yardcats

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Today started out early, as it has been of late. Between how early it gets bright out, and the inside cats deciding it’s feeding time, “sleeping in” is a bit of a pipe dream! 😁

With a daughter on kitten catching duty, feeding the outside cats went rather smoothly. I did notice that Caramel’s three were still together.

That orange kitten is so much bigger than the other two!

While doing the rest of my morning rounds, I made sure to water the covered beds thoroughly, so the moisture would help moderate the temperatures under the plastic somewhat, as the day got hotter.

The “Mr” haskap (the label actually says “Mr. Honeyberry”) is blooming quite nicely.

I even saw a big bumble bee enjoying the flowers!

I looked up the Berry Blue variety that this is, and most pollinator charts don’t include it. However, I found sellers that gave useful information in their descriptions. This variety is apparently a good cross pollinator for all other varieties, and is also self pollinating. It blooms in April-May.

Since the other two look like they won’t even start getting buds until June, this is a really bad combination!

At least we’ll get berries from the one, later in the season!

Once the outside stuff was done, I headed in for a light breakfast, with plans to visit my mother with my brother for Mother’s Day.

After some back and forthing, I ended up leaving later, as the restaurant he planned to pick dinners up from didn’t open until 11. He had to drive past my mother’s place first – and spotted my sister’s car! So that was a surprise. She works late shifts at Walmart and doesn’t typically get home and to bed until about 2am, so we weren’t expecting to see her in the morning.

So plans changed a bit and I met up with both of them at my mother’s, and we had a chance to visit before my brother quickly left to pick up the food he’d ordered. Someone at the restaurant answered the phone before they opened, so it was going to be ready for pick up right when the doors unlocked!

My mother was feeling up to going to church, and services started at 11:30. I had time to quickly go to a bank machine and get some cash, so I had something for the donation basket. My sister belongs to another church, so she left when it was time to walk across the street to my mother’s church. It was slow going for my mother, and she had to stop and rest along the way. With my brother staying close to her, I had a chance to show my sister the damage visible on the truck – I hadn’t realized this was the first time she’s seen our truck! We’ve had it for about 1 1/2 years now.

It was a special Mother’s Day service, so there were some extra prayers for mothers added, and the priest went around and sprinkled holy water on us.

I had to clean my glasses after that! Got “blessed”, right in the face. 😂

My mother was… being my mother. I won’t go into that! She did have a hard time with the new priest, though. He’s from India, has a very strong accent, and speaks faster than she can keep up. Not faster than typical; just too fast for her. Which is unfortunate, because he had a really excellent sermon, talking about his own childhood, and what a hard time he gave his mother! She passed away when he was very young, and that was a struggle for him. With his rather rambunctious youth, he never imagined he would become a priest, but credited where he is today to his mother. He calls her his angel. It was interesting to hear him mention his brother, later in the service, who is also a priest!

After a while, my mother started getting antsy, and even leaned over with her watch, telling me he was really dragging the service on. Which seemed strange to me, because I’m used to services being an hour and, according to her watch, it was only 45 minutes at the time. When the service was winding down, my mother stood up like she was about to leave, then took off as soon as he make the closing blessing, before the final hymn even started. Which meant my brother and I had to rush after her to help with the doors and get her home.

Not being able to hear much of what he was saying didn’t help, I’m sure, but to be completely honest, given some of the things she’d already said to me about this new priest, and some of her other behaviour, it really came down to my mother’s own racism. It’s getting worse as she gets older, unfortunately, as her mental health and cognitive thinking declines. At her age, we really can’t expect any positive changes.

Once we got her home and settled into her favourite chair, my brother went into the kitchen to get the take-out dinners ready. My mother started ordering me to get plates and stuff, but my brother told her, no. There’s simply no room in her 2-step kitchen! He could pass things to me, but anything more then that would just slow things down.

She seemed to get it, but then started ordering us around again, as if the conversation never happened! 😄

We did have a nice lunch together, though, and some time to chat about a few things. My brother had brought brought batteries from home and ended up changing the batteries in her remotes, just in case, so none of the ones I picked up for her yesterday were needed yet.

