The name of the game: procrastination

Back in the beginning of January I made the resolution to post on here at least twice a month. As it is now mid March you can see how well that resolution has gone. Much has gone on here on the Unfarm since I last posted in (oh, the procrastination, the embarrassment!) November. Here are some of the updates which I hope to be following up with more in depth posts.

An out of sorts sort of year: The whole of 2014 was unusual in that much of what we traditionally do each and every year did not get done. I had planned on taking Axel and Maia camping but my sister couldn't come out here from Colorado during the summer and I know too well Axel's desire to be near me that I feared if I attempted a solo trip I would come out of the campground showers to find him sitting outside the building waiting for me, having left an Axel-sized whole in my tent. In addition to a lack of camping there was a similar lack of berry picking. I don't think we went out once that summer. Usually we visit local farms to pick most of our strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and peaches. In addition, we had a bunch of home improvement projects planned that never got done. Let's hope we can get at least a few of them done this year - if not I think the chances are pretty good that someone is going to fall through the rotting pile of wood that we call a deck (the result of building a deck out of wood in a climate that is nearly perpetually wet.) As it is we have roofing tiles nailed to the deck to keep us from looking like a cartoon character who has stepped on a banana peel, windmilling our arms as our legs slide out from under us on the algae/slime that no amount of scrubbing and washing seems capable of reducing. The year went out with a fizzle as well when we failed to decorate gingerbread houses and bake our usual assortment of cookies and candies to give out to friends and relatives. We did manage to make a batch of fudge, some butter toffee, and rocky road but that's about it. No sugar cookie decorating, no cranberry coconut cookies (they are actually much tastier than they sound), and no chocolate covered cherries. We barely even decorated the tree for Christmas. Let's hope that this year is better than the last one.

Addition, then subtraction, then addition again: No, I didn't take a math course at the local college (child, please!) I bought a pet mouse back in August and named her Bernadette. She was a secret mouse in that Dad knew nothing about her (I figured ignorance was bliss.) Unfortunately she died after about a month (here is where that subtraction comes in) and I decided to get a new mouse (addition) and name her Caroline. In November we finally told Dad about our secret mice. He took it surprisingly well.

Another addition: The Saturday before Christmas we decided that we needed to add another dog as Axel seemed somewhat down since his friend Stella died of cancer recently and we know that Maia probably wouldn't be around much longer having just turned 19 years old and the thought of having only one dog seemed too lonely to bear so we added Scout, an 8 week old pointer mix from the Maui Humane Society. He was adorable which was good for him since puppies are, as everyone knows, rather obnoxious.

A loss: On January 3, 2015 we made the tough decision to put Maia to sleep as she had started whining, unable to get comfortable and her quality of life was diminished. It is never easy to make that decision but we try to do what is best for our little ones and I want to make sure that it is understood that it was not motivated out of a desire to reduce any "hassle" on our part. She got to leave with all of us (except Liz, who had gone back to Colorado already) around her.

A gain: We discovered that Axel likes having a dog to walk with but doesn't really care to actually play with anyone so we decided to add another dog for Scout to play with - enter Molly, an unknown small dog mix who is supposed to be about the same age as Scout (about 4 or 5 months old.) Two puppies at once. Clearly we would be good candidates to enter some sort of in-patient psychiatric facility.

Another loss: In February we lost Sakari, the last of our original three chickens. She was my personal chicken and would have been 11 years old this spring. She got a sort of throat infection and despite treatment she was unable to beat it. We had been hoping she would make it to old age - 11 is actually only middle aged for a chicken. Poor Penny is on her own for now.

And yet another loss: Just a few days ago we lost Basil to a gut upset. I have come to hate gut upsets in rabbits as they have taken several of my little ones now. Basil was an especially sweet little bunny who was the best cuddler of the group and preferred to spend his time out of his cage next to me so that I could pet him the whole time - he would actually demand it if I stopped for more than a minute.

Departures on the Unfarm

I have sad news to report: another departure from the Unfarm. This time it's Beauty that we lost. Over the last few days we had noticed her being less active than usual, and it worried me but then she seemed to recover the next day and was out chasing squirrel treats with the other ladies. Today, though, she was back to sitting around hunched up on the deck or under the eaves by the duck pools which was where I found her this evening when I went out to close up the chicken coop. I brought her inside, wrapped her in a towel and curled up on the couch with her in the hopes that warming her might help as it had a few months earlier when she was under the weather. We sat together for a couple of hours with her softly breathing when she bowed her head and stopped. 

