Doing Dumb Things

With 3 cats left to catch, I decided to take a couple of days away from my trapping job to get some other things done around here. Like plant my tulips.

I always do this, I buy the biggest bags of tulips I can find as soon as they're available, which in this area is usually in October. Then I mess around and don't get them planted until a week or so before they're due to sprout. There are some reasons for this. We don't get our first frost until late November or December and until that time the flowers are still growing and blooming. I can't bear to pull out a live flower to plant bulbs. After the first frost the ground is cold and the flowers are dead, but I don't like to dig in cold dirt. For one thing, it's the time of year you could slide your shovel through an underground den and slice a sleeping toad in half. Yucko. So I procrastinate.

I put the bags of tulips right by the front door so I wouldn't forget them. I have had a guilty conscience every time I walk past them. So that's two dumb things, I guess.

Anyway, I went out yesterday in the late afternoon to de-arm the two cat traps I had set. As I was working on the first one, I heard the second one snap shut. I thought it was probably Slinky again. He's not too bright and he's always hungry.

It wasn't Slinky, though, it was a black cat. I thought it was the other corn stand kitten. I covered the trap and went about my afternoon chores. One of the chores was to wash all the towels and blankets I'd been using for the cat traps. While they were still warm from the dryer, I took some out to the car to make a nice warm nest for the kitten in the trap. But guess what? I had actually caught the spooky black kitten, Carla's baby! I thought I'd never catch it because it's so wild. Suddenly the task of getting up early and driving to town the next morning didn't seem so bad.

When I got to SPCA this morning, however, no one else was there. A small (very small) sign on the door declared they were closed for 2 days for the holiday. Well dang. How dumb of me not to know that.

I have to admit I'm bad about knowing things like that. I pretty much just doodle around in my own little universe and have been known to make mistakes about days and times. I'm never late, I'm always on time. I just might be a week early, or a day early. I did this twice when we used to take chickens to a sale about 25 miles south of here. The sale was the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month. We (once it was Bob and once it was Amanda) would get up early, catch birds and pack them into the van, drive all the way to the sale, and then find out it was the wrong weekend. You'd think I'd learn.

The back of my car is the only warm and safe place to keep a cat in a trap. So now I have the black cat in my car for the next two days. I can't take it back to SPCA until Wednesday. It's already an unhappy camper. I've been calling it Spook because of its personality, but remembered something Cesar Millan said about naming dogs: don't give them names like "Killer" and "Cujo" and then expect them to be good dogs. So if it's a girl her name will be Angela. Like an angel, you know. If it's a boy I'll just call him Angel and pronounce it "An-hell" like my Hispanic neighbors do.

My plan for the morning had been to drop off the cat, go to breakfast, then drop off some late Christmas cookies to a relative. Angela and I stopped at a little restaurant in Rancho Cordova. It's in a fairly run down part of that town, but is clean and has good food. As I pulled in, I could see three people behind the restaurant going through the dumpster. They were picking out recyclable cans and bagging them. They had obviously been working since dawn because they already had 4 huge sacks tied to their small cart.

Under Angela's benevolent influence, I grabbed the cookies and headed toward them. "We'll clean this up before we leave," the older man said when he saw me coming. "Great!" I said. "I saw you guys out here working hard and thought you looked like you could use some Christmas cookies." They stared at me like I was dumb. Which, as I've been telling you, I often am. But this was one smart thing I managed to do this morning, because it seemed to really brighten their day.

Then Angela and I stopped at the grocery store. I picked up a few things, including some cooked chicken breast and a small water dish for Angela.

One thing about doing dumb things is that the tendency can be inherited. You don't necessarily do the same dumb things as your parents - for example, I've never hit myself smack on the head with a hammer like my mother did once, demonstrating demolition techniques. I was reminded of this tendency when Angela and I got home. Bob's truck wasn't in the driveway. I assumed he'd gone somewhere. That was wrong, he was actually waiting for me to come home.

This may seem like a digression, but it's not. This is a picture of our farm road. The Christmas trees on the left are on our property and our neighbor's sod farm is under water on the right.

See the area between the road and the trees? Well, that was a dirt irrigation ditch all summer. In the fall they go along with a scraper and fill in the ditch. It keeps the weeds down. In the spring they cut a new ditch. When driving around here, or riding a horse, or running, you stay on the road. If you get onto the old ditch, you will sink.

OK, so take a look back at the picture above. That little figure down there on the levee at the end of the road, in tan pants and a blue coat, is Bob waiting for me.

Bob was taking his sweetie on a moonlight ride around the fields last night and he forgot about the ditches.

They had a nice moonlight walk back home. The road is to the right in this picture. Because the creek had been up over this field a couple of days before, all the dirt is wet, but if he'd stayed on the hard road Bob probably would have been fine. Or maybe he would have ended up even further from home before he got stuck.

This is typical California winter attire, by the way, a ski jacket, Bermuda shorts, and flip flops. Why ruin a good pair of shoes or get your pants legs dirty?

