I managed to get a really good picture of the little puffball outside!
I was able to get within a couple of feet of her. I’m just going to assume she’s a she, since we’ve had no luck socializing the females. Peanut Butter Cup being the one exception.
Hmmm…. there’s a roofing nail in the grass that I missed. The cats knocked things out of the top of the shelf shelter, including a container of nails, a few days ago. This one is a lot further away than I expected to find any!
I tried to do a head count this morning, and got a different number each time. The highest was 30, and I think that one was right.
As for the indoor cats, Wolfman’s eye is improving, but looks horrible! He’s opening the eye and looking around, but we can see the inner eyelid is still very red. The eye itself is cloudy. I’ve been chatting with the Cat Lady about it, and she says this is pretty normal. We can expect the cloudiness to stay for at least two weeks. A month is more typical. Her cat that had the same thing still had a touch of cloudiness over his pupil, and it’s been about a month for him. We just need to keep monitoring it.
We’ve had to start dosing the inside cats with lysine lately. Some of them have started to sneeze a lot. It seems that bringing in PBC brought in a new strain of feline herpes. As the vet explained to my younger daughter, a while back, the outside cats and the inside cats will settle into a particular strain that they get immune to, but they wouldn’t be the same strain. Once PBC was settled in and accepted enough to be part of the cuddle piles, she exposed them to her outside strain. They are strong and healthy cats, though, so they’ll be able to fight it off. The lysine will just help them get over it faster, by strengthening their own immune systems.
As for Ginger, the Cat Lady is having a hard time with her schedule right now, so it looks like we won’t be able to connect this week. Next week is spring break and Easter, so it might not happen until after Easter. We shall see.
While shutting down the lights in the big aquarium greenhouse, I spotted a bit of green. By this morning, there was more!
In one of the two cups they were sown in, all three Purple Beauty bell peppers have started to sprout.
In one of the three cups the Sweet Chocolate bell peppers were sown in, there’s one sprout emerged, and another pushing its way through. There may even be a third, under a piece of perlite, on the right. If it is, we’ll know by the end of the day.
With the thyme sprouted for so long, but nothing else, I had unplugged the heat mat some time ago and just hoped the tank would still be warm enough for the other seeds. There is NO sign of the oregano. We had issues with oregano last year, too. I’ll give it a bit longer, then decide if I want to try sowing them again, or just give up on the oregano from seed this year. It might be better to buy a transplant when the garden centres open in the spring.
In other news…
I was contacted by the Cat Lady a couple of days ago. She has been able to find open adoption spaces at a couple of shelters in the city for us. After much discussion, we’ve decided that both Ginger and Toni will go to one shelter. They have a set up just for special needs cats, and apparently three legged cats are extremely popular. In the city, at least! The other shelter specialized in Siamese or Siamese looking cats. I sent a picture of Ghosty’s face, and she was identified as a Lynx Point Siamese. My daughters figured she was a tabby with albinism! Either way, this shelter tends to have rather high end clientele, so Ghosty will likely find herself in the lap of luxury before long!
As I write this, I can see the live feed from the garage cam. There are 6 cats milling about. It’s that time of year again. There’s been a lot of baby making going on, and the males are starting to fight over the females. I’m so frustrated that we haven’t been able to snag any of the females to get fixed! They simply will NOT let us near them! I think the super fluffy little tabby that is sibling to Patience outside, and Peanut Butter Cup, the Beast, and Soot Sprite, inside, is female. It’s hard to tell with all the fur, and I can’t get close enough to check, anyhow, but the way I see her behaving around the males right now…. *sigh* Why are all the females so skittish, but the males so friendly?
Anyhow.
If all goes to plan, we might be down three indoor cats on Friday! I’ll be driving them out half way to meet the Cat Lady, and she’ll take them the rest of the way.
This morning, after giving the outside cats their food and warm water, I did a bit of shoveling. I’m much less stiff and sore than I expected to be, after yesterday! I made sure to have some Golden Milk before bed, which I think helped a lot. Lord knows, the painkillers aren’t doing much. We now have paths to the compost pile, the back of the garage, the outhouse, and the litter pellet compost behind the outhouse.