After everything was cleaned up and we had a good visit, my brother had to head out. I stayed a bit longer, to rub the topical pain reliever on my mother’s back and hips – this time with her sitting in her chair and leaning against the table, rather than lying on her side in bed, making it much easier to get the areas that bother her the most. She told me that, after I’d applied it to her back yesterday, it helped her so much and she slept really well. She also has her hot water bottle, which she finds helps a lot, too. So she was more than happy with getting another “treatment”! Her home care aids do have applying this on her care sheet now, but my mother has been doing it herself before she gets dressed, so it’s done before they get there. She can’t do her whole lower back, though. She doesn’t like the idea of the home care workers touching, though. Hopefully, she’ll have at least some home care workers she trusts enough to do it, because it really does help her a lot!

By the time I got home, it was getting close to feeding time for the outside cats. I started doing for the cat house to get the container from inside the entry, when I disturbed a domestic scene!

This mama was nursing both Eyelet and Grommet, but Grommet ran off (you can see him in the next image above). I tried to not come too close, but it was still too much for him. I had to go where he was to get the food container, though, so he went hiding under the cat house, instead.

Poirot, meanwhile, had left the sun room, so I could see her babies while setting her own food dish in front of the carrier.

Seeing the adult cats splayed all over the yard in the heat is funny enough. Seeing Poirot’s babies splayed out is just adorable!

Once the food was out, I wanted to top up the water bowls, and cool down the portable greenhouse – the thermometer needle was as far as it could go, even with the doorway tied wide open. If the numbers on the dial went that far, it would have read above 60C/140F!

The water in the hose was scalding hot, so I used that to refill the garbage can heat sink until it was cold again. Then I misted all the plant containers, and even the roof and walls. By the time I was done, the thermometer was down to 50C/122F

As I went to refill the bowl in the water bowl shelter, I spotted two little faces peeking at me through the cat house entry.

I wasn’t fast enough to get the orange tabby.

This little tabby stayed and watched me, and I was even able to pick it up and snuggle it!

Grommet, meanwhile, was in the gap under the entry watching me, and started hissing and spitting before ducking further under.

Caramel’s babies need names. There’s the tortie, the tabby and the ginger. Since we already have Butterscotch inside (and is probably a great-great-grandma to them!), and Caramel is their mom, maybe these ones will stay on the sweets theme?

Something to think about.

Tonight’s low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I’m going to be leaving the door to the portable greenhouse tied open for the night. Meanwhile, Friday’s low has changed again, and is now expected to drop to -1C/30F – this after a heat wave over the next few days with highs reaching above 30C/86F! So no chance of transplanting anything quite yet. Any transplants would just get baked, then frozen, within a week! Tomorrow morning, though, I’m hoping to get some beds ready and planted with things that can handle both the heat and the cold. The summer squash bed looks like a total loss and, since it already has netting over it, I figure that’s a good place to plant potatoes.

For the rest of today, though, I’m taking a Sunday – and Mother’s Day – break.

For the moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and peaking rhubarb

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We’re ever so slightly starting to warm up this morning. The high is supposed to be fairly decent, but we’re supposed to drop below freezing overnight again. I don’t know if we got snow last night, but we did get enough rain to almost fill the rain barrel by the sun room. It was down to about 1/3 full after I used what was there to water winter sown garden beds, and now it’s just a few inches from the top. So that’s a good sign. Once it’s warmed up more, I’ll use it to water the covered garden bed, since it would not have gotten any rain.

The kitties were out in full force this morning, though I counted “only” 25 this morning. Not counting the bebbehs.

When Caramel is out, these two just quietly curl up together and sleep. This cat bed is almost directly under the heat bulb, so they would be nice and cozy.

Their sibling with Brussel’s older two, however is a lot more active!

Click through the slide show for a series of short videos.

She can’t quite keep up with her cousins, but she sure is trying!

