After a brief and sunny respite, it looks like the storm has finally hit us for real. Temperatures have dropped to -21C/-6F, with a wind chill of -35C/-31F – and this time, we don’t look at all sheltered from it, from what I’m seeing on the live feed of the garage cam! It’s supposed to end overnight, and then tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach a high of -24C/-13F with a wind chill of -36C/-33F. It’s supposed to be about the same for one more day, before warming up to -8C/18F!
Which means we’re going to be digging ourselves out for a couple of very cold days.
Meanwhile, we are warm and safe indoors, and I thought it was a good time for a Cabbages update.
Beep Beep keeps coming over to groom her, then Turmeric comes over and tries to force her way in between them! Jealous of the attention her adopted sister is getting, it seems. :-D
Cabbages is slowly getting better. I see her drinking water on her own more often, so we’re not as concerned about using the syringe to get her hydrated. She has little interest in eating, though. It looks like she can’t smell food right now! Her breathing is fine, so she’s not stuffed up. She’s also more active, and fights us off more when we try to feed her. She stomach seems stable enough that we’re using the syringe to feed her a little more often, and we’ll keep increasing the feedings as much as we are able.
I get to do the feeding part while my daughters have been taking turns, holding her. Both of them have bloody scratches to show for it! She may be almost skin and bones right now, but she’s still remarkably strong.
She still spends most of the day sitting like a little bony loaf in different spots in my office/bedroom all day. As I write this, she is back on the warming mat. :-) The main thing, though, is that she is improving!
With Cabbages losing the weight that she has, she’s been feeling colder to the touch (she’s not shivering or anything like that), so I set out the heated mat for her.
This is not Cabbages. This is a very pushy Turmeric, taking up the entire mat!!
Sometimes we’ll find Cabbages, Turmeric and Beep Beep, all smooshed together on the mat.
Cabbages still isn’t eating or drinking much on her own, so we’re continuing to use the syringe to keep her hydrated. We’re being more cautious about the quantity of solid food we’re making her eat, as we don’t want her to throw it up or something. Though she isn’t looking any better (too soon for that), she has definitely perked up. She struggles to get out of my daughter’s arms a bit as we use the syringe – Cabbages has never enjoyed being held much, so this is actually a good sign. This morning, when I opened the door to let various cats in and out, she actually left the room! She has shown no interest in leaving the room since we brought her in.
Turmeric is still snarling at the tuxedos, though when Layendecker and “grandma” came in, she left them alone. She’s been growling at Fenrir, though. We still have no idea why she turned into a snarling beast, and she does seem to have calmed down – as long as she’s in my office/bedroom. I’m hoping to try letting her out again today, but only if there are several of us around, just in case she switches to beast mode again.
Cabbages, meanwhile, settled herself in that Styrofoam “bowl” that was from the inside of the new washing machine. We kept it because the cats love it so much. We decided to bring her back into my office. We didn’t want to take a chance of her going under the couch or somewhere like that, and not being able to find her later. Keith did that when we were giving him his antibiotics every day, and we ended up having to have 2 of us lift the couch while a third snagged him and dragged him out!
Keith is doing very well, by the way. Completely back to full health. He gave us quite a scare!
First up, I’m happy to say that Cabbages is seeming better this morning. She got more hydration last night, and we even got some solid food into her – also through the syringe. She didn’t like it, but she ate it!
We are still keeping Turmeric closed up with me. I’ve been letting other cats in and out, and while she did growl at the tuxedos, once they were inside, she seemed okay with them. As soon as she’s out of my office/bedroom, however, she still turns into a snarling beast for some reason.
Beep Beep has pretty much moved in and taken Cabbages under her wing, so I had the three of them with me last night. I was awakened by the sound of a cat scratching under the door to get out, and it was Cabbages! That’s the first time she’s made the effort since we brought her into the room.
It turned out their food and water bowls were empty. When I refilled them, Cabbages parked herself at the water bowl and stayed there. I did see her drinking, but mostly, she was just a loaf. I was in and out a few times, and she stayed like that for at least an hour. Right now, she’s back on my bed, next to Beep Beep.
We will keep up with the hydration and the semi-liquid food, even though she is a bit more active.