What I am NOT going to bother doing is clear a path to drive into the inner yard. I don’t see the point.
We are getting snowfall warnings for this evening, though – another 10-15cm/4-6 inches – so we might need to clear the driveway again tomorrow, so we can meet with the Cat Lady on Friday. Hopefully, the gravel roads will be plowed, too. I thought it was done already, but when I cleared our driveway, I found that what I though was a plow ridge visible on the garage cam was just tire tracks from the one vehicle that managed to make its way down our road. !! I don’t expect to have troubles with the truck on the road, but our driveway tends to drift a fair bit. Mostly right in front of the garage.
We have several packages to pick up at the post office, which closes at noon today, so I will be heading out soon to get those, then keep going into town with a couple of water jugs to refill, and pick up a few groceries. I’ll have to snag a daughter to help me bring things to the house from the garage, since I won’t be able to pull up to the house. Either that, or reclaim the wagon from the storage side of the garage. It’s got our chainsaw and other tools I was using to clear trees and work on the first trellis bed stored in it. With the paths in the snow, though, it might be easier to just carry things in. We’ll see.
As I write this, we’ve already warmed up to -13C/8F, and we are expected to reach a high of -5/23F after the snow starts to fall. We’re expected to stay below freezing for a few more days, but the forecast is now saying we should reach of high of 2C/36F on Sunday, and be staying with highs at or above freezing from then on.
We’ll see what actually happens! I just want that snow to melt away slowly, so we don’t get any flooding aside from our usual moat around the garage. 😁
Well, time to get ready to head out, and see what the roads are like!
I just got off the phone with tech support at Skytech Gaming. I ended up downloading an app to my phone that gave me a code that allowed him to see through my phone’s camera. As we were talking, the computer restarted it’s loop again, and I told him what had been going on.
As we went through the prompts, he said he was looking for logging into the internet, and that was the one thing that has never been part of the loop.
Long story short, by the end of the call, he very apologetically told me that we will have to reinstall Windows. Something went wrong in the start up and this installation got corrupted.
Which means we either hook up to another computer or get a recovery thumb drive.
*sigh*
One of the things that came with the paperwork in the box was a quality control check certificate.
The date on that is August 2, 2023. So as of then, the computer was fine.
What a pain. At least it’s a relatively easy fix, though. I’m just not sure if I want to hook up to another computer, or just get a recovery thumb drive. I like the idea of having the thumb drive. Smaller and more convenient. I’m going to have several hours after dropping the cats off at the vet tomorrow morning, so I could probably find one.
We shall see.
Not at all the sort of problem I would have anticipated!
Having said that, I can add that customer service was good and very prompt. There wasn’t much he could do over the phone, but he could at least give me a solution. With that, at least, I am happy.
I love technology, but my goodness, it doesn’t take much to mess it up!
We have GOT to get more of the inside cats adopted out.
Last night was a rough one.
With my arm still giving me grief, I tried going to be early again. While I could move my right arm forward and back as normal, if painfully, I still couldn’t get it move more than a few inches straight outward.
When I go to bed, I often has several cats that insist they MUST be either right against me, or me, and they don’t often give me a chance to finish getting into bed before they do it! Cheddar is one of several that has decided where I sleep is his spot. He’s a big boy, so moving him with one wonky arm was a challenge! Others will move as I pull the covers back, but not Shadow in the Dark. He’s one that likes to curly up near my face or against the back of my neck, and he won’t move. So lifting the covers usually results in him being rolled over and over, then he lies there, all sprawled out, looking at me like I’ve offended him somehow!
That’s not unusual, though.
Butterscotch made things unusual.
She’s been doing quite well, and even gotten to the point that she has started to leave my room, if only to go as far as the steps to the dining room, or peak around the corner at the basement door, to look down the hallway, before running back into my room.
Lately, however, she has taken to growling and snarling.
Sometimes, I can see that there’s a cat nearby that she’s snarling at, but they’re usually just there, and not even looking at her. A couple of times, one of them would go at her, but it seems more a response to her snarling, and not the other way around. Other times, I’ll hear her snarling, and I can’t even see any other cats around her.
