The catio, and how it came to be

Max is a lover of the great outdoors. He likes to look at the great outdoors, smell the great outdoors, and - most importantly - be in the great outdoors. This would be fine if he were a dog and thus easily contained behind fences. Alas, he is a cat and fences prove little obstacle for him. He can wiggle over, under or through our fences and is therefore not allowed to be in the great outdoors. (Too many dangers for a small creature like him to be exposed to around here.) To make it up to him, and to try and curb his desire to dart out any door open longer than about 2.3 seconds, I wanted to build him a catio. You know, a patio for cats. Dad, however, was not so keen on my idea to fence in under the front yard deck to give Max a place to hang out where he could be safely contained but still enjoy the outdoors. "It will look ugly and cost too much money," he claimed. 

 So I did what any good daughter would do: I waited until he went on a trip and did it myself. (That is how many of our projects get done around here.) One weekend, while Dad was on a bike trip and Mom was at a medical conference, I gathered the lumber and hardware cloth from Home Depot and put the catio together. The hardest parts of the entire project were digging out an enormous concrete footing from a previous decking project that was in the way, and getting a roughly 15 foot long 2x6 board into place 5 feet up off the ground. The rest of the project was relatively simple. I built wooden frames that I screwed to the underside of the deck so that I had something I could attach the hardware cloth to. I put in a door so that we could access the catio, or so that in case of emergency someone from inside the house would be able to get out, and added a small cat house and then some bark dust to keep the mud under control. The last thing I added was a cat door in the existing house window and I was finished. All told, it took about 3 days from start to finish. Mom was quite pleased as she had always been on the catio bandwagon. Once Dad got over the surprise he seems to have accepted it as well. He will occasionally even say to me, "I'm so glad I convinced you to build that catio for Max."

Max seems to be quite content with his new catio. Granted he would likely prefer it if it were in the sun so that he could lounge around when the weather is nice but he does go out there quite often, especially at night when he can hunt for whatever little creatures it is that he hunts for. Bugs, moths, little shrews that he brings - still alive - into the house with him for Mom to find in her office... you know, the usual.

A view of the door to the catio, and the cat house inside it

Front view of the catio

Catio side view

Catio side view, with Max's hanging bed inside

Some updates from the Unfarm

Well, apparently my resolution to blog more this year is going swimmingly. (Not.) At any rate, here are some updates from the Unfarm to catch you up on what has been happening.

We lost Mynx, our little black and white spotted kitty cow, last August when she went into kidney failure. She had been declining for a while but we had been giving her medications and sub-cutaneous fluids for a couple of months in an effort to support her kidneys and buy her some extra time but we finally ran out of time for her on August 3, 2019. She took a turn for the worse and we had a vet come out to the house to put her to sleep where she would be most comfortable, at home, surrounded by the people who loved her. It brought an end to the Era of Mynx, which lasted well over a decade in our home. She was never a cat that loved to be picked up and held - in fact, she would scream like you were trying to murder her - but give her a lap to sit on and a hand to lick and she was a happy camper. The only time she allowed us to hold her without screaming at us was the day we found her. She followed us through the neighborhood and let us pick her up and carry her home when it became apparent that she was going to stick with us even if it meant crossing a busy street or two. Not once did she utter so much as a peep. So we carried her home, tried to find her family without success, and officially adopted her and had her spayed a week or two later. We never did find out exactly how old she was when she found us, but we figure she was at least 13 years old, probably closer to 15, when she passed away.

Mynxy cat, our kitty cow

We gained two ducks, and lost one of them. In the spring of 2019 I adopted two ducklings from the feed store and named them Gwendolyn and Genevieve. True to form for the Unfarm, Genevieve ended up having special needs: a cricked neck when she was quite young, but that got sorted out with help from the bird specialist vet we go to, and they grew up to be strong and healthy girls (both of them - imaging that!) and attached to each other at the hip. They would spend all their time together and hung out with the other ducks, Minna (our oldest female) and Fern and Aida (our two males, named when they were ducklings with the hope that they would be females, alas it was not to be.) Things were going quite well until February 2020 when Genevieve developed respiratory symptoms and our regular vet was out of town. We took her to two other vets who saw birds, but not as their sole practice, and treated her as best we could but she succumbed to her illness on the evening of February 13, while I held her.

Genevieve, on the left, and Gwendolyn, on the right

We gained two ducks, and lost one of them. Having a sense of deja vu? In the spring of 2020, I adopted two more ducklings from the feed store and named them Fiona and Gemma. This was in an effort to get the right mix of ducks so that the girls outnumbered the boys, to spread out the boy's attention over a wider population of females. So in came Gemma and Fiona, both mallards or rouen ducks, I still am not sure. They were doing great, getting along with the rest of the flock until they got spooked. The rototiller was brought into the back yard (not by myself, but identities are withheld to protect the guilty party) and it spooked the ducks into running. As the larger males, Fern and Aida, came barreling down on Fiona and Gemma, Fiona decided to take off. Literally. He (as we were beginning to suspect, as he was starting to develop what looked like male plumage) lifted off and landed outside the yard on the street beside the house. Fortunately no one was coming and it is a quiet street anyhow, so we attempted to get him back into the yard but he spooked again and flew off. The last we saw of him, he was flying east along our street. We put up signs and notices online, and searched the nearby area and local ponds for him but never found him. Fortunately, Gemma seems to have gotten over her loneliness and has joined the flock with Minna, Gwen, Fern, and Aida. 