My self-appointed job was to stay on firm soil in my car and take pictures. You know, in case I had to go find someone with a tractor. Bob's job was to dig the truck out.

Farm kids are good with a shovel. Unfortunately Bob has a city truck and it didn't cooperate very well. After several tries at digging and driving, Bob came jogging back to my car.

"I have a great idea," he said. "You drive the truck and I'll push it."

Nope, that would be a bad idea because I'd have to ruin my only decent pair of winter boots. I had a better idea: don't back the truck up, drive it forward.

So he went back and tried again and, sure enough, the truck finally was unstuck. Can you guess how I knew that would work? Well, obviously, I've been stuck out in the fields myself a few times.

The Godmother?

I accidentally left the raccoon trap near the wood shed door set last night. Usually I don't do that because I really do NOT want to catch the wild critters that amble around here at night.

Shortly after dawn I heard some jangling outside my bedroom window and remembered about the trap. It was the sound a trapped animal makes trying to escape. I looked out the window and saw a little gray cat paw reaching through the bars of the trap. I hoped it was the gray male with the hurt leg that I've been trying to catch, but I didn't want him to hurt himself more. So I threw on some clothes and shoes and stomped eagerly out the front door.

Oh fooey! What's this at the bottom of the steps?

With my reading glasses on, it looked a little like Carla. But it wasn't.

It was a possum. Maybe a dead one. It's hard to tell because they're good at faking it. Then I saw the blood smear leading to it. Okay, probably a dead possum. I wondered which of my friends who gets up earlier than I do might have left me this gift. Or was it NOT a friend? Was this, perhaps, like waking with a horse head in your bed? Perhaps a despised developer left it, or the NPR tower guy.

I backed up and went out the back door to check on the trap instead. It contained Rosie, not her brother. I was happy to finally see her again. I let her go and reset the trap. Within 30 minutes I caught another cat, one of the Corn Stand kittens.

I set the other trap in the hay barn nearby; it would be nice to take two to SPCA in the morning.

In the meantime, here's a closer look at the possum (opossum) for those of you in Australia and New Zealand who use the same name for much cuter wildlife.

The first thing most people notice about possums is their teeth. That's because one of their defense mechanisms is snarling. They have interesting little fingers on their front feet.

And what appears to be an opposable thumb on their back feet.

Possums can be a danger to chickens, but they're slow and not as clever as raccoons. It's fairly easy to keep them out of the pens. I don't invite them here, but they can be beneficial. They eat slugs and snails and fruit that has fallen to the ground. They look fierce but they really aren't, of all the dog vs. possum encounters I've heard of, the possum always lost. Melanie's tiny Norwich Terrier, Cindy Lou, has killed almost a dozen juvenile possums in their back yard in the city.

I found more blood smears on another sidewalk. I surmise this little guy was hit on the highway and wandered around before he died at my front door. Another possibility is that Dusty the horse stomped it. He's killed opossums before. Bob says, "thank God it wasn't just injured or you'd have brought it in the house to fix it."

Anyway, it took a while to get the possum off the sidewalk because I waited for Bob to wake up and take care of that job.

I can't walk fast enough to get the carcass across the busy highway, and up to the top of the levee where our local buzzard family can eat it for breakfast.

This was not a mama possum, by the way. I think it's the wrong time of year for that. The cats, possums, and skunks around here all come in heat this time of year. Their babies are born a couple of months later.

Big Game Hunter

Why would anyone who is retired, and has a cozy warm bed, be up and about so early in the morning that the sun is barely visible on the horizon? Who wants to chip ice off the windshield before their first cup of coffee?

That would be me, big game cat trapper, making another run to SPCA.

By the time I get there the sun has risen. On Sunday, there would already be a long line of people with cats in traps and carriers, waiting for the clinic to open. During the week there are fewer people, but you still have to check in early. The check in desk is open from 7:15 to 8:00. Then the clinic doors close and don't reopen until 4:00 in the afternoon, when the animals that were dropped off that morning can be picked up.

I caught two more cats, the mama and Rosie's sister. Rosie's sister is the tortoiseshell. She's very small and cute and not so wild as Rosie. I named her Molly. I haven't seen hide nor hair of Rosie since I turned her loose over a week ago. But I see Molly every day in the rafters of the wood shed, waiting for some food. I've caught her twice in the traps again and turned her loose.

I was really surprised to be able to catch the mama cat. She amazes me. For a cat that is quite definitely feral, she knows how to communicate with people. Or at least with me, she recognizes a sucker when she sees one. When her babies were small she would find me in the back yard when I was doing my chores, sit a few feet away, and yowl like a banshee. She made me follow her to the wood shed and fill the dish with canned cat food. If I went in the house through the back door to get the food, she would rush to the front door and sit on the railing, watching through the window. There's no way I could wander off task with her in charge.

I had not seen the mama cat for a couple of weeks when I started trying to catch her youngsters. I thought a coyote might have grabbed her, or that she'd wandered off looking for a tomcat. It's that time of year, you know. I was resigned to having another batch of kittens to worry about, when she suddenly showed up on the porch again one day. So I took the trap out there with some food in it and she walked right in!