Well, it seems that having so many cats in my room, usually covering my bed, sleeping in groups, is stressing her out to the point that she isn’t going to the litter boxes. She’d have to go past the other cats to do that.
The first time I heard the odd noises, I found her squeezed onto one of the boxes I’ve set in front of the wall shelf, under my craft table. I’ve got other boxes inside the bottom shelves; with the table there, they can’t be accessed for us, but when they were empty and I thought the cats were just using them as places to sleep, we discovered they were defecating in them, so we blocked them off with empty boxes. One of those overhangs the edge of the shelf, and she was squeezed between the box on the floor and the overhanging box.
Then I started hearing a very strange sound indeed.
The sound of hard turds dropping onto the box she was on!
I managed to get her out of there, but then she went into a shelf above where I sleep; the shelf I keep my glasses in, as well as where I put my phone on a stand to charge at night, among other things.
I got her out of that, and she squeezed herself into the space of another shelf, in between my cookbooks and the top of the mattress. I tried lying down again, but more noised had me getting up again to investigate, and this time she was digging into the shelf that I use for some of my clothes. I got her out of there and tucked her into the nearby cat cave, and she stayed there.
Not for long.
I was again awakened by strange noises, and this time I found she was making a mess on my bed, between my pillow, and my leaning sheep – a large stuffed sheep I sometimes use to lean against when sitting up in bed, but is normally stored in the shelve under where I keep my glasses. It’s large enough to almost fill the space completely.
Well, this time, it was a very messy mess.
My daughters are still timing things so that one of them is always available to help me with his, so I messaged my older daughter to help me. We wiped up as much as we could, then stripped the bed. The fitted sheet and the leaning sheep had to be washed, along with one pillow case, but the mess was bad enough that we had to strip the waterproof mattress cover for washing, too!
By then it was past 1am – so much for going to bed early!
While my daughter got the laundry going, I started putting out wet cat food. That lured all but one cat out of my room. I set wet cat food out in the bowls I have there, which allows for Butterscotch and a few of the the shier cats to get some, without being pushed around by the other cats. This time, I was able to close the door and keep the other cats from coming back in during the night.
Of course, that meant frequent interruptions by cats trying to claw the door open.
Eventually, though, I did hear Butterscotch going into a litter box, which should have been a good thing, but… something didn’t sound right. So I used the flashlight on my phone to try and see her.
*sigh*
Yeah, she was using the litter box, finally, but didn’t quite go all the way in.
She ran off again and hid in her cat cave while I got up and cleaned up the mess.
*sigh*
After that, things did finally quiet down, and I managed to get some sleep, but all this having to get up and check things was quite painful.
I have discovered on thing, though. While my girth may make it seem otherwise, I’ve got some pretty decent abs! I had to sit myself up many times using just my abs, and not being able to use my arms at all.
With just Butterscotch in her cave and what turned out to be Susan sleeping somewhere else, I actually was able to get some decent sleep, if only for a few hours.
This morning, I felt good enough that, when my younger daughter went to feed the outside cats, I went along to help out, then do the rest of my rounds and switch out the trail cam memory cards.
I was very happy to demonstrate to her that I can now lift my right arm straight out again! While there is still some pain, I have almost full mobility of my arm again! The level of improvement since yesterday is amazing. I’m so relieved! There were times I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the hospital, but giving it a couple of days of rest seems to be what I really needed. In fact, while writing this, I just tested my arm again, and I could do a full rotation at the shoulder, with no pain! Not even my left shoulder, which was not strained as badly, still has more pain now than my right shoulder does. I’m so relieved!
While doing the morning feeding, neither of us tried to do a head count. There were clearly fewer cats than usual, but they were also running around a lot, making it hard to keep track. There were these two, though…
The cats still aren’t going into the sunroom as much as usual. Checking it just a short while ago, there was a small pile of maybe three or four cats on the platform, and that’s it. Usually, we’d see about 6 or ten on the platform, and almost as many under the heat lamp or on the cat bed below, plus more in the shelf, at the food bowls or just wandering around. It’s going to take time for them to start feeling safe in there again.