Gemma on the left, and Fiona on the right

So there you have it. An update on some of the comings and goings here on the Unfarm. We are hoping for a relatively calm fall as 2020 has been stressful enough for everyone as it is. Here's hoping you and yours stay safe and well.

Josephine's big adventure - a short story

I don't know why the cages I have are deemed suitable for mice. All three of my mice can (and do, on a regular basis) get out of their cage by squeezing between the bars of said cage. I have long known about this propensity of my mice to escape the confines of their (cat-proof) housing - hence the placement of their cage on a rolling cart in the center of the room without anything leaning against it or trailing down off of it so as to "strand" the mice on a sort of island in the bunny room from which they cannot escape so that they do not go roaming about the house on their own. This technique has always worked well for me, so long as I do not leave things on top of the cage, apparently. I made this mistake a few weeks ago, leaving a fabric hammock sitting on top of the cage after the mice chewed off all four of the supports that allow it to hang from the ceiling of their cage. I thought nothing of it at the time but came to regret that decision the following morning when I did my customary head count of the residents of the mouse house. 

Coming up one mouse short of the three that are supposed to be in the house, I counted again. And one more time, just to be sure. Unfortunately, repeated counting did not change the fact that one mouse was most assuredly missing. Josephine had somehow gotten out and off of the rolling cart. As the hammock was also off the the cage and now sitting on the floor I can only surmise that Josephine entered the hammock which then fell off the top of the cage onto the floor below, taking Josephine along for the ride. I had not idea how many hours head start she had on me so I began searching for her all over the bunny room: under furniture, in the closet, and behind chairs without success. This was Monday morning. By Thursday evening I had searched the entire upstairs multiple times over, largely ignoring the downstairs as that is a) difficult for her to get to with two flights of stairs between the upper and lower floors, and b) the domain of the cats, where Mynx and Max regularly hang out. Late Thursday evening, however, we noticed that Max was extremely interested in the closet under the stairs, staring at the crack under the door with unusual intensity. Upon opening the closet we found... wait for it.... nothing. I looked on the floor between my art portfolios where Max had been staring and there was no sign of Josephine: no mouse, no mouse poop, no holes chewed in anything. 

I was about the shut the door when I happened to look at the top of my art portfolio and there she was: Josephine - hungry, thirsty, and probably a bit tired but otherwise alive and well. How she made it from the upstairs to down I have no idea. What I wouldn't have given for a tiny little GoPro mounted on her head to see what exactly she had been up to these last four days. Alas, we will probably never know. I had hopes that Josephine would learn a valuable lesson about the safety and comfort afforded her by a life behind bars, so to speak, but it appears she did not. She was out of the cage again just last night. This time, however, I did not leave anything on top of the cage that could fall off. At least one of us learned our lesson.

Josephine, alive and well, against all odds

Nothing but the best

Whipped cream has become a staple in our house, because you never know when the mood might strike to bake a batch of brownies and nothing completes a brownie like a dollop of whipped cream, except for maybe a scoop of ice cream. But let's be honest, ice cream just doesn't last around here so whipped cream is a good back up plan. We usually buy our whipped cream in a three pack from Costco, which carries Land O'Lakes in their distinctive red and yellow spray cans. 

They are so distinctive, in fact, that Maximus can recognize them when he sees them sitting on the shelf in the fridge and he demands his nightly squirt of whipped cream before we go to bed. He does this by waiting until the dogs are in bed (and thus not around to chase him back downstairs) and then coming upstairs and weaving in and out of my legs until I get fed up and give him a tiny squirt of whipped cream on the kitchen counter. And before you say it: yes, I know that cats are lactose intolerant and should not be eating dairy but Max is extremely demanding and it's easier to just give in than to risk breaking a leg tripping over him.

Last month we ran out of our Land O'Lakes whipped cream and had to get some generic brand from Winco in a pinch. It tasted the same to us but apparently was far inferior to the Land O'Lakes brand as Max refused to eat it. That is not to say that he stopped demanding whipped cream - he continued demanding it nightly but each morning we would find a small puddle of de-whipped cream on the counter where he left it the night before after turning up his nose at it. 

And in case you might be thinking that perhaps Max had simply decided that he no longer liked whipped cream - cats are notorious for changing their minds, after all, liking something one day and hating it the next - we discovered that this was not the case as soon as we switched back to the Land O'Lakes whipped cream. He would dive into his little pile of cream with gusto and we no longer found puddles of cream on the counter in the morning. He simply has expensive taste in whipped cream. And treats. And toys, as well, come to think of it. 

