We’ve set up a pair of water bowls in the shade of the kibble house. They are heated water bowls, but the larger one stopped working this past winter. The smaller one still works. The kittens like to drink out of the larger one, even though it’s harder for them to reach. This is the first time I’ve seen one use the larger one to drink out of the smaller one!
What it was actually doing was dipping its paw into the water, then licking the water off its paw.
Adorable.
One thing that was not adorable, though, was the state of a white and black kitten. I was able to picked it up and hold it, and could see its eyes were really leaky, with one swollen shut. It was dripping with puss! Poor thing. My daughter brought out a cloth wet with hot water to wash its eyes as I held it, then tried to clear its nose, too. We’ll have to watch for this one to clean its eyes out regularly – if it will let us! Thankfully, it is one that lets us pet it sometimes.
Once that isolation shelter is built, it could also be used to house sick babies so we can provide treatment, too!
I’m skipping the progress shots for the squash and melons, since I’ve got a video to show, instead! I hope you enjoy it.
Let me know if you have any issues watching it – and do feel free to watch it over on YouTube and hit that “like” button – but only if you really like it!
That’s Button in the background. I was able to pet the kitten in the foreground, while it was eating!
I put out more food in the mornings, since the raccoons are less likely to show up. Several skunks showed up, though!
There were also some late commers, including the mostly black cat that had such a messed up eye, months ago. The eye still looks off, but it seems to have healed up as much as it will, and he seems to still be able to see through it, fine. Thanks to the skunks, there was no kibble under the shrine, where the nervous cats usually eat, which means he had to slink his way over to the kibble house. I saw him eating in there later – with a skunk!
These for were all snuggled up in the cat bed, so I made sure to scatter some food near them. That way, they don’t have to fight off the grown up cats for kibble! A couple of the adult cats, both male and female, just don’t like the littles. Oddly, Shop Towel – who has been quite violent with some of the other cats – is excellent with the littles. Some nights, looking out the bathroom window, we can see him in the cat bed behind the kittens in the photo above, asleep and half buried in babies!
As for the four in the photo, while they were eating, I was able to pet three of them. The tabby on the right would not allow pets, but at least he/she didn’t run away!
Today I needed to hit a Walmart and a Canadian Tire, and took advantage of a city trip to pick up a few more stock up items, while I was there.
This is what $144.48 looks like.
*sigh*
And I was picking up the cheap stuff, for the most part.
For my husband, I got some Coke Zero and distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. The girls were out of soy milk, but so was Walmart. I got two 2L cartons of lactose free milk instead, which was on a two-for sale, plus a 1L carton for my own use.
Wait a minute…
I got charged for three 2L of lactose free milk. I don’t see a 1L of regular milk in there.
Crud. I wish I’d noticed that before I drove all the way home! Not worth the cost of gas to go back and fix it.
The hot dog wieners were also on a two-for sale, but I got only one package of hot dog buns. My husband and I prefer to have them cut up and added to other foods.
I got two bags of kibble; a 9kg of Whiskas and a 7kg of the Walmart brand. I also got some wood glue for the isolation shelter that’s being worked on right now.
I spotted an Annie’s pasta and cheese sauce display, and they were 97¢ a box, so I got 4 of two different flavours for the pantry, plus a couple of loaves of rye bread for the freezer. I picked up a bottle of lemon scented cleaner – the girls have noticed that when they used it to clean up the cat messes, the cats seem to avoid the area for a while, and we’re thinking they don’t like the lemon scent. We’ve tried using citrus scent to repel the cats from places, but it never worked. I guess generic “citrus” isn’t as useful as lemon. They certainly don’t object to orange scent at all.
Last of all, I picked up a bottle of magnesium for myself.
That’s it. That’s all I got for $144 and change.
Next I crossed the street and went to the Canadian Tire. One of the things I was after there was a new power bar to replace one I have in my room. They had a clearance sale on a couple of bars that have the plugins turned sideways, with one type having USB ports. With the power bar I have now, I have two things plugged in that take up four spots. With the new bar’s design and the USB ports, I freed up three plug ins. I got a second non-household one that has the plug ins spaced out in two rows, and a built in cord storage, for the same clearance price.
I also found some inexpensive outdoor wheels for the isolation shelter’s pallet base. They rotate 360°, so that will make it easier to move the finished shelter. I didn’t find the right size hose clamps I was after, though. They had one size bigger and one size smaller, but not the size I needed! There wasn’t even a space on the shelf for them.
I just looked them up at a local hardware store. They have the size I need – and in stock!