That night I told Katherine I'd caught the mama and asked her to suggest a name I could put on the papers. What's a good name for a tiny, tough, bossy, loud little cat who raised 5 kids as a single mom? Katherine said, "Carla, like on Cheers." Perfect! Carla she is.

The other cats had been very quiet in the car. Carla bitched all the way to SPCA in the morning, and all the way home in the afternoon. I had left the two younger cats in the trap in my car overnight and released them the next morning. Carla was older and they told me it might take her a while longer to recover. I could not bring her into my house. Finally I came up with this solution:

Carla's Condo

Carla's condo is a coffin-sized wooden box on legs that I use as a brooder for chicks. I put a cat bed in it, a small litter box, and food and water. Then I mostly covered the screened top with plastic and plywood and left a heat lamp on to keep it warm. Carla stayed in it for 3 days, then she wanted out.

She didn't run off and disappear into the Christmas tree forest nearby. She just sat about 5 feet away licking her paws. Then she came and rubbed against my leg before she wandered off on her own business. Later in the afternoon she came to the front door, yowling at me. I took some food to the porch, but she wasn't interested in it. She wanted me to follow her to the carport. I did. She parked herself in front of her condo and yowled again. I took a big chance, but bent down and managed to pet her a couple of times before I caught her by the back of the neck and put her into the condo. That made her happy, I guess, because she didn't bite or scratch me.

I have left the condo set up with an opening in the top, and Carla goes in there at night to eat and use the litter box.
.........

Before I got this posted, I caught a fourth cat, the big orange tom, Slinky that got away from us twice before. This time I left him in the trap and everything was fine. I just released him back to the wood shed this morning after a trip to SPCA yesterday. That's 4 down and 4 to go.

I realize this blog has become all about cats recently. If there was anything else interesting going on in my life right now, you'd hear about it. The suggestions about opening a cat psychology clinic were fun, but you folks who don't live in California should know that there are already businesses like that here. Here is one that I've heard about: Penelope Smith. (This is not a recommendation, but I've heard of this woman through a couple of different sources.) At any rate I have a hard enough time communicating with humans at times, telepathy is definitely not one of my skills.

I would like to say something more about my recent adventures with Sacramento's SPCA. All of my experiences there have been good, from the young and enthusiastic people who work the reception desk, to meeting other people in the waiting room. The staff is helpful, the public - as diverse a group as you'll see anywhere - is upbeat. It's like we're all happy to be a part of something we know is a good cause.

A few years ago I had dealings with county animal control. That was a bad, bad experience. The employees there were surly and abusive, maybe not to the animals, but certainly to the public. There was a long line at the desk of people looking for missing pets. The lady behind the counter was taking the opportunity to chastise each one of them for not keeping track of their animals. I had taken in a pregnant feral cat that someone tossed off at my house, and got a lecture about not spaying and neutering MY animal, and then expecting the county to handle the problem. I told her it was not my animal. She said "Did you feed it?" Well, of course I had, that's how I caught it. She said, "If you feed it, it's yours!" She actually snarled at me, I swear it.

I can understand how working at a high kill facility could be depressing, and how you could get a negative view of the public when you have to work with the results of their irresponsibility every day. But what a difference at SSPCA, where they give you the opportunity to do good things. I took them some Christmas cookies and left a donation as well.
..........

The weather here is typical winter stuff, lots of overcast, some drizzle, some foggy mornings, some sunnier afternoons. December is a boring month, I like it that way. It means the river isn't flooding and the roof isn't leaking and there's plenty of wood in the shed. Bob is off work for the week. I see him occasionally, wandering through the kitchen to get a plate of food before he heads back out to the game room to watch movies.

Next week I'll starting washing chickens.

My kitchen and dining room will be a mess of drying chickens in cages, stacks of damp towels, and bits of feathers and toenails on the floor. I entered 15 birds in the Hollister show. Five of them are white. The Dom bantams don't take much clean up work, but the whites are always a chore. I always hope no one shows up to visit during bird-cleaning week, most people look down their noses at things like chickens being washed in the sink. A (European) parent of one of Bob's friends who wandered in while this was going on a few years ago said, "This reminds me of a French farmhouse." I'm sure that wasn't a compliment, but it is what it is.

Merry Christmas

Whether your Christmas was traditional...

...or a little more jazzy,

I hope your holidays have been wonderful, safe, and warm.

Meanwhile, Back in the House...

The feral cats outside are having a tough time. It's cold and uncomfortable and the crazy lady who feeds them keeps trying to catch them and haul them away to have their bodies mangled. Inside the house there is a different kind of hardship.

There is only one bed that has a heating pad.



Velcro sleeps in it most of the time, because she's old and delicate. You'd think she had plenty of insulation to keep herself warm, but that evidently isn't so. The only time Velcro isn't in the heated bed is when she either gets up to eat or to use the cat box. And when she does, Gollie sneaks in.

See, it's actually a rather large bed when it isn't full of Velcro.

When Gollie is in the bed, Velcro gets grumpy. She lays and waits. And sulks.