These two are almost always in the sunroom. Syndol can’t get enough attention, but the little one (can you believe they’re only about a month or so apart in age?) is now getting to the point of enjoying pets and being picked up. We’d brought this one into the house a couple of times to give his nethers a thorough washing. He was so patient about it, the girls have named him Patience.
Even his tortie sister has started to allow me to pet her more often, and will tolerate being picked up more. Which is good, because it means we can bring her indoors for overnight fasting at the end of the week, before taking her to get spayed. Oh, how I wish more of the females could be socialized enough to get them done! My daughter was able to pet Broccoli this morning, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I did manage to pet Junk Pile – the first time in ages. She seemed shocked at being pet, and liking the shoulder skritches, but didn’t allow it for long. Even Caramel was around, but I only managed to touch her while she had her back to me while eating. Brussel won’t let us near her, but she will go into the kibble house and even into the sunroom. Sprout keeps her distance. If we’re around, she won’t eat at all, and she prefers to eat from the bowls under the shrine, across the yard. We’ve seen Slick around, I think (aka: Octomom), and there’s another grey tabby that’s more spotted then striped that I think is also female. That one will eat at the kibble house or on the cat house roof, but is even shier than Sprout, so we haven’t been able to confirm, either way. Another one we have not been able to confirm is one more from that late litter of either kittens; a small grey tabby with dense longer fur. It will go into the sunroom to eat, and I’ve been able to sneak a pet on its back, if it can’t see me, but that’s it. Given how it won’t let us near it, I’m going to just assume it’s female. 😕
Anyhow, that’s the current status.
In other things, my daughter was able to help me move a chair out of the living room so I have access to the aquarium greenhouses again. With my arm mobile again, my goal for today is to get the big aquarium ready for seed trays, then hopefully actually get seeds started. We’ve got the red onions, yellow onions and shallots that should have already been started by now, plus some peppers and eggplant. Possibly some oregano and thyme, too, but those can probably wait a couple more weeks. I’ll have to go through our seeds that need to be started the earliest and make some decisions. With having to build or rebuild so many beds, once things are thawed out enough, I’m going to work on the assumption we won’t have room for everything we want to plant. Especially for things that would need to be planted in ground, like corn.
We shall see how things work out. For now, I’m just glad to 1) be pain free and mobile enough to get back at it and 2) not have any unexpected running around to do, but actually be home to get my own stuff done!
Time to grab a stool and get at those aquarium greenhouses!
Yesterday evening, we finally got a good look at the cat stuck in the old kitchen!
I put the big cat carrier on the freezer, with food and water. We had a small packet of a wet catfood treat left from a donation a whole back. Just enough for one cat, so that got squeezed into a small dish and stuck into the back of the carrier. I even put some cat nip in there.
It took a while, but eventually, the cat came out. I spotted it in the carrier, digging around the blanket inside, the food dish empty, and almost pushed out the door! As soon as the cat saw me, though, it ran off.
It didn’t quite run away, though. When I saw a pair of ears, just barely visible behind the kibble bin, I waited. Of course, one of the teenage cats inside wanted attention, and I ended up with Ghosty in my arms.
Well, that got his attention! The pair of ears became a pair of eyes, then a whole head, as the cat stretched its neck to see Ghosty through the window. Which got Ghosty’s attention, too!
For the next whole, I would stand at the window in the door, holding a different cat. The cat in the old kitchen seemed to be more comfortable seeing cats instead of just a human. I could see it was wanting to get back to the food and water on the freezer, so I didn’t interrupt too much. The way the door is oriented to the stairs, my daughters could monitor things from the top of the stairs. We did not try to go into the old kitchen to let it out, though, since we knew it would just disappear again.
This morning, while feeding the outside cats, I made sure to leave both doors between the old kitchen and sun room wide open. A daughter was stationed at the window to see if the cat left.
Of course, there was a major rush of other cats going into the old kitchen, and this time, we just left them. I finished my morning rounds, then checked with my daughter.
She did not see the cat leave, though all the others had left.
In the end, we decided to leave the doors between the old kitchen and the sun room wide open for a few hours. We did have to make extra sure the door into the rest of the house was securely closed. That one has been known to pop open, if we’re not careful!
Well, I just got back from checking the old kitchen. It seemed empty, so I went in.
