So far, we still have just one developing eggplant right now – a Little Finger Eggplant, and it is getting noticeably bigger. Still very small, but at this stage, growth should be quick. This variety grows long and thin.
I also spotted a couple of lady Crespo squash blossoms! Which, of course, got hand pollinated. There are so few of them, I won’t take a chance and leave it to the bugs to pollinate!
Before I headed out this morning, we tended to the sick kitties. The orange and white one spent the night indoors in the carrier with eyes baby. He likes to use her as a pillow. They could keep each other company – and keep each other warm!
While my daughter was in the shower, I brought the orange and white kitten into the bathroom to enjoy the steam while I washed his eyes, then just held him. He nose is as leaky as his eyes, poor thing.
After a while, I set him in the sun room, in baby jail, then got eyes baby. Her eyes are still so very swollen, and one of them looks like it’s popping out of her skull. They don’t seem to be leaking, but I don’t know if that means much. She got her eyes washed and a feeding. Since she can’t seem to see to eat, and we don’t have a feeding syringe, we took the kitten baby bottle and put very thin cat soup in it – with supplements mixed in – and chopped the tip off of one of the bottle nipples. The opening is large enough for the more solid food to get through. Eyes baby was definitely hungry, and even tried chomping on the bottle, but was also finished very quickly.
Around when my daughter started running out of hot water, we did the eye drops. The kitten was very wet and messy, so I’d washed her fur a bit, so I spent some time sitting with her in my arms, rubbing her down with paper towel, until she stopped shivering. Then I put here in baby jail with the orange and white kitten, before I did my morning rounds. When I came back, I found the two kittens, still snuggling.
Unfortunately, neither of them is getting better. In fact, later this afternoon, the orange and white kittens eyes were oozing and stuck shut. I washed them, which he really didn’t like, but at least he could see again! Eyes baby likes to sleep in the sun, but a few times I went past her, I stopped to see if she was breathing. She really looks bad. I have no doubt that if we took them to a vet, they’d recommend putting both of them down. I keep expecting to find them gone, but they manage to keep going!
How is it that these obviously sick kittens are managing to hang in there, while I buried so many kittens this year that never looked sick at all?
We do the best we can for them. Unfortunately, it isn’t much. When the Cat Lady took Button to the vet, it cost her almost $700. I don’t even want to think how much it would cost to treat these two!
Some of the other kittens have leaky eyes that are looking messy, but nothing like these two. Hopefully, they will recover on their own, because we can’t catch any of them.
If all goes well, we should have the cat isolation shelter ready, and will be able to use it to house any of the more feral cats for treatment or convalescence.
Which is what I’ve been working on today. More on that in my next post!
We had eyeball baby inside for the night again, and she got her eye drops in the evening, after and eye wash. This morning, another eye wash and more drops. This time, I was able to get the eyelids open more, and she didn’t seem to be too bothered by the drops, which is good. I’m pretty sure she’s going to loose one eye, though. It’s hard to say, since the lids are still so swollen. On the plus side – I think – there is no oozing infection like before. The eyes are still leaking, for sure, but not the gunk like she had before.
After her eye drops, she went back into the carrier to hopefully eat and drink some more, before letting her outside again. I put her in the cage in the sunroom, as far onto their favourite cat bed on the bottom as I could reach. She went right onto the bed, and settled into a corner. I set a plushie beside her, but she didn’t go near it. The outside cats had already been fed, and the orange and white kitten had gotten his eyes washed, too. He was loafed in front of the sunroom door, so I picked him up, cuddled him a bit, then set him into the cat cage, too. He went straight for eyeball baby and snuggled with her!
The photo above was taken just a little while ago. Eyeball baby may not be able to see, but she can still find her way out of the cat cage and make her way around, so she must be able to at least see something.
Meanwhile, I got an update on how Button is doing.