Looks like I’ll be making a side trip after I go to the dump!
Which will be opening soon, so time to get things together and start heading out again.
My usual morning routine starts with feeding the outside cats, then doing my rounds to check everything is as it should be, switching out memory cards on the trail cams, tending the garden, etc. We did get a good rainfall last night, so no watering needed, this morning, but that’s usually part of the morning routine, this time of year.
By the time I’m ready to head back inside, the yard cats have had their chance to eat and are more relaxed. Sometimes, I can even walk relatively close past some of the more feral ones.
This morning, I found several kittens and Adam on top of the shelf shelter next to the sun room door.
The cluster of three kittens snuggling for a nap was adorable, but then there was Adam and her one of her progeny, glaring at me. 😄 They have matching angry expressions.
We had some packages come in today and the store the post office is in, closes at noon on Wednesdays, so I headed out as soon as I could. The truck is parked in the yard for now, with the garage being set up as a workshop right now. As I was leaving the yard and driving past the garage, I spotted Brussel’s last surviving kitten, just loafed in the grass, watching me. Even when I stopped the truck to take a picture, it just stayed there.
When I got back and was heading up the driveway, Brussel and her kitten were in the vehicle zone in front of the garage. As I got closer, Brussel ran off, but her kitten just hunkered down! I was able to drive around, but there’s a point when I just can’t see the kitten anymore. By the time I got to where I could see it again, I found it had barely moved at all, and was just sitting in the grass.
The little bugger. Runs away from people, but not a moving truck!
In other cat related news, we finally connected with the Cat Lady this morning. The vet appointment I was concerned has been changed; she’s bringing in a couple of other cats, including a pregnant female, instead. She has us for September, though I don’t have a date or details yet. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get a female or two in for that one! The isolation shelter should be finished by then, too.
As for connecting to pass on Button, that is likely going to happen on the weekend. One of her other kids is sick now, too! They just can’t catch a break! But she will be in our area on the weekend and we’ll meet up to pass on Button. He’ll stay with the rescue for a week for vet checks and the usual treatment (he won’t be neutered, since he’s waaaayyy too small for that!) before going to his forever home.
I had considered making a trip to the nearer city today, but will be doing that tomorrow, instead. One of the things I’m looking for is in Canadian Tire, and it goes on sale, starting tomorrow, so it’s worth a bit of a delay. Among the other things I’m looking for is wheels for the isolation shelter. This is one shelter we will want to be able to move around, as needed.
I’m still gathering what materials and tools I can think we might need, and hope to get started on it this afternoon. I might end up redoing the plans in more detail, now that I have more of an idea of what materials I have to work with. I did get a chance to look at the windows in the barn and shed, but there is nothing suitable for this project. Many of them are broken, too. Which makes me think that if we ever do make windows in any shelters we build, I wouldn’t want to use real glass at all!
We’ll figure that out when the times comes. Until then, we make do with what we have!
My daughter heard a possible commotion last night, so I popped out to check on the kitties. No sign of raccoons or skunks, thankfully. It was such a gorgeous night, though, I ended up staying out for a while, and even tried to get some photos of the stars.
I was just using my phone’s camera, and I didn’t have a tripod. Instead, I rested the phone on top of the wire covers on garden beds. Which, I discovered, bounced for a while once the phone was laid down! So several of the photos have very shaky looking stars. 😄 I did manage to get shots with the streak of a satellite going by, which is neat.
We are supposed to get some rain late tonight, but I decided to water the garden, anyhow. This year’s garden is unusually full of things that require large amounts of water, and from the looks of the weather radar, the system is going to pass to the north of us, anyhow. We certainly aren’t going to be hit with a storm like what hit Calgary last night! I was seeing photos shared on some of my Zone 3 gardening groups on FB, and it was just devastating. The largest hail reported was the size of a baseball! Scary stuff!
After doing the watering, I went back and picked another handful of shelling peas.
I’m really appreciating the logs on the sides of that bed. I can step on a log and reach the peas, without stepping on any winter squash vines! While watering, I noticed a couple of vines, including one with a female flower, that were trying to climb the trellis netting. The Wild Bunch Mix package did say these were all vining types, and they really do want to climb! The trellis netting is strong enough to hold the peas and beans, but nowhere near strong enough to hold the winter squash vines, not to mention any fruit that might show up on them. I got them loose and laid them on the ground, in the process finding tendrils that had wrapped themselves around bean pods and vines, actually cutting off the bean pod in the process!
I’m hoping to have pole beans to harvest by the end of the week.