The walking wounded

It is our assertion that Maximus is an indoor cat. It is Max's assertion that he should be allowed to go outside whenever he wants to. We are concerned about Max's safety while Max is primarily concerned with his fun. Needless to say we do not see eye to eye on this particular issue and Max will take any opportunity that he can to escape; which is what he did the other morning when Max sneaked upstairs and pawed open the screen door on the front deck and got out into the front yard. When we discovered his escape, Mom and I ran outside to begin searching for him and he led us on a merry chase through the front yard to underneath the trailer to under the Suburban where we were finally able to corner him. As I lay on the ground, half under the Suburban, I spotted him crawling along the undercarriage of the car and I was able to just reach his tail so I grabbed it, figuring he would follow along with it seeing as how it is attached to him. He did, but he was rather more upset than I figured he would be and he expressed his displeasure by biting my thumb. Hard.

I don't remember who gave in first, but one of us eventually let go and Max ran off, no worse for the wear while I staggered into the house, bleeding from both sides of my thumb. I am not normally a fainting sort of person but the combination of the adrenaline and the sight of my mangled thumb had me sinking to the floor in a bout of extreme dizziness and nausea. I did not pass out completely but I was useless to continue chasing Max so it was fortunate that Mom was able to catch him on her own somehow.

By the afternoon, Max was safely back in the house but my thumb still had not stopped bleeding so off we went to the urgent care. Usually it is me taking the pets to the emergency vet, so being on the receiving end of the care is a switch here on the Unfarm. I figured they would bandage it up and maybe give me some antibiotics but it turns out that the damage was worse than I had initially realized: Max had bitten clear through the nail and pulled out tissue that is supposed to stay inside the skin. (It would not surprise me in the least if it was discovered that Max's teeth actually met inside my thumb.) This meant that they had to take off part of the nail (I know, gross) in order for the wound to heal up at all. After that they were able to bandage it up and gave me a bottle of antibiotics to take for the next five days, with full recovery expected in four to six weeks. Upon learning that my tetanus shot was up to date, gotten several years ago after I was bitten by a squirrel, they gave me twice the number of pills that I actually needed. It seems they sensed a pattern in my interactions with animals and foresaw the possibility of a need for antibiotics in the future.

In the end, Max and I came to an understanding: he forgives me for pulling his tail and I forgive him for biting me. That is not to say that I don't flinch when he gets claws or teeth near me, however.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

Max stalks his fat mouse/cherry

Cherries: they're not just for eating - they are also for playing with, according to Maximus. 

This morning found Maximus on one of his typical haunts: the kitchen counter. Despite being told (repeatedly) that he is not actually allowed on the counter he maintains that we must be mistaken. This is, after all, the best place from which to view Rat TV (which, despite our efforts to the contrary, is still airing occasionally), and how else is a small cat such as himself to get any milk, yogurt, ice cream, butter, etc if he is not where the food is: on the counter? 

Also on the counter this morning was a colander full of fresh cherries. Max sat in front of the colander and contemplated the cherries: they were small, and dark, and had tails (aka stems.) Just like his favorite wand toy, which he has currently chewed down to a disappointingly small nub. But fate has presented him with an opportunity - here sits a bowl full what can only be fat mice. He fished one out with his paw and dropped it onto the floor. From there he hopped down and batted it all over the kitchen. He then picked it up by the tail and carried it off into the living room to continue playing amongst his many other toys. He seemed quite proud of himself, and despite his multiple transgressions (on the counter, stealing food, throwing cherries around the living room carpet) our reprimands were half-hearted at best. Can you really be mad at someone so cute? So far the verdict is "no."

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

The photos above offer definitive proof that Maximus is a true cat: no cat that I have ever lived with could resist sitting in a puzzle box. I must admit that Max is the first cat who has decided to entertain themselves by diving across the table, knocking half of the puzzle onto the floor. The first, also, to eat the pieces. If Maximus seems to be showing up a disproportionately large amount of the time in these photos from the Unfarm it is because he is a kitten, and by definition he can be found doing something amusing approximately 78 percent of the time. The rest of the time he's sleeping. He walked on the stereo in the master bedroom today and turned on "Dancing Queen." After he spent two minutes playing with the curtains he decided he'd had enough of the music and he turned it back off again.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

It's Monday, folks, which means that it's time for... pictures from the Unfarm of course! I call this one "You snooze, you lose." This is another common sight on the Unfarm - Maximus knows that the dogs get some canned food mixed in with their dry food during dinner time and he wants in on the action. The canned food is actually an incentive to get Maia to eat as her appetite has shrunk over the years - she is 18 now and entitled to a little special treatment. For her part, Maia is convinced that if she holds out long enough something even better will magically appear in her bowl. These items might include ham, chicken, eggs, cheese... you get the idea. So while Maia procrastinates Maximus takes advantage of her lapse of attention and scarfs down bits of meat and gravy until he is caught and sent out to the living room with his consolation prize of canned kitten food.

Rat TV

Maximus has always been a fan of quality entertainment. He finds great joy in sitting down in front of the TV to watch whatever might be on. And I mean RIGHT in front of the TV - he sits two inches away and blocks half the screen. This situation is advantageous to him because it satisfies two cat loves at once: being entertained an making a nuisance of himself. Of late, however, he has found a new channel to capture his attention: Rat TV. Now before you go checking your cable listings, I regret to inform you that it's a local channel, only available here on the Unfarm. 