I had a whole bunch of cats following me and trying to trip me up after they were fed and I continued my morning rounds. Judgement is not much of a surprise, but even Patience was getting under my feet, and he’s not normally willing to get that close. I did have to do a bit of straightening out of the mesh over the chain link fence garden bed, showing that at least one cat was laying down on a section of it. They seem to gravitate towards the overlapping sections of mesh, too.

For some time now, I’ve been watching there the rhubarb is, partly to avoid stepping on it when I got into the old kitchen garden from the north side. Tiny hints of red have been poking through. This morning, they were quite a bit larger. They much have liked the rain we got!

We’ll need to prune back the ornamental crabapple trees that are shading them. Especially the patch and the north corner of the garden. Honestly, I’d love to get rid of those trees completely and replace them with something that produces edible food for humans, and doesn’t shade out the things we’re trying to grow there. They tiny crabapples they produce, which are about the size of big blueberries, do provide food for the grosbeaks in winter, though. Plus, they can be cross pollinators for the Liberty apple tree we planted nearby. So I guess we’re stuck with at least one of them. If we can keep up with the pruning, though, they should be less problematic. It always surprises me when I cut away one branch, only do discover a whole section of dead branches were hidden inside. That’s one thing about any fruit trees we will be planting. They will be pruned! I want to try espalier as well. I know my dad used to prune the trees when he was able, but my mother would just shove things into the ground and leave them. Then wonder why other things would start dying off… Ah, well. It is what it is! They certainly are pretty trees. During my last visit with my mother, I was showing her pictures of the garden and trying to explain the cover on the bed in the old kitchen garden. When I told her it was the same idea as her cold frames, she seemed to start grasping it. Then she asked about the pink rose bush. I told her how, when we first moved there, it was just a couple of stems and dying – until we pruned the ornamental crab apple tree because it and it finally started to get light again! I didn’t have any good photos to show her, but she was happy to hear it is doing well now. It took years for us to get it to the point where it could actually bloom and we saw it was a pink rose bush! Unlike the Cherokee rose, which turns out to be invasive and is trying to take over the garden. They’re beautiful, too, but it’s going to take work to keep them under control, that’s for sure!

At some point, I will want to transplant that rhubarb into a fresh area. Since we will be planting asparagus where the black tarp has been for the past couple of years, that might be a good area to plant the rhubarb, too. It could be the beginnings of a perennial garden.

If we can keep those elm tree roots from choking everything out. Those elms have got to go!

All in good time.

The Re-Farmer

Kitty updates

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Well, Magda got out of the isolation shelter again. Poor Grink was all alone in there. I decided to catch Kohl and put her in with The Grink for company.

They seem okay with the arrangement!

It wasn’t until after I got back from running errands, late enough to do the evening feeding, that we were able to grab Magda and medicate her ears. We put her back into the isolation shelter after that, then dosed The Grink’s ears.

Kohl, seemed to want out, but not too desperately. Since she might be in there, with the heat lamp, for a couple of weeks, we figured this would be a good time to bring out the clippers and give her a hair cut. She is almost solid with mats, and it must be quite uncomfortable. I know there’s at least one patch on her tail that is burrs stuck in her fur.

Unfortunately, by the time we got the clippers out for what would be their first use, she made her way into the bottom of the isolation shelter, settled on the box nest, and completely ignored us as we tried to convincer to come come to us!

We finally have up.

We went inside and did David, instead.

David wasn’t as bad as Kohl, but we’ve been using a mat cutting comb on him, whenever we could. He really hates being combed or brushed, though, so he still had mats in various areas we haven’t been able to get at.

David did NOT like getting his hair cut. My daughter and I would work at one of us holding him while the other trimmed, then trading off when he got too squirmy. We had to stop a couple of times to just let him have a break and destress a bit – and to clean up the piles of hair.

That is one very fluffy cat!

We got most of him shaved now. Almost, but not quite, a lion’s mane style. It’s a bit of a mess in places, but the mats are gone, and that’s the important part.