In other things, I’m hoping to get meet up with the Cat Lady tomorrow or soon after. I know she has medical appointments today. The last time she set up a vet appointment to neuter 4 of our male yard cats, covered by the rescue, a second appointment was made for this month. Then they had emergency vet car needed, which cost a great deal. The appointment is still on my calendar, though – this Thursday (today is Tuesday), for two cats, preferably female. I checked to make sure the appointment was cancelled, as I know the rescue budget was low. She said she’d contact the vet, but I haven’t heard back about that, yet. I hope to hear from her soon, because I don’t want to unknowingly be a “no show”.
Meanwhile, I got some photos of Peanut Butter Cup this morning for her to share among her contacts.
She has really turned into a beauty, and has the softest fur of all the cats! More importantly, we brought her to full health. She was the only female that was done at the time. While the males could go straight outside after a brief recovery period in the cat carriers, she needed 2 weeks. Once they come inside, they don’t go back out. That’s when we found out she had leaky butt issues, but we got that all fixed up. Gotta love that Healthy Poops stuff! Thank you, M, for sending us that first container! I never would have known such a product even existed. We have been using it in place of the ground pumpkin seeds (pumpkin is one of the ingredients) that we’d been using in the cat soup, along with lysine. All of the cats have been eating it, and it has made a real difference in PBC! No more leaky butt! Her respiratory issues have disappeared, too. We now have special shallow trays for the cat soup, big enough for several cats to eat out of at the same time, with one kept in my room for Butterscotch.
Who still refuses to leave my room!
I don’t get it.
Anyhow, I hope the Cat Lady will be able to share the photos and someone will be interested in adopting PBC.
Meanwhile, I’m basically just waiting for the post office to open for the afternoon. The special sheets for my husband’s hospital bed mattress came in yesterday, even though it was a holiday and the post office was closed! So I’ll be picking those up. If they work out, we’ll order more, and he won’t have to fight with having to use top sheets on his mattress, because regular fitted sheets are too short.
While yesterday’s lawn mowing never got finished, I did get enough done that I can park the truck in the shade of the inner yard. Then I’ll set up a work table and power tools in the garage, gather materials and get started on the outdoor isolation cage for when we can start trapping and spaying the more feral cats. Hopefully, the females! Not that we will have much control over which cat gets trapped.
As long as we don’t end up trapping skunks or raccoons, instead! I don’t think the trap that will be loaned to us will be big enough for raccoons. Well. One of the young ones, maybe, but a cat sized trap would not be big enough, nor strong enough, for an adult raccoon.
Speaking of which, the isolation cage we’ll be building has to be strong enough to keep the raccoons out. Once it’s built, we’ll set it up with the door open, so the cats can get used to it, so I would expect the skunks and raccoons to explore it, too. I don’t plan to keep food, water and a litter box in it until there is a cat actually closed up in it, but it will still provide cats and kittens with shelter in the mean time.
As for the build itself, I’ve got general plans drawn up, but ultimately, it will depend on what materials we find in the barn and the sheds. I’m hoping to incorporate at least one of the many salvaged windows we’ve got. Something that can be slid open to access the inside, rather than a hinged door.
One thing we will probably have to buy, rather than scavenge, is more hardware cloth. I’ve got most of a roll of hex type chicken wire, but a raccoon can tear through that easily.
It isn’t a lot, but the more they get picked, the more they will keep producing! These are the Dalvay variety of peas that we got several years ago, and still have lot of seeds left over.
There is nothing like peas fresh off the vine!
The purple Dragonfly peppers are ripening much earlier than any of the other varieties we’ve planted this year. All the others are still very green. Eventually, we will have brown Sweet Chocolates, orange and yellow Early Sunsation and Early summer, and Purple Beauty peppers in this bed, too.
We aren’t going to be particularly hot today, so the only watering I did this morning was to fill the reservoirs by the drum gourds and pumpkins. The biggest of the pumpkins is starting to turn orange! I’ll be taking the comparison photos for the series I’ve been doing this evening – and hopefully, I will remember to include the Crespo squash this time! I completely forgot, last time.
My goal for today is to finish mowing the inner yard. I’d intended to do some mowing yesterday, but never got that far. I’d picked up replacement hose connectors, as we have leaking front yard hoses. With one connection, both hoses had already had their connections replaced, and both were leaking. One of them had a 1/2 inch connector instead of a 3/4 inch connector. The clamp couldn’t quite tighten it enough. The other was the right size, but still leaking. So I replaced both.
