I’m glad we’re out here, so I can be the one dealing with her the most, rather than my other siblings! That doesn’t work on me. It does make my brother absolutely miserable. She has no idea how badly she hurts him with the things she says.

Overall, though, it was a good visit. She just saved the psychological manipulation for the very end, when she didn’t want me to leave. 😄

But I wasn’t sure where I was going, or the hours of operation. My daughter had placed an order from somewhere that had mailed her stuff out before, so they accepted our box number. However, it went to Purolator this time. They don’t accept box numbers. When my daughter got the notification, she tried to input our physical address, but it wouldn’t accept it. Which, of course it wouldn’t. Our physical address doesn’t exist on maps. According to them, we’re on an “unnamed road”. She tried the live chat and explained the situation to a real human being – who told her, they don’t accept box numbers. My daughter explained that she new that, but they don’t accept our physical address, either. Apparently, the person couldn’t understand that, and we’re out of their delivery are so…

In the end, my daughter said to send it to a depot the next town over.

The problem is, the place that used to also be the depot suddenly closed. Last I’d heard, the Purolator deliveries were switch to a garage, right next door. My daughter had sent me a screen cap of the delivery notification, which had an address, but no location name. Most of the places on that stretch don’t have addresses visible from the road. It was on the same highway, though, so maybe it was still there?

So I went there and…

It was closed. Not open on Saturdays at all.

There was no sign in a window or anywhere to show that this was also a Purolator drop off depot.

Also, I couldn’t find an address anywhere on the building. I ended up just putting it into my map app to look it up and…

It was clear across town. In fact, it was well out of town.

So I drove over there anyhow. The place turns out to be some sort of … marine garage? There were fishing boats parked on one side, and RVs parked on the other.

It was also closed.

They had been open today, but closed about an hour before I got there!

Again, there was no sign anywhere to show that this was a Purolator drop off depot.

I went home.

Purolator was supposed to phone after the package was delivered to the depot, but they never did, so we couldn’t even ask them directly. It’s not like there’s a number we can call to find out. All we have is a delivery notice.

I’ll have to try again on Monday.

Which leaves my daughter in a conundrum. She has to order things for her business. If it goes by post, it’s fine. It’ll get to us. But a lot of places are like this order: they accept a box number when you place your order, but then it goes to a delivery company instead of the mail, and they don’t do post offices. However, they also don’t deliver to our physical address, because we’re often out of their delivery zones (though not with all companies).

In the end, she’s going to try what my husband sometimes does. Give the physical address for the general store the post office is in, and have our box number as the “unit” number. Which explains my confusion, because I know I’ve picked up Purolator deliveries at the store, when I was expecting a mail delivery. Purolator, it turns out, does deliver to our little hamlet. Just not to us, because we are “out of town”.

What a pain in the butt!

Hopefully, I’ll actually be able to pick up that parcel on Monday.

At least I’ll have something better to pick up tomorrow.

I was wanting to make a trip to Costco to pick up some quality proteins, so we have more variety in our freezer. Well, I don’t have to do that anymore. At least not for meat. I had been buying pork from a homesteader that lives not for from us, who had been selling at one of the local summer markets. He wasn’t doing that at all last year, and we sorta lost touch. The last I spoke to him, we were talking about getting a half pig in the fall, but never got back about it. Then I saw him posting on a group we’re both on, about having whole chicken available.

Long story short, I’m going to be picking up a variety pack of pork and chicken, tomorrow.

We’re going to have to rearrange the chest freezer to make space! I don’t actually know what we’ll be getting. I just told him how much my budget was and asked him to surprise me with a mix of things to meet that amount. Since I’m picking it up tomorrow, I will finally have a chance to see their homestead! I’m quite looking forward to it. They’re doing a lot of things we’re still slowly building up to.

Meanwhile…

Still no word about the vehicle financing. I’ll have to send an email to see if I can get an answer, one way or the other, so we can just get on with things and start using the van again.

Tissue is still doing all right. She’s still not eating as much as I’d like to see, but she is eating and drinking. Giving her her medication this morning was amazing. She was sitting on my office chair, so I was just going to brace her while my daughter used the syringe to squirt the medication into her mouth. She got most of it in, with no fight at all, and when she moved to squirt the last little bit in, Tissue actually opened her mouth to take the syringe!!