She was always a fairly skittish chicken - we adopted her when she was already four months old so we missed out on the early days and weeks of life when we spend lots of time with the chicks getting them accustomed to us - but she was a nice hen nonetheless and we will miss her. 

With this loss we are down to only two hens now, and going into the coldest months when the girls huddle together in the coop at night to keep warm. I worry about how Sakari and Penny will handle the winter without Beauty, who was probably the biggest, fluffiest of the three. I am afraid I might have to spend the next few weeks knitting chicken sweaters, comb covers, and wattle warmers just to keep the girls cozy. In thinking about it, with all the rain we get I should probably break out the sewing machine and whip up some ponchos and rain hats while I'm at it. Now, where does one look for patterns for the fashionably minded hen? 

Beauty, curled up on the couch with me this evening

Rest in peace, Beauty. We will miss you.

Daisy

We lost our sweet little Wyandotte, Daisy, today. She was slow to leave the coop this morning and spent the morning sitting on the deck. I became concerned and dug out our Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow and started searching for causes of lethargy and diarrhea (no one ever said the life on the Unfarm was glamorous). I also double checked the chicken first aid kit supplies recommended over on the Fresh Eggs Daily blog at http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/11/the-all-natural-chicken-first-aid-kit.html and decided that Kocci-Free sounded like it might be what we needed, or at least it couldn't hurt. I started calling around to our local feed stores but no one seemed to have Kocci-Free in stock. I had decided I needed to set out to the feed stores and see what else they did have but I wanted to check on Daisy again first. I went out the the back to see how she was doing and that is when I saw her. She was lying on her side in the pathway, between the honeysuckle and the china blue vines. She was already gone. 

Daisy will be greatly missed, as she was one of our friendlier hens, if not the friendliest, and she was quite sweet and gentle as well. So sweet and gentle that the other hens tended to pick on her and she was usually last to get any treats during a feeding frenzy. I will miss seeing her up on the railing, stealing squirrel food; or running behind the other hens with her funny little gait; or jumping for blueberries under the bushes in the summer. 

This brings our hen population down to only three, none of which are laying. Beauty has never laid a single egg, despite being an Australorp, a breed reputed to be good layers. Penny has historically been a good layer, but seems to have joined a union and gone on strike. Sakari, the last of our original three hens (and my personal hen) is just plain retired having reached the age of 10 years. How this little workhorse of a chicken has made it so long when everyone else has succumbed to one illness or another is beyond me, but I am glad for it - she is the matriarch of our flock.

I hope that we can add a new chicken or two to the flock again soon. I miss going out to the coop to collect eggs, and it seems lonely in the coop now with just the three girls.

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.

Long overdue updates from the Unfarm

I made a resolution at the beginning of this year that I would make posts more often. And I know that most resolutions get thrown by the wayside by mid January, or early February if we are very good. But despite that history, I really did have every intention of keeping this resolution. Things got a little bumpy at the beginning of the year, as you may remember, when Maia had a health scare, but after recovering from her surgery she had more energy than she's had in a long time and it looked like it would be smooth sailing from there on out. And it was. For her. 

But as I drove home from work on the evening of January 29th, I got a call from my parents that Kita was acting strangely. I rushed home long enough to call the emergency vet to give them a heads up and run out to the car with drooling, panting, unresponsive Kita. There was nothing the vet could do. He was ready to go (which was confirmed by our AMAZING animal communicator, Karen Anderson, who we LOVE) and we couldn't hold him here no matter how much I may have wanted to. The hardest part of living with animals is knowing that you will, in all likelihood, outlive them and you will have to watch them as they slip. I lay on the floor at the vet's office, with my nose resting against Kita's, trying to let him know I was there for him and would not leave his side. And then the vet gave him the injection, and he left. It was hard - incredibly hard - to lose this dog who had been part of our family for roughly 16 years. I kept expecting to see him come around the corner, or be sleeping on his dog bed on my bedroom floor, or pass his leash hanging on my wall. 

