I don’t mean a sneak pet on the back while she’s eating, either, though I did start with that. She moved away while the boys came in and dove under my hands, demanding attention. While I was petting them, I reached over and started petting her, too. She got a bit startled, but I was already giving her shoulder rubs and neck rubs, and she leaned right up into my hand instead of leaving. I even got ear skritches, which she really liked. I stopped after a little while – didn’t want to push her too far – and pet the boys a bit more, which gave her more time to eat. I did reach out again and pet her, but she didn’t like being pet on the back, compared to getting the shoulder and neck rubs.
Her neck fur is just full of hidden mats! There’s still lots of burrs stuck in her fur, too. You can see some on her side near her hip. The tip of her tail is just a matted ball of fluff stuck to a burr.
While I’ve managed to touch her before, this is the first time I’ve been able to give her a real pet! This is HUGE progress!
Now, if we can just keep it up and get her socialized enough, we can finally get her spayed!
Speaking of which…
The large animal rescue that moved just a mile away from us last summer made a post on FB. They’ve got quite a few projects in mind in the near future and were looking for everything from material donations to volunteers. One of the things they were looking for was tractor tires. We have a few, though they’re not accessible until the snow is gone, so I contacted her about it. Finding regular sized tires is no problem for her – her brother is our mechanic, so he’s always got lots – but the large tractor tires are a bit harder to come by.
As we were chatting, she asked if we expected to have kittens this year, and offered to take some. !! I told her that we probably will, and explained about not being able to socialize any of the females enough to get them spayed. She said they were planning to do fundraising for things like pet food, spays and neuters that she plans to use to help other rescues like us! We’re not officially a rescue, but with what we’re doing, we’re sort of a defacto one. They’ve had cats and kittens in their rescue, even though they mostly do large animals, and have been able to get them adopted out, so she offered to help with that, too. Of course, I happily expressed my appreciation for the offer of help!
So, between the two rescues, we might finally be able to get more cats adopted out, as well as spayed and neutered.
We’ll still probably need to get a trap for the females outside, though.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to socialize Adam well enough and not need to use a trap on her! What I really want is for her to get to the point where we can use the mat cutting combs we have on her, and get those off. I’m sure her equally long haired brother, Driver, has them, too.
Taking my mother to my brother’s place for a visit went rather well, overall. There were a couple of predictable incidents, like when she suddenly started yelling at me in a rage because I took a slightly different route than the one she always took. That took some time to calm her down. It amazes me how, in her mind, the “short cut” that she always took (it isn’t any shorter, nor is it a faster route) is the only right route. Which, in itself, I wouldn’t mind, but the sudden and incredible anger she displays because I prefer a different route just blows me away. She’s more laid back about other route changes, but this one, and one other, just set her off like nothing else. The one other route that sets her off, my brother had driven her and took a different route, probably more than 20 years ago, and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it. Very strange.
There was also the very predictable attempt to pit my brother against me. Of course, she brought it up completely out of context, saying that I’d “reminded” her that this is no longer her house – but she paid for the roof! She neglected to mention the parts about her and my sister being in the area, and my not inviting them over for an unexpected and unplanned visit, or how she had tried to guilt me by saying “don’t forget, you’re living in my house.” Then she tried to say that she “paid for everything”. Everything? She seriously has zero understanding of just how much my brother and I are spending to keep this place up – the “perfect” house she asked us to move into that turned out to be in far worse shape than I ever thought.
Thank God my brother now owns the property!
What was also not a surprise, but still sad to hear, is that after I said no to her about coming here, they instead went to visit our vandal. This, in spite of the abusive messages he still leaves on her answering machine, and the horrible things he says to her about me. I’m quite disappointed in my sister for doing this. She says she wants to stay out of it and be neutral, but there is no neutral in this. Part of taking care of our mother is protecting her from herself, too. And there is nothing neutral about staying in contact with him, knowing the things he’s said and done to the rest of us.
Ah, well. What’s done is done. I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt.
My mother was very tired, even before we left, so the visit was relatively short. Which, of course, she turned around and made it sound like my brother wanted her to leave early, when all he had done was be solicitous about her being so tired, and giving her choices. She chose to leave.