We’ve tried to see her tongue wound. All I could make out was redness. She spends most of her time sleeping, and is currently burrowed under the covers on my bed. She still hisses at Marlee, Nosencrantz and Butterscotch. Much to my surprise, Nosencrantz mostly ignores her. She’s usually the Anxiety Bear, but right now, Marlee is the Anxiety Bear when it comes to Tissue. Butterscotch just sort of puts up with her to a certain point, then leaves. Tissue will even hiss at Cheddar and Leyendecker, when they come in, and they seem quite confused by her behaviour! I think mostly, she just wants out of the room!

Just a couple more days, and we can let her out, I think.

We shall see! She’s still clearly a bit rough around the edges, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering her much. Monitoring will continue!

The Re-Farmer

A Tissue update, and a bit of vehicle news

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But first, let us enjoy this handsome blepping boy!

While I’ve managed to touch him briefly in the past, for the most part he won’t let us near him.

Sadness!

No such sadness when it comes to Tissue!

She had a quiet night in baby jail, which was actually closed up, just to be on the safe side. I had it open for a while in the evening. Tissue really, really wants out of the room. She even managed to escape briefly, when my daughter came in, not knowing she was out. Interestingly, any cat that is in the room with her, or is allowed in, she will growl at – but when she ran out of the room and was surrounded by cats, she didn’t growl at any of them.

She definitely has a hoarse “voice” right now.

She has been eating, but not very much. I imagine her tongue and jaw must be quite uncomfortable. Which means she’s not using the litter much, either. But she has her favourite spot in baby jail that she hangs out in, though just as I started writing this paragraph, she started trying to open the door. I will let her out later, when I’m able to supervise her more closely.

She got her medication this morning, which should help with the pain and, hopefully, she’ll eat more. She’s on the pain meds for a total of 5 days. I don’t know how long she’ll need to be on soft food. It all depends on how well she heals. Overall, she is calm (except towards the other cats in the room) and allows us to pet her and hold her.

Well, that’s interesting. I decided to open the door to baby jail in between writing the above. She went out, popped into a cat cave, then went right back onto her favorite bed in baby jail! 😄 She just didn’t like having the door closed.

Fair enough!

In other news…

I got a call from the financing lady about the replacement vehicle. She had good news and bad news. The good news was that we were approved for financing. The bad news was, they wanted a deposit of $3,500, first.

That’s about 40% of the cost of the vehicle!

Obviously, we don’t have that.

As we were stalking, though, she mentioned a Nissan.

Nissan?

We were looking to buy a Ford Escape.

…

Well, it turns out she was sent information about 2 vehicles, and the wrong one was applied to our application! So she input the correct information, with a much lower price, but a higher mileage, and resubmitted them to the lenders. One, she could tell me as she was doing it that it would be rejected, simply because of the mileage, and it was. It was automatic. The other one she sent it to, they had no such restrictions.

That one was tentatively accepted, pending confirmation of banking information.

Considering it was past office hours by then, that was as far as things got.

So I am expecting a call with an answer, some time this morning. She’s been trying really hard to get this vehicle for us, and it’s really appreciated! Ours has been a very unusual application.

Until then, we continue to wait. At some point, I need to go pick up some parcels at the post office. I’ll leave that for the afternoon, when the post office reopens.

I hope to get the call before then! This hanging in limbo thing really sucks!

The Re-Farmer

A bit of news. Do I dare say, hopeful?

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We had another foggy night last night. While it’s clear and sunny now, areas to the south of us were getting fog warnings of sudden zero visibility!

The trees never lost their frost from when the first fog hit, so we now have frost on top of frost on top of frost!

I didn’t even try for a head count this morning, but I did manage to zoom in to get a picture of this elusive tortie! The girls call this one Phantom, because she has a sort of Phantom of the Opera mask. She is from Broccoli’s first litter, along with two calicos, which makes her big sister to the two tiny bitties we were finally able to catch and pass on to the Cat Lady.

I got messages from her while I was doing my rounds.

Tissue made it through the night. She is awake and alert.

That’s all we have right now.

Which means they will be fully assessing the extent of her injuries right now. It’s still possible her injuries are so severe, it would be just too much and trying to treat them would do her more harm then good.

Or, the injuries might not be as severe as we fear, and she’ll make a full recovery, minus a tooth.

There’s just no way to know right now. We just have to wait until we get work from the vet.

Tissue is such a strong cat and a real fighter. The Cat Lady and her husband have the wounds, and a torn apart car, to prove it!

