As my daughter and I headed out today, I saw a cat crossing from the unoccupied farm across the road from us, stopped in the middle of the road.
Sniffing at another cat on the road, before moving on.
At which point, I stopped and walked over to take a look.
Sure enough, it was a cat that had been hit by a car. It had been there long enough for there to be… damage, shall we say… making it hard to identify the cat, but it looked an aweful lot like Poirot.
We saw Poirot yesterday, but did we see her while doing the morning feeding? I couldn’t remember, but if we had seen her this morning, it was unlikely she was this cat. My older daughter had helped, so we messaged her and she couldn’t remember early, but promised to keep an eye out while her sister and I continued with our errands. She did confirm seeing her kittens sleeping in the sun room, but did not see Poirot.
We got back late enough to do second outside cat feeding of the day. It was, as always, a commotion of hungry cats and kittens. I managed to close up all the kittens in the sun room so they could have their cat soup without being pushed away by larger cats.
Miss Lemon, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp had their fill, along with Grommet, Eyelet, Sir Robin and Havarti. We have gone from 11 kittens to 7, and we know what happened for sure with only one of them.
I messaged the Cat Lady about the potential situation during one of our stops. I’ve been sending her photos of Eyelet as well, because he reminds me so much of Button – and is very photogenic! She is going to try and find a home for him. The chances might be better with a kitten with such striking eyes.
Once I was sure enough, I also messaged the large animal rescue that was going to take in Poirot and her kittens. I’m sure they will still take her kittens. At more than 7 weeks, they can be weaned pretty safely. They are so tiny, though, I’m sure they’ll have vets thinking they are much young. I do, however, have photographic proof that they were born on May 4th.
Crud. We weren’t able to completely socialize her, but Poirot was such a sweet cat. She would have made a great ambassador for colonies such as ours at the rescue.
Today is now 2 weeks since Kohl and the fluffy boy were spayed and neutered, so it was time to open up the isolation shelter.
I did today’s morning rounds, starting with feeding the outside cats, as usual. When I got to the isolation shelter, I saw Eye Baby’s messed up eye was stuck shut and his nose all crusty. When I opened the sliding window to put food in, he was much more interested in escaping! So I grabbed him and took him inside, where I held him while my daughter washed his face.
Once his face was cleaned up, I put him in the sun room, under the heat lamp. Then I opened up the isolation shelter and put the entry box over the ramp.
Then I went back for the jug of warm water to top up the various bowls. I found Eye Baby on one of the plant stands we have for them to use to get up onto the platform and other shelves. I scatter kibble on it, as some of the cats prefer to eat there, rather than at the trays on the floor. He was eating quite enthusiastically.
When I returned to the isolation shelter, an adult white and grey was already inside and going for the food bowl. The fluffy male was just outside the entry box, saw me and dashed back into the isolation shelter!
There was no sign of Kohl, anywhere.
I kept an eye out for her as I continued my rounds. I didn’t see her until I was back in the sun room. I found Eye Baby in a cuddle puddle in one of the cat beds. As I tried to get a picture, Kohl emerged from somewhere and photobombed me! So I picked her up and cuddled her for a while. She seemed quite happy to be out of the isolation shelter.
Not long after, I started heading out to the garage to go to my mother’s. I found a whole bunch of adult cats in the isolation shelter – plus the fluffy boy! I did try to pet him through the sliding window, but the best I could get was some finger sniffing.
Everything seemed to be going well, though. The cats were really liking having access into the isolation shelter again.
From there, it was off to my mother’s town. I left early so I could make a quick stop at a small department store before going to the gas station. I’d seen that gas prices had dropped to $1.229 a few days ago, but it was back up to $1.309 So I just got $30 in gas to top it up a bit.
By then it was past 11am, which is when their fried chicken is ready, so I got chicken and wedges, plus a couple of smoothies, for my mother and I to have for lunch, as she doesn’t get Meals on Wheels on Thursdays.
