Going out in the mornings is such fun these days! There are so many babies to see.
Granted, most of them are not as willingly photogenic as this little model of mine!
What a cutie!
These ones are willing to pause for pictures, as long as I don’t get too close!
I’m not sure where the tortie was hiding.
The love to play in the holes in the shrine’s base.
As these little guys aren’t up to going to the kibble house, yet, I brought over a bowl for water as well as kibble. Now that they are eating solid food regularly, I figured Rosencrantz could do with less kitties still nursing because they are thirsty.
While working in the garden, I spotted an adorable little green baby on a corn leaf.
Can it be any cuter? 💚🐸
It was about as big around as a quarter.
My daughters have been getting tree frogs visiting their window for most of the summer. The same three frogs, in small, medium and large! 😄 This one falls under the “small” category.
Yesterday, Potato Beetle settled into the sun room, and stayed settled! I had a horrible, sleepless night and wasn’t feeling well as a result, so I asked the girls to feed the cats, and let Potato out if he wanted.
He didn’t want. He was still there when I came out!
I had the door wide open, and he just did this. 😁
By the time I was done the rest of my morning rounds, he was gone, but he certainly wasn’t in any hurry to do so.
I’m do wish he wouldn’t take off for days – or weeks! – at a time. I’d hoped that getting fixed would reduce his wanderlust, but it doesn’t seemed to have had that affect. Ah, well. As long as he keeps coming back!
Meanwhile…
I got a call from the vet clinic about Leyendecker. He did well overnight and they had collected quite a bit in his catheter bag. It was, however, still bloody, so it doesn’t look like he’ll come home today. The doctor wasn’t in yet and I was supposed to get a call later, but was also warned that she sometimes forgets to make her calls. It was suggested that if I didn’t hear from her by 10am, to call myself.
It’s well past that, but there was much to do. I’ve called just a little while ago, but the tech that can update me was with someone, so they will call back. I called when I did because I will be heading outside again for a few hours, but they can leave a message if they don’t call back before then.
It would be nice if we can bring him home tomorrow!
Last night, as I headed out to do my evening rounds, I was quite happy to see Potato Beetle was back! I left the sun room door open while I did my thing, and he went straight in to his private dining area, and stayed! He was quite content for me to close him up in the sun room for the night.
This morning, he really wanted attention…
Dang, that boy is sharp!
He had no interest in leaving, though. I left the door open while doing my morning rounds. I came back to find him lounging on the swing bench, with kittens! He didn’t stay long enough for me to get a picture of them together, though.
Unlike some of the other adult cats, he and the kittens get along just fine!
On another note, I did a bit of a rush on my morning rounds, so I could call the vet clinic when they opened. Layendecker has been behaving strangely for a few days now. I don’t see him often, but the girls tell me he’s been very lethargic. The alarming thing is that, every now and then, he will suddenly start making this horribly distressed wailing sort of meow. Even the other cats will come running to see what’s going on, when he does it. About the only thing we can think of is that he is feeling some sort of intestinal distress. He doesn’t seem bloated or gassy, that we can tell, but one of my daughters observed that when she tried to palpate his abdomen, he would start panting. He clearly doesn’t like it, and doesn’t like being picked up, either.
I was able to get an appointment for him this evening. The clinic has greatly extended their hours, since the lockdowns and restrictions got lifted. I imagine they have a lot of catching up to do and, like with clinics and hospitals for humans, a lot of animals didn’t get the treatment or diagnosis they needed. As a “medical facility”, they are still required to require masking, but when I’ve told them I can’t wear one the first time I went in without one, they haven’t said anything to me, since.
Hopefully, whatever is wrong with Layendecker will just need some simple treatment, but of course, we worry. On top of that, I don’t have the budget for it. My daughter is paying for today, and we’ll see what the diagnosis and treatment ends up being.
Oh, my daughter just sent me a list of the symptoms they noticed. That will be useful at the vet’s. Interesting. Apparently, the first time the yowling started, he was in the middle of using the litter. It doesn’t look like he’s eating, either, though he does seem to be drinking.
Poor Layendecker. I do hope things work out well for him!
Only some of them were willing to let me take their picture!
Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but it seems that super fuzzy one on the right is not running away quite as quickly as usual. It’s not that he is letting me come any closer. Just that he seems to be waiting a bit longer before running away.