She usually doesn't have to wait long. Gollie has ADHD and she's also a scaredy cat. If she doesn't find something else to do, something will scare her and she'll have to run and hide.

But it was sooooo cold this morning, the inside cats tolerated each other's cooties to stay warm.

Cat Fiasco

Saturday was cat trapping day. I had planned so carefully. I bought 3 extra carriers so I'd have one for each of the 5 kittens and (hopefully) their mother. I put a fresh towel in each carrier and sprayed it with very expensive Feliway, which contains pheromones that supposedly make cats relax and feel like they're in a good place. 

I had been feeding the kittens in the 4x4 foot chicken cage for a couple of months. The cage has a door that can snap shut. It's an advanced version of the cardboard box and stick trap that little kids make to catch unicorns. We've used this cage before to trap kittens. Seventeen of them. Those were pretty young when we trapped them, and their mothers were feral but not very smart. Floof brains.

The woodshed kittens are 2/3 grown, and they are very smart. They're almost at the age when the boys will start peeing everywhere and the females will get pregnant. Their elusive mother is probably already pregnant with another litter. She seems to be hanging out in the basement of the house next door. Which means I'll never get Katherine or Bob to fetch them for me, and they're the bravest people I know. It's a scary basement.

In preparation for hauling all these cats, I put a plastic tarp down in the back of my car, and covered it with an old blanket and some newspaper. I set the chicken cage trap with a clothespin to hold the door open, then tied a string to the clothespin. I tied another string to the door so I could pull it and hold the door shut until I could latch it. I tested it twice when the cats weren't looking and it worked. 

I put the same food on the same plate I've been using to feed the kittens all this time, put it in the cage, then sat several feet outside the woodshed, holding my strings and trying to remember which was which. It only took two minutes to get four of the five hungry kittens into the trap. I surmised that the fifth, the spooky black one, would not go in there while it could see me, so I decided to settle for four. I pulled both strings and the trap worked like it was supposed to. In the 100th of a second before the door slammed shut, however, one of the kittens had escaped. Unfortunately it was the big gray male that has injured its foot and I was hoping to get it treated. Well, okay, three kittens wasn't bad, and two of them were females.

I went back to the house to get Bob to come "help" me. Which means I wanted him to grab the kittens out of the trap and put them into the carriers. Bob is good at stuff like this. I would hold the carrier doors open. By the time Bob found his gloves and a heavy-duty scratchproof jacket and we got back to the woodshed, the calico girl had somehow escaped. There were only two really freaked out cats left in the trap. Bob looked at the situation. "Really?" he commented. That's what he always says when it's obvious his mother has signed him up for yet another questionable activity. Then he sighed, opened the door and bent over to catch the first kitten. It was the orange tom I call Slinky. It scratched and clawed its way out of his grasp and escaped out the woodshed window. Bob quickly grabbed the one that remained and we stuffed her into a carrier. She only bit him once, right through the gloves. I gave him my best, "I will bake you cookies" smile and said "thank you."

I doubted the kittens would ever go back into the original trap. But I had a raccoon trap they hadn't seen. I set it up next to the woodshed door. It didn't take long to catch the orange tom again. Bob suggested leaving him in the trap, but I disagreed. "Let's put him in a carrier so I can set the trap again," I said, "maybe I can catch some more." Greed gets you every time.

Bob had a terrible time getting Slinky out of the trap. When you catch a raccoon, you don't handle it, you just pull up the door and release it where you want it. Usually that's 30 miles away. Or, if it has broken into pens and killed chickens, it gets sent to Raccoon Heaven. But we've never had to manually remove a critter from the trap.

Bob tried to fit both his hands through the door of the trap while I lifted it open. All I could see was an orange whirlwind, and flying fur. Like a blonde Tasmanian devil. I might have even said something helpful like "Eeeeek!"

Bob wrestled with the cat and finally got it by the scruff of the neck. If you can imagine trying to flush a panther down the toilet, you might have an idea how hard it was to try to get the cat through the small door of the carrier. Slinky was squalling and fighting for his life. Bob is very soft-hearted, he was trying to get the cat calmed down. That didn't work. Slinky finally squirmed his way free and ran off again. 

When Sunday came around, I had only one kitten to take to SPCA at the crack of dawn. Now that I had 4 trap-shy kittens left, I mentally prepared myself by thinking I'd just have to accept the flood of piss and mess of more feral kittens soon to come. At least there would be one female that wouldn't have a batch.

The kitten we had caught was this one...

She's light gray, with undertones of peach and a very sleek coat. 

The cat and I left home at 6:30. I always leave too early because I hate being late. I had used zip ties like Heaven, a friend on Facebook suggested, to make sure the carrier door wouldn't pop open in the car. I didn't need that personal experience.

It was really cold. I was wearing both a vest and my down jacket, and had a cup of coffee in the car. I had planned to sit in the warm car and drink my coffee, but there were already several people in line with a big bunch of carriers, and more coming in. So I dragged my carrier out and joined them, shivering, telling myself how it probably would not seem so cold if I'd had all the cats with me instead of just one. Calling myself names like Clumsy, Greedy, and Crazy Cat Lady.