That took a LOT longer than it should have. The old connectors had to be cut off, one of the new clamps was bent and wouldn’t loosen or tighten properly, I tried to use the old clamp only to have part of it disappear completely, so I had to figure out how to get the bent new one to work, etc. I used Teflon tape on them, too, as an extra precaution to prevent leaking. I think I ended up spending at least an hour fighting with it.
The front tap has three hoses connected, and one of them predates our living here. It’s still one of the best hoses we have, though! It was leaking, so I replaced the rubber washer.
Then I turned the hose back on and…
It’s all still leaking.
*sigh*
I do have the contractor’s grade hose that was gifted to us. It is going to be used to replace the hose in the back and set up a garden tap again. It’s going to be a while longer yet, before we can dig up the rest of the buried water pipe, and I won’t start that until I have the pipe I want to run the hose through to protect it, before burying it.
The problem is, the pipe I’m looking to get costs at least $27 – $35 for a 3″ x 10′ length. The 4″ pipe is easier to find, but more expensive – and I’d need four of them, plus angled connectors for each end. The idea is that, if the hose ever needs to be repaired or replaced, it can be easily pulled out of the pipe without having to dig the trench again. I might be able to find pipe in the diameter I want that’s a better price, but for that, I’d have to actually go into a store in the city that carries them in stock (I’m not finding anything in stock locally) and look at what they have. Their websites are not very helpful.
So if it’s going to be a while before I can even consider using that hose to set up a garden tap, I may as well use it now!
Meanwhile, this time of year is when things like hoses go on clearance, so I should be able to get more heavy duty hoses to replace all our cheapies. I’m getting really tired of having the world’s kinkiest hoses! Even the non-kink hoses I got a year or two ago are constantly kinking!
All in good time, I guess.
For now, though, I want to get the inner lawn mowed, so I can move the truck to the yard and use the garage as a workshop to build an outdoor cat isolation cage. We have some pretty feral ladies that need to be trapped and spayed, and there’s no way we can keep them indoors anywhere for the 2 weeks they need for recovery. Who knows. We might even get them to be more semi-feral than feral while they are in an isolation cage!
I counted both adults and kittens, though I know at least the two new kittens were missing. I saw the orange fluffball earlier, but it was gone by the time I started counting.
I counted 36.
Which is interesting, since that’s about half kittens. In the winter, we have the most cats around the house, where there is safety, food, warm shelter and warm water to drink. In the summer, many disappear, with some popping by every now and then, others not returning until the fall, or not returning at all. Last winter, we tended to have a high of 33 cats. So having 36 cats (38 if I count the two new kittens that I know were hiding somewhere nearby), including kittens, is interesting. I honestly expected more, even taking into account the number of kittens, plus an adult cat, I buried this year. Certainly more than a net increase of about 5!
In the end, we’ll see how many there are in the winter, when the explorers start returning. Hopefully, we’ll have more than just Button adopted out, too.
He does get creative when it comes to getting the nip! It took me a while to figure out what I was even looking at! 😄
Adam is so patient with the kittens. She doesn’t seem to care at all, how many are trying to nurse her at the same time, or how much they are trying to push each other around to get at a nip!
As for getting Button to his new forever home, we were not able to connect with the Cat Lady this weekend. They did make it out to their cottage, but are still dealing with too many health issues right now. Her son is recovering, though, and that’s the important thing! She’s asked me to let her know if I’m heading to the smaller city where we usually meet, in the next week. Heck, I’ll make the trip special, just for that! Button will be taken to a vet clinic first, before going to the vet that is adopting him. I was happy to hear that. He is just not getting noticeably bigger, and I’m concerned for him.
I was finally able to connect with my mother last night and, as expected, she needed a grocery shopping trip. So we made plans for that, and I headed to bed early.
I even fell asleep!
Then, in the wee hours of the morning, I rolled over and got hit with a Charlie horse. After much pain and difficulty, I finally managed to reach my phone and send a voice to text message to my daughter, asking for help.
I love technology.
She was able to give me a hand, bring me some ibuprofen, etc., until the cramps finally eased off. When I was finally able to walk, she stayed close while I made my way to the bathroom and back, ready to help me get back into bed if I needed it. Thankfully, I did not, but the muscles kept threatening to cramp up again. I finally got up and made myself something to eat. By the time I was done and able to get back into bed, I slept so hard, I never heard the thunderstorm and heavy rains that swept over us! I didn’t know we’d had a downpour at all until morning. My leg was still unstable, so I asked the girls to do the outside stuff and water the garden, but the garden didn’t need it this morning.