When I got to her place, I saw her water jugs already set out on her walker; there is a tap on the laundry room with softened water that she uses for drinking and cooking water. She was talking to someone on the phone when I knocked and went in, so I just left the bag of food on the table, then went to refill her water jugs. She was done on the phone by the time I got back, and told me her niece (who is also my godmother) was wanting to pop by some time today.
So we had our lunch, then went over her shopping list. A few things got added to it, and then I headed out. She didn’t need much, so I wasn’t gone for long, even though I went to a couple of different places to get it all. I did get a couple of extra things for her that weren’t on her list, but I that knew she would be good with, and were within her budget. She was quite happy with the changes.
I didn’t stay too much longer, as there was going to be social activities in the common room this afternoon, and my cousin was going to visit some time after that. My mother was going to have a very full day!
While I was in town, my husband asked me to pick something up, but I hadn’t seen it in the stores, so on the way home I made a side trip to the town closer to us. I found what he needed, but on the way back, I realized I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I stopped at a full serve gas station.
The gas prices here were $1.229!
When I told the gas jockey to put in $20 (which came very close to filling my tank!), I told him what the price was in my mother’s town. He was very surprised, and told me they were expecting their prices to go down again, soon!
That done, I could finally head home. After bringing stuff in and catching up with my younger daughter, she mentioned going the litter in my bedroom/office. She hadn’t had a chance to empty the bucket yet, though. With using stove pellets for litter, we’ve been tossing it behind the outhouse to compost. Since I still had my boots on, and didn’t want the bucket to freeze in the old kitchen, I went through to dump it out.
When I opened the old kitchen door into the sun room, the first thing I saw was a white and grey kitten, lying on the floor next to the door to outside.
It was Eye Baby!
He had been there long enough that rigor was starting to set in.
Damn, damn, damn. He seemed to be doing so much better this morning! What happened in the few hours I was away?
Since we can’t bury him right now, he went into the branch pile for cremation. There are now two kittens in there.
I’ve since updated the Cat Lady about this, as she helped us so much with him, providing him with medication for his eye and antibiotics for longer treatment. Yes, he was still sickly – that’s why we put him into the isolation shelter – but still. It was a real surprise, after how he seemed just this morning.
Damn.
After taking care of Eye Baby’s remains and finishing my errand, I gave the outside cats their evening feeding early, and topped up their water as well.
There were SO many cats inside the isolation shelter! The food bowl was completely empty, so I put a generous amount in there.
Fluffy boy was still in there, and was very interested in the food bowl, but there were adult cats in the way. Fluffy was on the shelf above, so I gave him a handful there. He was shy about my reaching out to him, but was willing to eat.
I even got to pet him! After a couple of times petting him, he even stopped acting like he was about to run away, and fell under the magic of ear skritches.
Kohl, meanwhile, prefers the sun room, and comes right over for cuddles.
I’d hoped we’d find homes for the two of them before we opened the isolation shelter, but the only people that expressed an interest when the Cat Lady put the word out about them were people who lived too far away to make it practical. I’m not sure about the legalities of cross border pet adoptions, either!
The Cat Lady is feeling really bad that they didn’t have space for Eye Baby, even though she knows they probably would have ended up keeping him permanently, and being another very expensive cat.
Speaking of which, she updated me on Button.
Not only is he deaf, but he’s now almost completely blind! He’s had so many tests since they took him in, they’re just done with it. He can no longer find his food bowl, and they constantly keep an eye out for him. Even their dog has been helping! He’ll actually pick up Button and carry him to the food bowls, or to his cat bed, or out of harms way. The Cat Lady has fallen completely in love with Button, as has one of her daughters. He’s such a unique looking cat, with his eyebrows and deep blue eyes, he’s actually had a few people express interest in adopting him, but nope: they are keeping him. I expect he will not be long lived, with all the health problems he’s turned out to have, but he’s wildly loved and is having the best life he could possibly have.