The other cats still seem very confused by my closed door. I usually have the majority of them splattered all over my bed, finding myself trapped by several when I wake up in the morning. They’ve had to find other places to sleep. A couple of them already preferred my husband’s hospital bed, but now he’s finding his bed covered with 4 or 5 at times. That bed is pretty narrow, so they basically take up the whole thing when that happens! Mostly, though, they have been converging on my daughters, upstairs.
They have not been getting much sleep, lately!
I do wish I knew what was going on with Turmeric, and why she still hasn’t settled down, yet!
Anyhow.
When I head into the sun room to get kibble for the outside cats, it’s not unusual for me to see a cat on the hand rail outside. It’s usually Nosencrantz or Potato Beetle. Sometimes it’s Agnoos or Tuxedo Mask. Not this morning!
The Distinguished Guest had her butt parked there this time! I managed to get a picture before opening the doors, at which point she took off. Not far, though. She knows it’s breakfast time!
She is really looking to be a permanent “guest”.
I counted only 13 this morning, though I did see Ghost Baby show up soon after. We were short two orange tabbies. I didn’t see Butterscotch or Nosencrantz this morning, either. It’s not unusual for Butterscotch to be missing, but I usually see Nosencrantz.
Chadiccus came over for pets, and I was happy to see he’s all cleaned up. No sign of the blood that was all over his front, yesterday. Since no cats look injured, I’m hoping it was just from some rodent he caught and ate.
I can see that the cats checked out our winter sowing experiment! The jugs themselves were undisturbed, though, so that’s good.
Once I was done my rounds and back inside, the two deer that come by regularly were soon at the feeding station. Then I spotted one of them in the south yard!
There is a short path along the chimney block planters that has been shoveled, and that’s where she is standing.
Then she made her way around the white lilacs, to the shrine! From the tracks in the snow, they have been checking out the kibble tray fairly regularly. Which is interesting, since there is nothing there they can eat. There are birds that like to steal the kibble, though, and of course the cats are often there, just like at the feeding station, so maybe the deer is associating the presence of birds and cats with food!
Or she’s just curious. :-D
I like how the cat is so chill about the deer coming at it.
Doing my rounds this morning was a bit of a bother. Those high winds from yesterday drifted over many of our paths with hard packed snow. A couple of days from now, we’re supposed to get hit by a storm, with 10-15 cm of snow (4-6 inches).
*sigh* I suppose we should clear out the end of the driveway again, before the plows have to go through.
I figured it was a good idea to write a separate post on how Cabbages is doing.
We have been giving her water with a syringe, as dehydration is the biggest danger for her. By the second time we were doing it, she seemed to get what we were doing, and was quite cooperative. We were careful to give her just a little at a time, and she actually seemed to perk up.
She wouldn’t eat the wet cat food. The girls are planning to boil some salmon for her, which will be made into a paste so we can use the syringe to feed her, but for now, getting water into her is the priority.
She seemed a bit stuffed up, so we got her into a steamy bathroom for a while. She got a couple more hydration sessions while in there, too. That done, she was returned to the comfort and warmth of my bed.
I came in to find Beep Beep and Turmeric, grooming her. A little too enthusiastically! I had to move them off of her, every now and then.
Turmeric seemed to decide she needed to be the center of her mom’s attention, though, and kept trying to insert herself between Beep Beep and Cabbages. Meanwhile, Cabbages just lay there, taking it all. Turmeric finally got to be too much for her, though, so she got up and moved to the other end of the bed.
I just took a bit of a break from writing this. My daughter came in, and we hydrated Cabbages again. We got two syringe fulls into her. She is definitely more responsive, and even opened her mouth more for the water.
We don’t want to over do it, of course. The last thing we want is for her to start throwing up again. So far, though, her stomach seems stable.
The poor thing looks so miserable. She hasn’t lost a lot of weight, but she didn’t have a lot of weight to lose in the first place, so she feels all bony now.
I got some more texts from the woman that will be fixing our cats. She let me know that all the photos I sent have been passed on to “all the girls”. I had let her know about Cabbages, and they have been made aware of that, too.
Then I got a text telling me that they have all sorts of wet and dry cat food that’s just sitting there. It needs to be used, so she will pass it on to us. !!! We should be able to meet up, the next time she is in town.