And then I thought, "Ah well, I'm sure there are worse problems to have."

And just so I'd really buy into that argument, the next car into the parking lot was a convertible. With the top down. The lady driving it … who truly deserved the title Crazy Cat Lady … was only wearing a sweater. In the back seat she had 5 carriers, filled with feral cats.

The other folks in the line were just as crazy and devoted to their "jobs." They maintain feral colonies. We were only in line for 15 minutes, but I got lots of tips from them about how to catch cats, what traps to use, what bait to use, and that it's smartest to keep the cat in the trap all the way through the process. I found out that SPCA has traps that can be borrowed.

A volunteer soon brought paperwork for all of us to fill out. One line asked for the name of the "colony" the cat came from. I asked the convertible lady what to put there. She said to make up a name if it's a new colony. So now there's an official Davis Ranch feral cat colony. NOTE: that does NOT mean you are free to dump new feral cats here, and I will still kill you when I catch you. Another line asked for the name of the cat. There was a little girl standing with her parents in front of me. "What would you name this cat," I asked. She peeked through the sides of the carrier. The kitten's fur glowed in the rising sunlight. "Rosie," she answered.

Rosie got neutered, and got her rabies and some other kind of immunization for $15. Actually $20 because they didn't have change and I told them I didn't need it anyway.

The nice ladies at the counter knew who I was, Andrea had told them. They had a trap ready for me to check out. I left the cat in their care.

Later that day Bob and Anna were in the kitchen when I got the pick-up call. I told Bob I needed to make a quick trip to town, to SPCA. "Why?" he asked, "I thought you took the cat in this morning." 

"I did, now I'm going to pick her up."

"WHAT? You didn't say you were going to bring the cats back. I thought it was a one-way trip!" Obviously a communication disconnect.

Next time I'll just have to work much harder to get him to "help" me.

Ah well, I'm sure there are worse problems to have.

Frustrations

On a sunny day, a negative thought or two might cross my mind. They're usually soon forgotten as my simple mind busies itself with other things. It's easier to get frustrated when the weather is nasty.

Last week we didn't see much of the sun. Those who live in England, Oregon, or other soggy places are probably thinking, "Oh, poor, dear baby!" But this is California, you know. Vitamin D capsules do not substitute for the sunshine we think we need.

When I was a kid, time moved much slower. Rainy days lasted forever. At my age I've seen enough seasonal changes to know that isn't so. Psychologically, I am equipped to handle bad weather, but in the practical world, I'm not. I never have shoes that are appropriate, for one thing. Oh, I had at least 20 pairs of shoes that I'd bought, trying to find a pair that wouldn't rub blisters on my princess feet and send me to the podiatrist who uses a switchblade scalpel. I managed very well this summer with 2 pairs of sandals that I found. But they didn't work so well after Thanksgiving, when the grass got soggy and there was slick mud everywhere. Even when I wore socks. (Which is such a classy look, especially if you let your leg hair grow.)

Desperate, I had ordered a pair of wintry-looking bootlets online. I had been wearing them and I thought they might work. They had enough tread to keep me from slipping and falling. The downside was they also had enough tread to pick up mud and chicken poo. I had to take them off and clean them every time I came into the house, or I had to sweep the floors three times a day. I haven't decided which of those chores I like least, but generally I don't like anything that involves housecleaning tools. So the winter shoe problem was only half solved.

Problems that never occur when the days are long and the sun is shining seem to pop up when the weather is nasty. I looked out my bedroom window one morning and saw two young roosters fighting. They had been best buddies in the sunshine. I put on my bootlets, shuffled outside, and caught the one that looked like the perpetrator (the other one had a bloody comb). Then I noticed his leg band was too tight. So I traipsed back to the house with the rooster under one arm. I tried to balance in the doorway to take off my boots with one hand. The leg bands are stored near the middle of the house. On a top shelf. It takes both hands to get the box down. I couldn't turn the rooster loose in the house, so I used him to knock the box down, (serves him right for fighting) and caught it with the other hand.

To take the rooster back outside, I had to try to put my boots back ON with one hand. That didn't work. I walked back out to the pen in my socks. Things like this happen all the time in the winter. I ruin lots of socks. That's frustrating.

The telephone is always frustrating;  more so in bad weather. I was waiting for two calls, one from a chicken breeder in the midwest and one from the SPCA. Every time I'd go outside, just long enough to accumulate mud in the boot treads, the phone would ring. That happened 3 times. It was always a sales call, not the ones I wanted to get. The carpet cleaning call is especially annoying when you've had to track mud across your carpet to answer the danged phone.

The next morning I had just returned home and was trying to unload my car, carrying damp sacks of groceries. I put my key in the front door lock but it wouldn't work. The door had swollen. I finally got it open, but had to set the bags down in the puddle on the porch and use both hands. By the time I got back to the groceries, the bags had totally deteriorated and cans of stuff went rolling everywhere.