When the folks at the clinic first saw him, they were convinces he was only three weeks old. The Cat Lady said, no way – I would have told her if he was born just three weeks ago! They ended up aging him at 11 weeks, but he weighed only half a kilogram – about a pound. Also:
Panleuk test: negative feline leukemia test: negative He has URD (upper respiratory), but I expected that. Grade 3 heart murmur Earmites are so bad, they believe his hearing is permanently damaged, but he was definitely born hearing.
To quote the Cat Lady “they have seen a lot of tiny kittens but this takes the cake.” She sent me a picture of her youngest daughter as she took Button outside for some exercise, and he looked even smaller than ever – barely the size of her foot!
The vet was saying they think he has failure to thrive.
Uhm… yeah. That’s really obvious.
One visit, and they’re already saying that this kitten has already really beaten the odds. My thought it, there was probably a reason he was abandoned by the mother, whoever it was. He’s a feisty little one, though.
They’ll be seeing him in two weeks, and hope to be able to vaccinate him then.
Which means, I guess, that he won’t be going to his forever home in one week, as originally planned!
I hope the woman that said she would adopt him doesn’t back out.
Since the folks at the vet clinic had been so sure Button was much younger, I went looking up my posts and photos to confirm when we found him. It was on July 4, and it’s August 16, now. So we’ve been tending him for 6 weeks, as of yesterday. When I found him, I was pretty sure he was close to weaning age, based on his behaviour and eating habits, which would typically be 6-8 weeks old. So them aging him at 11 weeks adds up.
Well, he is in excellent hands now. I just hate that we ended up passing another sicker-than-expected cat to the rescue!
I have to admit, I’m honestly starting to think seriously of culling the outside cats. Maybe not all of them – we did manage to get some of the dudes neutered – but most. They seem to have way too many health problems. We seem to have an unusually bad strain of feline herpes that seems to be resulting in life long URD, even after they’ve been taken indoors or adopted out. Cats from other colonies around us that got adopted out have been recovering, then never having problems again, so this is unusual. However, we’ve found several of them have had heart problems, several of the ladies that got spayed turned out to have uterine abnormalities. These are things that can’t be treated by simply getting them fixed, vaccinated or adding immune boosting supplements to their foods. We do the best we can for them, but it may be that our good intentions are actually causing more problems.
It’s an unpleasant line of thinking, but we just may not have a choice. Not just about the ongoing health problems, but the sheer cost of taking care of them – and that’s with help from the rescue and donations! We’ll never be completely without yard cats. They earn their keep and keep the rodent population down. But to have so many is something else entirely. We don’t even know how many we have right now, since they come and go, this time of year.
Meanwhile, we’re doing things like bringing in a sick kitty to tend to and medicate it that nature probably would have taken care of some time ago, if we weren’t such sucks for the cats!
Speaking of which, I got more progress on the isolation shelter. I will write about that in my next post.
This morning didn’t need as much time out in the garden. I didn’t do any watering, as the forecast was for rain, possible thunderstorms, this afternoon, with rain continuing through to tomorrow.
I should have checked again before I headed out, though. Now we have an only 30% chance of rain in the late afternoon. We might still get rain overnight. Ah, well. The high for today is expected to be 25C/77C. I think things should be okay. Right now, we’re already at 24C/75F, while humidex makes it feel like 28C/82F, and it’s not even noon yet, as I write this.
There was one G Star patty pan squash that was getting quite large – but the other one that I hoped was well pollinated hasn’t been growing any bigger at all, so I left it. It’s not turning yellow or looking like it’s going to drop off, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, there are more female flowers that should be opening soon, so we should have more patty pans to harvest soon.
I also spotted an open female winter squash blossom, while harvesting the peas and beans, that was on a vine that, as far as I can tell, has not had any female flowers yet. This vine is at one end of a bed, so it’s easier to tell it from other vines.
I made sure to hand pollinate it!
I’m spotting female flower buds on other vines, too, including the Crespo squash. Given that it’s August 14, and our first average frost date is Sept. 10, it’s unlikely they’ll have time to mature, but… you never know!
So here was have another little harvest for the day. Nothing compared to past years, but then, we have a very different garden this year!