He is most displeased with us.

He did finally allow much husband to cuddled him and keep him warm for a bit, though.

I’m hoping to get a picture at some point, but that might take a while. 😄

Meanwhile, the littles in the sun room are getting so very active!!!

The black and white one has climbed out of the cat cave, several times. The calico has been climbing the opening, and there have been a few times I’ve seen her basically dangling from the top. Even their adopted sibling is squirming and worming around.

At one point, my daughter walked past and heard a squeaking noise. She looked over and found the black and white with its front legs outside the cat cave, looking at her and “yelling”. It didn’t stop until she reached in and started petting him! Brussel has been leaving the sun room more often, and for longer times, so we’ve had more opportunity to pick up and cuddle the babies while she’s gone. After taking the last picture, with the black and white one outside the cat cave, I reached in to pick him up, cuddled him a moment, then put him back into the cat cave. Brussel was in there that time, and she was most displeased with me!

In other things…

It looks like we lost our window of opportunity. Slick no longer looks pregnant. I saw Sprout today, which I haven’t for a day or two, and she is looking less round, too. There wasn’t a chance we would have gotten her this time, though. I do wish we’d gotten Slick, though. Well, we just have to concentrate on catching some of the others. At this point, it’s probably a matter of bringing in any cat we can trap, male or female, though if we trap one of the mamas that just gave birth, we’ll have to let them go. The vet won’t spay them while they are lactating. The problem is, with the more feral ones, chances are we won’t be able to tell until the vet actually sees it.

Well, it is what it is. We do the best we can.

Hopefully, Magda will stay in the isolation shelter this time, and get some rest and recovery – and wet cat food! She did get at some of it before The Grink and Kohl ate it all, so maybe she’ll make the association between staying in the isolation shelter and getting extra tasty food, and not having to fight off a dozen other cats for it! 😁

The Re-Farmer

Little grubling

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I finally got clear photos!

Look at that good mama! Taking care of her new baby, just like her own.

The baby looks like it might be a tabby, not a tortie. If so, then there is a chance it is male. It’ll be some time before we can find out for sure.

What a cutie!

The Re-Farmer

My morning buddy

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Judgement decided to follow me around while I was doing my morning rounds today. Which is fine, except that he kept running in front of my feet, then flinging himself into the snow in front of me. I finally had to pick him up and carry him, to avoid stepping on him.

He may be one of our most socialized cats, but he’s not THAT socialized! He did not like being carried!

I tried to get a picture of him, but he was moving around so much, it was really difficult. So I am so happy to have managed to get this shot!

This may well be the best picture I’ve ever managed to get of him! He doesn’t even look judgmental, for a change. 😄

We’ve had a light snowfall through the night that is supposed to continue, off and on, throughout the day. Or not. The forecast has changed, again, and now it’s saying the snow should stop within an hour or so. Of course, it’s also saying we have snow falling right now and, as I type this, I’m no longer seeing any. Our high of the day is supposed to get a few degrees above freezing. What that is actually expected to be seems to change every time I look at my weather apps, but we’re supposed to reach our high of the day somewhere around 6pm

Looking ahead in the 10 day forecast, we’re supposed to stay just above freezing for a few more days, then get a couple of days where the highs are below freezing – and then we’re supposed to get highs warmer than 10C/50F. What I’m really looking forward to is when the overnight lows get consistently above freezing temperatures! Well get a few nights above freezing throughout April, but it won’t be consistent until May, at the earliest.

The outside cats are going to really love the warmer nights!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: pre-germination progress – plus the cuteness!

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I will start with the cuteness!

Brussel is such a good mama.

Also, she seems to now be more expecting and accepting of her wet cat food delivery. She didn’t growl at me this morning, as I used the food delivery back scratcher to drop it as close to her face as I could. She didn’t even bother leaving the cat cave while I was doing the kibble this morning, and simply waited, nursing her babies. Once the food was delivered, she didn’t hesitate to start eating, too.