Yesterday, as I was heading back inside through the sun room, I spotted Button and his blue, blue eyes. I’ve been trying to capture just how blue they are and, this time, the light was hitting them just right. The camera was even able to capture the colour very well, too!
I was able to get a few pictures and even a short video. When I had the chance, I shared them with the Cat Lady (and others! 😁), just so she could see the colour.
Soon after, she was asking me questions about Button, and telling me she was going to share the photos around. She knew some people that had lost their elderly cats and was hoping they’d be willing to adopt a kitten.
Well, I don’t know about the ones that lost elderly cats, but she did find someone that was very interested!
Best of all, this person is a vet!
For all his tiny size and blue eyes, we know Button is likely at least five weeks old, based on things like how much he’s eating solid food, compared to how often he nurses on the creche mothers. The vet knows that he is a foundling, and that we know little else about him. We also just assume he has ear mites.
The Cat Lady will pick him up, most likely on the weekend when they are in the area again. He’ll be with her for about a week before going to the vet. The vet is even taking on the expenses that the rescue would normally take on before a cat is adopted out.
Now, we’ve had way too many of these things fall through in the past couple of years, so I’m not holding my breath on this, but as it stands now, Button’s gorgeous blue eyes seems to have found him a forever home!
Now for the sad news.
The girls had fed the cats outside quite early in the morning, so when I went out to do my rounds, I topped up the kibble a bit, then did my usual routine.
There is one black and white kitten – one of the Squashes (kittens that like to sit in the pots with my summer squash) – that we’ve been keeping our eye on. He (she?) did not seem overtly sick, but was definitely not thriving. Yesterday, I honestly thought he was dying, like the other black and white Squash kitten I’d found a few days ago. However, when I picked him up, he perked up, got active, wanted down, and started behaving normally.
I was keeping an eye out for him while I was outside and, by the time I was ready to head in, I had not seen him anywhere. This kitten was one that always stayed close to the house, with several favourite places to hang out, and he was in none of them.
*sigh*
So I started looking for him, knowing I was likely looking for a body. But where could he be? If anything, this is one kitten I would have expected to find out in the open, like some of the other kittens we’d found passed on.
Once all the obvious places where checked, I started looking for the less obvious places he might have gone into.
Which is when I saw the tail, peaking out from under the back of the kibble house.
An orange tail.
This year, we’ve had one orange fluffy kitten, and one orange and white kitten. The orange and white kitten was in the sun room, enjoying himself in the cat cage.
Which is when I realized, I hadn’t seen the orange fluffy one in a while.
I will not go into detail but, let’s just say, the orange kitten had been under there for quite some time. It took some creative effort to get him out and bury the remains under a rose bush.
I made sure to hose down under the kibble house after. There is a sheet of rigid insulation on the ground that fits perfectly under the floor of the kibble house, and a lot of the cats and kittens will hang out under there, or hide under there if they feel threatened. The back wall of the kibble house is just a few inches above ground; too low for an adult cat to squeeze under. The front is more open, with just the 2×4 supporting the floor of the kibble house for them to squeeze under. It’s hard to see anything under the kibble house without basically getting down on the ground. When I retrieved the remains of the orange kitten, I did make sure there were no other remains.
Which means I still had the black and white kitten to find.
With the condition of the one kitten, I really wanted to make sure the black and white wasn’t in the sun room for us to find by the smell or something. After looking all over, I found myself eyeballing the counter shelf. The kittens like to hide under it, and go between it and the window.
Then one of the other cats moved out from under the table saw, and I could see a little black.. something.
It turned out to be a barely visible tail tip.
*sigh*
This one got buried under the honeysuckle.
So that’s two more gone, and we don’t know why. The Cat Lady says it’s most likely lung issues. I suspect she’s seen a lot more of this than we have!
But still, this is 5 kittens I’ve buried in less than a week, and only one of them looked like it was having issues. I can’t say for sure about the orange one, since it ran from us all the time, but the other two had seemed hale and hardy, until they weren’t.