I moved cat carrier to the sun room for the cats to get used to, since we plan to “trap” a cat in it for cheap spay/neuter day. I had to pull the inner old kitchen door – the one with no window – closed behind me, to keep cats from going into the old kitchen again.
I couldn’t see the cat that had been stuck overnight anywhere, but I didn’t go outside. I did stay to pet the crowd of cats swirling around my legs, vying for attention.
But not this one.
This is the one female we can be pretty sure to be able to catch for the cheap spay day, but she was not allowing contact, today!
She and her two siblings from the last litter are still so tiny! Hard to believe they are 7 months old! I did get to cuddle her fuzzy black and white brother, but her fluffball tabby sibling it the shiest of them all.
While petting the cats, I heard a commotion from the old kitchen. Thinking it could be the stuck cat, I checked. No sign of a cat – until I looked at the inside door.
Mitzy looked back at me!
She had scrambled her way up the door and was hanging off the window! What a monkey!
So it does look like the stuck cat has finally gotten out. We will keep monitoring, just in case.
Come spring time, we will have to empty out the old kitchen as best we can, fpr clean up. There was no litter box in there while the cat was stuck!
At least for now, the room should stay more or less freezing, so we shouldn’t need to worry about smell. We are at only -2C . By the end of the month, we are expecting several days at +3C. Things will be melt7ng outside!
What concerns me about the warm weather is, the ladies might go into heat early… and there’s nothing we can do about it, since we can’t catch them to get them spayed.
*sigh*
For now, though, it at least looks like the trapped cat is no longer trapped.
I was able to pick him up early. He was completely quiet the entire time, from the clinic to bringing him into the house.
Then, as I went to park the truck, my daughter let him out of the carrier, and he went into overdrive. Not the reaction to expect from a still sedated cat! He was running all over the place!
He also had a whole series of cats following along, trying to sniff his remaining nibby bits as he ran around.
He has finally calmed down and, as I write this, is wandering around the dining room.
While at the clinic, I remembered to go through the list of cats they have on file with us. Some have been adopted, while others have disappeared or passed on. Turns out they had Potato Beetle as two cats – Potato, and Beetle! 😆
While at the counter, one of the staff came by and asked where we found Soot Sprite, and whereabouts we live. I was a bit confused by the question, and just said, in our yard. She was wondering if we were missing a kitten that looks like Soot Sprite. She recently found one!
It turns out, she is a neighbor! She lives off a road a mile north of us, so she takes a paved road, another mile north, to get to her place, rather than the gravel road past our place, So while we live on the same cross road, she has never gone past the intersection near us. I would have driven past where she is, but all the houses along there are hidden by trees, so I only have an idea of her geographical location.
I mentioned we have a lot of black cats this time around, and that the number of cats outside at our place ranges from about 23 to 37, so I couldn’t know if any wandered further her way. Now that I think about it, though, she did say she’d found a kitten like Soot Sprite. Any kittens his size and age have been staying close to the house. My guess is, it would be from another farm out her way.
Though it probably has the same daddy that produced so many mostly black cats at our place!!
Unfortunately, while paying for the neuter and claiming Soot Sprite, I completely forgot to ask her name. That’s not a problem, though. We’ll be back there again, often enough. They take good care of our felines!
I left early today, so I could run some errands before going to my mother’s to do her grocery shopping for her. I was able to pick up a couple of hot meals at the grocery store for our lunch. They had rib dinners today, and she was really happy with it. I think it’s the first time I’ve brought lunches over where she didn’t find something to complain about! The price is right, too. The grocery store seems to make a limited number of these dinners for the lunch crowd, and that’s it. They don’t make them again. I’ll have to remember that.
As we were eating, she made a comment about “when we leave…”
We??
As far as I knew, she was giving me a list to do her shopping for her.
Nope. She decided she did need to go to the bank after all.
So when we were done lunch, I had to move things around a bit, in the truck – the few groceries I picked up for ourselves were in an insulated bag to keep things from freezing in the cab. For the length of time I would be with my mother, if they were in the box, they would freeze, anyhow.