This afternoon, she did leave her babies briefly after I came out with the second feeding of the day, but went back before I was done refilling water bowls. She didn’t growl at me until I stopped to try and get photos and video of her.

My younger daughter has been having a rough time getting sleep (with both cats and high pain levels to blame), so she ended up awake all night. This morning, she was a sweetheart and shoveled the plow ridge away, and cleared the end of the driveway before going to bed for the day. We haven’t bothered to try and clear the rest of the driveway, or the turn around space in the yard to back up to the house. Though our high of the day was just below freezing, it was bright and sunny, and things are melting all over. I considered doing the Costco run today, but decided against it.

I did make a quick trip into town and stopped at the hardware store to pick up a heat mat. Unfortunately, they were all out. I did stop at the grocery store for a few things, but I will do the Costco run tomorrow. There is a Canadian Tire across the street from the Costco I go to, and I’m hoping they will have a heat mat…

… because our pre-germinated seeds need to be potted up!

The first image has the 4 Sunshine squash and the 6 Mashed potato squash. As you can see, their seed leaves are emerging from the shells.

In the second image, with the 2 Arikara squash and the 5 Baked Potato squash, are just going wild with their roots, as well as the seed leave emerging!

In the last image, the luffa now has 3 out of 4 seeds showing radicals.

I have everything ready to pot these up, except a second heat mat. The eggplant and peppers won’t start showing for a while, yet, and those need to be on the heat mat. The luffa will go into peat pots, so they can fit into the tray with them and be warm, but the rest of the squash will be going into the large celled tray. I might have to just hang out in the basement with the heater on and warm things up. I can also use hot water in the tray to help warm up the seed starter mix, too. The basement, however, was at only 10C/50F when I went down this afternoon. That would be really warm, if I were outside in the sun, but in the basement, it feels cold!

Those germinated seeds need to be put into the seed starting mix, though.

I think I’m going to take the chance and just do that today, then go hunting for a second heat mat for them, tomorrow.

The Re-Farmer

That’s more than 10-20cm…

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So… we got a bit of snow, overnight! 😄

It’s still snowing a bit as I write this. According to the weather radar, we are pretty much in the middle of the system that’s passing over us, but I’m just barely seeing snowflakes fluttering around at the moment. We are still under a snowfall warming, and they are now saying to expect a total of 15-25cm/6-10 inches of snowfall.

I think we already hit that.

Unfortunately, the wind direction was blowing snow right into the kibble house, and the space between the kibble house, the cat house and the water bowl shelter was deep with snow.

On the plus side, there is no longer a big puddle of water on the bottom of the catio! I haven’t returned the food bowl into there, though, and have been leaving kibble on the replacement hammock we put in to replace the damaged one. I can reach that with my scoop of kibble without having to untie the door.

As you can see in the second photo of the above slide show, the cats are quite enjoying the catio!

In the last photo, taken after I shoveled around the shelters and cleared some paths, you can see how much snow accumulated on the shelter roofs. I didn’t go all out on the shoveling, though. We’re going to be warming up again and, even when the temperature is just a degree or two below freezing, things will start to melt.

The yard cats were certainly appreciating the cleared paths around their shelters – and the shelters themselves.

They also seem to really appreciate that I left those box nests under the shrine for them to use. Since one of the kibble bowls under there has disappeared, I started to put kibble inside the box nests as well as the one kibble bowl that’s left. If nothing else, it keeps the snow off the kibble! The cats seem to like eating out of them – and sitting on top of the boxes, too. These cat been built to be used inside the isolation shelter, they seem to be quite useful in other places, too!

Speaking of the isolation shelter…

There was no way to get them all in a photo, but I counted 13 cats inside the isolation shelter! Including Syndol, lounging on the hammock which, I’m happy to say, is no longer being constantly knocked loose from its hooks. Simply adding a cord joining the two hooks closest to the ramp to the second level seems to be enough to keep it from happening.