During the visit, my daughter sent messages to keep me up to date on what was going on at home.
Two Toes had escaped again.
They reinforced the cage, and were able to catch her.
After I got home, I wanted to walk around outside, only to find…
… a tripod staple cat walking past me!
It took a while – and the help of another cat! – but my daughter was eventually able to catch her again and put her in the carrier.
She is such an escape artist, and so determined to get outside, that we had to make the decision to bring her inside and add her to the “isolation ward”. Which is getting pretty full! Her babies will be okay. Other creche moms will nurse them. Who knows. Maybe she’ll even nurse these guys…
When I brought the carrier in and put it on my bed, the kittens were immediately interested in it – and her! They were pawing at the door, trying to get at her. After a while, I opened the door, and a kitten dashed right in.
Much to my surprise, there was no hissing from her at all. The girls had tried to put the two sick kittens in the cage with her, but had to take them out, because she was hissing at them so much.
She comes out every now and then, but the carrier seems to be the spot she feels most comfortable in, and she goes back into the carrier fairly quickly. As I write this, she is napping in it right now.
So far, Butterscotch seems indifferent to her, contentedly sharing bed space with her, Nosencrantz is keeping her distance, and so is Marlee.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
While I was still at my brother’s, the Cat Lady came by to pick up the sick black and white kitty. She asked if there were any other sick kitties, so my daughter brought out the white and grey one.
I took this picture of the two of them napping together, yesterday.
I had not mentioned the second kitten to the Cat Lady because, to be honest, I didn’t think it would make it. Instead, it started to get better, though it’s still very weak and looks a mess. Plus, when I found out they were doing this out of pocket, instead of through the rescue, because donation money had gone to spays and neuters, I didn’t want to add to their expenses!
As sick as the white and grey one is, the black and white one is in worse shape. Before I headed out this morning, I washed both their eyes. The black and white one’s eyes were stuck shut again, and as soon as they started to open a bit, puss started to ooze out. From both eyes. The Cat Lady, however, has already let me know she’s picked up medication for them, and they will be seeing a vet soon for testing. Because she has the rescue, she can pick up medication that I can’t, without first bringing the cats in.
She is also asking if we can catch 4 older female kittens to place at that farm she was telling us about, plus she is going to arrange spays. Catching the mamas is not going to be easy, though! She was in a rush and using her vehicle to pick up kitchen cabinets they’d bought locally, so she wasn’t able to drop off a trap or anything else. She just took the kittens and that’s it.
She will also try to adopt the spayed cats out, but even if they end up coming back here, at least it will help reduce the number of kittens next year!
So that is done for now. I hope the kittens recover well for her. She’d be so heart broken if they don’t make it.
One of the things I asked the girls to do while I was gone was a bit of harvesting in the garden, mentioning what likely needed to be harvested. Which made it a surprise when I got a picture of these guys.
These are squash from the compost pile! I had intended to just leave them until the end of the season, but my daughter wanted to see how they are. She didn’t pick all of them, but I’m still a bit perplexed about it! I guess we’ll be cracking them open to see how they look.
Along with more bush beans, a few summer squash and some Spoon tomatoes, she also picked the largest, ripest Sweet Chocolate pepper. They had it with their supper. I’ll have to ask them how it tasted, since I can’t eat peppers without gagging, no matter how wonderful they look and smell.
I had my own accidental harvest.
While doing my evening rounds, I was checking the squash patch and found a couple of female flowers to hand pollinate. I’m amazed, every time I look at the candy roaster and pink banana squash. They are growing so fast, and there are so many of them! I also took a closer look at our one Honeyboat Delicata. It hasn’t been getting any bigger, but the colours were changing, showing that it was ripening. I moved it to look around and…
… the stem snapped.
It’s so tiny! Ah, well. I guess we can eat is like a summer squash, still. Plus, I spotted a couple more little Delicatas forming on another vine. Hopefully, these will reach the full size they are supposed to get!