Do we dare be hopeful?

The Re-Farmer

One step forward…

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… one step back, shuffle to the left, take another step forward and do-see-do!

Ugh.

What a day yesterday was!

But first, let us appreciate this handsome boy.

Gooby followed me out to the gate while I was doing my morning rounds. This little boy LOVES attention and wants to be held.

Nothing like having a cat claw its way up your leg, while you’re trying to switch the memory card out of a trail cam!

Once in my arms, he happily burrowed into my neck and violently started licking my nose.

He has a thing about noses!

As I was heading back inside after my rounds, I was greeted by this.

Walnut’s siblings and cousins, minus one. The three smaller ones (two in front, one in the back) are siblings. The three larger are from a slightly older litter, as is the one that was elsewhere when I took this photo. The one with the orange head is called Pinky. His fur is an unusual combination of orange and grey that sometimes makes him look pink! The little one in the back has spots that are almost completely black, rather than the grey tabby markings the others have.

Walnut, meanwhile, did get spayed yesterday and, while it took a long time for her to wake up, is doing very well. Walnut and the bitties are all getting treated for ear mites, and getting medications to treat upper respiratory infections. Itty Bitty Bobby was found to have some fluid in his lungs, but Sprite has just “uncomplicated” URI.

Oh, and guess what?

They all already have homes waiting for them!

Walnut will be going to a household that has one cat – a rescue the Cat Lady placed awhile ago. The bitties will stay together, going to a home with an older couple, and first time cat owners! They’re going to be hooked on cats with those two. 😊

Tissue, on the other hand…

I’m still waiting for word on whether or not she’s been caught. They found no sign of her. The garage is being renovated, so there’s not a lot in there, but they even opened up the drywall, looking for her. Nothing. Not even a peep. There’s no possibility that she got outside, as there was no access to outdoors. They did finally open the garage doors, with the workers all standing there, to back the car out (after checking to make sure she wasn’t in the engine block) and look again. Nothing.

It’s a heated garage, and they set a trap up. Hopefully, they will find her today, but I’ve not heard anything yet. Once they have her, they will leave her in the trap, and we will meet in town. We will take her back, trap and all, and hang on to the trap until we connect again. The vet, meanwhile, as offered a free spay near the end of February, but if we want to get Tissue done, we will have to take her to and from the vet ourselves.

Honestly, at this point, I’m not worried about getting her fixed. Clearly, she is not adoptable, and I just don’t want to put her through that again. She will stay with us, indoors, permanently.

As for her escape, they are utterly amazed. We knew Tissue was a burly girl, but they were astonished by how strong she is. She was in a hard sided carrier that they’ve used to transport ferals. They’ve never had a cat break out of it before. The Cat Lady had set the carrier down to open her car door when it “jumped” and Tissue was gone. The door was torn off and the carrier broken apart.

The Cat Lady is just beside herself with worry over Tissue. They’ve all been looking for her, off and on, all day yesterday. All they could do in the end was set the trap and leave it. At least they can look into the garage from inside the house, through a window, and check regularly.

For now, it’s just a waiting game.

While that was going on, we heard from the financing company about our application for the replacement vehicle. Since my husband is the one with the income, we were doing this all in his name. He got an email from them, saying it was tentatively approved. They just needed some banking information to confirm our income on the application, an ID such as a driver’s license, health care card or passport, and a few other little details confirmed.

Well, my husband doesn’t drive anymore, and we never got his driver’s license transferred after the move. The one time he went in to try, they wouldn’t do it, because his name on his old license didn’t perfectly match his birth certificate. In my husband’s family, no one uses their first name. Tradition is, everyone has three given names, and uses their second name. This was a bit of an issue when he was in the military, but all they did was reverse his first and second names on some paperwork. Everywhere else, he just used his second name and surname. Well, that’s not okay here anymore, and after much painful waiting, he was finally told he needed to change his legal name to…. His legal name. We did eventually contact the ombudsman who confirmed my husband only needed to have at least two bills or bank statements with his full legal name on it, and he could get his license. By then, however, he was in no condition to go physically go back and go through the process. Not even to just get a photo ID.

Well, it turned out the bank the financing company works with wanted a driver’s license or passport – our health care cards don’t have photos on them. He has neither.