It is a regrettable fact that if you have animals, especially chickens and ducks, who eat their food outdoors, or you regularly leave food out for birds and squirrels, you are at risk of attracting rats. The fact that we are near both a forest and a pasture, and that we have a shed the rats can hide under doesn't hurt either. So in the evenings, once the kitchen is quiet, our resident rat (I would not go so far as to name him an Unfarmian, though) can be found scurrying around on the back deck, fattening himself on what little bits of seeds or duck food has been knocked onto the ground. While the humans on the Unfarm look upon these nighttime forays with dismay, Maximus finds it quite entertaining. He will plant himself in front of the large sliding glass doors and watch his regularly scheduled programming of Rat TV. And thus far, his program has not been cancelled as this particular rat has been quite crafty at avoiding any traps we have put out. Either that or he just has no taste for peanut butter. 

I should note that I do not approve of killing animals, but it is dangerous to have rats in such close proximity to us and our animals because of the diseases they may carry (and the chickens have absolutely no interest in taking on a rat for a roommate, as they are keen to do when the winter cold sets in.) So when we find it necessary to rid ourselves of rodent interlopers we use the snap traps because they kill quickly, as opposed to poison which is slow and painful. Plus, given our success rate (which is low), it would seem that the traps give the rats a sporting chance. More often than not, the rats get away with a free meal. 

So until our rat gets sloppy, or develops a craving for peanut butter, Maximus will be spending his evenings watching his favorite show. After all, it's somewhat interactive and there are never any reruns. The only thing missing now is the popcorn.

Maximus: our newest arrival on the Unfarm

As you may remember, last year the Unfarm took several hits including the loss of Aspen, bringing our cat population down to one. Or half, maybe, because Mynx is rarely seen by anyone but myself and you cannot really pet her, let alone pick her up.  She is convinced that any attempts at affection are in truth a thinly veiled threat: surely we mean to harm her in some horrible manner and she screams bloody murder until we set her down and she can bolt back under the bed. 

Mynx's attitude combined with the loss of Aspen six months prior had me thinking: perhaps it might be time to start contemplating the addition of another feline to our household. Mynx did seem to be lonely, after all - she had taken to spending an unnatural amount of time outdoors hanging out with Chico, the neighborhood riffraff who technically resides next door but is regularly seen throughout the neighborhood terrorizing other cats and all small creatures that creep, crawl or fly. Hardly the kind of character we want Mynx associating with, even if he does seem to have a soft spot for our spotted softie.  

It seemed, therefore, serendipitous that last November I should receive an email from our local cat shelter, announcing that they too would be participating in the Black Friday madness: all of their black or mostly black cats would be available for adoption for the bargain price of $10, a whopping 90% off the usual price. Being the good bargain shopper my mother taught me to be, I could hardly pass up a deal like that now could I? The only real question was this: how to narrow it down to just one...? 
 

Maximus in a rare moment of stillness

My sister and I spent an arduous hour trying to decide which cat would become the newest member of the Unfarm. There were all manner of choices: sleepy kittens, playful kittens, striped kittens, spotted kittens, solid kittens, male kittens, female kittens and every combination thereof. Holding kitten after kitten was a tiresome, tedious task but we somehow managed to persevere, eventually settling on a small, black kitten who was in a kennel by himself, sitting quietly beside the door. (We had learned our lesson, you see - we chose Aspen because he was the "spunky" kitten in the litter, and I am pretty sure that most of his adult life was spent plotting ways to inflict harm upon his human captors, so this time around we went for calm and quiet.)  Acknowledging that this would be a companion for our Mynxy cat, we were also looking for a younger, male cat who might pose the least possible threat to Mynx. 
 

Max loves to play with plastic bags

The name Maximus was settled on in part because it went so well with Mynx and we headed home with our newest family member, bracing ourselves for the fallout: we had not asked permission to adopt Max knowing that had we asked we would have been told no. Mom's reaction was fairly predictable: she feigned dismay but spent an awful lot of time cuddling with something that "we can't possibly keep." Dad's reaction was exactly as predicted. We told him to close his eyes and hold out his hands. He did as requested and the second we set Max into his hands he burst out with, "Oh no!" and looked crestfallen to say the least. 
 

Max enjoys kitten food, long walks on the beach, and watching TV

Despite the odds, my parents came around to the idea of Max becoming a permanent fixture here on the Unfarm (this process was likely easier for Mom than it was for Dad) and part of the deciding factor may have been the effect Max had on my sister. She had been in something of a bad mood - which is putting it mildly to say the least, and she can be quite scary when she's in a bad mood - earlier in the day and Max was more effective (and faster acting) than Prozac on her sour mood. Kitten adoption fee: $10. Kitten food, toys, and assorted supplies: $54. Changing my sister from a fire breathing dragon to a cuddly teddy bear: Priceless.

Footnote: Thus far, Mynx has not appreciated our efforts to give her a companion to spend her days with and looks upon Max as some kind of tiny terror with ADHD whose main goal in life is to ruin hers. 

Despite what Mynx thinks, Max really does look up to Mynx. He is often seen making a careful study of her and trying to follow in her footsteps.