It just occurred to me; this black and white and the orange kitten were both Brussel’s babies. That’s at least two out of her litter of four she has lost. Possibly three, as the other black and white might have been hers, too.
I just went looking through my photos. There is one of her kittens that has a distinctive black splotch over its nose, and I’ve been seeing that one around the house. Looking at the others in the photo, I am now more convinced that the other three from her litter are now gone.
Wow.
So…
What a start to the day.
At least we have the good news of Button soon to be going to his forever home with a vet!
Last night was one of those nights where, as soon as I went to bed, I just kept getting more and more awake! I finally got up and spent time with my younger daughter, who was busy making pies. Of course, being up at 2 or 3 in the morning, I was peckish, so I made a snack in between batches of pies, then she and I watched an episode of Columbo while they were baking.
We cheated on the pies. We had some canned pumpkin pie mix. Yesterday, I made a quick trip to the local grocery store and grabbed some frozen pie shells and other missing ingredient. There was no way we were going to be making pie dough in this heat and humidity!
By the time I got back to bed, it was 4am, and even then, I was still up at 4:30!
I did get a bit of sleep, though, but was just after a nap at that point. We were looking at reaching a high of 29C/84F today, but the coolest part of the day was going to be a brief period at about 5 or 6am. My goal was to water the garden while it was still cool.
So when I woke up at 6, I got up and headed out.
The first thing was, of course, to feed the outside cats. As I was going into the sun room with the kibble, I saw several kittens asleep together in a small cat bed on the floor. One got out, another start looking around, and the third…
*sigh*
One of the tabby kittens was lying stretched out, looking like it was asleep. With this heat, I see a lot of the cats sleeping all stretched out like that, but with all the commotion, this one wasn’t moving.
Yup. We lost another kitten.
That’s three kittens in four days.
After putting the food out, I quickly buried it near the unknown kitten I found yesterday morning.
I wonder if it’s the heat and humidity getting to them? There was no sign of anything obvious. It was about 17C/63F at the time. The sun room would not have been much warmer – these days, we leave the doors to outside wide open and the ceiling fan on all the time, for maximum air circulation. If anything, down at the concrete floor, it would have been a bit cooler.
I don’t know what to make of it. About the only solace I can take is, fewer cats in the colony.
Once the sad deed was done, I started my morning rounds. It was very foggy this morning!
It was so dense that I could see the fog covering the tops of the spruce trees in the inner yard. My phone’s camera automatically clears up the image, so in reality, it looked foggier than in the photo.
That sun is red because of smoke. Again, the camera doesn’t capture it well. It was much redder than it appears in the photo!
I just checked the live fire map. There are no fires near us; they are all quite a bit further up north. However, there are currently 6 fires listed as out of control, another 5 listed as being held, 29 (!!!) listed as being monitored and another 9 listed as under control. Some of these, however, are grouped closely on the map, almost on top of each other. All of them are listed as natural causes. None are near populated areas.
So this morning, it was both smoke and fog!
Checking the weather forecast last night, it was saying thunderstorms during by around midnight tonight, but when I checked again this morning, it was saying thunderstorms starting at about 3pm this afternoon.
I’m writing this at quarter to 3 right now, and on checking the weather radar, there are no storms on the horizon. My phone’s app is now saying to expect a thunderstorm around 8 or 9pm.
We shall see.
Either way, with the upcoming heat, once I did my rounds, I did a thorough watering of the garden beds. Which was rather torturous, because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Not so bad that I was willing to go back to the house and get the bug spray, though. Having had only a little more than an hour of sleep, I was planning to go back to bed as soon as I got inside and didn’t want to have to wash all
As I write this, we are at 27C/81F, with the humidex at 32C/90F The expected high had changed to 28C/82F, and I’m not sure if we actually reached it.
Oh! I just got a message from the Cat Lady. She just dropped stuff off at the gate for us. She didn’t message ahead, or I’d have opened the gate. She had The Wolfman with her, and she says he started going nuts as soon as they got on the gravel road. When they opened the windows at the gate, he started clawing to get INTO his carrier. He didn’t calm down until they were back on the highway.