That is so awesome! I knew the organization provided free cat food to their fosters, but I didn’t expect them to have so much extra, they would need to get rid of it, and could offer it to us. I have no idea how much it will be, but every little bit will make things easier on our budget! The cats will be very happy. :-)
Today had warmed up quite a bit. It’s past 9pm and we’re still at only -9C/16F, but it’s been blowing snow all evening. Not a lot of snow is actually falling, but enough is being blown around that I’m glad we didn’t need to go anywhere. I’ve heard the roads are got pretty bad. According to the hourly forecast, we’re supposed to warm up to -2C/28F by 3 am, and stay that warm until 6am! If the driveway isn’t drifted over too badly, I might make a trip into town and get some kitten milk for Cabbages for both nutrition and hydration. We’ll see how Cabbages is doing by tomorrow, though. Poor little thing. She really does seem to have perked up. I am encouraged.
We’re getting another warm day today. The forecast was for 1C/34F as the high, hte we were already at that temperature before it was fully light out! Now I’m seeing a high of 2C/36F for this afternoon, but I would not be surprised if we passed it.
The critters do seem to be enjoying the mild tempertures!
Chadicous, of course, was determined to be stepped on.
The heated water bowl was completely empty again. My suspicions that deer have found it were semi-confirmed last night, when I glanced out the kitchen window and saw one at the small gate in the chain link fence. No tracks that I could see around the water bowls, though.
While putting kibble into the trays in the kibble house, I had more cats coming for pets than for food. Including *drumroll please*
The Distinguished Guest!
Yes, I got to give our new addition a thorough petting and ear skritching. :-D I still can’t walk up to her, but at least she’s willing to walk up to me, now.
I even got to pet my brother’s dog, who came for a visit this morning, though the cats were not happy to see him! :-D
This pair of deer are morning regulars, enjoying the bird seed. It’s not the best photo I got of them with my phone, through the living room window, but when I saw the chickadee caught in mid flight, I just had to post it!
Later on, my husband looked out the kitchen window and spotted a big cat going by the barn, to the old hay yard.
And by “big cat”, he actually meant a *big* cat. Most likely a bobcat. I know they are around, but have never seen one, yet.
As for the inside critters…
… here is Keith, getting some major cuddles from Beep Beep.
Keith didn’t seem to have many issues last night. He was noisier while Beep Beep was lying across him than he was before. :-D My daughter has brought him into the bathroom with her so he could get a steam treatment while she showered. :-)
I don’t know if he’s any better. I can only say for sure that he’s not worse. Still not much appetite, but he seems to be moving around more. I think it will be a while before we can say for sure whether the anti-biotics are helping or not.
My daughter and I brought Turmeric to the vet for a check up (driving into a wall of fog on the way!), as she was the most recovered of the cats that had gotten sick – all of which started just within the past few days. The vet checked her over, and she’s fine. It was just difficult to listen to her lungs, because of the purring! It did not take her long to settle in at the clinic at all, and she was more than happy to jump at the vet for attention. :-D
As for Keith, it was decided to try him on antibiotics for two weeks, first. He got an injection at the clinic, and we’ll be giving him half a pill, twice a day. If he gets and stays better after those two weeks, then he just got hit with what the other cats got, but harder. If he doesn’t, then it’s heartworms, and we need to take him back and figure out the next course of action. The vet does think it’s heartworms because, when she did an ultrasound of his heart, she thinks she actually saw a worm. It could have been a “heartstring”, but those should not be visible in an ultrasound.
Personally, I am leaning towards respiratory infection. Even this morning, he seemed a bit better than yesterday, and after we brought him home, he actually showed interest in food and water. Not much, but at least enough for a nibble and a lick. As for the other cats, after examining Turmeric and hearing the descriptions, it sounds like a feline herpes flare up. The clinic knows that both the inside cats and outside cats have it – we’ve brought various kitties for treatment over the past few years. What is possible is that the outside cats have a different strain than the inside cats. While treating Tuxedo Mask, as careful as we were about hand washing, etc., we could have exposed the inside cats to a new strain and, as the vet put it, the two were fighting it out, and some cats were being affected by it more than others. Which makes sense to me.
Also, if it does turn out to be heartworms, this will be the first time the vet has personally seen heartworms in a cat. She sees them in dogs fairly regularly, but it’s just so unusual for cats to get them.