Adding Insult to Injury

Aspen got a bath today, which would be bad enough in itself, but the bath was on top of the haircut he got this morning.  A lion cut, which means that he was completely shaved down except for his head, his lower legs, and a poof on his tail.  I can only imagine how humiliated he must feel to now more closely resemble a poodle than the distinguished Norwegian forest cat he is.  

I should perhaps mention, in case I haven't in the past, that we do not shave him because it amuses us. (It is actually something of an ordeal as he cannot be groomed without sedation and must therefore be taken to the vet and placed under observation while he is under the anesthetic and after he comes out of it.)  We shave him once a year, near the beginning of summer, because he has spent the previous twelve months growing his coat out and nursing an impressive crop of mats and by this point he has at least a good half dozen in various places on his chest and stomach.  Brushing his fur is out of the question unless we develop the desire to experience life as an amputee as he has no qualms about biting (and scratching) the hand that feeds him.

The bath is not something we usually do, but today he messed in his carrier on the way home and by the time we got to the house he stank to high heaven, so it was either subject him to a bath or break out the gas masks and hope the scent cleared.  The bath, however, put an already cranky cat into a foul temper and he crept into a bed under one of the desks and proceeded to mope for the next five hours, looking decidedly angry and shivering even with the heater on.  And so now, to top it all off, if the weather doesn't warm up soon, we might have to contemplate getting him a sweater of some sort.  If it comes to that, it might be wise to have the Red Cross on standby because I don't see us getting through that without serious bodily harm.  Let's all pray for sun.

Kit Kat

Kit's grave, and the view from it of the ocean.

A few weeks ago I decided to take a mini vacation up along the Puget Sound. I went for a walk on the beach and made something of an unusual discovery. Most of the time when I am at the beach I find seashells or seaweed or the shells of dead crabs (none of which I take home, by the way - I am not a fan of beachy smells) but that day I came across a cat. Or rather, the cat found me. And, as you may have noticed by now, I can not resist an animal, especially an animal in need. So I scooped her up and took her with me into the house. (Was there ever any doubt?) As soon as I picked her up I realized just how much trouble she was in. She was covered in fleas, had enormous mats in her long fur, and she was light as a feather - I'm pretty sure that you could see just about every bone in her little body, and she was extremely dehydrated. She must have been trying to survive on her own out there, without any food - and probably precious little fresh water as well. As I had not planned on finding a cat I neglected to bring with me the basic necessities: litter and a box, as well as food. Every cat - every animal, for that matter - needs a name so I dubbed her KitKat (the inspiration was a KitKat bar that I found in the house sitting on the kitchen counter), secured her in the bathroom so that the dogs wouldn't bother her, and took off in the car for the 12 mile drive to the nearest market to pick up some litter and much needed food. I got back to the house and spent the rest of the day neglecting my homework in order to take care of Kit. I gave her some food - she couldn't eat much though, as her stomach must have shrunken during the weeks she had been without food. The dogs, being fairly accustomed to my habit of bringing home strange creatures, took little notice of Kit after the initial introductions, although they were careful to give her space on the couch or bed and not crowd her. I set up a litter box and showed Kit where it was, although she hardly needed it - she couldn't have let out more than a tablespoon of urine. A couple hours later I decided that Kit needed a bath. This was somewhat of a difficult decision to make - on the one hand, getting her wet might force her to use more energy to stay warm, but on the other hand, she had so many fleas on her that I worried they were sucking out any nutrients she might have and weakening her further. In the end I decided to try the bath - I soaped her up in the kitchen sink, washed her down with warm water and wrapped her in soft towels to try and dry her off. When I noticed her shivering I put her under the covers in the bed and snuggled her next to my chest to keep her warm. I tried to get her to eat something later in the afternoon but she wasn't feeling up for it and her movements became less coordinated. I let her sit on the couch with me when she didn't want to be held, and cuddled with her when she did want to be. Her breathing became a bit labored in the evening and I let her rest against my chest and cuddled her to try and comfort her. Around 10:30 that evening I felt her stretch and was relieved that she was finally feeling better, and that her breathing was finally quieting. I took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn't feeling her breath much at all. I shook her gently and said her name to get her attention. Once. Twice. A third time. But she was gone.

Usually, I am not much of a crier, but when it comes to animals I have a soft spot, so I will admit that I did cry for about an hour after she died. Partly because I felt guilty that maybe the bath had pushed her over the edge, but mostly because I didn't want her last weeks of life to be so miserable. I wanted her to be safe and warm and loved and happy before she died. Full of good memories to take with her. I wanted her to have enough good life that it would make this hard time a distant memory. Instead of being cold, hungry, thirsty, lonely, and looking for help but unable to find it. I can only imagine her going from house to house, looking for someone to help her, but at that time of year there are fewer people at the vacation homes. And even worse - what if she had found someone but they had refused to help her?

I wrapped her in a towel and, because it was beyond dark out, put her on the bed in one of the back bedrooms and shut the door. I couldn't bring myself to put her body outside for the night, all alone, but I also realized that I needed to separate her in some way from the dogs because the fleas would start jumping ship now that she was gone and I had to protect them from the fleas as much as possible. In the morning, I found a spot on the hill above the house, in the sun, with a view of the ocean and dug a hole as best I could in the rocky ground. I laid her inside and covered her back up, feeling guilty that I would be leaving her there on her own when I went back home again.