This cat has gotten completely attached to them! More than any of the others they ended up keeping permanently!
Excuse me while I head out and collect the donated kibble from the gate.
Wow! Four 9.1kg bags of kibble were waiting for me! I’m glad I dug the wagon out of the garage to bring them over. That will be such a huge help!
Also, I am absolutely dripping with sweat. I just checked and yes, we reached the predicted high of 28C/82F in the last twenty minutes. The humidex is at 33C/72F Apparently, our humidity levels are just 56%, but I question that. Stepping outside was like walking into a sauna!
I did top up the cat food outside with some of the new kibble, and they definitely prefer it over the feed store kibble I got. They’ll eat the feed store brand, but not as enthusiastically. Not that they are eating much in this heat, anyhow!
We should have a brief respite over the next few days – meaning will be in the mid 20’s rather than approaching 30C/86F – but then we’re supposed to get right back up there again.
This is the sort of weather that breed thunderstorms, but so far, those only seem to be forming up north. If only they would get just rain to help put out those fires, instead, that would be good!
Well, the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons and squash will sure enjoy the heat! We just need to keep up on the watering.
I think I’ll go to the living room and stand in front of the air conditioner for a while!
It was another sleepless night last night. Pain and stiffness, I expected, but the worst of it was the pain in my damaged elbow. Talking to one of my daughters about it – at about 3am – we tried an experiment. One thing that helps it is warmth. Which is weird, considering how warm it was during the night. My daughter had some scrap sleeves in a stretchy material that she brought down. We found a section that fit fairly well and cut it into a shorter tube to cover just my elbow. My pjs already had long sleeves, which helped hold the tube in place.
It seemed to help, because I did finally get a couple of hours of sleep.
After that, it was the cats going crazy that kept me up!
My daughters took care of the morning routine for me, though, as well as the cats, and I did finally get another hour or two of sleep. Which I needed, since I was going to be doing some driving this afternoon.
Once I was finally up and about, I did my usual rounds. I was just finishing up and coming around past the cat house to go in through the sun room when I spotted Squash lying in the grass.
I’ve been able to pick Squash up fairly regularly, so I went to pet him (her? we never did find out. I’ll just say “he”) and realized something was very wrong.
Squash was clearly dying.
I ended up spending almost two hours with Squash, trying to comfort him. He did not seem to be in any pain, but was barely breathing. He did seem to perk up a bit when I started giving him water, one drop at a time, with my finger.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay with him any longer. I left him in a shady spot, then headed to town for, among other things, a pharmacy run to pick up my husband’s injections. When I got back, Squash was gone, and I buried him near Driver.
With so many kittens, there are bound to be losses. and we’ve had quite a few over the years. Among this year’s kittens that we’ve seen so far, if there was any I would have expected to suddenly pass, it would have been Button. He’s so incredibly tiny, we’re sure he was the runt of his litter. Yesterday, however, I did pick up Squash and found him very… lethargic. When I put him down in the sun room, he went back outside, though, and that was pretty normal for him.
The one symptom he did have was a severely leaky butt, which he did not have yesterday. We had something similar happen with a kitten we’d brought inside, last year.
Unfortunately, with this heat, we’ve had kittens and cats splashed all over the place, all stretched out and trying to keep cool. Every time I see one – especially when it’s Button or one of the other smaller kittens – I find myself wondering if they are okay! So in a way, it wasn’t really a surprise to find Squash in his condition. The only surprise was that it was Squash.
After the sad job of burying him, I loaded the truck with our garbage and made a run to the dump. Later on this evening, I plan to go out again and rake up some of yesterday’s grass clippings for mulch. It’s past 6pm right now, and still 25C/77F with the humidex at 28C/82F, and we’re not supposed to start cooling down more for a couple more hours. It’s a good thing the days are so long! Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter and, depending on what app I look at, we’ll either have no rain at all, passing showers, or possible thunderstorms.