So we will be monitoring Keith and medicating him for the next two weeks (unless he takes a turn for the worse and has to be taken back, of course). Thankfully, my older daughter filled all her slots for quick commissions and was able to pay for it. All those tests added up. :-(
As for the couple of other cats that seem to be having a harder time of it, it was recommended to have them in a steamy bathroom. So my younger daughter will be taking a long, hot bath tonight! With feline company :-D
When I do my morning rounds, I’m in and out of the sun room quite a bit. We didn’t want to take a chance of Tuxedo Mask dashing outside. Every time one of us used the bathroom, we could hear him through the window, crying to get outside! So my younger daughter took on Tuxedo Mask duty. I did have to stop my husband, though. He was about to do the outside cats’ food and water, forgetting that we have a patient in the sun room that would be eager to dash outside!
Tuxedo Mask was not a happy camper when we came in. He had settled at the bottom of the door to the old kitchen, then ran and hid when we opened it. It took a while for my daughter to get him out while I topped up the food and water bowls. Which did not need topping up. If he ate or drank during the night, it wasn’t enough that I could tell the different. The litter wasn’t used, either, which means we’ll likely find a mess to clean up in the spring.
Gotta love concrete floors.
My daughter then stayed with Tuxedo Mask, holding him in her arms while she sat on her dad’s walker, while I went in and out. As unhappy as he was about being stuck in the sun room, he had discovered the joys of being cuddled, and didn’t even try to get out of my daughter’s arms!
His eye is looking pretty much normal already! It wasn’t even very leaky. When giving him his eye drops, it was a bit more closed than the other, but the redness seems all gone. A huge improvement from when I first saw it, and it looked like blood.
Which means, unless something changes for the worse, he’ll be in the sun room for only a week.
Hopefully, he’ll have learned to use the litter box before then!
The other outside cats, meanwhile, were in fine form. Even Broccoli’s eye has no visible redness, and any signs of leaking doesn’t appear fresh. I couldn’t see Caramel’s eyes, though. Too much running around!
Rolando Moon joined me for a while.
Ah, Rolando! One moment, it’s CHOMP!!!
The next moment, it’s KISS!!
She’s so mean and loving. :-D
Meanwhile, the fix on the door is holding out wonderfully. Tightening that hinge plate seems to be making the biggest difference. All this time we fought with the door, and never thought to look at the hinge! There was one spot on the floor where the door would jam. If I could push it past that one spot, it would swing free again. The floors in this house are uneven, and it’s been doing this for longer than we’ve lived here. It never even occurred to me that it was anything other than the uneven floor being the problem. Tightening the hinge plate adjusted the door a tiny bit, but it’s enough that we can now open the door all the way, without it jamming on that bump on the floor!
The door latches much better now, too, and we no longer have to fight to get it to stay closed. Which means where will be less wear and tear on the knob mechanism. It opens and closes so smoothly now, I didn’t even notice the bit of give on the handles, because of the too-long bar!
To think we put up with this for 4 years, and never thought to look at that hinge the entire time. Even my dad would have been putting up with it for who knows how many years; as his mobility declined, he went in and out through the sun room, too, because there are no stairs that way.
Funny how easy it is to miss these little things, yet they can make such a big difference!
My daughters and I went into the basement maternity ward to set up a new “nest” for Butterscotch and her babies, and block off the old radio so she wouldn’t go in there again.
As we took her babies out, however, we found another of her orange babies was struggling.
We spend the next while tending to it, and it did seem to be getting stronger again. Butterscotch is not particularly maternal, so we even tried to put it with Beep Beep. Eventually, it seemed strong enough to possible latch on and nurse, and I put it back with Butterscotch, as close to a nip as I could get it.
Even in this photo, you can see that it’s smaller than its siblings.
Sadly, after about an hour or more, the little guy passed away.
It’s hard to know what happened, since we were unable to monitor Butterscotch’s kittens as well as Beep Beep’s. Both kittens that passed were noticeably smaller than the remaining two, both of whom are strong, active, vocal and nursing enthusiastically. Both of the ones that passed also had irritated and messy rear ends. Given that they are only a few days old, I would guess that they had not been strong from the start.
If we had not been able to bring the mamas indoors to have their babies, we would never have known how many they’d had to start with. A sad downside to bringing them indoors is being there when there are losses.
The old radio is now stuffed with packing material and blocked off, so Butterscotch can’t move her babies into there again. We tried to make her new nest as cave-like as we could, so I hope she won’t feel the need to try.
Thankfully, the other kittens all look healthy, are nursing well, and becoming more active already.
With Butterscotch and her babies now right next to Beep Beep, Beep Beep has been showing an interest in her babies, too!
The Re-Farmer 