So we had to transfer the application to my name. The financial information didn’t change, since it’s household income and we’re working with a joint account, however they not only needed my driver’s license, but the banking information we sent needed to have my name on it. Which doesn’t show up on the paperwork unless I selected the print option, with letter head. We’ve been sending in phone scans of the required documents, which does make things easier.

It took a few tries to get something legible but, by then, it was late in the evening. On top of that, yesterday was a statutory holiday, which meant few staff and everything was slower. Which is understandable. We’ll find out today whether the application, under my name, is approved.

Oh, one of the things that they needed to know is what “company” I worked for. Which confused me until she mentioned that we said we had a custodial arrangement, leaving us with no rent or mortgage payments. She thought that meant we were the custodians of a building, like an apartment building or something, owned by a company. So I explained that, and now my brother’s name is on the paperwork as the company/owner we have an arrangement with. They don’t need to contact him. They just needed something on the paperwork. I also explained to her that I can’t have my own income, because anything I earn would be deducted from my husband’s disability payments. That cleared up some confusion on her part.

Meanwhile, a daughter and I went out and emptied the van of our belongings, then put the set of all-season tires in the back. We won’t need them anymore, and with dozens of tires scattered around the farm already, I didn’t want to add to the piles! If the approval goes through, I can just grab the van and go, and come back with the replacement vehicle.

If it doesn’t go through, well… we’ll just put the stuff we need back, and keep going as is.

I’m really trying not to get my hopes up about getting this vehicle. True, we’d do better with a truck or van but, my goodness, even a 2013 Escape will be the most luxurious vehicle we’ve ever owned if we get it! We’ve never had a vehicle newer than our 2007 Grand Caravan, and that was quite a few years old when we got it.

Well, we shall see how it goes.

Hopefully, we’ll get all sorts of good news today, both about the vehicle, and Tissue!

The Re-Farmer

Yikes, Tissue! What’s gotten into you?

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But first, let’s take a moment to admire this handsome boy.

This one will sometimes let us pet him, and it more tolerant of us coming close in general.

Which makes sense for a semi-feral cat.

You’d think it would be different with a house cat.

This morning, I started getting some rather frantic messages from the Cat Lady. It seems Tissue has been acting full-on feral! She’s been hissing at them and even attacking, and so stressed out, she’s been panting and drooling. So I was asked if I could pick up Tissue straight from the vet today, because they were afraid she would harm herself during the recovery period.

Of course, I said yes.

Then I got more wild messages, and things got really crazy!

In a nutshell, they got her in the carrier and were loading her into their vehicle to take her to the vet, along with the littles (who are apparently right as rain), when she ripped the door off the carrier and escaped into their garage.

Yeah.

Ripped the door off.

That carrier had a crack at one corner, but still! The whole thing came apart.

So, as of right now, Tissue is still somewhere in their garage – which is in the middle of renovations! The Cat Lady is so worried she might hurt herself on something. They’ve set up a trap to try and get her.

They took a different vehicle to take the littles to the vet, so they wouldn’t have to open the garage, and gave the renovators the day off. Their kids continued to try and find her while the littles were dropped off at the vet. The vet gave the Cat Lady until noon to bring Tissue in. After that, it’s just too late to do the spay.

I’m just amazed by Tissue’s behaviour. I know she didn’t like being in the carrier when I brought her to the cat lady – she was upset enough that by the time we got there, she’d thrown up in the carrier. Still, even that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Even after we snagged her and brought her inside, she never behaved like this. However, she’s also never been out of the house since then, and hasn’t really been around other people. When we have company, she is one of the cats that heads upstairs and waits until they are gone. This is a cat that loves to cuddle with my daughters, and sleeps with my younger daughter at night. During the day, she likes to sleep on my husband’s hospital bed, and will often demand attention from him, too. I don’t see her as much, since I have to keep my door closed, and she’s not one of the cats that has any interest in checking out the new additions.

It’s just crazy! I feel so bad for the Cat Lady. She’s so worried Tissue might hurt herself!

Well, whether she gets fixed or not, we’ll bring her home. It’s just a matter of how and when that will happen!

What a morning!

The Re-Farmer

Living in a post card

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The fog has mostly dissipated – I was still seeing touches of it while going my morning rounds.

My goodness, but it does make things beautiful, this time of year!

I couldn’t resist getting a picture from the same spot as yesterday.

The temperatures are nice and mild right now. As I write this, we’re at -8C/18F, with almost no breeze at all. We’re supposed to reach a high of -6C/21F today. A good day to finish clearing in front of the garage so I can open the doors to get my mother’s car out, and clear a few more paths.