I also moved the truck to the loading zone by the main doors, where there was more room for her to maneuver with her walker. Usually, we use a side door closer to her apartment, but the sidewalk is narrower, with a ditch on each side. A ditch filled with snow. In the summer, while helping her in or out her car, I’ve had her walker roll away and into the ditch, because it’s so uneven on the sides. With the snow blown even across, chances were greater that one of us would step off the safe section of sidewalk and end up in the ditch, ourselves!
I had the little step stool ready for her at the truck, too. It was awkward for her partly due to space. She needed to hang on to both the door and her walker to be able to use the step stool. From there, she could use the handle in the door frame, and the seat, to climb up the truck’s step under the door, and finally climb into the cab. It was definitely a tough climb, but she did much better than I expected! Thankfully, she seemed to be having a good knees day today. I know there are days when a climb like this would be out of the question.
Our first stop was the bank, and I cheated a bit. I used my husband’s disabled parking permit to park in the disabled parking zone. This put my mother close to the automated doors that she normally won’t use. Access from the parking spot up onto the sidewalk wasn’t shoveled, though. She made it through a spot that was almost clear, with a bit of help lifting her walker through the snow.
Once done at the bank, it was time to climb back into the truck and then off to the grocery store. Once again, I was able to park closest to the doors for her, where there was no chance of another car blocking her side of the truck.
She did a fairly large shopping trip today, which I was glad to see. She did have issues getting meat. She was going to pick up some deli chicken and wanted just a chunk of meat, rather than sliced, as she says the meat keeps longer. The guy behind the counter didn’t understand what she wanted, at first, and thought she meant thicker slices. I explained to him she wanted a piece, not a slice. So he tried asking her how much she wanted. I tried to explain to her what he needed to know, suggesting something about an inch thick, which is what I saw her get before. She got frustrated and said, “give me 2 pounds.” The guy and I looked at each other, and I could see we were thinking the same thing. Two pounds is a LOT for deli meat. We tried to explain again, but she started getting mad and said, “just give me 2 pounds.”
So the guy ended up cutting off about 1 1/2 inches, then putting it on the scale. It was under 2 pounds, but he gave her the weight in kilos, since all weights are in metric, and the amount, with was almost $15.
And that was one of the cheapest cuts they had available!
My mother got angry, said to take it away, and walked off.
The poor guy.
I apologized to him, but he assured me they could still use the cut. It was large enough that their machine could still slice it.
My mother ended up getting a sausage, instead, and that was it for meat.
At least she got eggs.
I found out from my brother, when he spoke to her this evening, that she said the guy at the deli was rude and was using the “wrong” weights. He was very polite and patient with her! Not the slightest bit rude at all. But she had trouble understanding what he was asking her, so to her, that means he was rude.
*sigh*
That shopping done, we had to make one more trip, to the pharmacy. My mother didn’t get put of the truck this time, though. I ran in and picked up a couple things for her.
Then it was time to go home, and she insisted I park by the side entrance, because it’s closer to her door. I ended up parking half in the street, to make sure she had space to move and no chance of either of us ending up in the ditch! Once she was safely out and I helped her through the doors – which are not designed at all for accessibility! – I had to go back and park properly. She waited at the doors for me, so the outside door wouldn’t fall closed and lock me out!
Once inside, we had a surprise waiting. Some stuff on the floor at her door. An insulated bag, and what I at first thought was her mail. There is a neighbor in her building that regularly brings her mail for her, but he usually slips it under her door.
My mother figured our vandal had swung by.
I think she was right.
There was no note, but the insulated bag had a jar labeled pickled herring, but I think it held some kind of home made borscht. There was a hummus dip container, but I could not tell through the labels, what was in it. Plus, two chocolate cupcakes.
What I had thought was mail turned out to be a magazine, plus a weekly paper that my mother doesn’t get in her town, which also confirmed it was from our vandal.
There were social activities happening in the lobby, so when I left, I asked if anyone saw who left things at my mother’s door. No one saw anyone go by. They would have recognized our vandal.
After I put my mother’s groceries away and we sat to talk for a bit, she told me she didn’t like how our vandal would show up unannounced at her place. She has her own things to do, appointments, etc. He has never called her in advance before. I didn’t think to mention, he couldn’t call her in advance, anyhow. My brother arranged for call blocking of several numbers our vandal uses. No more abusive phone calls or answering machine messages!