So that was most of my day. I know I’m forgetting things, but my brain is pretty fried right now. Especially after I called my mother later on. Oh, right! After dropping her off, I had time to swing by her pharmacy to ask about when her prescriptions needed a renewal from a doctor. I’m so glad I did! It turns out the pharmacist had been trying to fax the paperwork to the doctor’s new office, not knowing that my mother is no longer his patient. He had extended her prescriptions himself, already, but he could only do it for 4 weeks, and only once. Then he gave me a copy of the forms they faxed to the doctor’s new clinic. When I take my mother to see the interim doctor, I can bring them along for her to sign, so there should be no hassle trying to look up what my mother needs renewed.
I waited until I knew my mother would be up from the nap she was going to take after I left before calling to let her know. I talked again about how this is going to be just about the prescriptions. This doctor isn’t taking new patients, so there’s no point bringing up any of the other things my mother wants to talk about. She always brings up the same things, but she’s convinced the doctors are hiding what’s “really” wrong with her and not telling her everything.
Then she started saying my brother should be taking her to the doctor. Because he’s so smart and knows English so well. Nice sideways insult thrown at me with that one. I pointed out that taking her to appointments is part of my “job” in living here. My brother not only has a much longer drive, but he would have to take time off work to do it.
Then she started complaining that my brother hardly ever calls her or visits her. I know full well he calls her, even though she treats him like crap when he does, and he is incredibly busy. I eventually got out of her that she was talking about how he used to visit almost weekly. This was before we moved onto the property. He would drive out here after work on Fridays, do more work around the property, trying to fix things, and since my mother’s place was along the route, he would stop and visit her, too. Part of our living here was to take that burden off of my brother, so he wouldn’t have to make the long drive out all the time. She didn’t care. She thinks he needed to keep right on making the drive out, just to visit her. She even said he needs to come out more often, because she’s getting older and he has to take care of her. I told her there’s three of us to take care of her, and it was wrong to put the entire burden on my brother, when he is the one least able to do it! He’s got his full time job, his own property to take care of and lives the furthest away. She pretty much told me flat out, she didn’t care.
*sigh*
This, after she betrayed him so badly not long ago. She still can’t understand that there was anything wrong with what she did and has essentially forgotten about it.
So… that phone call wrung me out even more than the drive with her today!
My poor brother. He’s such a good man.
For all the stuff going on, it was good to at least see him and his amazing wife today!
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!
First of all, allow me to introduce to you our new addition.
Hello, Marlee!
The poor cat lady was in tears as she passed Marlee on to us. We’ve since been chatting about her history, and my heart just breaks for her. She wasn’t physically abused, quite traumatized. Abandoned by her owners, she watched as her stuff – her cat tower, her litter boxes, everything – was thrown away after her owners kicked her outside. The new owners were “not cat people”, and would chase her away from the drier vent she was trying to keep warm under with a broom. A 90 yr old neighbour with cancer fed her every day for 2 years, before she finally called for help, fearing that no one else would take over if she died. The cat lady trapped her, but was turned away by rescues and vets repeatedly, until her own vet was finally willing to look at her. She was deemed “semi-feral” and would never be a “good” cat. They recommended euthanizing her.
The cat lady kept her, but it was 2 months before she would allow any pets, and she never settled in. She was clearly miserable. When passing Marlee on to us, she said she feared the cat would think she was being abandoned again, but at least she would be safer, outdoors with us on the farm.
Well, we’ll see about that.
When I got home, my brother was here, so after unloading the van, the girls took over while I stayed outside to help him.
Yeah. That’s Marlee, accepting scritches. My daughter had poked her fingers through the baby jail walls. Marlee came right over and head bumped her. So my daughter worked her way to reaching in and petting her, and Marlee was just loving it! She loves head scritches (which make her drool like crazy!), and accepts belly and side pets, but doesn’t like her tail or back touched. She was eating well, too. We’ve got Big Rig in my office/bedroom, too, where she will likely stay while recovering from surgery, and Big Rig is being less friendly than Marlee!
When I told the cat lady about it, she was amazed, and then shared the rest of Marlee’s background story. As she described the people moving out, and the neighbours feeding the abandoned cat, I was picturing some typical urban neighbourhood.
Nope.
That house sold for over a million dollars. And her owners got a house in Toronto, which has some of the most expensive housing in the Canada.