As I was picking up the cans I noticed that the horses had leaned over the fence and torn the tarp off their bale of hay. They had helped themselves to lunch. I had to go inside and change my clothes before I could deal with the hay. If you handle grass hay in anything that's knit, as many winter garments are, the stickers will ruin the clothes. I finally got the hay moved to a safer place with my yellow wagon. I started to toss the last flake into the horses' feeder for their dinner. "Toss" is what most folks do. With my shoddy shoulders, that task is a little more complicated. Blue Top got frustrated waiting for me. (People aren't the only ones who get frustrated.) He stuck his big nose over the fence and knocked the flake out of my hands just as I got it over my head. Half of it went down the front of my shirt.

Horses are the reason I learned cuss words way back when I was 17 years old. I kicked the hay away from the fence so the horse couldn't reach it and said, "So go suck mud you a--hole." I left it there.

I had to change my clothes again. I either had to take them off outside or take them off inside and drag out the vacuum cleaner to clean up the hay mess. The vacuum is my least favorite housecleaning tool. So the real choice was, do I undress on the front porch that faces the highway, or the back porch that faces the corn stand?

In my third outfit for the day, I went back outside to feed the feral cats. I had bought a plastic garbage can with a lid and filled it with cans of cat food and a sack of dry food for them. Uh oh. The lid had blown off the night before and the garbage can was filled to the top with water. We must have had more rain than I thought. It took quite a while to sort out this mess. Now the garbage can is inside the wood shed, full of cans with no labels. It's frustrating when you have what you think is a great idea and it doesn't work.

When I fed the cats, I noticed that one of them was limping. The one that's wildest, of course. I was already frustrated trying to get the whole mess of cats to SPCA to have them neutered. I had to try again so I could get the lame cat treated. Another trip to the house, took off my boots at the door, and made another call to SPCA.

The phone is not answered by a person, you have to leave a message and they call you back. This time it was only an hour before they returned the call. It's frustrating to have to wait around for a call. While I'm waiting I think of all the reasons I need to be outside doing my chores. I ignore the fact that I use it as an excuse not to do them. When the lady finally called, I tried to explain the situation. "I think I can catch all 5 cats, but I don't know what to do with them, ALL of them, overnight in a small chicken pen." The appointments are not until 7:30 the next morning. The lady on the other end of the line asked, "Are you Bob's mom?"

It was one of those moments when you think you've been abducted by aliens, dragged through a time warp, and returned a few seconds later in Earth time, having missed a bit of the conversation.

"Yeeeessss," I'm Bob's mom.

"Oh, hi, this is Andrea, Todd's wife." A local ex-4Her. I was so relieved. It made up for all the frustrations of the day to be able to talk to someone who had a clue. She made an appointment for me on Sunday morning. Bob can help me get the cats caught and loaded in the car.

The past two days have been sunny and fairly warm. Our sandy soil dries quickly, so I've spent most of my time outdoors (in my sandals and socks) getting caught up with chores. Maybe when the next storm comes in tomorrow I'll be able to sit by the woodstove and read a book. I'm not going to count on that, though, it's too frustrating when plans go awry,

Water Aerobics

Pouring rain and pigeon problems

We've had 4 days of fairly relentless rain and strong winds here in California. Luckily there was very little snow in the mountains, so there has been no flooding in Sloughhouse. Our river, the Cosumnes, is usually only a threat when we get warm rain on a snow pack. So far, so good.

It's soggy and nasty outside, though.

I went out to check the animals this morning after the wind died down. Just as I got halfway across the lawn, one of those dark red bands you see on TV weather radar must have passed overhead. What a downpour! I wish my shower worked that well. I hurried the best I could with my poor balance and shambling gait, but I got totally soaked before I got back to the house. There was even an inch of water sloshing in my shoes. My new shoes.

That passed quickly, so I changed clothes and went back outside. I found the chickens all dry and fine. Our years of dealing with bad weather, predators, and other emergencies has finally paid off. Bob's pen design and his carpentry skills are proving to be superior. The new pens he built for me are great even in the worst weather. (Knock on plywood.)

In the pigeon pen, however, I found a mess. There was no water, but there were 2 dead babies. I found their siblings hiding on the ground. One was pecked on the head.

It seems there is a rogue pigeon in the pen that throws babies out of their nests, and I haven't been able to determine which one it is. Maybe it's because there are too many pigeons in the pen? Maybe it's because I had them locked up while it was raining? I had found the big speckled baby on the floor out there a couple of weeks ago Let's call her Rita. That's easier to type than big speckled baby.

These are the two bigger babies I found this morning. They aren't happy being in a nest together. The gray is spunky and gives me karate chops with its wing. The black and white one has been terrorized and isn't sure life is worth living.

I put some medicine on the B/W baby's head, fed them both, and put them in with Rita until I could get another cage ready for them.

As I passed the pigeon pen to find that cage, I heard more squeaking squabs. There were two younger ones hidden in a nest near the roof, out of my sight. Their parents were with them and they seemed to be okay, but their nest was damp and I was worried the murderer would pick on them, too. So I brought them inside.