I didn’t even notice what The Grink was doing in the second picture above, until now. She’s got her face right up at that heat bulb!! (Yes, it is confirmed: The Grink is a lady.) I’m glad the new clamp lamp has a guard around the bulb, but she’s so tiny, she could easily push her face past it. I don’t think she will, but it’s a possibility.

Brussel seems to have picked up on my new routine for her. At first, when I came out to do the kibble and water, she would jump out of her nest and eat outside. I would wait until she was back with her babies, then use the long handled back scratcher to deliver wet cat food into the cat cave. Since she would be nursing her babies, I tried to drop it close to her face, so she could eat and nurse at the same time.

Lately, she hasn’t bother leaving the cat cave when I come out with the kibble. She growls at me when I take her food and water bowl out of the cage in the evening, then put it back, refilled, in the morning, but she doesn’t leave. She also grows when I deliver the wet cat food next to her, but she now immediately starts eating, without waiting for me to leave. This is encouraging, since one of my concerns is that she will take her kittens out completely, and who knows when – or if – we’d see them again. The mamas don’t bring their babies to the house until they’re ready for weaning and, by then, it’s a lot harder to socialize them.

I’m going to be on the lookout for another small cat cave like the one we brought over for Brussel. If we can fit another one in the cube where she originally went into labour, perhaps one of the other more feral mamas that went into heat really early will have her litter in it, instead of somewhere in the outer yard. We do have another cat cave in the house, but it’s far too big to fit into the cube. Plus, that one is in pretty constant use by the inside cats!

Looking ahead in the long term forecast, it seems this will be the last big snowfall for our area, and April is looking to have daytime highs above freezing consistently. In fact, we are supposed to start getting daytimes highs of 13C/55F and up by the middle of the month.

Of course, forecasts that far ahead are never a sure thing. What we’ll really be starting to look at as the season progresses is the overnight lows. Once the overnight lows are consistently 6C/43F or higher, the soil should be warm enough for cool weather crops. With my winter sowing, that means taking the mulch off the beds so the soil can warm up, and give the seeds we planted in the fall a chance to germinate. Those overnight temperatures, though, are unlikely to hit until the second half of May and into June.

With the current 10 day forecast, the snow we got should melt fairly slowly, which will be good for the garden beds. So far, it looks like we won’t be getting any serious spring flooding. Of course, that could change very quickly, if we find ourselves with an April blizzard. We shall see!

For now, I’m happy with the snow we got. We didn’t have a lot of snow over the winter, so this extra moisture will be good for the farmers’ fields, as well as our gardens.

All is good!

The Re-Farmer

First babies

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I got quite a surprise while feeding the outside cats this morning!

I’d done the food and was just about to go do the rest of my rounds when I heard a strange noise.

I tiny little squeak.

Being half way out the door, I at first thought I was hearing it from outside. It took some looking around, but I finally found the source.

It was coming from the cat cage under the platform.

Where Brussel was scrunched into a corner.

Giving birth.

After watching for a bit to make sure she was okay, I quickly finished my rounds, then checked on her again. I didn’t think she was done, but it was hard to tell. I could see one little calico squirming around, but Brussel is so fluffy, there could easily have been more hidden in there.

What I ended up doing was pulling the entire cage away from the window wall, where it would be colder. I grabbed a cat cave from inside and, after straightening out the blanket bed in the cut next to Brussel, I squeezed it in, using the handle of a broom stick to shove it into place. I’m hoping Brussel will move her kittens into there.

I also got a two sided bowl and set it up for her with food and water. I also changed the angle of the second heat lamp with the warmer bulb to face more into the cage.

She growled at me, the whole time.

I’ve let the Cat Lady know already. We have never been able to get close to Brussel, though her sister, Sprout, is even more feral than she is. But she chose to have her kittens in the sun room, which is a total shock. Given how insanely early in the year it is for having kittens, it was probably the warmest place she could find. Since she is in the cat cage, if we could get a litter pan in there somehow, we could close it up, too. That would keep the other cats – and racoons and skunks – out.