One way we can tell how much more pleasant the weather is, is by the cats.

The usuals are back to preferring to eat on the cat house roof again. In this bunch, there’s only one that’s friendly. I can sometimes pet the black and white, but not often. Still more than I can come close to Broccoli. I don’t know how she’s been with her kittens gone. She’s been avoiding me, so perhaps she’s made an association between me and missing babies. I don’t know. I so want to socialize her more! We’ll have to wait longer before we can try to trap more females. The hard part is waiting for things to warm up, so there’s no chance of a critter freezing in the trap, but not so warm that they start going into heat and get pregnant, first.

Speaking of which, I saw Shop Towel skulking around when I put the food out. While I was switching the memory card on the trail cam (and melting the frost off the lens and solar panel), I heard a cat fight, and am guessing it involved Shop Towel.

Before going in, I tried to get some more pictures of the frost and was able to zoom in to get this little cutie.

We have not been able to keep up with the feeding this winter, because of the racoons destroying the hanging feeder, but the chickadees and blue jays have been raiding the kibble trays, instead!

While getting this shot, something strange in a tree above the storage house roof caught my eye.

Well, I guess we can see who Shop Towel went after! One of his older sons, no less. A couple of the grey and whites are much larger – more like their dad in size.

In other things, I spoke to my mother last night. She’s in need of a grocery shopping trip, which is why I want to clear the doors to her car. She was fully expecting to go to the grocery store today; apparently my sister is supposed to be visiting her, though my mother didn’t seem sure, when I spoke to her. I pointed out to her that it’s New Year’s Day. The stores will be closed. She sounded so surprised when I told her that. 😕 So, if all goes well, I’ll be heading out tomorrow to help her with shopping – in her own car!

For now, I’m monitoring cats. With the littles gone, I actually got a full night’s sleep! The ladies seem relieved to have the room to themselves again – even if Marlee still hisses at Butterscotch and Nosencrantz sometimes. Leyendecker and Cheddar seem to be looking for the littles when they come in. Meanwhile, I now have grandma, who moved out here with us, in with me. My daughters just let me know she’s been behaving oddly, like there is something stuck in her mouth. We thought it might have been something stuck in her throat, but I’ve seen her eating. She seems fine, until she suddenly makes retching faces and started rubbing the sides of her face with her paw. My one attempt to gently move her head for a look had her meow in alarm and run off, so I do think something is hurting her. Hopefully, it’s something that will work itself out. So far, she’s eating and drinking normally. Right now, she’s on my bed, not far from Marlee, and settling in for a nap.

I’ll have to get one of the girls to take over monitoring her when it’s time to get outside.

The Re-Farmer

Snow perspective

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The freezing rain we got yesterday didn’t last long – at least not here. I was expecting the heaviest part of the system to be pushed to the south of us, but instead it was to the north of us, and they got quite a bit more rain and ice pellets.

We were clear for a while, then it started snowing during the night. All night, apparently. It was a lot deeper than I expected, when I came out this morning!

This handsome fella gives it a bit of perspective. I had mostly cleared the cat house roof of snow previously. You can see the warm spot over the ceramic heat bulb! There’s kibble buried under there, and it looks like cats were digging for it. Considering that there was still kibble in most of the food trays, I think maybe they wanted not-frozen kibble? When I shoveled most of the snow off again, I uncovered some of the kibble, and one of the cats was immediately up there, eating kibble out of the snow/slush by the warm spot.

Another perspective shot. This is accumulated snow on the kibble house roof, not just one night. It’s deeper than the height of my kibble container.

Those popcorn containers are the handiest things. The plastic is food safe and super strong.

I had to dig out around the cat shelters before I could finish putting out the kibble and topping up the heated water bowls. The snow seemed to drift right in space in the middle, and even in front of the entry to the cat house, which is probably the most sheltered space, with two overhanging roofs to protect it.

After that, I had to dig my way out of the yard, and a path to the garage. I am so thankful for our neighbour clearing our driveway yesterday! It’s still quite passable, even with the new snow. Of course, snow blown off the garage roof drifted right in front of all the doors, so I cleared a path in front of those. We can now access the side where little Spewie is stored.