That little brown tabby in the front in the kibble house perplexed me a bit. He will come up to me, or hang around when I come in, and even gets playful around me – but he still runs off if he feels I’m too close – whether it’s because I moved towards him, or he moved towards me!
If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, I’d be spending more time just being outside, trying to socialize them. I don’t want to slather myself with bug spray to do it, either. Especially with the littlest kittens. Between the smell and the chemicals, it isn’t good for them.
This morning, the girls opened up the cat house to give the inside a good cleaning.
Both daughters are in this picture. 😂
One is inside the cat house, clearing out the old straw and debris into the wheelbarrow by the side of it, while the other assisted as much as possible. Mostly by keeping kittens out of the way. The socialized ones REALLY wanted to get underfoot! Speaking of feet, my older daughter flipped a toenail and can’t wear closed toes shoes right now, so her sister banished her from going inside the cat house. Unfortunately, in the winter, the cats do crap in there, rather than going outside into the chill.
I tried to do my part in distracting kitties by putting out some cat treats. Which the kittens that were underfoot mostly ignored, in favour of being underfoot!
Once they did as much as they could and closed things up again, the less socialized cats started coming out of the woodwork, too. 😊
The old straw has been removed completely and, being full of cat poop, isn’t going into the compost. It was added to the burn pile, instead. The giant crochets blanket that was in there is now draped over the kibble house, where it had been hosed down on one side. After a while, it’ll be flipped so the other side can be hosed down. It get really, really heavy when wet!
We don’t have fresh straw to put inside, so for now there is another scrap yarn crocheted blanket in there. I am thinking of moving away from straw completely. Having the heat bulb is great, but even though it’s just a relatively mild terrarium bulb should be fine, I’m still paranoid about straw dust. There are some scrap pieces of high density rubber mats in the barn. I am thinking we might lay some of the rigid insulation we have left on the floor, then covering it with the mats. The cats love scratching the foam insulation, but they won’t be able to scratch those mats. Between the mats and the insulation, it should help keep the shelter floor comfortable in the winter.
I also want to give those windows a good cleaning on the inside, and before winter, we’ll be sure to switch out the battery in the smoke detector we have in there.
With so many kitties this summer, I suspect the cats’ house is going to be very full this winter!
This morning, the girls were able to haul wood chips over to the Korean Pine and give them a good mulching. They also got another coat of paint on platform bed frame that will become a litter box platform in the basement.
They fed the kittens early, to keep them out of the way, emptying the kibble bin in the process. Turns out I should have bought two bags last time, not one.
While they were doing that, I did my morning rounds. Checking on the garden beds, I found myself able to hand pollinate more Ozark Nest Egg gourds, Styrian pumpkins and summer squash, as well as get a harvest.
There was a surprising number of cucumbers to pick.
I don’t know what to do with them anymore! We planted adequate amounts of cucumbers for our own use, but with my sister being so very generous in giving us some of her own cucumbers we have more than we can use! We like cucumbers and pickles, but not that much of it! 😉
With the ground cherries, I’m just picking what is ripe enough to fall to the ground; there are many more on the plants that are still very green, and getting very big!
The beans might be winding down, but the yellow pear tomatoes are winding up. I’m hand pollinating the summer squash as much as I can, so hopefully we will be picking more those, soon, but sometimes, there’s just nothing to pollinate.
Whenever I pause to take a picture of our morning harvest, I try to get two set ups; one spread out like in the above photo, and one with everything back in the colander.
While I was working on that, I had two kittens that were very, very interested in what I was doing!
This one was ready to climb right into the colander! The little black and white one, whose paws you can see at the top, kept trying to play with the pea pods while I was trying to take the first pictures.
Silly babies!
My plan for after I finished my morning rounds was to head into town and pick up another bag of kibble, to last us until my husband’s CPP Disability came in on Monday. We got a nice surprise, though. It came in today. So I decided to do a Walmart trip at the nearer, smaller city, instead. Costco can wait until the main pay comes in on the last business day of the month.
After seeing the Old Farmer’s Almanac prediction of a “glacial” January and February this winter, the girls have put together a stock-up list of non-perishables, on the assumption that we will have at least 2 months where we won’t be able to go anywhere. Every shopping trip, we already try to get a little extra for the pantry, but we’ll be working to step it up a bit for non-perishables, whether it’s case lots of canned soups, or extra Costco sized packages of toilet paper. We’re trying to figure out how to re-arrange the old kitchen to store things like paper products, since that room freezes in the winter.
