Kitty update and… what heck, WP? This can’t be real!

First, the cuteness – and something to keep an eye on.

The kitties are definitely enjoying being outside of the cat cage, though only the tiny adopted kitty wasn’t getting out of it very easily. They are often found piled up on or near the self warming mat – and all over each other!

Brussel is often found with grublings sleeping all over her!

In the second photo, you can see she is quite the creche mother, nursing any or all of the babies that want. She does have a permanently angry expression, though!

She is not, however, the only creche more anymore!

The next photo shows the mystery mother. I was able to get the picture through the bathroom window, as she avoids going into the sun room if we are around. Later on, as I was going through the sun room, I spotted her actively nursing several kittens, not just her own! I made a point of getting through the sun room as quickly as possible, so as not to scare her off, so no picture possible.

Not long ago, I noticed that the calico had developed a sore on her leg. It looked a lot like the one Ooofus The Brave had on a back leg, that is now all healed and the fur growing back. Today, however, I had my daughter check a clump of fur on her back leg. As she tried to wash it out, she discovered it was another wound. We weren’t able to do much at the time, but we’ll have to make sure to put some cat-safe antibiotic cream on both wounds, in the morning. If you watched her running around, you wouldn’t know the wounds where there at all. She is not favouring the injured legs at all. When Oofus had his on his back leg, it seemed to me it was the result of over grooming, likely because I’d accidentally dripped some squeeze treat onto him while feeding it to Brussel while he was nursing. It’s possible that same thing has happened to the calico, but it’s hard to know for sure. Hopefully, she will heal up as thoroughly as Oofus has.

On a completely different note, I have a WordPress mystery. It has to be some kind of glitch. I got a “you’re being noticed” increased traffic notification, but when I finally actually checked my stats… honestly, it has to be some kind of error. This is a small blog, with a small but steady flow of traffic – both views and visitors. As of right now, my stats are telling me I’ve had a whole 49 visitors today – and almost 5,300 views! That many views is a good month for this blog, not one day! Over 1,500 of these views are to the Home page/archives link. The next highest is a food related post that is typically at the top, with 40 views.

According to the stats, virtually all of these 5000+ views are from the US, with almost 2000 from Michigan and over 1000 from California. The Michigan views are almost all from Lansing – and almost all these views are from a desktop, not hand held device or laptop, which is also unusual these days. Even then, the devices information is odd. The browser is listed as “other”, and so is the OS.

How on earth did I get such a huge jump in views? It has to be some kind of glitch. It doesn’t even seem like it’s from a traffic inducing bot; I got hit with one of those a couple of days ago, when several dozen “like” notifications came through at a rate of almost 2 per second.

I would not be at all surprised if, a few days from now, my stats get “corrected” to something more usual!

The Re-Farmer

Stripped bare, and heavy traffic day

It’s working out to be a very unpleasant morning, weather wise! Thankfully, I was out earlier to do my rounds outside, so I could make sure the gate was open. We’ve got a septic company coming in to clean out our tank for the winter, some time this morning.

Checking on the sunflowers this morning, I just had to get some pictures to share.

The stalks have been stripped bare of any leaves under about 6 1/2 – 7 feet!

From the fresh pile of deer droppings visible at the bottom of the above photo, you can guess why!

The leaves were mostly frost damaged and already drooping. You can’t see in the photo, but the ground in places was littered with stems left behind after the soft parts were eaten.

It’s looking like we’re not going to get any actual seeds out of these. This seed head is one of the best that’s out there. Many never had the chance to fully open and get pollinated. Even the two I harvested and brought inside to dry are looking no different, really, than this one. I plucked a seed out of one of the dried ones, and it had pretty much nothing in the shell. I’m leaving these outside for now. The weather is going to cool down for a few days, then warm back up again, and the sunflowers are pretty much the last thing we’ll be cleaning out. Mind you, their role as wind breaks are rather defeated by the lack of leaves!

Our sunflowers may not be doing well, but it’s been a great year for farmers’ crops this year. After such a horrible year last year, this is wonderful news. A lot of people planted corn again, including our renter. Yesterday, we were hearing and seeing a LOT of traffic by our place. Checking the trail cam files this morning, I was seeing gravel trucks, hay bale trailers, trucks full of fire wood and farm equipment. It wasn’t until I’d gone through a number of images that I realized what I thought were dump trucks full of gravel were actually full of corn. Or, at least, they couldn’t possibly be gravel. The images aren’t very good at that distance and speed of subject! :-D I have one of the trail cams now set to stills instead of video, and going through that one, I counted 23 full loads going by! Those are just the ones that were captured. There could easily be more that got missed by the camera delay. At one point, the road was so busy, two dumpt trucks had to squeeze past each other in front of our driveway. That road is barely wide enough for two cars, never mind two dump trucks!

Sometimes, I kinda wish we lived even further into the boonies. Too many neighbours! Too much traffic! :-D

The Re-Farmer