In other things…
Last night, my older daughter went into the sunroom to check on a commotion, and the kitten with the messed up eyes came over and started squeaking at her. The poor thing’s eyelids were so swollen, it’s basically blind. We gave its eyes a wash, and ended up putting it in a carrier with some food and water for the night.
This would be a good time to have the isolation cage we’re working on right now!
It wasn’t happy being in the carrier, but eventually settled down. I get the impression it can still see something, but not much. I’m hoping to connect with the Cat Lady soon, as she said she had something she could give me to treat the eyes, when she picks up Button.
With the kitten in the carrier in my bedroom, I ended up leaving my computer on all night – I found a black screen video on YouTube with the sound of a cat purring for 10 hours, and I had that playing. It seemed to help. Not just for the kitten, who slept solidly all night, but the other cats in the room, too! While the baby was squeaking (it has the strangest meow!), they were very curious about it, that’s for sure! We also gave it some wet cat food with lysine mixed in, but I don’t think it ate any.
This morning, we have it’s eyes another wash – my daughter thinks they are getting better – and then I took it with me when I fed the outside cats. I think I saw it starting to eat and drink in the sun room. By the time I came back with my little harvest, I found it curled up in one of the cat beds, sleeping soundly.
We’ll see how it does and, if it seems warranted, we’ll keep it in the carrier for the night again.
I also had a less than pleasant surprise when I left the sun room to feed the outside cats. I found another stillbirth. More like a miscarriage, I’d say. The kitten was recognizable as a kitten, but the placenta was at least twice the size of it! I made sure to look, and there was only the one. I can’t even begin to guess with cat was the mama.
I have no doubt this sort of thing has been happening with the yard cats in the past, but this is the first year it’s been happening right next to the house, for us to find. I wonder what has changed. It’s not like the females are any less feral this year.
Ah, well.
Meanwhile, I need to get back to work on the isolation shelter. I’m going to have to nap first, though. I got to thinking about the design and decided to make some changes. I ended up spending time flipping the design around in my head, working out the best ways to assemble things with the materials I have, and what pieces I’ll be needing to cut and paint, and before I knew it, it was past 5am, and I hadn’t slept a wink! The last thing I need is to be using power tools while half asleep.
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!
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!
My daughter and I loaded Leyendecker up and took him to the vet, today. I wasn’t able to get a picture, so here’s one from last year.
This is from when we were taking him to the vet and found out he was blocked.
He is too big for that carrier! The carrier can be opened from the top, where the handle it. Seeing my daughter carry him to the car, I could see the top door bending from his weight! Once we got to the clinic, I carried the box with both arms, rather than the handle.
Once he was in the carrier, he started howling and yelling and wailing! I heard sounds coming from that cat I’ve never heard before! We even popped up the back seats (I’ve had them flat, so I can put my mother’s walker in the back without having to fold it) so that the carrier could be in one seat, and my daughter in the other, trying to comfort him. He yelled the entire way. Even as I was carrying him into the clinic, he was wailing.
That’s one way to get right into an examination room, even though we were half an hour early!
So it’s not good news, but not really bad news.
Also, that boy did NOT want to give a urine sample, and he’s so big – just under 22 pounds! – they couldn’t take a sample from him via a needle directly into his bladder. We could see in the ultrasound that things were cloudy. He even conveniently tried to pee while lying in the V shaped pillow on his back, and we could see the muscled contract, cloudiness going through his urethra – then going back into his bladder!
They were able to collect barely enough urine from him to get it tested. There were the expected high readings due to stress – and he was massively stressed out! – and some bacteria. Not that it was a clean sample, since she literally collected it as he leaked. When he was blocked before, one thing they did NOT find were crystals. This time, he did have crystals in his urine.
Crap.
But, he is still able to urinate, if uncomfortably and all over the house, so we caught it in time.
He’s now on the same medical regime he came home with last time, after he’d had his hospital stay. Onsior for cats, an anti-inflammatory, Clavaseptin, an antibiotic, and Prazosin, a smooth muscle relaxant. He’ll be taking half pills twice a day for 10 days, then once a day for another 10 days, with just one of the medications. We got extra of the Prazosin, just in case he needs it for longer.