With that in mind, while at the Walmart today, I did pick up some extra flour and a couple of cases of ramen noodles. I also picked up a small plastic storage shelf that just barely fits in the old kitchen space where the rocker is. I’ll need to find another place for the rocker, but the little shelf has already freed up space that had been taken up by cases of canning jars and paper products. We moved a plastic couch that had been in the sun room, into the old kitchen, where I pictured being able to sit in the cooler old kitchen on hot summer days, only for that to never happen. We’ve been using the room for too many other things. There are a couple of old wooden shelves that aren’t being well used, but I don’t want to move them, as they are strong enough to stand on, giving us access to the breaker panel. I guess we could move the couch to the storage house, but that’s already so full of stuff, there really isn’t anyplace to put it there, either.
We’ll have to figure something out, since we want to convert the old kitchen to a sort of walk-in pantry.
The thing that will take up the most space is going to be the bags of kibble. Today, I was able to find a couple of 10kg bags, along with the usual 7kg bags we get at Walmart. When we make our Costco run, we’ll get their 9kb bags, too. We have a hard time stocking up enough kibble to last one month, never mind stocking up enough for 2 months!
Ideally, we’ll be able to adopt out more kitties before winter, though, and won’t need to buy so much cat food!
While I was out, I got a message from my daughter, updating me on what they were able to finish before heading to bed for the day. I’ll have to make my way into the basement to see how much further my younger daughter got down there. During the night, I could hear large things being moved around. Meanwhile, her sister got the remaining fresh tomatoes sliced up, and they are dehydrating in the oven right now. Once those are dry, I’m debating what to do next with them. We can just store them dry, put them in jars with olive oil, or powder them. Eventually, we’ll probably have all three.
Since we will likely be dehydrating more often, I decided to look at dehydrators. There were none at the Walmart, so I went across to a Canadian Tire. After much searching, I did find one in the hunting section. A small one, way out of budget. Ouch!
I didn’t get a dehydrator, but while wandering the store looking for one, I ended up getting a few other handy things, including an extra jar holder for canning, like we already have. When it comes time to make and can tomato paste, they will be in 125ml jars. The jar holder is designed to stack smaller jars on top of each other, which will allow me to can up to 12 small jars at once, which will save us plenty of time.
While on the way home, I stopped at a farmer’s market I’d never been to before. There were some of the same vendors I have seen at others, including one that sells fresh produce. They did not have a lot to offer; looks like they are having a difficult year in the garden, too. I did find the pie lady, though, and picked up an apple bourbon pie. I don’t know how large this particular market normally is, but it seemed there weren’t very many vendors. There are a couple of others I’ve been to last year and can compare, and those have most definitely seen a major drop in the number of vendors. The types of things being sold has changed, too. Not a lot of fresh produce, canning or meat products, but more direct sales booths, like Norwex or Pampered Chef, and hand crafts. I’m glad I stopped by, though. Along with a lovely pie, I found some excellent handspun yarn. I think I’ll give it to my daughter, though. I haven’t been able to crochet in quite some time. My fingers have become far too stiff, and the high humidity of late has been brutal on my arthritis. I do miss it, though. 😞
Ah, well.
Now that I’ve done the Walmart shopping, I find myself seriously considering making a trip into town. They still have that case lot sale happening, and a few cases of canned soup for the pantry would not go amiss.
The question is, do I have the energy for another drive into town today?
As I’m writing this, I’d have to say no. I do not.
This little guy just LOVES attention, and wants to play with the Giant Food Givers!
I’m hoping these ones will get used to me if I keep coming over while they eat.
I was actually able to touch the tortie this morning! Granted, it was in the process of leaving when I did, but it did stop for a moment before hissing and continuing on.
Did I mentioned this one loves attention?
He actually trapped me. I bent over to reach something, he went onto my back, then settled. I couldn’t straighten without either dropping him, or ending up with a scratched back. When I tried to reach him, he rolled into my arm and I ended up in an even more difficult position, trying to keep him from falling onto the concrete floor! Thankfully, I’d been able to reach my phone in my pocket and had already sent a message to the family, asking for assistance. 😄 My husband was able to come out and remove the bebby. Who did NOT want to be left behind! I had to dash in and rush – carefully! – to close the door.
I had quite the crowd this morning! One of the little black and whites apparently wasn’t hungry, so it hung out, out of frame.