These are the two younger babies.

Note to Katherine: their mother is one of the Old Owl's kids.

So now I'm handfeeding four baby pigeons. But it's okay because I have help. Rita is a great nanny.

She was pretty excited to see the feeding tube. When I set it down, she picked it up and walked off with it. She knocked over the small bowl of little, round pigeon peas twice. It will probably take a week to find them all on the kitchen floor. Quicker if I have bare feet. The bigger babies didn't appreciate her tweaking their tail feathers and poking her beak in their business. The little ones like her, though.

I need to go online and investigate pigeon murders to see if I can solve this mystery. Has anyone had a problem like this before?

Traveling Through England

I don't own a TV. You know that by now, because I mention it all the time. I'm not looking down my nose at you folks who DO watch TV, it's just not for me.

I do, however, watch shows on Hulu and Netflix when I'm not cuddled near the fire with my Kindle (last book I read was yesterday, Janet Evanovich's book 19 of the Plum series).

There is a good selection of programs I can watch on my computer, including some current ones. I recently tried to watch a new show called Revolution. Mostly I was curious because it sounded a lot like Jeremiah, the post-apocalyptic series that starred Luke Perry from 2002 to 2004. In Revolution civilization came to a screeching halt when electricity ceased to function. Slightly different premise, but with similar after effects. The first year of Jeremiah had been interesting, seeing what issues the writers imagined.

I only managed to watch Revolution a couple of times. I also tried Grimm and Once Upon a Time. All of these programs have some interesting aspects, but I have the same problem with all of them. Danger lurks everywhere, there is torture and murder, constant stress and danger, too much violence for my delicate nature. Grimm is especially... well ... grim. The producers pride themselves on grossly brutal murders. Yuck.

For a while I settled for old shows. Mary Tyler Moore, for example. And I watched all of the Dog Whisperer.

A couple of months ago my former boss, Linda, told me I should watch Doc Martin on Netflix. It's a series about a grumpy doctor in a small English village. At first it was hard to follow the dialogue, but that became easier once I was familiar with the characters and my ear became attuned. I loved Doc Martin. It only took 2 weeks to watch all 5 seasons of it. The plots are simple, but fun. The characters seem like real people, at least they look like real people. On American shows half the characters are 20 year old starlets with big lips and no talent.

My favorite part of Doc Martin was the scenes of the Cornish countryside.

The fictitious village of Port Wenn

The people on the show lived in real houses, mostly old houses, that have the same sort of problems I have with my old house. People in the countryside had chickens and pigs and sheep. I loved the little town and the farms and farm houses.

Here is something I was surprised to see. People who were born or raised near Sloughhouse might recognize the plants growing up a trellis in the background in this scene. Do the rest of you know what they are?

When I'd finished Doc Martin, I discovered another British series, Rosemary & Thyme. It's about two middle aged ladies who are skilled gardeners and also solve murder mysteries. One of them reminds me of Martha Stewart. Unlike Grimm, there are no gory scenes. If I ever get shot in the head or fall from a cliff, I want my corpse to look like the ones on Rosemary & Thyme, very peaceful and lovely, with just a tasteful smudge of blood on one temple.

Rosemary & Thyme is not very well written, nor is it well acted. By the time they figure out who the murderer is in each episode, I don't really care because I've so enjoyed the scenes of English countryside and the beautiful gardens.

I've watched these shows, and also enjoyed the many photos that my English blog buddies have posted when they're out and about. I have gained a real appreciation for England. Perhaps it has places that aren't so photogenic and quaint. I don't need to know about that. I prefer the scenes of the peaceful, beautiful place that are planted in my mind.

Accessorizing

I like to put leg bands on the baby pigeons I raise so I can keep track of them once I turn them out with the other 40 pigeons. I had put a yellow band on the most recent baby when she (I think it's a she) was small, thinking she would grow into it. She didn't, this little one is quite petite. She's old enough now to pick her own accessories. So I brought out the leg band box this morning.

First she chose a basic brown band. A tasteful choice, perhaps, because it matches the brown in some of her feathers. Not my choice, though. I can't see a brown band very well in a pen with 80 pigeon legs.

After trying out all the colors, throwing a few bands onto the floor and carrying a few more around in her beak, little pigeon finally tossed this one on the counter.

"I want this one," she said. So we took off the large one and replaced it with the smaller version.

I think she would have preferred rhinestones to plastic, but I haven't been able to find fancy legbands.

Life is also unfair for cats

"What?"

"Go away, I'm busy."

Velcro wasn't always a chub. Her first 7 years she was fluffy, but fit. Nowdays she has trouble getting around. The problem is not that she eats a lot, though. This is the scene at dinner time.

Gollie eats while Velcro watches.

Velcro weighs 13 pounds. Gollie weighs 5 pounds. Gollie eats 85% of the food. Velcro does lay around a lot, but so does Gollie.

I don't think the problem is the type of food. The dry food I buy is very expensive, with no grains added. The canned food is the same. A small bowl of dry food, less than a cup, lasts at least a week. Velcro doesn't eat much of it because her teeth are rickety.