But one of the advantages of having multiple pets, for me at least, is knowing that all the other animals still need me and I can forget my loss, to some degree, by taking care of the rest of the animals. And we weren't without dogs - Maia and Buddy were still with us, although Buddy seemed to feel Kita's absence and spent the time after the loss moping around the house and showing little interest in his regular activities. About a week after Kita died I decided that Buddy needed to get out of the house and go for a walk with me and Maia, even though he didn't show his usual exuberant whippet energy. We got part of the way down the street when he stopped walking. He simply refused to go any further, despite several attempts to get him to change his mind. I finally gave in and took him back home and he went right back to bed. At about 6:50 that evening Mom noticed that his gums were pale and suggested we call the vet. They told us to bring him in right then, even though they were closing in 10 minutes. At the vet it was discovered that his red blood cell count, which should have been in the 50-60 range was down to 8, a number the vet described as "barely compatible with life." From there I rushed him to the specialist vet 40 minutes away and he was submitted and getting a blood transfusion within the hour. We were told by Buddy's internist (yes, he had his own internal medicine specialist) within the next couple of days that Buddy had IMHA. Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia. Basically, his body was destroying his own red blood cells, for reasons unknown. And more good news: it was a non responsive type, which is harder to treat. But we went all out - transfusions, regular blood counts, multiple night stays in the vet ER, special diets, and enough medications that we had to create an elaborate chart to keep track of when he needed his 13+ medications each day. I even tried alternative treatments. He went to a holistic vet, he got acupuncture, and he received reiki and shamanic healing from an amazing friend of Karen's. We spent one month fighting for Buddy, and over $10,000 to give our six year old dog every shot possible. I wish I could say that it worked, that Buddy finally began to make a turn around, that he is sleeping on the floor behind me as I write this. But I can't. In the end, Buddy became unresponsive and began panting hard one night. I rushed him to the specialist with my brother where they said he may have thrown a clot and they might be able to get him through to the morning if they intubated him, sticking a breathing tube down his throat. I decided that we had to let him go. He had told Karen a couple of weeks earlier that he was tired and ready to go but we hadn't been ready to let him go yet, and he seemed to be showing some improvement. I couldn't stand the thought of him dying there, in the hospital, with tubes down his throat and all alone. So I kissed him and hugged him and stroked his face as they gave him the injection, and then he left. Just like Kita, and only two months and two days afterward. And five short days before his seventh birthday. Driving home at 3:30 in the morning, it struck me as appropriate in some way that I had been the one to bring him into our lives, with a car ride together after picking him up at four months old from the breeder's house several hours away in Kennewick, Washington, and I was with him on his last car ride, as he left our lives that night.

Kita we had expected. We didn't like it, but we saw it coming - he had lived a long, full life with us. But Buddy. Buddy was so young, and so full of life such a short time ago. And now the house felt like a canyon - like you could scream and you would hear an echo with the emptiness of this place.

Two days after Buddy died, I checked in with him and Kita, via Karen. They were both feeling great and Buddy was raring to come back soon. He said he felt like he hadn't gotten to finish his time with us. But in the meantime, he said, he had sent us a gift. A dog at the local shelter was meant for us. So I went that very evening to get Axel, our newest addition to the Unfarm. He is a large dog - about 95 pounds, and black with brown markings, a Husky-Shepherd mix (so like Kita it's almost uncanny!) and ten years old. He probably didn't have much chance of being adopted with that triple threat: big, black, and elderly. He had, in fact, already been adopted and returned to the shelter once before. As I was filling out the paperwork for adoption I was given the highly encouraging news that Axel also had separation anxiety and should he ever be left alone he would proceed to destroy the doors, windows, couches, gates and any crate we might put him in. This gave me a great deal of trepidation, but not nearly enough to doubt Buddy's wisdom. 

We have had Axel for over a month now, and he has turned out to be THE perfect dog for us. He is gentle, calm, friendly, quiet, and he LOVES going on walks and for rides in the car. We have also discovered that he has little to no separation anxiety with us and my fears (and the ominous predictions of the adoption counselor) were largely unfounded. He certainly does not enjoy being left alone, but he tolerates it just fine. He also has loads of energy and doesn't show his age at all. And the cherry on top? He grew up around chickens and cows so he behaves perfectly around all of our various "snack sized" pets. We could not have created a better situation if we tried. Thanks, Buddy.

So the drama was over, and life on the Unfarm settled back into a comfortable, if slightly lonely, routine. Until exactly two weeks after Buddy died, when Aspen went to the vet to address his bladder leakage. I had to leave him there for the afternoon for x-rays but went back in the evening to pick him up and hear the damage (Aspen has had several bladder problems in the past and they tend to run at least $1000 each and involve at least one overnight stay at the emergency vet per occurrence.) When I got to the vet they told me to head back to the visitor's lounge. This was unusual - definitely more kidney stones. Sigh. It was not kidney stones. It was worse. He had a heart murmur. And was in kidney failure. And the cancer we suspected he had, had now spread and was filling his abdomen. He was uncomfortable and at 17 years old, even if we decided to be aggressive in our treatment, it would not buy him a lot of time. I held him, bundled up in a blanket, and kissed his little gray nose (enough times to annoy him, most likely) and whispered in his ear as the vet gave him the injection to send him sailing away from me. 