We also picked up some anti UTI cat food. A 2.72kg (about 6 pounds) bag cost over $50. It actually cost more than 20 doses of Prazosin. We’d had some before, but he didn’t like it, and the cost was prohibitive. We tried a different brand that we hope he’ll like better.
The problem is going to be the food. We normally just have food available for the cats to eat at their leisure. For most of the cats, this is not a problem. Leyendecker, however, is going to have to be fed separately, which means we can’t have other cat food around all the time.
So from now one, we’re going to be feeding the cats – and giving Leyendecker his meds – at 8am and 8pm, with a third feeding (no meds for Leyendecker this time) at 2pm. With his special dry cat food, he’s supposed to get 1 1/2 cups a day, so half a cup each feeding. We’ll give him some of the wet cat food, which we do every evening, as well, but it’s never a large amount.
It was also recommended to try giving him cranberry juice, to increase the acidity of his urine. How, we’re not sure. The vet only knew of one person who gave it to their dog to successfully treat a UTI. It won’t harm the cats, so we could try adding it to their water fountain, but more likely we will get some cranberry supplements and add the powder to his food.
We’ll figure it out.
Meanwhile, we are now $345 and change poorer. It meant going into the money we were setting aside for a downpayment on a new van.
*sigh*
It could have been worse.
Ah, I hear the girls coming down the stairs. Time for the evening medications and feeding!
We’re supposed to get quite hot for the next while, so I tried going to be very early. Usually, I don’t go to bed until 2 am or so. Especially this time of year, when it’s still light out for so long. So “early” usually means “before midnight” for me. Instead, I tried to be in bed by about 8, hoping to be up and about outside by 5.
It didn’t work.
Some people can fall asleep soon after lying down. My husband has always been able to do that. I’ve never been one of these! I think I did finally fall asleep before midnight, but didn’t wake up any earlier.
Also, I need to start being very careful rolling over at night, because I’m starting to wake up with kittens chewing on my toes!
Anyhow.
The first order of business outside was to feed the cats. One of the first cats to show up was Octomom! I think the girls had called her Slick, but she’s around so infrequently, the name didn’t stick.
She is such a beauty! She didn’t like me being around, though, and kept moving away as I set kibble out in different places.
Last of all, I put kibble in the bowl in the garage for her. It was not only empty, but I could see in the box nest, that she had been digging around for any remaining kibble that might have been left behind in there.
Since the mama was at the kibble house, I took advantage of it. I grabbed one of the blankets, then went over to the barrel the kittens are in. After removing the “cover” (a sheet of aluminum weighed down with a brick), I took out the rotted pieces of the barrel top that had fallen inside, then lay down the blanket on one half of the bottom – which, I could not see, is just dirt. The barrel is upside down. The pieces I had taken out used to be the “floor” of the barrel. Now, it’s open at both ends.
After moving all the kittens onto the blanket, I went and got the other one and tucked it into the other half. Then I found some clean pieces of wood in the garage. They used to be part of the packaging for the wood chipper, if I remember correctly. They are longer, and I put them at angles above the kittens. This gives the mama something to land on when she jumps in, and an area to perch on above her kittens, when she needs a baby break.
By the time I was putting the cover back on, the mama was returning, and she was not happy to see me! She hovered around, growling at me, until I moved away. I watched as she climbed up to the rim of the barrel and looked down, but she did not go in yet. Instead, she perched on the edge and glared at me! The last I saw, she had moved onto the other barrel and continued to watch as I continued my morning rounds. I’ve been out that way a couple of times, since, and once I saw her in the grass. Later on, I’ll have to check again, when I’m sure the mama isn’t around.
As I headed back to the sun room, I spotted this.
It’s SuperAdam!
I don’t think any of those kittens are her own, and there are kittens from at least 3, possibly 4, litters that she is nursing!
One of the things I checked this morning was the raspberries, of course.