Had Kit lived, I fully intended to bring her home with us and make her a permanent member of the Unfarm. After what she had to go through, trying to survive out there on her own, looking for help but unable to find any, until me, I wanted to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would never have to go through anything like that again. The only comfort I could take in the situation was in knowing that she was, on her last day, warm, and safe, and very, very loved.

And so I have decided to add her, posthumously, as a full fledged member of the Unfarm family. In addition, because I was unable to save Kit, I decided to make a donation in her honor to a local cat shelter. I have recently started drawing pet portraits for friends as gifts and so I decided to give a gift certificate of a pet portrait to the cat shelter, and they would choose one of their less adoptable cats to give the certificate to. The certificate would be an added incentive for someone to adopt the cat, giving that cat a chance at the life that Kit should have had.

Cross that off the list

It's done! Finally! A picture of every single animal that lives with me here on the Unfarm. Getting the pictures added to this site has been on my to do list for a few months now - I needed to add pictures of Minna and Maggie (now that they are full grown and sporting their adult plumage), as well as Maia, Jojo, Clover, and Mynxy cat. But getting the pictures was - as is customary on the Unfarm - easier said than done.

Minna and Maggie were relatively simple as they tend not to run around as much as the other animals. Not that they can't run - don't ever think that just because they have large feet designed more for swimming than mobility on land that they aren't fast - it is at times hard to outrun Maggie when she (I mean he, but it has become habit to refer to Maggie as a "she") is determined to catch up to me.

As for Mynx, I happened to catch her during a rare moment when she was not sleeping. She did, however, decide to investigate the camera and I was eventually able to get a shot of her whole face, rather than just her nose.

When it came time to get a picture of Miss Maia it took considerably longer than I had originally thought that it would as Maia was convinced I was about to deliver some cruel treatment of some kind. As a result, although she did as I asked and sat on the couch, she spent the entire time trying to avoid looking at me while trembling throughout her entire body. It may have had something to do with the fact that I often corner her on the couch or chair when it is time to clip her nails - something she (well, all the dogs actually) abhor. To be fair, I try to be as careful as possible when clipping their nails, but both Kita and Maia have black nails and sometimes accidents happen and I nick the quick.

The most difficult photos to get were the pictures of Clover and Jojo. The rabbits, while they do many, many cute things and strike numerous adorable poses, only hold those poses for approximately 2.3 seconds - not quite enough time to get the camera in position and focused. After about 10 minutes or so of taking pictures of Jojo and Clover, I had 5 decent photos to choose from, and 63 photos depicting only a blur of bunny moving across the screen.

But they're here, they're done - uploaded and titled and off of my to-do list - now all I have to do is tackle the other 374 things on my list.

Of cats and haircuts

Disclaimer: we would never, ever intentionally hurt any of our animals.

We are torturing our cat. We are drugging him and holding him down and threatening him with sharp implements. And yet, with all of that, we are still no match for an angry cat with flexibility, teeth, and claws on his side.

What we are actually doing is trying to cut the mats out of Aspen's hair, hence the sharp implements (although the razor we are using is actually a pet grooming tool and there is no danger of cutting Aspen with it.) The drugging is a veterinarian prescribed sedative designed to calm him down, and the holding him down is largely ineffectual. We were attempting to save Aspen the stress of traveling in the car and going to the vet's office to be groomed – and us the $150 (minimum) expense – by grooming him ourselves at home. When our vet gave us the sedative, we were told to give Aspen half of a pill and then wait for thirty minutes or so for the drug to take effect. If he was not drowsy enough after that time, we could give him the other half of the pill, but no more than that in one day. After both halves of the pill and one hour, there was no noticeable effect on Aspen. It was only once we called the vet for advice that we learned that the medication does not always have the desired effect on every cat. In fact, some cats actually have the opposite reaction and become more hyper with the medication. Just our luck, Aspen seems to fall into the second category. We tried two different medications and several different times to get rid of Aspen's mats but were eventually forced to give up and take him in to be groomed. (His belly area, where many of the mats were located, was thoroughly protected by eighteen razor sharp claws which he had no qualms about using against the hands that feed him.) We knew that he would not be happy about being groomed but we hoped that he would come to see the necessity of it and at least accept it. Knowing Aspen, we should have known better. The first thing Aspen did when I looked in his carrier at him and told him how cute he looked with his new haircut was to let out a loud noise that was some combination of a growl/hiss/high pitched yowl. Once home he promptly ran downstairs and hid under my brothers bed, refusing to come out for the next five hours. It did not help, I suspect, that when my mom saw him as he slunk out of his carrier she burst out laughing and exclaimed, “he looks so scrawny!” Granted, he did look much smaller than his usual self which is bulked up considerably by his thick coat, but I wouldn't say he looked scrawny, exactly. He was given a lion cut, which means that his body was shaved down but the hair was left on his head, tail, and arms from the elbow down.