Do you see the catten (that’s what I call our “teenagers” – not quite an adult, but too big to call a kitten anymore!) on the right? Over the counterweight? That’s the one that looks like it’s going to be big and bushy, like David. If we can socialize it, we have a forever home waiting already. One of my SIL’s really, really wants a David. 😂 Unfortunately, it’s one of the shier ones!
The catten climbing up into the kibble house is another shy one that we see pretty rarely.
Rosencrantz and her crew had company this morning! The catten that looks quite a bit like Junk Pile – but with a distinctive black lower lip! This one tends to show up alone, and I’ve yet to see it with any of the adults in a familial way. Here, Rosencrantz tolerated it for a very short time.
Also, I managed to get that tortie to look at me while taking the photo. What a cutie!!!
Here we have it. Finally! A photo with all five of Rosencranctz’s kittens in one shot! The spotted one on the far left tends to hang back while the others go for the food, and tends to be the first one to run off when I come around.
My original plan of the day was to continue mowing the lawn after doing my morning rounds. Unfortunately, I realized that I would need to get new SD cards for the new trail cam, which did not come with its own. Since I switch cards every morning, each camera needs two card, and the old SD cards we’ve been using for the past few years are starting to wear out.
Which meant a trip into town, after feeding the kitties.
So. Many. Kitties!
There are 10 kittens and three adults in this photo – with many kitties that hadn’t come out yet!
Except these ones, that emerged rather quickly, since they have their own kibble bowl.
Gotta love the one that likes to sit completely in the bowl!
The fifth kitten came out of the lilacs after I got this picture, then ran off before I could include it in a shot. It is pretty distinctive, with more black spots on is body than it’s mostly white siblings.
The only place in town that I could think of that would have memory cards was the pharmacy, so I picked up my prescription refill while I was at it. My doctor switched me from pills once a day two injections once a week, which he wants to try for a year.
Thank God for my husband’s insurance! The price went up, and it cost almost $70. Which means that, without insurance, it would cost almost $700. My dosages are still building up to what the doctor wants to be on. At full dose, I am probably looking at about 2 boxes every 3 months, if I remember correctly. As it is, one box now costs more than my husband’s bubble packs for 4 weeks, and he’s got something like 10 different medications spread over 3 times a day in there.
Ugh.
Anyhow…
The pharmacy turned out to not have any memory cards in their little electronics sections. The cashier suggested I try a store across the street. They didn’t have any in their electronics section, but when I asked, it turned out they have them behind the counter.
I was about to buy two of them when I realized they were micro SD, not SD cards. I tested a micro SD on the camera, and it doesn’t work.
After telling her what I needed, she wracked her brain then suggested I try a cell phone place a few streets over. So I did, and they did have one type in stock – with far more memory than I needed, and so expensive, I couldn’t get the two I needed with the budget I had.
The guy wracked his brain, then suggested a small computer repair shop. I’d completely forgotten it existed, because is shares retail space with another shop. So I went there.
They did carry memory cards – but were completely out of stock and would not get more for at least a week.
Crud.
The next option was to go to the small, slightly nearer city. They have a Walmart. I figured I should at least be able to find one there! I made a quick stop at the gas station, then home to leave my meds, then off I went again.
The trip took quite a bit longer than expected, though. This time of year, the provincial and municipal road maintenance crews are out in full force. They’re cutting the overgrown grass and saplings along the shoulders, scraping the shoulders free of weeds, clearing ditched and culverts for the winter, and even painting fresh lines on the highways. This particular highway was being resurfaced – finally! – leaving only half a lane open for traffic. We were all driving half on the road, half on the shoulder, for miles, while traffic in the other direction was having to wait. The road crews wouldn’t even let people make turns along the way, because the asphalt was so fresh.
Once I got to the Walmart, though, I realized it shared a parking lot with a Staples, so I went there.
I found two 32G cards (I would have been happy with 16G, or even 8G, but there were none in stock) at a price low enough, it actually made up for the cost of gas to drive out!
My daughter had given me her card and a shopping list, so I hit the Walmart, too. Then, it was home by a different route!
Once home, I formatted the cards, then finished my morning rounds, which included switching out the memory cards. Though we had a good rainfall yesterday, we’re heating up over the next while, and won’t get rain again for some time (if we get it in our area at all), so I gave the all the garden beds a good watering.