Those purple raspberries we transplanted this spring are doing amazing! The one in the photo is the largest of the three. We have been able to pick a whole 5 ripe raspberries from the three bushes.
The other image is of the raspberries I picked from the ones in the main garden area. My mother had transplanted them in the area long before we moved out here. Now that the crab apple tree that was there has died and was cut down, the raspberry bushes at that end, and around the old compost pile, are doing much better! The ones at the other end, closer to the chokecherry tree, are not doing as well.
Also, I don’t know if you’re seeing the bowl of raspberries okay, but after I uploaded the images to Instagram, that picture now looks like it’s got a semitransparent black overlay on it. Instagram seems to have issues with multiple images uploaded at once.
One of the other things I worked on this morning was an experiment.
I took the remains of some chicken wire and added it to the box frame. It’s just held in place with wire twists. I had a lot less chicken wire than I thought; not even enough to cover one side.
We do have enough of the black netting we got last year to cover it completely, which we might use as a temporary cover. I definitely want to use hardware cloth attached semi-permanently to the sides. I will probably put some on the top, too, but not permanently. The thing it, once the sides are covered, the only way to tend the bed would be to remove the box cover completely. That would be a 2 person job, to avoid damaging the corn.
Hmm… I was just thinking, as I look at that picture. Right now, I’ve got the excess wire over the top. The hardware cloth also comes in 4′ widths. I could have excess mesh on the bottom, covering the sides of the raised bed. That would ensure critters won’t be able to slip under the bottom of the box cover. It would also serve to keep the whole thing from getting knocked off the bed by a determined critter.
Something to think about.
By the time this was done, it was getting too hot and humid to stay outside, and it wasn’t even 10am yet!
We have a change in plans for today, anyhow.
We got a call from the vet clinic about Leyendecker’s appointment tomorrow. Looks like they got a cancellation or something, because they were asking if we could come in today, instead! So he now has a 4:30 appointment today.
Hopefully, it will not be something serious, but after his last vet visits, I have my doubts. 😟
I phoned the vet clinic today and asked about the kitten we brought over last week because of it’s messed up eye, that promptly got adopted. He is doing fine! His eye was removed just a couple of days ago. While talking to the receptionist, she told me her daughter was playing with, as we were speaking.
That was really wonderful to hear!
I wonder if he will end up becoming a clinic cat? They had one before they moved to the new location, but I haven’t seen it since the move.
Next the concerning news.
I phoned the vet clinic today.
For the past while, we’ve been having issues with cats spraying around the house, but lately there have been massive problems with finding huge puddles of pee all over the place. Some regular spots included in front of the fridge, in front of the washing machine, in front of the main door, in front of the toilet, and under my older daughter’s bed.
It turns out to be Leyendecker. He’s not just spraying anymore. He seems to be losing bladder control, and he’s not happy about it!
We have an appointment for him on Saturday.
The last time he was there, it was because he was blocked and couldn’t pee at all. Now, he can’t stop peeing!
Poor bugger.
On a completely different note…
While going through the gardens beds this morning, I was thinking it’s time to pull the peas.
They’re about done their season, but mostly it’s because their tops are gone, and so are most of the developing pods. They never got very tall, but are now even shorter. My guess is a deer has simply been walking along the chain link fence, munching away. On both sides! There are still some pods developing, but I’ve been harvesting maybe 3 of 4 pods, at most, in the mornings and just snacking on them while I do my rounds.
When it comes to pulling the plants, though, they won’t actually be pulled, but cut. Peas are nitrogen fixers, but to take advantage of that while planting something else, it turns out the roots should be left in the ground.
One more reason I’m happy to have discovered the Gardening in Canada channel! I did not know that until recently.
Once those are clear, however, that leaves a long bed with room for something else.
In the second half of July.
We only have about 50 days before first frost.
Maybe. For the past couple of years, we didn’t get a first frost until much, much later. Based on those years, we may actually have another 4-4 1/2 months of growing season left.
Or we can get frost in July or August. It happens. That’s the problem when working with averages. The real world doesn’t know what those are! 😄
There are actually quite a few options available.