Clearly, lack of funds had nothing to do with the cat being abandoned!
One thing is for sure. We’re going to do everything we can to help this lady settle in to a safe and comfortable forever home. Yes, we still have lots of cats, inside and out, that need to be adopted out, but this one is going to stay.
Which reminds me…
Plushy and Princess (who now have new names) were supposed to go to one family, but two neighbouring households. Well, the two of them get along so well, the family decided not to separate them. They will be in one household, and Grandma will just have to walk over to visit her cat! 😄
On a related note…
When I came out to do my morning rounds, the first thing I saw when I stepped outside was a tiny little tuxedo running around! He quickly dashed under the cat house.
He was a hungry little one! (I’m just using the generic “he” – we have no idea if it’s male or female).
Later on, I spotted the tabby.
Usually, I just see his mostly white face. This is the first time I’ve had a decent look at the markings on the rest of him.
Well. Part of the rest of him.
After I came back from getting Big Rig and Marlee, I spotted the tuxedo again, running around, going in and out of the sun room, and exploring.
Here was have one of the littles, next to one of the oldest kittens!
With all the commotion while the roofers were working, I hardly saw the bitties at all, but I still wasn’t seeing the orange one. This concerned me, so I spent some time trying to see into the cat house, until I spotted what looked like orange fur. One of my daughters was able to come out to give me a hand with opening the cat house to check.
Sadly, the little orange bitty was dead. It’s eyes were crusted shut, and its nose covered with dried mucus. From the looks of it, other cats had been snuggled up to him. It’s possible he had been smothered, or it was a combination of respiratory illness and smothering. It definitely wasn’t the cold. This one did seem smaller and weaker compared to its siblings, so I can’t say I’m surprised, but it was very saddening. We even had someone wanting to adopt him.
As for the other two, we’ve had no luck socializing. I was actually able to catch the tuxedo, but he was NOT happy with that, and I ended up bleeding quite a bit for my efforts! Which, unfortunately, has probably set back our efforts to socialize them.
The cat lady passed on some food donations, including large cans of wet cat food. Tomorrow morning, I think I’ll dump a can into a bowl, break it apart, then spread spoon fulls out all over, making sure the bigger cats are busy with eating before making sure the bitties get their share.
Along with the food donations, she also passed on a couple of cat caves and a bunch of treats, too! She has been able to help us out with the cats so much, we’re more than happy doing what we can to help her back, by taking in Marlee (who I can hear growling at other cats behind me right now, from the safety of her cage). We just did the evening wet cat food feeding in my office, and she was quite happy while she was eating, at least! The grey lady needs some more TLC, I think. 😊
The girls had set up a next in a laundry basket for the bitty kitties, which they promptly climbed out of. Last night, we kept them in the cat carrier for the night, to be safe (and I got some sleep!).
Butterscotch does NOT like the kittens. She hisses and runs away from them, clearly very unhappy. Nosencrantz growls and them, but won’t go near them. Cheddar sees them and runs away.
Then… there’s Leyendecker.
He has claimed the laundry basket as a bed.
He will chase after them and insists on grooming them. When he lay in the basket, I put the bitties in with him, and he immediately starting licking them both!
The kittens are quite active as I write this. And loud! They are wandering all over my office/bedroom as I write this. I got the heat pad for under seedling trays out. It’s water proof, so I put it under their bowl of formula. The little black and white one, which is more content to turn into a loaf and just sit for a while, discovered it. 😁
The grey and white tabby is definitely the more active one, and rarely settles for more than a few moments. It’s very talkative, too!
It’s coming up on 9:30am as I write this. The cat lady was hoping to get here by about 10am. Not much longer before we’ll be saying goodbye to the bitties, and turning them over to her tender loving care. She’ll be able to get them checked by a vet, too.
Oh, a bitty is crying by my feet now. Gotta watch out when I roll back my office chair, that’s for sure!
This morning there was a real crowd when I came out to feed the yard cats!
I’ve taken to leaving kibble on the ground for the babies that like to hide under the cat house. Counting these four, I spotted 27 cats this morning! There were more adults than usual, but certainly not all of them.
Sadly, as I was putting food out, I checked inside the cat house, as I always do, and spotted a little black and white kitten.