My mother and I had plans to go out for lunch before I did her shopping, so I intended to be there on the early side. While the girls did the outside stuff, I still wanted to check on things before I left, which reminded me to take pictures of the garden beds to show my mother.
One of the first things I saw as I headed out from the sun room were the new kittens – and their mama!
It is now confirmed: their mama is Sprout. I knew she must have had a litter somewhere, but this is the first time we’ve seen her with kittens.
The orange kitten looks so fluffy!
Unfortunately, Sprout is one of the more feral of the yard cats. She is even aggressive to the other cats, snarling, growling and hissing at them if they come too close. That might make it harder to socialize those kittens!
Then, as I was heading to the truck to head to my mother’s, I spotted Brussel’s last kitten.
She and her baby still like to hang out in and around the garage, much like Broccoli and her babies prefer to hang out by the garden shed.
The visit with my mother went okay. When I got there, she told me she was not up to going out to eat, so she’d made lunch, instead. I wish I’d known in advance, or I would have brought food. I don’t like eating her groceries! It did give us a chance to talk, and I showed her the photos I took of the garden (those will be in my next post), then we went over her shopping list, which included a stop at the pharmacy.
There were a couple of things I forgot to pick up when I went to the grocery store for ourselves, yesterday, so I did both our shopping at the same time. I even picked up a few extra things for my mother that weren’t on her list, but the prices were good, and I knew she could use them. Other things, I found substitutes, because the prices were too high. Still, she’s now well stocked for the week, and that’s the important part.
The visit did have its down sides. After I’d put everything away, she had the local paper out and open. Our vandal has made his annual “in memory” listing about my late brother, with a colour photo of him with my late father. This impressed my mother greatly, because he does it every year, and it costs extra to include a colour photo. The fact that the content is passive aggressive and misleading – even outright false, in one thing – she is totally impressed by it. I told her I’d already seen the listing online, and she was all “and you didn’t tell me?” My response was, why would I? He does this every year, and it’s not like he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart. She then launched into making excuses for him and how he’s doing such great things, like volunteering to cut grass at the cemetery. Which I’m sure he made sure she knew about. Well, I visited the cemetery, too, but I don’t tell her about it, or about the flowers I added at the family graves, etc. Coming from me, she would find ways to either tell me how I am doing it wrong, or find a way to turn it around and start saying how great our vandal is.
Then I found out, he’d come by her place recently.
I told her, he shouldn’t be doing that.
She, of course, tried to turn it around on me, because that’s what she does. It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, because she phrased it so oddly, but she essentially said, if my daughters did what our vandal did, would I cut them off entirely? I told her, if they did what he did, yes! I would hold them responsible and accountable. I then called her out on making excuses for him the way she does, pointing out that he’s stolen 10’s of thousands of dollars of stuff from her that was on the farm (heck, his taking stuff was one of the biggest reasons she asked us to move here!), but that’s okay because he put a colour picture in the paper? He does this stuff because people have been letting him get away with is for years. I’m the first person to stand up to him, and he ended up vandalizing the place, we have to keep the gate locked, and worry that he’ll suddenly show up and try to burn the house down or something.
She changed the subject after that.
That was pretty much the only real downside of the visit. Mostly, I think she was just too tired to be as difficult as she usually is.
I didn’t stay too much longer after putting things away, since I did have my own few purchases getting hot in the truck, so I headed home soon after.
Once at home and settled, I gave the outside cats their lysine enhanced kibble. Since it’s the more granular type of lysine, I have been making sure the kibble bowls get some water in them, so it’ll stick to the kibble. With some of the bowls, I add extra water, as the kittens seem to prefer it, and this way they are getting more hydration in this heat, and the lysine will be dissolved in the water. Some of the kittens are getting leaky eyes and noses, including Button, and I want to make sure they get their lysine! It helps strengthen their immune systems.
No sign of the new kittens this time, though.
Then I went into the garden, but I’ll talk about that in my next post.
As for how things are now, my leg is still feeling like it’s about to start cramping up on me. More so as I’m sitting down then while I’m walking around. I’m going to be feeling downright nervous, getting into bed tonight! I’ve been looking into the various possible causes. One was the lawn mowing in the heat, but I didn’t do anywhere near as much as I have in the past. Lack of electrolytes is a possibility. I’m already taking B12 and Magnesium supplements, but it looks like I might be low on potassium and sodium, too. At least, those are the only possible causes I can be proactive about. Others include things like “getting older”. 😄