Among the usual recommendations are some we just won’t bother with. Arugula, for example, is something we just don’t eat, so we don’t even have the seeds. Radishes are another one, and we do have seeds, but they are something I want to grow for the pods to try, so they need a full season. None of us are actually keen on eating radish bulbs.
Among the greens we could plant, and have seeds for, spinach is something we enjoy. We haven’t done well with lettuces, as I found they got bitter even before they bolted. We also still have Swiss Chard seeds if we want a different green.
Bok Choy is a recommended crop, but the only seeds I had were the tiny ones that got smothered by the Chinese elm seeds. The few surviving ones are going to seed and pods are developing, so I’m hoping to save seed and try them again next year. Somewhere else!
Some varieties of carrots can be started now, as they handle frost well and can be left in the soil in the winter, if covered well enough. We already have 2 types of carrots, and I don’t want to start more now.
Summer squash is supposed to be something that can still be sown now, since they get harvested while small. I’ve already reseeded summer squash three times with poor success, so that’s out. They would be too big for the space, anyhow.
It’s the same issue with planting bush beans. We could use more beans, but we’ve got the onions planted where the Czech lettuce and tiny bok choy were choked out. Bush beans would cover them completely.
We could try more turnips and/or beets. The beets we planted earlier are really struggling. Perhaps they would do better in this bed. The Gold Ball turnips are growing, but I do have some leftover seed from varieties we tried last year, too.
We could actually plant the Dalvay peas again. We certainly have enough seeds, but I’m not interested in feeding the deer even more, as much as I would love to have a real pea crop to harvest!
Hhhmm. I think it will come down to either beets or spinach. Considering the length of the bed, and how the chain link fence posts conveniently divide it into three equal sections, we could do smaller rows of three different things, and still get decent potential quantities.
Whatever we decide on, we’ll be making sure to work in the early morning hours over the next week or more. We’re looking at temperatures at, or over, 30C/86F to deal with, and the hottest part of the day it typically around 4 or 5pm, and it stays hot until 8 or 9pm. As I write this, it’s almost 6:30pm, and we’ve been at our high of 27C/81F for a couple of hours already. It’s not going to drop to comfortable temperatures until almost midnight. Looking at the long range forecast, we’ll be getting temperatures just below 30C/86F for the rest of the month.
Which makes it weird to think about what cool weather/frost hardy crops we can plant right now!
When I finally got outside to do my evening stuff, I was able to pick a bunch of peas and raspberries.
It seems quite a lot of our peas have been “topped” by deer, but they seem to like the leaves, and not the pods.
I wanted to have that photo first, so no one squeamish sees the next photo in the post previews. You are warned!
The first time I started to go outside, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. After putting the food out, I was able to snag it and bring it inside for an eye washing.
That eye was looking worse than ever. The swelling was massive, and it looked like the eye was not going to make it.
We decided to call the vet. After talking to them for a bit, they had me come in as an emergency visit. This is how the kitten looked after we got it in the carrier.
That is not good. Not good at all. You can’t actually see in the photo, just how bad the swelling is. Just a great big ball over his cheek bone and partly towards his ear. While we washed the eye, I move the lids around and could see gunk was accumulating under the eyelids, too – not something we had any way to wash out.
By the time I got to the vet, it actually looked better, though all the pink tissue was blood red. The eyeball itself no longer looked cloudy, like in the photo.
I was taken to an examination room immediately. Just before leaving, I messaged the Cat Lady with the above photo, and we chatted for a bit while I waited for the vet. She has seen this before and told me about some medications that worked wonders for her, in just a couple of days. I was feeling better about that, by the time the doctor came in.
Not so much for the Cat Lady, though.
Her cat that is blocked is back in surgery, and he’s either going to make it, or be euthanized, depending on how things go. They’ve already spent thousands of dollars on this cat. I’m assuming they are doing the last ditch surgery of creating a “female” urethra. I honestly would never go that far. There can be so many problems after the surgery, and a severe reduction in quality of life. I don’t know for sure, though. Unfortunately, not only are they dealing with this, but family from out of country are in and they have to put a smile on their faces attend a family gathering. She’s a total mess – and yet she still was able to encourage me about the kitten!