It was lying alone, in the middle of the floor, looking like it was asleep. Except, it wasn’t.
Now, I know the cat house was empty when I checked it last night. My best guess is that the bitties were hiding under it, then made their way inside during the night. Or just one of them did. There was no sign of the dark one.
I buried it with Keith.
Definitely a sad way to start the day.
Today being a warmer and sunnier day, I started working on cleaning out and winterizing the sun room. In the process, I found the buckets of old seeds my mother saved over the years. Some had vague information on the packets like “yellow flower”. Others had nothing.
I ended up dumping all but the tree seeds into a shoebox sized bin. Found some squash seeds of some kind in the process, and what look like dried currants. The packages said only “shrub” on them.
I decided to just fling them out somewhere. These are old seeds that have been through temperature extremes in the sun room, so germination rates would be very low, but who knows?
I decided to fling them somewhere in the outer yard, closer to the secondary gate. As I was leaving the inner yard, though, I changed my mind.
Out by those willows, things got very wet with the spring flooding we had this year. I figured in a more average spring, it would be a better place for the seeds, as it would at least have more moisture.
That arrow is not where I flung the seeds.
As I took the mowed path towards one of the Korean pines, I suddenly started hearing tiny mews.
That arrow is going to where I found a pair of bitty kitties! The second black and white one, and the grey and white tabby. They were at the base of a tree, and there was no sign of a mama. There were broken branches all over, hidden in the grass, but I got to them and picked them up. They were mewing like crazy, so I quickly (and carefully!) made my way to the south end of the trees, flung the seeds, then put the kittens in the bin to carry them home.
As soon as I got inside, I turned them over to the girls, then went back to look for the dark grey little spitfire. While I did that, I sent a message to the cat lady.
It turns out we have a much better data signal in the outer yard than in the house!
After a few messages, the cat lady called me and we talked about the bitties. She is going to be in the area tomorrow morning, so she will make coming here her first stop. She just ran out of kitten milk with the babies she’s already taking care of, but will pick up more. We will giver her the formula we have now, too.
Then I kept looking for the last kitten in the tall grass. Unfortunately, many other kittens came out to follow me, so any time I stopped to listen for meowing, I was hearing bigger kittens rustling through the tall grass.
I kept looking, using the flashlight on my phone, until my daughter came out to get me. She had seen an owl swooping around, so we needed to get the kittens back to the house. I moved ahead so they would keep following me, while my daughter kept watch. Once by the house, I rattled kibble bowls and topped up the water bowls to get their attention, and they eventually all came over.
Meanwhile, my other daughter was with the babies in my bedrooms/office. They had set up a nest in a laundry basket, but the kittens climbed right out, found the kibble bowls for the other cats, and started eating. Amazingly, Leyendecker was following them around, trying to lick them. Including butt licking. Which is good. Butt licking is very important for such young kittens, and I’d rather he did it, than have to try and simulate it with a damp cloth! While two of us were there to play interference, my daughter opened a can of wet cat food and divided it up, setting bowls in different places for Nosencrantz and Butterscotch (who wanted nothing to do with the bitties!), and the smallest bowl for the bitties.
These babies seem to have had guardian angels watching over them!
They dove right in. The only problem was, they kept trying to bite the sides of the bowl, too!
As encouraging a sight that was, dehydration was another concern. After a while, we broke out the kitchen scale to weigh them, so we could calculate how much formula powder to mix with water. My daughter ended up having to bring a mixing bowl to put on the scale, zero it out, then put a kitten in the bowl. The grey and white tabby was 430 grams/15 oz, and the black and white was only 310 grams/11 oz.
My daughters took care of getting a bottle and formula ready while I tried to comfort the babies. They just wouldn’t stop mewing. The grey and white one really runs around a lot! The black and white will sit quietly for a while, but then wants to be with its sibling and starts trying to find it.
We tried to feed them with a bottle, but it just did not work. They didn’t want to take it, and when they did, the formula didn’t want to flow, even though we snipped the nipple as the instructions described. Finally, we tried pouring some into a tiny bowl to see how that worked.