He has had a few weeks now to recover from his ordeal and I think that, while he would prefer to have his normal hair, he has gotten used to his new look and it doesn't bother him much anymore. This change in attitude is due partly, I think, to the fact that we have been telling him over and over again how much he looks like a lion. A “big, fearsome, gorgeous lion,” and “aren't we lucky to get to live with such a handsome lion?” The copious amounts of half & half and tuna we gave him didn't hurt either. All the same, I think that everyone involved - humans and cats alike - would rather not have to go through this again any time soon.

News from the Unfarm

Minna is under the weather. I noticed her limping when she came in for dinner this evening and - although concerned - I wasn't overly worried. It is not the first time I have seen one or the other of the ducks limping and while I keep an eye on them, it has always gone away after a bit. Ducks are a fairly hardy animal, not too prone, for the most part, to getting sick. And although I am a bit of a worrier as mothers go, I was not letting my fears get the best of me when the ducks came in this evening. They ate dinner as usual: Maggie has a few bites and Minna finishes off the rest of the bowl, and came in to play in the water bowl as they always do, then headed off to bed.

But it is now, what?, 12:01, and I am in the midst of a full blown panic. Since settling down for bed this evening Minna has now deteriorated into laying a bit on her side and not moving. She is alert and awake, but she isn't moving. Not even to get water, and Minna rarely passes up a chance to play in the water bowl in the evening. I am praying that it is only a very sore leg that has her so low, and that she will be better in the morning. If, by then, she hasn't laid an egg yet I might set her up in the bathroom with a heater to see if perhaps she's become egg bound. (Egg binding is a relatively common affliction in the bird world and it has the potential to become serious - if they can't pass the egg it will need to be massaged out, if possible, and if it breaks while still inside it can lead to dangerous infections.) Being somewhere warm is supposed to help them pass the egg. If she is not egg bound, and continues to deteriorate, I may have to get her in to see the vet. We have three different vets: one for the dogs and cats, one for the rabbits, and another one for the chickens and ducks. All told, I'm sure that over the years we have shelled out enough to each clinic to pay for a new addition to be named after us.

For the moment, because it is midnight, there is not much I can do - the emergency vet has very little experience working with ducks and/or chickens, as we have discovered over the years - so I am hoping that keeping her calm and quiet and letting her rest on a soft towel will help her to feel better. I am trying my best to be a decent nursemaid to Minna but I have discovered that Maggie, while very attached to Minna, is never destined to join the medical profession. At the moment she is sleeping on the majority of the towel I put in for Minna but I don't dare move her off of it - Maggie sitting is a vast improvement over Maggie standing. Before she settled down she was walking around near the gate, hoping I would let her out again, and the fact that Minna was in the way did not bother her in the least. She stepped all over Minna as she walked back and forth, and Minna looked decidedly uncomfortable - understandable considering she is only half the size of Maggie. Maggie did not look remorseful in the slightest. But then, I don't think ducks are all that familiar with remorse, as a rule.

In other Unfarm news, Aspen has been turning his nose up at his usual favorite for the last three nights. Evaporated milk has always been his drink of choice, so when he walked away from the bowl of milk again tonight - and it was the regular stuff, not the skim milk that he has never liked - I finally figured out what it was he was after. The whipped cream. Ever since I made the mistake of giving him some one night, he has decided that when we have it in the fridge he is entitled to that in place of his milk. Or on top of his milk. Whichever we choose - he is, after all, a very accommodating cat.

Unfarm introductions - Mynx

In which we discover how Mynx came to live on the Unfarm, we learn how she and Emmy got along, and we reveal some of the quirks of Mynx herself.

Mynx is our most recent cat acquisition. Not that we often go out actively looking for cats to acquire. Of all the cats that I've encountered here - eleven, that I can recall - eight of them have found me. Mynx was one of those eight, who came to live with us four years ago after she followed me home on a walk.

She was tiny, her coat in rough shape, hungry, white with black spots (picture a holstein cow, in the size and shape of a cat, and that's basically what she looks like), with a tail that is only 3/4 length, with a little bump on the end of it, and - after looking for her home for a couple weeks with no results - ours.

We thought (a bit naively) that she would be the perfect addition to the current cats on the Unfarm - that she and Emmy (our female cat) would get along great, seeing as they had so much in common. They were, after all, both female, both petite, both variations on the black and white theme, and both rescued from homelessness and starvation.

This picture of domestic bliss we had envisioned turned out to look - in actuality - much like extreme hatred would. Emmy and Mynx, instead of curling up together on a rug in front of the fire, would only come within five feet of each other if they were in the midst of a raging, yowling cat fight. These fights were, fortunately, not too common an occurrence - fights are dangerous to both parties, after all, and it is in everyone's best interest to find another way to work out disagreements. Which they did, much to the dismay of our carpets.

They began staging what I can only describe as "pee battles," the rules of which are as follows: one cat pees on the carpet somewhere and the other cat retaliates by peeing somewhere else. They were dividing up the house, staking out their respective territories by scent marking them. While this may be a natural behavior for cats to engage in, it certainly made the house rather unpleasant to live in: while we were often able to figure out which room had been marked, we couldn't always find the exact location. Needless to say, the carpet cleaner was well used.

By the time Emmy died this past April, she and Mynx had established a sort of tentative truce and the Great Pee War was largely over, with both sides sticking to their mutually agreed upon territories. And while we are still feeling the loss of our Little Miss Emmy - the gentlest and most cuddly of all the animals - Mynx seems to be taking rather well.