When the vet came in, we talked for awhile and I explained the background on the kitten. This is only the second time I’ve been able to catch him (when I mentioned I hadn’t even had a chance to see if it was male or female, she did check and was mostly sure it’s male). She said the eye was likely related to herpes, and I told her how we’ve been giving the outside cats lysine to help with that. The adults are fine now, but once the kittens start getting weaned and eating solid food (including the mice and birds the mamas bring them), their eyes start getting gummy.
She used a light to look into his eye and confirmed that it’s gone. It’s full of blood and apparently starting to rot inside. All that swelling you can see in the photo? That’s all eyeball. *shudder* We’d be treating it for a while, and then having it removed later. So many of them have red, leaky and stuck eyes, but we can only catch a couple of them, once in a while.
The only way we could treat the kitten would be to bring it inside, of course, but that meant we would be able to control the lysine dose. They weighed him and worked out that he would be getting half a scoop – the scoop that comes with the lysine, not the size I’m using for the outside cats! – mixed into his food, twice a day. For an adult cat, it would have been 1 scoop twice a day. We would have gotten eye drops, too.
Note that I’m speaking in the past tense now.
The vet then took him out to wash his eye with saline solution, cover the eye with gel to keep it from drying out, and give him a slow release antibiotic injection.
Then she came back with him and a handful of medications to take home with him, started to talk to me about it, then asked, “unless you want to adopt him out…?”
???
I wasn’t quite sure if she was serious, but I said yes, of course. That would be a huge help. We already have too many cats in the house (the last I saw this vet, we had 16, but now Decimus and the 6 babies are inside, too).
Then she asked if I wanted to take him home first, or adopt him out now?
It seems one of the techs wanted to take him home. Now? Or Monday?
I was a bit confused, things were coming at me so jumbled. At first I was going to bring him home to treat him over the weekend, then bring him back on Monday, but then she told me to wait and went to talk to the tech again.
The tech was happy to bring him home with her right away.
So that was settled!
I was stunned, but happy.
Then I went to settle the bill. I figured it would be more than I got for the van, just this morning, and had already been checking my bank account to see what I could transfer over out of savings, if necessary. I’d mentioned to the vet that I’d been chatting with the Cat Lady, so when I was at the counter, she asked me if the rescue was covering the bill or was I? I told her the rescue was not involved with this kitten. Then I saw some semi-verbal communication between the vet and the tech that was out of view.
Suddenly I was being told it was okay. It was covered. The tech that adopted the kitten would take care of it, and I was basically – cheerfully! – kicked out. 😂😂
So… yeah.
By the time I left, I was in a bit of a daze. It all happened so quickly! I went in with a messed up kitty, worried about how we were going to pay for vet care and sure the baby was going to loose an eye. I left with the kitten in the best of hands. Who better than someone that works at a vet clinic to take care of it? The only way things could be better is if, by some miracle, the eye recovers. Unlikely, but possible.
I’m quite late starting this, because I am so very tired. One of the main reasons why is, almost no sleep last night!
We had a storm blow over us. A few of them. While we had driving rains and high winds, thunger and lightning, we did not actually get the brunt of any of the storms. From photos I saw people sharing in local groups online, the town to the north of us got hit much harder than we did!
Because of the wind and rain, we ended up propping the sun room doors like we do in the winter, making sure there was something blocking the outer door to make sure it didn’t get slammed shut. This way, the kittens and cats would have a more secure shelter in there. With the doors open, as we’ve been leaving them lately, the wind was blowing the rain straight through, and half the floor was soaked in no time. After propping the doors, we left the shop lights on, so we could check the room from the bathroom window, too.
At about 2 in the morning, one of my daughters went into the sun room to check on things. When she untied and opened the inner door, she discovered the ghost kitten huddled on the threshold between the doors, completely alone. Both its eyes were completely stuck shut.