We were supposed to reach a high of -6C/21F today, but apparently we’ve already passed it. We’re supposed to cool down slowly through the night, then get a high of -14C/7F tomorrow. After that, we’ll be warming up again. Very mild and pleasant for this time of year. Previous predictions of snow over several days have changed, and now there is no new snow expected for some time. Looks like we got what was expected to fall over several days, all in one night, instead.

We never heard back about the financing for the replacement vehicle yesterday. I will wait until about noon before I try calling the garage to see of they got the answer. I suspect not getting a call means we got turned down for financing. That would be disappointing, but not surprising. The shift to long term disability and losing 40% of my husband’s income ended up messing with his credit score quite a bit – and since neither of us have credit cards, nor any debt other than dipping into my overdraft now and then, we’re not building our credit scores back up again, either.

Well, we shall see.

It sure would be nice to have a reliable vehicle again!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty progress – so excited!

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Okay, so we’ve been having good progress with the littles overall.

Walnut and Leyendecker napping together is very good. Leyendecker will sometimes groom and play with them, but generally will just nap on my bed, and he’s good with having a little company.

Also, my blanket is absolutely covered in cat hair. Even after washing, there’s still cat hair stuck in the fibres!

Also, also, my carpet is horrific. The cats keep spilling the kibble bowls and kicking sawdust out of the litter box, but I can’t vacuum it right now. It would be too much of a terror for kittens we are working to socialize!

The bitty (we need a name for this guy!) has rediscovered the security of baby jail, and likes to chill in one of the upper level beds.

He is SO much more settled and getting socialized. Last night, I found myself being cuddled by both littles against my back. When I lie on my side, I have my top leg bent and my bottom leg straight. That turns out to create a perfect little nest for a bitty, and I’ve been waking up to find him there. I can tell it’s the bitty because of how tiny and light he is! He has also discovered that playing with fingers is a fun thing to do, and then he discovered this strange protuberance in the middle of my face that is quite fascinating. And tasty, apparently.

Also, he is very sharp.

What a way to be awakened during the night!

While nowhere near as greedy for cuddles as Walnut is, the bitty is really enjoying getting pets and cuddles.

Which is working out perfectly, because he’s now helping his soot sprite sibling settle in.

Yes!!!! We caught the other bitty!

I have had no opportunity to get a photo, but I’ll be sure to try to get one later.

For the past few days, we’ve kept one of the hard sided cat carriers in the sun room with the door open. When putting food out, I’d toss a handful into there. The cats had explored it, and I would often find a cat sitting on the blanket inside, just chillin’

This morning, I came into the sun room, and the little soot sprite was looking at me from the doorway of the carrier.

I very quickly just closed the door. The carrier opens from the top, so I used that to put some kibble in with it. I then quickly did the food and water for the rest of the cats – Broccoli was eating on the cat house roof, and while I could come pretty close, she would not let me touch her.

I’d really love to bring Mama in, and reunite the family! Especially since I see she is still letting even a much older kitten nurse her.

Once the food and water was done, I brought the carrier in and let a daughter take over while I finished my rounds. We’d already reached our forecasted high of the day, -15C/5F, though after having no wind yesterday, a wind chill of -24C/-11F was more of a downer. Still, I did finally switch out the memory card at the sign cam. We’re going to have to dig a path to there again. A lot of the paths around the house are now drifted over. With the more pleasant weather ahead, it’ll be good to get as much of that cleared again before the next snowfall.

Meanwhile, my daughter was able to put the bitty tabby into the carrier with his sibling, then gave all the cats some wet cat food, with the siblings sharing a bowl. They reunited quite comfortably. She had the door open a bit and the bitty tabby went out, but the bitty tuxedo didn’t go out until she opened the top. Once the carrier was available again, I took it back to the sun room. Who knows. I might catch Broccoli in there, too!

The bitty tabby immediately started playing with and chasing around his sibling. The tuxedo has been exploring, as well, but is nowhere near as nervous as the tabby was when we first brought him in. I’m sure the tuxedo remembers Walnut, too. Of course, the tuxedo still won’t let us near it, but I don’t think it will take long.

Marlee is not a happy camper. Anytime she sees a kitten, she starts growling!

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz seem more accepting of the new addition.

My daughter let Cheddar in. He when straight to the new kitten, snuffled it – then started grooming it!

Cheddar is such a good dude.