Tomorrow afternoon, I’m taking my mother to her doctor’s appointment, right when it will be getting the hottest. Thankfully, the truck’s AC works all right!
Meanwhile, I need to start editing my July garden tour video. One of my daughter’s previewed the recordings made on the 16th and the 17th, and said both days were fine. The only think she noted is that I sounded tired – which I was!
I still am, to be honest. I might just skip collecting the grass clippings tonight, and do it in the morning, before I have to leave for my mother’s. I seem to be waking up at 5:30am, no matter what, so I may as well be productive when it’s a bit cooler.
I just hope I don’t find any more kitten losses. 😢
I just got back in from feeding the outside cats for the evening. I counted 26 or 27 – I wasn’t sure if I’d already counted one of the tabbies. It’s a higher than usual count, with several of the “old timers” around. Rolando Moon was there, as well as Junk Pile and the other tabby that looks so much like her.
The Distinguished Guest made an appearance, but there were so many cats around – plus one skunk! – that he backed off to wait his turn. Rosencranzt was there and she kept chasing cats away from different food trays in between scarfing down kibble and running from tray to tray. I think she has had her kittens. Possibly even the ones I think I heard from the pump shack.
Broccoli was there, too, and she is starting to look pregnant, too. Maybe. Of the three kittens she had last year, they are all female – Brussel and Sprout, we just assume female because they are calicos – and a grey tabby we can’t get close to, but has short fur, so I did get a chance to see and confirm female. She seems to be the only female tabby among last year’s kittens. All the others are male. So far, I can’t tell that the new females are pregnant, but the oldest of them are still not even a year old, so I hope not.
We’ve already found an early litter of five that succumbed to the cold, and now Pointy is gone. That’s a high rate of loss for the year already. Wherever those little ones I think I heard are, I hope they are safe and warm.
Keith passed away peacefully during the night. When I found him this morning, he looked like he was having a lovely little snooze.
My older daughter and I buried him this morning. At first, we were going to bury him under a willow, where there used to be a flower bed, but there were too many roots under the first few inches of soil. Knowing we could not be able to dig very deep, and not wanting critters to do damage, my daughter went looking for something to use as a cover while I decided to dig among the white lilacs.
We have horrible, rock hard, rock filled soil on top of hard clay and rocks. But we traded off and made progress, until we hit some much bigger roots. We took a hatchet to those, only to find a large rock under them. After much digging around it, we realized it was just too big and was not going to move.
We were able to bury Keith, though, and cover his grave.
It seems rather appropriate that as soon as everything was in place, a kitten decided to play on the spot.
The bench was returned and will add an extra level of protection. Once the ground is frozen, we won’t have to be concerned about it. In the spring, we will add soil and plant something over his grave.
Good bye, Keith.
How strange that we would suddenly lose Keith, when Leyendecker was the one who as so very ill. He has been active, has a good appetite and is overall looking so much better… but still doesn’t seem to be able to void properly. My daughter wants to have his blood tested again before making a final decision, to confirm one way or the other, whether his is recovering.
Right now, I just feel so tired.
And not because I just spent more than an hour fighting a losing battle with a big rock.
Happy Three King’s Day! Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which is our last day of Christmas. After today, we start taking down our decorations. :-)
It was another mild day today, so when I finished my rounds this morning, I decided to go ahead and dig out the fire pit.
I considered breaking out Spewie, our little electric snow blower, but for the amount of snow we have, I figured it would be easier to just shovel it!
I shoved the snow off what I’m using for a cover, but didn’t bother moving it, yet.
On our warm days, the snow melted enough to create a layer of ice on the surface of the picnic table. We’ll be staying at these mild temperatures for a while, so now that it’s uncovered it should melt away on its own.
I cleared a path to the organized wood pile. That cover did not need to have snow removed from it. I didn’t bother shoveling to the big pile of branches. The little pile has kindling and should be enough for our needs. We may not use the fire pit at all, but at least now we have the option! :-)
I made sure to dig the path to the fire pit wide enough for my husband’s walker, should he feel well enough to join us if we do a cookout.