The bowl was too tiny for both of them, as the voraciously went after the milk! One of my daughters ran to get a small rectangular bowl, and that worked much better. After giving them a chance to have some, we transferred them, and the bowl, into the cat carrier we’d set up so we could safely tuck them away as needed.
Once they were done, they started crying at the door, so I let them out. They were both absolutely wet with formula, and seemed to be quite happy with nice, full bellies!
As I type this, the black and white is curled up against my shoulder. The grey and white tabby had settled on my thigh, but is now on my wrist, wondering what my fingers are doing on the keyboard!
And mewing.
I’m not going to get much sleep tonight.
My only concern right now is for the kitten we never found. I can only hope that it is safe with the mama somewhere.
With Nosencrantz insisting in spending her days tucked into an empty shelf behind my nightstand, I decided she should at least have a bed. So last night, I quickly crocheted one for her.
Before I was done, Turmeric was isolated in my room with me, Butterscotch and Nosencrantz for her fast. B & N were not impressed with the company. Turmeric is one of the cats that has been the most aggressive towards them. Particularly towards Nosencrantz. So they were both hiding in their nests, while Turmeric roamed the rest of the room.
Which is why Turmeric got to test out the new bed, first!
It looks so tiny compared to her from this angle. Trust me; it’s large enough for a cat to curl up in! :-D
When the girls did the evening cat stuff (which is when they get wet cat food), Turmeric was tucked into the bathroom until B & N were finished eating.
It was not a good night.
Normally, once the other cats are closed out, so that B & N can at least get some wet cat food, uninterrupted, that’s when they come out and eat, drink, use the litter, and play.
I don’t get a lot of sleep these days.
They couldn’t do that as much, last night. Of course, there was no other food once the bowls with the wet cat food were cleared away. Just water. At least three times during the night, I had actual cat fights happen as Turmeric went after Nosencrantz! Poor thing. Then, when I wasn’t breaking up cat fights, I was fending of Turmeric attention, as she decided the best way to get at Nosencrantz’s cubby hole was by first snuggling my face and licking my nose (because noses are delicious, apparently), then making a dash for the opening behind my night stand.
So adorable and nasty, at the same time!
I finally got some sleep, just in time for my alarm to go off. I had given myself extra time, so I figured I could set my timer for half an hour and still have time to get ready to go.
I think I forgot to hit the start button.
An hour later, I woke up and had to start scrambling! I didn’t have time to do the morning cat stuff, though once I had Turmeric in the carrier, I had enough time to put food out for the outside cats – startling away several deer in the yard – before we left.
Turmeric wasn’t too impressed with being carried, but once in the van, she settled down very quickly.
She even took a bit of a nap.
What a face.
Drop off time was for when the vet clinic opened, and I got there early – though when I checked my phone, the appointment was for a half hour later. I hadn’t needed to rush so much! No matter. They had no problem taking her when they opened.
My daughter usually has been doing this part, since the mask thing because an issue. The restriction is lifted, but there were still signs all over, stating that they were a “health care facility” and required masks.
They had zero issue with my maskless face.
The paperwork was done. The Cat Lady and her new rescue are covering the cost of the spay, while the tattoo is a clinic freebie. The pain meds for afterwards is not covered, but we might still have enough left over from when Beep Beep and Fenrir were done. I checked the bottle when I got home, and I think we’ll pick up more, just in case. The doses are low – especially for such light cats (Turmeric weighed in at just over 5 pounds) – but I’d rather have extra than not enough.
As I write this, she should be out of surgery and recovering. We’re set to pick her up at 3:30, though they’ll call us when she is ready.
Today also happens to be my and my husband’s 34th wedding anniversary. He’s not up to going out for dinner, so I’ll be picking up some pizza on the way home, courtesy of my daughter. We’ll be trying a different place this time. I’ll have enough time to drop off Turmeric and the food, then head out again to pick up our meat order. I just got the invoice this morning, and will be picking up the order this evening.
Now that’s my kind of anniversary gift! :-D
We do get a giggle out of the fact that we’re meeting up in a parking lot to get meat, like it’s some sort of drug deal. :-D
It’s going to be quite a day for running around from town to town! Worth it, though.
The Re-Farmer 