So now I sit, monitoring an exploring soot sprite, sitting in the world’s creakiest office chair, which isn’t helping things. We’ll need to take turns supervising the new addition. Not so much that we’re worried about the tuxedo, but more because Marlee is not enjoying them and we try to keep them away from her favourite corner as much as we can. The kittens pretty much ignore her growling and hissing, and sometimes want to go over and check her out in spite of it, and we just want to reduce her stress levels.

I’m just so happy we finally got the last bitty!!!!

The Re-Farmer

A Cold Christmas Eve!

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Today is Christmas Eve. In our family, we celebrate our non-traditional Christmas Wigilia feast today, after the first star shines. I have a terrible habit of starting the turkey too early, though, so I’m keeping myself busy writing this, before I go spatchcock the turkey. We had gotten to enjoy brining the turkey in the past, leaving it to sit in the brine using our largest stock pot and leaving it in the old kitchen overnight.

It’s just too darn cold in there, and since I’ve discovered spatchocking is much easier than I thought it would be, we are quite enjoying doing it that way!

But first, the cute things update!

Walnut has settled right in. I now have three cats to fight over for my office chair!

Things were a lot calmer last night, and I actually got some sleep. It wasn’t until about 5am that the noises started. The bitty tabby (we need to come up with a name for that one!) was wandering around, squeaking. I was eventually able to gently catch it and hold it close. It does NOT want human attention, but even though it clearly wanted down, it did start purring as a cuddled it and pet it.

I got a message from the Cat Lady last night. She had gotten home from a long drive, delivering Plushy and Princess to their forever home. They settled right in! I can’t post the picture she sent me, but they were both curled up on the crossed legs of their new human, lounging and stretched out, like it was nothing new or strange at all.

Heading out this morning was definitely something I had to work myself up to.

This is the temperature after I was done; -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -42C/-44F I don’t even try to switch the memory card on the sign cam right now. The batteries would be frozen, anyhow. I did do the gate cam, though. We definitely need to get more of this solar powered type. The batteries on that still read 100%. It’s being powered entirely by solar – though it does need clearing of frost or snow, frequently! If this were one of they kinds where the solar panel charges rechargeable batteries (which many trail cams specifically say not to use) instead, it’d be dead right now.

I’ve been making a point of putting out most of the kibble in the sun room instead of outside these days, with various impromptu containers scattered around, so as many cats can eat at the same time as possible in there. I’ve also been topping up their food in there more often, and adding hot water to the frozen water bowl, to melt the ice and they can drink without having to go outside.

When I went outside, I found there was still kibble on the roof of the cat house – no surprise they don’t want to eat there right now! – but there was also a surprising amount in the kibble house trays. The trays under the water bowl shelter, however, were empty. They seem to prefer eating under there, which I am surprised by. There’s little to cut the wind under there, but it is a less open space, I suppose. I find myself wondering if we should modify the kibble house to make a “second floor” across the middle. That would enclose the kibble trays more and give them more of a sense of security, and we could maybe even add more kibble trays to the top, so more cats can fit in there and not be fighting over space around the food.

Something to think about, for the summer.

Meanwhile…

While the large water bowl had its usual crown of frost around the edges, the small one was completely frozen across the top.

The bowl is still working; there was plenty of liquid water underneath, but the cats couldn’t get at it!

So I took this bowl and set it up in the sun room, where I could plug it in. There’s no outlet in the sun room, so we have extension cords going through the window from the old kitchen. Usually, I use the two outdoor power cords, one of which powers the cat house, and the other powers the ceramic heat bulb in the sun room, but there’s also a household extension cord that was here when we moved in. It was run up and around the door frame, and I’ve been using it to charge my baby chainsaw (battery powered pruner). That puts the water bowl well away from food bowls, but that’s okay. Plus, I still topped up the broken heated water bowl, which just had ice in it.

I did see flashes of the little soot sprite. I’m afraid my last attempt to catch the tuxedo bitty has made him even more nervous to come out when I’m in the room. Normally, I’d try to lure it with treats or wet cat food, but with so many other cats around, that can’t really work. I’d be fighting off too many other cats!

Well, it’s supposed to start warming up tomorrow. We’re supposed to have a high of -17C/1F. After that, things are expected to keep warming up, though not as much as earlier forecasts were predicting before. It’ll still be almost balmy, compared to today. The yard cats will likely be running around outside a lot more, so I hope that will give more opportunity to catch the bitty tuxedo – and maybe Broccoli! Yes, they’re old enough to wean, but it would be so great to reunite them with their mama!