I have the critter cam set facing the cat cage and the live feed up right now. With the cage pulled further from the wall, I can see into it more, but the heat lamp’s shield blocks my view of the corner she is in. I did, however, catch another cat going in to check things out, and was able to use the camera to tell it to leave, which it did.

Hopefully, this will mean we can finally socialize Brussel, and be able to socialize her kittens, too, and get her fixed.

Meanwhile, I need to head out soon to run errands. The family can keep an eye on her while I am gone. My biggest concern is that she will move them out of the sun room completely, which would probably kill the kittens. I know, I know. We don’t need more kittens, but after last year, finding so many dead and dying kittens, day after day, I really don’t want that to happen again this year.

Whatever happens, happens. We’ll deal with things as they come – but I can still try to set things up to hopefully have a happy result!

The Re-Farmer

Cats, cats and more cats!

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I got to spend some extra time with the outside cats this morning. We had a chilly night, and it was still pretty cold, but they didn’t seem to notice! It’s going to be a decent day today, and then just keep warming up, so they’re going to be all over the place!

While putting kibble out in the sun room, I got accosted by a tuxedo, who wanted all sorts of pets.

We have a few tuxedos, but I haven’t seen most of them for a while. I’m actually not sure if this is one of our regulars that has come back from exploring, or if this is a new cat. It cats hard to keep track when they come and go so much.

I’m thrilled to have caught him in a tongue blehp, though.

He was incredibly friendly, though, and eager for both food and attention. So he’s probably one of ours that has returned. I suspect that if he were a dump, he would have been more skittish. He could be visiting from another farm, too.

Once outside, there was a crowd of cats on the cat house roof, waiting for kibble, so I went over and got an absolute thrill.

Adam came to me, wanting pets!

I was able to get some video.

The tabby in front was named by the girls because he apparently always goes for their toes. He nips when he wants attention. He’s not the only one that does that!

Before I got my camera out, not only was I able to pet Adam, but I was able to give her full on, two handed, face and neck scritches. She looked like she was in heaven! This is so awesome! We have been trying to socialize her for 3 years, with virtually zero success. No, suddenly, she has decided she likes us. 😄

She is one of the cats that went into heat early, but she doesn’t seem to be pregnant. Given how long it’s been, I would have expected her to start showing by now. There’s no real way to know right now, though. However, now that she had decided to let us actually pet her, we should be able to get her into a carrier, rather than having to trap her, and get her spayed. Hopefully, the rescue would be able to arrange something, soon. It’s getting warm enough that I would be willing to try trapping cats soon. It’s those overnight temperatures we have to keep an eye on, since we have no way to monitor a trap.

As I was finishing up my rounds and passing by the isolation shelter, I had a whole crowd of faces, watching me!

There are eight in this photo, including one mostly hidden by the lamp. There were at least two others out of frame, too.

Once inside the sun room, I was greeted by this fluffy boy.

He looks so angry! 😄 He was actually being very friendly and wanting attention.

Just like this little girl, who followed me from the isolation shelter.

Magda is one of the cats that is just too smol. She’s almost a year old, but looks like she’s just a few months old. There are several littles like her, but she is the only friendly one – and even she has her making strange moments, still. She would be an easy one to catch for spay and adoption through the rescue, but I’d be afraid to do it. With her small size, that tells me she’s probably going to need extra medical care. Whenever that happens, it seems they end up keeping the cats permanently, and they already have so many unadoptable cats right now!

I tried to do a head count this morning, and I think I counted a total of 30. It’s hard to know for sure if I got them all, or if I double counted some.

So many of them would make such great indoor cats, if we could find people to adopt them!

The Re-Farmer

Not today

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Oh, how lovely it feels outside right now! I did my morning rounds and even remembered to wear a lighter coat instead of my parka, so I wouldn’t over heat.

What I didn’t do was break out little Spewie to clear the rest of the driveway. Not today!

As far as the pain levels go, I could do it, but I know myself well enough by now to know that if I did, I would be useless for the next couple of days – and we’ve got too much going on in the next while!