So she brought it in. They washed its eyes, and brought it to my room to baby jail, to see if Decimus would accept her. This kitten is older than hers but at least a few weeks, but more helpless.
At first, Decimus seemed to be okay with this. The kitten immediately tried to find nip, and she did not seem to object. I was still awake, so I stayed up and watched over them for a while. When Decimus started hissing and batting at the ghost baby, I let the girls know. They came with the cat carrier and took the baby upstairs with them. They also gave it wet cat food, with a dose of lysine. It took a while to figure out the dish of food, but when she did, she basically sprawled on top of it and devoured it. Then she curled up in my daughters arms (they took turns holding her) and went to sleep.
In the morning, they tried bringing her back to Decimus. Again, Decimus seemed okay with her at first, but she was so aggressive with trying to find nip and failing, pushing the other kittens aside, we finally took her out. I’d make a quick trip into town to get some cat milk and kitten kibble, and my daughter bottle fed it for a while. Ghosty didn’t seem to figure out the bottle, either, but my daughter just squeezed the bottle so she at least got drips of the milk. Then, she was put back with Decimus.
With a full belly, she didn’t try to nurse, and just snuggled, instead. Decimus seemed quite okay with that!
So, we now have another kitten in the house. At least this one is slated to be taken by the cat lady when she gets back. She’s out of the country right now, but I’ve been sending her pictures and keeping her updates. She will take both gooby babies. While she has had no luck adopting out bonded pairs, singletons get adopted quickly. She took in a pair of older kittens from a shelter that were slated for euthanasia before she left the country, and they were adopted out within 24 hours!
Since then, I’ve also been able to catch and bring Ghosty’s litter mate inside to get its eyes and nostrils washed. It isn’t anywhere near as bad as Ghosty, but still bad enough to be a problem. It looks like these two are the only ones of this litter. I still haven’t managed to count how many are in Adam’s litter, because they run and hide so quickly. Plus, I think there is a third litter visiting the sun room. The tuxedo that was here earlier seems to like having other kittens to play with, but he still tends to stay away, claiming the cat house as his own.
While we were up and about with kitten happenings, my daughter were in the dining room when they heard a whole lot of cracking and crunching noises. Either a tree fell down, or the one that was stuck fell further down.
When heading out for my morning rounds, I found more downed branches in the yard than usual. The biggest drop was a chunk of one of three big maples near the fire pit. The middle one has died, and one of the main branches finally broke. Thankfully, it fell into a part of the yard that is wide open.
I ended up finding quite a few downed branches, this time. We haven’t had a lot before now, since we’ve been cutting down as many dead branches as we can reach. Those winds last night, though, were really something. We had power flicker out for a few moments. Enough to shut down our computers (we weren’t fast enough in shutting them down first!), and wake my husband. His CPAP is quite high pressure, so he’s got a chin strap to keep his mouth closed while he sleeps. Rather than a face mask, he has nozzles that fit into his nostrils. If the CPAP shuts off, he suddenly has no air at all. As you can imagine, it’s a very stressful way to be awakened!
Still, I have no complaints. The garden is enjoying the rain, and while one potato bed had all its greenery blown to one side, there was no damage. In fact, the closest thing to damage I found was a hoof print, right next to a summer squash seedling! A deer had made its way through, and almost squished one of the squash we re-sowed.
Today was a slightly cooler day, with a high if “only” 25C/77F, so I took advantage of it to do work outside. Tomorrow is supposed to be even better, with a high of only 19C/66F. Alas, we will be going above 20C/68F again after that, but not quite like the heat we’ve been having for the past while.
I look forward to the work, but am now concerned I might not be able to do it. As I was writing this, I got up to go to the washroom, and my left knee tried to give out. Not with pain. It just decided it wanted to dislocate. Then when I got back and tried to sit down, I started getting a Charlie horse in my left leg! Thankfully, it didn’t get bad, and I was able to stretch it and relax it before it could do that.
I’ll share just what I did to cause all this, in my next post!
The Re-Farmer 