In this house the fat cat stays that way eating scarcely any food. The scrawny cat eats 4 times as much and never gains an ounce.

Many of us can sympathize.

Peageon

Fancy-tailed pigeon

Learning to Fly

I have been putting the baby pigeon outside in an old parrot cage for a while every day so it can watch the other pigeons and maybe figure out how to be one. This morning I let it out inside the house for a while to stretch its wings. All it wants to do is sit on my shoulder. Once in a while it gives me little kisses, or nibbles on my ear. Pigeons are very affectionate birds. That's not anthropomorphism, if you watch them in the wild you will see pairs of pigeons grooming each other, feeding each other, and nuzzling a lot.

My chickens don't do that. If the hens are nuzzling around on a rooster's neck it's because they're pecking his feathers out and eating them. They do that when they need more protein, a handful of cat food every day for a while will stop them.

Pigeons are very easy to have in the house. They are precision flyers. When they're babies they will flap their wings and just go up and down a few feet. They don't just take off and crash land in the bushes like fledgling songbirds. A baby pigeon will not actually fly horizontally until it's quite sure it can get back to its nest. This is undoubtedly a good thing, considering pigeons are cliff-nesters.

A cat vet in Sacramento used to keep a pigeon in his office. It would fly around from perch to perch and entertain the cats who were penned as boarders or patients.

This one won't be going out in the big pigeon pen until it's better at flying. For one thing, the other pigeons will hassle it for a while. Each pigeon has a preferred roosting spot in the pen and each will defend it. If I put in a new roost and stick the baby on it, they'll leave it alone. But the baby needs to fly well enough to get down to the food and water and then back up to its roost.

I'm also concerned about the hawks. We seem to have more of them all the time. Yesterday there was a very small, dark hawk that had a bird on the ground right outside the kitchen window. I thought it was a pigeon and stumbled for the door. The prey was screeching and fighting back. John was outside and got to the birds before I did. He booted the hawk with his toe and it tried to fly off with its prey, but dropped it. It was a scrub jay and it managed to fly away.

I think it's interesting that the jay was fighting back. Pigeons don't do that. They just give up. They'll take advantage of an opportunity to escape if the hawk isn't diligent, but otherwise they just seem to be resigned to their fate. They do the same when I catch them and always seem relieved when they don't get eaten.

My flock is getting smarter about hawks. They listen to the chickens. They always have a sentinel posted on the highest pole. I just wish the danged hawks would stay out in the fields, where there is an abundance of mice, voles, and jackrabbits. I used to keep a bird feeder in the yard and enjoyed watching the wild birds that gathered there. The Cooper's hawk used it as a fast food restaurant.

Giving Thanks for the Babies

I drove a couple of hundred miles for Thanksgiving so I could see the babies in the family.

On my dad's side of the family there have never been a lot of children. The original family that came here from Massachusetts in the 1860s had several of them, but only two ever married. My grandmother and her brother were the only Sloughhouse descendants. My grandmother married and had 3 boys, her brother did not marry.

My father and his two brothers each had two children, a girl and a boy. That's my generation. The six of us had three girls and one boy (Bob). From Bob's generation there are only two children at this point. We all adore them.

This is Tessa. She's three years old now.

Tessa and her dad, Cort

This is the newest addition, Charlie.

Charlie meets Sarah

Tessa is a careful observer. She's not convinced that anyone outside of mom, dad, and grandparents are actually safe to visit. Okay, so some of us ARE wacky.

"These people are weird, mom, what are we doing here?"

Charlie is very sociable, though. And he does silly kid tricks to amuse the adults.

"You can all applaud now."

Why is cousin Nancy smiling all the time these days?

Smiling Nancy

Because she's Charlie's grandma!

The cousins are all dog lovers. These are two of the family's new dog members.

Em and Rick

Emily rescued Rick when his family moved out of their house and abandoned him. If you were a pup, you'd want to be rescued by Em, she has a heart of gold.

Sarah and June

Sarah, Cort and Tessa adopted lab mix Juno and discovered the day before Thanksgiving that she had problems with both front legs, so she's wearing casts. It didn't slow her down.

I left the Chico Thanksgiving early to drive 2 hours back home, where Bob had been cooking all day. My timing was perfect, everyone was just about to sit and eat. There were two more babies at home.

Cousin Joe's wife Anne and baby Kina, Bob's girlfriend Anna

Kina is two. Everyone is her new best friend, and she's very good at convincing anyone to see her point of view. She does this using positive methods..."Hi, I'm Kina and you like me because I laugh at your jokes. Could you PLEASE reach over there and hand me some of those purple pretzels? What? My mom says no? I think if you reconsider that you'll find I'm the one who's right, and I'll give you another big smile for your effort."

The other baby is not an official cousin, he belongs to a good neighborhood friend, Nick.

Nick, Aiden and Oma

It was well worth all the driving to get to spend some time with all the grandbabies.

This is my favorite picture, though. It appears Auntie Mo is performing a proctological procedure on a bear that sings "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Changing batteries. Really.