One of those things is to hopefully be able to snag this fluffy lady and get her to the vet on the 30th.

She needs a name, still. So far, no name seems to stick, other than “fluffy lady”, and we have several of those!

After I took this picture, I tried to reach out to pet her, but she kept backing off. I was able to move around and reach her more from behind. Once I started to pet her, she was good with it. She does love to be pet, and I was even able to give her double handed skritches on either side of her head. But we can’t just walk up to her, or reach out to her. We still have to sort of sneak in to pet her.

I am 99% sure she is pregnant right now. Last year, she’s the one who dropped her litter all over the yard and abandoned them, leaving me to have to euthanize the survivors. She got pregnant very late in the season. This year, she went into heat so early, there is almost no chance of survival for her kittens. Especially if she drops her litter again, like last year. So getting her spayed is a higher priority than getting Brussel spayed. We know Brussel knows how to be a mother. The chances of her kittens surviving is still really, really low, just because of the time of year, but we do know she has a safe nest somewhere beyond the inner yard.

As for which male we are able to catch, it could be any one of several friendly males. It might even be this one.

I was actually petting both Magda, when she was up on the shelf, and Kohl (you can just see Magda’s face beside Kohl, near the window) when this tabby pushed himself in, demanding pets. I believe this is the male that was pretty sick for a while, and allowed us to tend to him. He’s grown quite a bit since then!

It was interesting to see these three, plus a couple more kittens on the cat bed inside, and realize they are all almost the same age. There would be only days or, at most, a couple of weeks age difference between them. Magda, another grey and white, and a black and white cow baby the girls call The Grink, are all really, really tiny. Then there’s this tabby, Kohl and her brother, Rabi, who are all so much bigger! Kohl and Rabi were the first litter last year, so they are the oldest among the kittens, but by this time, the others should have caught up.

With things freezing in the snow and being visible that would normally not be seen in the summer, we have a pretty good idea of why some of these kittens are really small. At least one of them has a serious case of round worms. I was very perplexed when I found what turned out to be frozen throw up. There was nothing in the ice but these worms; no partially digested food or anything like that. I’ve seen tape worms before, but I’ve never seen roundworms before, so I was quite perplexed by what I saw. They are very curly!

I’d sent a picture to the Cat Lady (it’s a good thing we’re such friends! 😄😂) and she identified it for me. These are the worms that Button had. He needed to be treated for worms three times before he was clear of them. During treatment, she said it was like he was pooping spaghetti, it was so bad! Once he was clear of them, though, he started growing again, and is now almost normal size for his age. Still on the small side, but not abnormally so.

The question is, how do we even begin to treat yard cats for round worms? It’s not like we can give them a pill. For starters, we have no idea which cat had those throw ups I found. We’d have to basically treat all of them – yesterday, I got a head count of possibly 36 – and just hope we get the infected ones. I lean towards thinking it’s The Grink, a cat we can’t get close to, but there are the two other very tiny cats that likely also have them.

One of the recommendations is to feed them pumpkin. Which would be great if we could do cat soup for the outside cats. Without heated food bowls, though, we had to stop giving them the kibble we softened with warm water we’d been doing in the fall. We could mix in the lysine and ground pumpkin seed with that. When the softened kibble started freezing before they could finish eating it, there was no point in continuing. Once we start consistently getting temperatures above freezing, we can start softening the kibble for them again. That makes dosing them with supplements easier. Not that there’s any way to control the doses this way, but at least they’d get some.

The jury is out on how well pumpkin actually words for this. It might be worth getting more of the Happy Poops stuff as a supplement. Looking up the ingredients – pumpkin, flax seed, coconut, chicory root, turmeric, ginger and banana – I found that several of them were noted as helping against worms. The larger jar would be pretty expensive, though. It’s one thing to buy it for the inside cats, where we at least know that they won’t just get infested again. Quite another to get something like that for yard cats.

There’s only so much we can do for them, but we do the best we can.

The Re-Farmer