And so now, of the female cats, it is just Mynx left on the Unfarm. What we didn't know, when we brought her home, was just how shy she is. I don't know if she's really shy, so much as half wild. She is, to put it simply, Mynx.

Here's Mynx in a nutshell: She can not stand to be held, but the moment you sit down she's in your lap and she will lick your hand until your skin falls off. She always drinks water with her paw in the bowl. She is condensed – our vet's word – that is to say, she is not fat, but she is incredibly heavy: it actually hurts when she stands on your stomach. She loves to play. She plays with cat toys, bunny berries, invisible bugs; anything she sees (or thinks she sees.) She only goes outside if the temperature is above 80 degrees F. And even then, only for ten minutes at a time – as it is November now, she won't even look out the window until May, at the earliest. She is, at the moment, sprawled out on the table with one foot on the cable box - she does this when she's gotten too hot from sleeping curled up on top of the cable box. She will spend hours at a time moving from the cable box to the table and back again. And then there's her diet: she likes catnip (yesterday I caught her licking the plastic bag that we keep the catnip toys in) and junk food. I eat apples with those little Laughing Cow cheeses and Mynx is constantly trying to eat the cheese out of the wrapper. She also eats popcorn – both Kettle and Butter flavors – and Sun Chips.

So there you have it: a (perhaps not so) short introduction to our Mynxy cat, in all her quirky glory.

What's new on the unfarm?

I realize there hasn't been an unfarm update in a while so here's a quick briefing.

The chickens spent most of this morning in a miserable huddle under the redwood, trying to stay dry. It poured here all morning - dark, grey clouds and thunder, making it seem like it was dusk at only 11 am. The chickens, in general, do not appreciate the rain. Light rain they will tolerate but this was far from light. Even the ducks took cover during the heavy rain.

Speaking of the ducks, Minna continues to lay an egg every day, and she continues to manage to wiggle out of her diaper after only a couple of hours of wearing it. Maggie keeps hers (or rather his) on all night most of the time but Minna is always out of hers by the morning. I'm not entirely sure why this happens - the only thing I can think of is that Minna's significantly larger chest results in the diaper strap sliding to one side or the other, which then eventually pulls the diaper off completely. I think her chest has gotten larger since she started laying. This means I'll have to try reworking her diaper - again - to account for her new... bustiness. I am really not looking forward to another session with the sewing machine - each diaper takes at least an hour to make. If I don't screw up and sew the velcro on the wrong side or stitch the back strap on backwards. But there's no avoiding it - I need to get her diapers to stay on all night, their sleeping area is always a mess in the morning and as it gets colder it's going to get more and more troublesome to do the cleanup with the hose when we have to shut of the outside water.

The cats have now officially moved into their fall routine. This means that Mynx will not be going outside again until (in all likelihood) sometime next June, and Aspen has finally decided that he will come in (most nights) at a decent hour, as opposed to his summer routine of making me wait up until midnight when he finally deigns to grace me with his presence. He also will start rubbing up against our legs again when he comes in. This - in other cats - is a sign of affection. In Aspen's case, he only does this when he is wet. Aspen is a Norwegian forest cat and the rain doesn't actually soak into his fur, it just sits on top until he wipes it on something - or, most often, on someone.

The rabbits still aren't getting along. And on top of that, I think that TJ has finally given up on Suki becoming a mate. By mate I don't mean a husband/wife type situation so much as a best friend sort of thing. In rabbits a bonded pair spend most or all of their time together, keeping each other company and grooming one another. When one half of a bonded pair dies (as is the case with TJ, in which his mate Tajha died) the remaining rabbit can get depressed and mopey until they have a new mate. That was supposed to be Suki, but Suki doesn't seem to want to participate. So, from what I can tell, TJ has decided that I will be a sort of substitute mate. What this entails is the requirement that I pet him and massage his ears whenever he is out of his cage. If I do not pet him, he reminds me of my job requirements by biting me. Not the most pleasant situation - I'm still holding out hope that somehow I can get all three rabbits to get along.

It's getting pretty late and I'm tired so the last one will be very brief (as opposed to the rest of this, which was supposed to be brief but ended up rather long and rambling...) The dogs: Buddy is improving in his behavior on walks, but I suspect that this is only because I continue to carry a water bottle and threaten to squirt him whenever he misbehaves. Maia: she remains the most well behaved on walks and around the house, but she is starting to show her age a bit in the trouble she has jumping onto and off of my bed (which is, admittedly, ridiculously high.) Kita: he is also showing his age a bit by slowing down a bit on walks and having some trouble hearing at times. In general I hate seeing evidence of old age or illness in any of the animals, but I guiltily admit that this morning it was kind of nice to see Kita sleeping through the thunderstorm which usually sends him into a full blown panic.

Daily art

Daily art for September 30: All Tied Up. The cat is orange because I didn't want to try and do a spotty cat like Mynx (who, by the way, I need to get a picture of...) and I used to have a large, orange cat named Milo. Milo didn't play with string, though - his favorite things to play with were twisty-ties and acorns. He was a very unique cat.