I just got back from feeding the outside cats. Shop Towel, aka: Sad Face, made an appearance – and he was really living up to his alternate name! He’s looking so beat up.
The wounds you can see on his side were full of wood ticks, too. He was so hungry, not only did he let me touch him, but he let me pull all the ticks off!
Unfortunately, he tends to be the one starting the fights, and he’s considerably larger than most of the yard cats. He may be getting on in years, for a feral, but he is brutal.
I was keeping an eye on the local highway conditions groups last night, and apparently things were pretty bad. We didn’t get a large amount of snow, but the high winds made the biggest difference.
It was all over by this morning, though.
I got this shot as I was coming back inside, and they were all done with breakfast. This bunch is directly under the heat lamp. The mostly black one is friendly, and the orange one allows pets most of the time. The tabby with his head tucked allows pets at feeding time, but that’s it. The other tabby runs off. The tuxedo on the left is at that “hey! I think I actually like this… maybe?” stage of discovering pets.
I love that black strip on his nose.
Once again, it seems the racoons visited during the night. The water bowl in the sun room was dry, even though I’d refilled it during the evening feeding, and I had to clean dirt off the bottom before I could refill it.
After their food and water was done, I started shoveling.
And shoveling.
And shoveling some more!
Fair warning, there is a photo of a wound later on.
I was able to clear the cat shelters and the cat paths to the food bowls under the shrine, and to the corner of the storage house, where they go in and out of the “basement”. The cats get SO excited when their paths are clear! It’s hilarious to watch them running around and playing in the paths. I then made sure to clear the sidewalk to the gate in the chain link fence wide enough for my husband’s walker walker. The snow was still light and fluffy, though, so I kept going and cleared the area I back up into, to unload the truck. The rest of the driving area will wait for the snow blower, though.
Then, because I actually enjoy shoveling snow, I kept going and cleared paths to the burn barrel and electricity meter, before continuing to the garage. The path to the garage needs to be wide enough for my husband’s walker, plus I cleared enough in front of the driveway that we can open the side doors where little Spewie is stored. The snow isn’t deep enough that clearing the driveway and yard is a necessity, but we’re supposed to get more snow later in the week, so it’s more to keep things from accumulating.
It’s stuff like this that’s the problem, though.
That’s a whole lot of ice under the snow!
This is the path to the garage where it crosses the “driveway” to the inner yard. That area is lower and collects water, so when we had our nice, warm days with all the snow melting, the moat around the garage started to form. A couple of days ago, we reached a high of 6C/43F, only to have a high of -11C/12F yesterday. This morning, while I was shoveling, we were at a very mild -7C/19F, which was perfect for shoveling – as long as I was out of the wind. However, I kept hitting patches like this, which can be quite dangerous to find unexpectedly. In the inner yard alone, around the cat shelters, I almost slipped a few times.
I was still shoveling in the inner yard when I suddenly noticed this.
I have no idea where I got this, but by the time I noticed it, enough time had passed that it had stopped bleeding. My cuff kept sliding over it while I was shoveling, which is why it looks so horrible!
I just kept shoveling, though. No point in stopping when it wasn’t bleeding anymore, and didn’t hurt at all. Once I was inside, my daughter was handy, so after I washed the blood off, she got the wound all cleaned up and bandaged for me. The wound was actually a lot bigger than I expected, and it’s a couple of scratches, not just one.
I keep going through what I did before I started shoveling, trying to figure out where or how I could have gotten this, and I’m still drawing a blank!
Ah, well.
The paths to the compost pile, outhouse and the back door of the garage still need to be done, but I stopped for a while and finished my rounds instead. My daughter, sweetheart that she is, made breakfast for me after tending my wound. The more time goes by, the stiffer my body is getting, from the shoveling. 🫤 Time for some more painkillers, I think!
Tomorrow, I’m expecting to do our Costco shopping, so if we’re going to get the rest of the driving area in the inner yard done, it’s going to have to be today. Unless the girls do it while I’m gone tomorrow, but tomorrow is supposed to get much colder again. Current forecast is for a high of -5C/23F today, but a high of -18C/~-1F tomorrow. We’re also expected to be getting some light snow from about 4pm tonight until 4am tomorrow morning.