I was being watched the whole time!
You can see the cats’ favorite way to get under the storage house. The path that goes around the back branches off to a partially broken window they also like to use, as well as through the trees to the path they’ve made to the storage building outside the yard. Well worn little footy paths in the snow! :-)
I also had to dig a wider path around the kibble house. There is a lot of overhang on the roof that is working quite well for the cats, but not so well for a human with a walker! :-D
While clearing around the cat shelter and kibble house, I found this.
It’s a frozen little cat treat! :-D Next to the slab of ice that slid off the “porch” roof of the cat shelter.
Rolando Moon looks like she’s thinking of that delicious frozen treat! :-D
So we will now be able to easily get at the fire pit if we feel like having a cook out, or just a nice fire. I still like the idea of using a fire to thaw the ground out, so we can set up the fire pit grill my brother and his wife got for us!
We do have the BBQ they have us, and the propane tanks does have fuel in it, but I am much more interested in the fire pit, instead! :-D
In other things, I was able to get through to the clinic to make an appointment with my doctor about my breathing issues. After hearing the messages about restrictions before it ever got to a human, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make an appointment at all. The messages say nothing about medical exemptions to mask wearing, of course. Which sucks, since not being able to breathe properly is why I need to see a doctor in the first place. I was able to make a telephone appointment for Friday afternoon, and then it will be up to my doctor to decide if I should come in or not. I made an appointment for my daughter for right after mine, so when he’s done with me, I can just hand the phone over to her. This is the first doctor’s appointment either of our daughters have had since we moved. After seeing how difficult it has been for my husband and I to get good medical care, they have developed a strong distrust of doctors. I can’t say I blame them, either.
But that is done. We shall see what the doctor has to say when the time comes. I am not expecting much of anything, to be honest. No one is getting real health care right now, and our premier has just put us under another 30 days of house arrest, even has many of our politicians have been caught ignoring those restrictions and have gone traveling to tropical places, visiting with their friends and family, and then pretending to be sorry after getting caught.
Thankfully, we are out here in the boonies, and I get to focus on more pleasant things. Right now, I’m working on a project to help me be organized about our gardening, including keeping track of what seeds to start indoors and when.
I checked on them this morning. Beep Beep’s kittens were sleeping in a pile, and she had even come to the stairs to greet me when I came down, before dashing back into her nest.
Butterscotch was in her nest, sitting like a loaf. I couldn’t see her kittens, so I felt around and found them. They complained a bit at being disturbed, and I was a bit concerned that they seemed to be under Butterscotch. Once they started complaining, she lay back and nursed them, and all seemed well.
One of my daughters had a shift today (one extra day this month, then nothing but Saturdays on the new schedule), and while I was in town, my other daughter checked on the kittens. They were all looking fine. She did have to dig the orange one out from under Butterscotch, so she continued to check throughout the afternoon, and again when I went back to town to pick up her sister.
Which is when she found the orange one, unresponsive.
At that point, she took the grey and white one and put it with Beep Beep, who had no problem nursing an extra baby.
I checked again when I got home, and there was no question. The kitten was gone.
We’re now left with a couple of possibilities.
Either these babies all had some sort of birth defect, and we’ll have to watch the last one carefully. Or Butterscotch smothered her own kitten.
The box we’d made a nest in that Beep Beep was using was starting to get kinda damp, so I ended up moving her and the babies into the crate that Butterscotch was using, and made up a new bed in an old laundry basket. It is too open for the moms’ preferences, though, and Butterscotch ended up trying to climb into the crate with Beep Beep and the babies.
She is now outside.
I noticed as I picked her up, she did not seem to be full of milk, either. When I had picked up Beep Beep, I could feel she was quite full of milk. This could be another part of the problem.
We will have to make a point of checking on Beep Beep and the babies often. The last I saw, all five kittens were nursing and wriggling around.
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 