By the time all the running around was done, the weather was starting to turn. It didn’t get colder, but the winds picked up again, and even in town, visibility was starting to drop. The highway was still good for my drive home, though.
So my mother did manage all right with the truck, though it was a struggle. Having to get in and out so many times was definitely taking its toll on her. Still, she did really well. I think I found it scarier than she did!
She even had nice things to say about the inside of the truck!
This is not something she should do often, but at least I know I can use the truck to get her to a doctor’s appointment or anything like that.
I’m not sure what it says, that she would rather do all that climbing so I can drive her around, rather than have my sister drive her around in her much nicer, newer, car that’s easier to get into!
Well, I’m just happy to be able to do it, and thankful we are in a position to be available for her. It takes quite a load off my brother! There are still some things only he can do, since he has power of attorney, but he doesn’t have to take time off work and drive the hour plus to do them!
So things worked out rather well. When my brother called her later, he said she was in very good spirits – and cut the call short because her show was starting! 😆
Now, if only we could find a way to keep our vandal from showing up at her place! I think he still somehow believes she can give him the property, even though she already transferred ownership of this place to my brother.
I just got back in from morning rounds. We are at -27C right now, but the windchill is at -29C. I’d really love for those winds to die down! I had to clear a bunch of paths, not because we got much snow last night, but because the winds filled them in with hard packed drifts.
I got through to my mother about coming over today, and brought up about her saying she would be willing to climb into the truck. She told me she checked and has enough cash, so we can try when it is warmer.
So… spring??
No matter, for now. As long as I get her groceries. Going to the bank is the one thing I can’t do for her!
I want to talk to our mechanic, in person, about my mother’s car, but we won’t have any budget for repairs for a while. I’m considering putting the insurance on hold until we can get it in, which likely won’t be until the spring. The truck and other things have priority in the budget. After having to cancel my husband’s eye appointment at the last minute because we were at -30C with no block heater, my husband really wants to get that done.
Of course, it can’t be a generic cord. GM has their own cord with a built-in thermostat that has to be used. Generic ones won’t work right. Which I would prefer, anyhow. Our van had one of those, and I liked it. These cords shut themselves on and off as needed, so you don’t have it heating constantly. I just got a text this morning with an estimate. Replacing the cord will cost under $100. Replacing the block heater part, however, would cost almost $300. !! As far as we know, it’s just the cord that needs replacing, since finding the plug ripped off the end.
We are supposed to have a high of -16C, give or take a degree, and stay warmer than -20C for the next while before warming up above -10C. I’m quite looking forward to the return of the El Nino effect!
I’m sure the yard cats will be appreciating it, too!
We ended up getting two trucks come over, and two guys checking the lines.
This time, the problem was definitely inside.
They checked the hub in the basement, which was working, but they noted the condition of the wires.
The problem turned out to be the jack in my room. Badly corroded.
Likely from the kittens going behind the bins and making a mess. However, they debated replacing the entire line, because the whole thing is pretty old. It’s not really accessible from the basement at that end anymore, though, so they left it.
The jack was replaced, and the line is working now.
As we were chatting, we, of course, started talking cats. I mentioned they were mostly rescues, and how hard its been to adopt them out.
One of the guys said he and his girlfriend were talking about getting a cat. I ended up giving him my contact info and telling him to feel free to pass it on, if he knew others who were looking.
The other guy was saying he’d love to have a cat, but had to adopt his Bengal (!!!) out when he moved. He’s looking to move to a new apartment that allows pets, and is eager to have a cat again. While he was outside, Syndol had came over and tried to climb him! He was so stoked about that.
So not only do we have a working phone again, but potential leads on cat adoptions.
After confirming the line at both jacks, one guy made sure all the phones were hooked up, including the corded phones. “Hang on to those!” he advised me. The rotary dial phone, in particular, is a great backup phone. We certainly were glad to have it!
I’m so glad they were able to come over so soon. It’s a slow time of year, and they had basically been sitting in their vans, waiting for a call.
Now we just have to keep the main phone base in the cat free zone.
The Re-Farmer 