Oh, wow! I’m just looking at our record highs and lows for today. The record high is 5C/41F in 1999, but the record low for today is -34C/-29F, set back in 1962! The average high for this time of year is a nice and mild -7C/19F.
A few more days and we’re into March. The time feels like it is really flying by, this winter! Maybe it’s because my brain is constantly thinking ahead, to what we need and want to do, once spring arrives.
The next few days are going to be really busy ones, with our stock up shopping and other end of month errands, so I’m going to appreciate having one more quiet day, with no running around involved – and no crowds of people!
We’ve got a lovely day outside, and I was hoping to be able to do a burn. While setting up the burn ring, I noticed The Distinguished Guest was lurking about in the outer yard. He wouldn’t come near me, but I could still see that something was wrong.
I had to zoom in quite a bit to get this shot. That is a new wound on his leg. I sent the picture to the cat rescue lady, but since we can’t actually catch him, there’s nothing we can do but monitor from a distance. At least he’s still coming around for food. My guess is, the damage was done by Sad Face (AKA; Shop Towel). Sad Face has been quite aggressive towards TDG and some other cats, and he’s got the size and bulk to be the winner pretty much every time. I still see Sad Face around, but he runs off pretty quickly.
About the only positive thing I could make out is that TDG wasn’t actively limping as he walked around. He’s is such rough shape, though. He was a lot more social when he first showed up at our place, which is why we think he was dumped, but with Shop Towel beating on him, and likely getting chased away from other farms around us, he is a lot more feral now. I’ve only been able to get close to him when he’s been too hungry to be willing to leave the kibble.
He is not the only critter I saw today. When I first went outside to bring burnables out, I spotted a groundhog running away, first to the raised beds near the spruce grove, then skirting along the edge of the spruce grove towards the garage, then around the other side of the garage. Where he went after that, I couldn’t see. From the looks of the hole in the ground we found by the house when the snow first melted away, it’s possible it’s being actively used, and if it is, this might be the grog that’s using it.
I was really hoping to not have to deal with grogs in the garden this year.
Ah, well. It is what it is.
I’m more concerned about TDG.
As for the burn, it’s all set up, but we’ve got too many wind gusts to do a burn today, so it’ll have to wait. The burn ring is getting so full of ashes, we won’t be able to cover and let it smolder this time, but need to burn it down as much as possible, then clean out the ashes. Since we are slowly burning away the rotten pallets cleared out of where the wood pile used to be, before an electric furnace was installed, there’s a lot of nails in there, so we’ll be using the soil sifter over the wheel barrow to catch things like nails, as well as larger pieces of unburned wood. Since this is all from litter pellet sawdust and garbage, we can’t use the ashes in the garden, but we can dump it in some of the low spots in the outer yard.
This post has been oddly difficult to type. For some reason, Fenrir has decided she really, really wants to sniff and lick my keyboard, directly under my left hand. Earlier, she was trying to do the same thing with my mouse and mouse hand, and when I tried to stop her, she actually got angry enough to attack my hand and try to bight me! I can’t imagine what she could possibly be smelling on there all of a sudden.
But I digress.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a calmer day and we’ll be able to get that burn done. If possible, I’d like to do a controlled burn of the outer yard around there, but for that, I’d want to make sure to have enough hoses joined together to reach, and the water tap’s shut off valve in the basement turned on. It’s still freezing overnight, so we’d have to make sure to turn the valve off again.
It may be dipping below freezing during the night, but not by much, so I unplugged the extension cord to the cats’ house and put that away, then unplugged the outside heated water bowl. I haven’t bothered to unplug the heated water bowl in the sun room, yet, simply because I like for that cats to have access to at least some warm water during the night.
Okay, this is weird. Fenrir is back. It’s not my keyboard she’s trying to get at. It’s my left hand. I don’t know what I touched that she might be smelling, and I did wash my hands when I came back inside, so I have no idea what’s going on! Time to give up trying to type, though. Every time I remove her, she comes right back and tried to eat my hand!
Part of my morning routine, after I’ve done my rounds and switched out the memory cards on the trail cams, is to review what the cameras recorded.
It’s not unusual for me to see things they recorded that we miss completely, otherwise. Like all the deer that go past one of the cameras while we are in bed.
Every now and then, though, I catch something that I should have seen myself, but somehow missed!
Like the top line of barbed wire on a fence being damaged!
The Re-Farmer 