Well, it’s time to start getting things set up for tonight. It’s going to be a very quiet Christmas, with just the four of us, and I’m quite happy with that.

I will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and may 2023 be a year of peace and joy for you all!

The Re-Farmer

Cat status – a rough night!

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So… I didn’t get much sleep last night.

The fact that we can’t keep the littles inside baby jail, because they can climb up to where the openings are larger and squeeze their way out, is making it more difficult.

First, the good news.

Walnut has adapted very quickly.

One of the few times I drifted off, I woke to feel something small against my leg. I was able to grab my phone and use the selfie setting, with flash, to get this picture and see who it was. It took a few tries, but the flash did not wake her up!

Walnut is all over the room. In fact, she’s been making it hard to work on this post, because she keeps climbing me, or trying to walk across my keyboard. I have a brief respite, as she leapt from the back of my office chair onto the top of the baby jail. It has a couple of strips of cardboard and towels over 3/4 of the top. The towels were to help calm down any cats inside, but the other cats like to use it as a bed now, and their feet keep pushing the towel through the cage, so I added the carboard.

The bitty tabby, however, is having more difficult. It’s shy around me, plays with Walnut, and keeps going after the other cats. These kittens are used to having a lot of other cats around them, without much issue. Walnut in particular would be used to being part of a cuddle pile. The bitty tabby was just getting used to that when we brought her in. Plus, of course, she is looking for a mama to comfort nurse.

Marlee has been in a state, ever since the littles arrived. Most of the nice, she was growling and snarling, even if they weren’t near her. She’s been batting at them if they come too close – and even snarling and growling at me when I try to calm her down! She’s spent most of her time in her new favourite spot on the rolled up blanket near my bed, but she also liked to spend time loafing in baby jail, or under my vanity – both spots the littles have taken over.

Cheddar has been good, overall. He’d come in and immediately sniff at whichever kitten was nearby – usually Walnut – and even give them kisses. Walnut responded to Cheddar by immediately nuzzling him and rubbing her shoulders against him. That was too much for him, though, and he was soon asking me to open the door to let him out!

Leyendecker has also been all right, for the most part. At one point, I’d turned the light on to see what Marlee was snarling at, and found him on my office chair, as usual – but with Walnut curled up with him! He couldn’t tolerate that for long, though, and soon left the chair to her and went to sleep on my bed.

Butterscotch… is Butterscotch. She is done with kittens. Wants nothing to do with kittens. She’ll ignore them, but if the come too close, she’ll start hissing. The problem for her is, once she goes down to the floor to get some food or something, the bitty tabby comes running, and that gets her really upset!

Nosencrantz spends most of her time on her favourite spot by the ceiling, but when she did come down, she ended up under my foot stool. It’s a favourite spot, normally, because it’s kept right next to the heat vent, which the bitty tabby has discovered. It also is a good hiding spot. The bitty tabby tends to run under there when I move around, but Nosencrantz started snarling and batting at her every bit as much as Marlee.

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz both ended up at the top of the shelf to get away from the littles. Which was fine, until…

… Leyendecker jumped up to get away from the littles, too.

Butterscotch was NOT happy!

One of my daughters took over supervisor duty while I did the morning rounds, and she ended up having to kick Leyendecker out.

Meanwhile…

… still no luck in snagging the other bitty.

What an adorable little soot sprite!

If we could get Broccoli, too, that would be fantastic. She could stay with her babies longer, and even Walnut would enjoy her mothering. Broccoli has been letting some of the white and greys nurse, too, even though they are so much older and not her kittens.

I now have Walnut on my chest, attacking my face and the end of my braid.

She’s sharp!

Anyhow… Where was I?

I’ve been making a point of…

…

Oh, dear.

Walnut just tried to run away with my braid. It didn’t work and she fell onto the floor. Now she’s back, trying to attack my braid, and face, again!

What a little beast!

As I was saying… I’ve been making a point of leaving extra food in the sun room, so the cats don’t have to go outside to eat. The adults and the cattens don’t have too much issue with going out to eat. Especially the long haired ones. The littles would rather stay in the sun room, which I want to encourage. At least until this cold snap passes. Hopefully, that will also make it easier to catch the last bitty – and maybe even Broccoli.

I don’t think Marlee would be happy with the additions, but at least it would only be until the end of the year, when the Cat Lady will come for them.

The Re-Farmer