I’m just amazed by how quickly this pumpkin is turning colour! Obviously, it’s not going to reach anywhere near its potential, but we made no effort to do that. I prefer to have a pumpkin that doesn’t need a forklift to carry. 😉
I’ve been eyeballing our long range forecast and, so far, it looks like the mild temperatures will continue well into September. Our average first frost date of Sept. 10 is expected to have a high of 19C/66F, and a low of 10C/50F. The middle of the month is looking to have lows of 5C/41F. Forecasts that far ahead are far from reliable, of course, but it is hopeful. Every mild day is that more more time for all the stuff that’s behind in the garden to catch up!
It’ll also be good for the litters of kittens that were born later in the season, too!
For some reason, I just could NOT sleep last night. I didn’t finally fall asleep until around 5am, and even then, I woke up several times before I finally gave up.
So I was a bit late with my morning rounds.
I managed to get a decent photo of this fuzzy cutie.
Yup. We most definitely have another “David” here. This is going to be an equally long haired cat. I do hope we can socialize him (or her), because if we can’t get at him when he’s an adult, he’s going to end up with all sorts of mats in his fur.
Last night, I made a final push and got the rest of the silver buffalo berry mulched. It was too dark and I was going to get a photo this morning, but completely forgot. The cardboard is mulched. Once we get more cardboard, we’ll fill in the gaps between the saplings in the second row, the mulch that, too. Until then, the next area to work on will be the Korean Pine in the outer yard.
While I was working, I had Rolando Moon hanging around and keeping me company. She was enjoying sitting on the wood chips next to one of the saplings! As long as she wasn’t rolling on the saplings, I don’t mind.
While I was putting food out for the kitties this morning, Rolando Moon came by – and she was limping! While she will let us pet her, within limits, there is no way she’ll let me look at her paw to see what’s going on. I think I see some swelling, but I’m not sure.
Mostly, she hung around the yard, watching the other cats while they ate, waiting her turn. Including Rosencrantz and her five babies (one of the grey and whites ran off when I came close, so there’s only four in the picture). Junk Pile photobombed me while I was taking pictures. She is not a happy kitty, and will hiss at any of the other cats – including her own cat-tens – and us. I know she’s had a second litter, and the one time I saw her rolling on the ground, she is definitely nursing, and I don’t think she’s impressed with the situation.
Meanwhile, after my morning rounds, I had to make a trip into town. With the raccoons knocking over the kibble bin, we did have some spillage. Not much, thankfully, but enough that we weren’t going to have enough to last until our big shopping trip. If I hadn’t been so late with my morning rounds, I could have stopped at the post office before it closed for lunch, and I would have been able to pick up our new trail cam, to replace the one that disappeared. I’m quite looking forward to trying it out. We did put the old, original trail came up at the sign and, amazingly, it’s actually working all right. It’s set to stills, not video, and is aimed at the area in front of the sign, but it’s not a wide angle lens, so it’s mostly picking up the road.
It always amazing me how much traffic we have on our little road.
So right now, I’m just waiting for the post office to open, and I’ll head out again to pick up the camera.
Meanwhile, I’ve set up a painting job under the canopy tent. When we moved here, there was a platform bed frame that turned out to have been left for us by my brother, until our stuff came in. For the last few years, tt had been in the basement until I brought it out this spring to use as a platform to hold seedlings out of cat reach, to harden off.
This spring, that basement got very wet, and things started to mold. It’s dry now, and my younger daughter has been spending her nights slowly cleaning it. One of the things we now want to do is raise all the litter boxes off the concrete floor. That end of the basement had the most dampness. Thank goodness we use the stove pellets for litter, because if we were still using clay, that would have been so difficult to clean up!
To prevent this from happening again, we’re going to use the old bed frame, which is twin size and only about 6 or 8 inches high, as a platform for the litter boxes. It’s just raw wood, so we’re going to paint it, first. That way, it can be cleaned more easily. The only paint we have right now is the red exterior paint I used on the bench and the stairs, which should be just fine.
Over the next while, I’ll be slowly picking up paint for the basement. The girls want to paint between the floor joists to lighten things up, make it more visible, and easier to clean. I’ll also pick up a mold and mildew resistant primer, then regular interior paint for the walls.
It’s very handy having two daughters who worked in a hardware store and were both paint trained. They can tell me exactly what we need for the job. :-)
That will be a winter long project, though, working on a little at a time!
The Re-Farmer 