Three losses of my little ones in as many months. Can you see now why I avoided this entry? I did not want to admit that we had lost so much, so many animals that spent their days and nights with us, who kept us company and made us laugh and comforted us when we needed it. So many days I won't get back and so many experiences that were yet to come. But here it is. Written down for everyone to see. And in reading this, I hope that they might live on again, even for a short while, in you.

Updates from the Unfarm

It has been a while since I've checked in so another session of Unfarm Updates is in order. I (barely) survived the school year, managing to pull off A's and B's in a soil science class and a computer class. The computer class was especially tedious with lots of little details to memorize and four proctored tests to take. (Really, proctored exams in a 100 level online class? Please.) Needless to say, I was more than happy to cross that class off my list and I will never have to take another computer class for as long as I live. Do you hear angels singing, too, or is it just me?

Speaking of angels, we've had another loss here on the Unfarm. Poor little Suki-mama passed away about a month ago. She had been suffering from kidney disease for a while and eventually lost about half her body weight. Despite the best vet care we could provide, the disease was too severe and she passed away here at home in the morning. I had checked on her as soon as I woke up and found her sitting in her litter box, not looking great but hanging in there. I returned less than half an hour later, after eating breakfast and preparing her medicine, to find that she had passed away. So far, Jojo – who was her mate – seems to be doing tolerably and is not moping much, so I have hopes that he will not decline as time goes on and I will not be forced to lose another of my children any time soon.

Such is the cycle of life, I suppose. No matter how much we may want to, we can't stop it from turning. The way I handle it, usually, is to bring a new animal to the Unfarm. And so we have found ourselves with a couple new additions: Buttercup, a Chantecler breed chick, and Belle, a Brahma. “We found ourselves with a couple new additions” may imply that they showed up on our doorstep one morning, with their small possessions wrapped up in a bandana, carried over their shoulders on tiny sticks. This is not what happened. What did occur was more along the lines of my mother lamenting the fact that our hens don't lay eggs nearly as often now that they are more mature, which I took to mean, “perhaps we should get more chickens.” She will, of course, deny this if you ask her, so I took it upon myself to go to the local store and pick up a couple rarey breed chicks. When adding chickens to an existing flock, it is best to add two or more at a time, so that they have a companion while they are young and a partner once they join the flock, to prevent the older hens from picking on them too much. So really, it would have been irresponsible of me to only get one. Once she got over her shock, Mom quickly warmed up to the chicks and now calls them “her girls” or “the littles” (as opposed to our established flock - "the ladies") and likes to say goodnight to them before going to sleep. So really, I did her a favor.

I feel that I should perhaps mention another disclaimer - despite what most of my family thinks, I am not an animal hoarder.  I do not acquire animals willy nilly, so to speak. I never have more animals than I can take care of, or more than we have room for, or more than we can afford to care for.  It is quite possible that, if asked, my parents would argue that last point - they frequently complain that we have surely funded an additional wing or two on our vet's office by now, but when it comes down to it, we have never euthanized an animal that was not ready to go because of costs.  We pay for laser treatments for arthritis, surgery for kidney stones, specialists in cardiology and hysterectomies on hens.  It has always been my opinion that money can eventually be replaced, but we will never have another Kita, or Emmy, Dandelion the hen, or Patches the guinea pig.

A loss on the Unfarm

If you are expecting a lighthearted, somewhat humorous report of life on the Unfarm, I am sorry to disappoint - the news today is neither of those things. We have suffered a loss here on the Unfarm yesterday. My little, tiny, baby bunny boy, TJ, went into shock yesterday morning due to a gut upset. (I am quickly coming to face gut problems in rabbits with a knotted stomach and a cold sweat, after having previously lost both Tajha - TJ's mate - and Peter - the Netherland dwarf who lived with us before Jojo and Suki arrived, to gut upsets.) I rushed TJ to the vet where he managed to hang on for most of the day but lost the battle in the early evening and slipped away. All losses of my little ones (we have lost somewhere around twenty pets in my lifetime) are painful but losing TJ was particularly tough because we had become so close in the last few months as I nursed him through a stubborn injury he sustained after a run in with Jojo during an attempt at bonding. TJ and I have been together for at least four years now and he was so tame that I could walk right up to him and pick him up wherever he was - whether inside or out running around the garden. We often cuddled up for naps and he is the only rabbit who I could trust to run free throughout the house as he stayed out of trouble and the dogs seemed to accept him as a sort of honorary dog, knowing somehow that he was not to be chased or otherwise bothered.

The evenings now are the hardest. That is when I miss him the most, during that time when the distractions of the day have begun to melt away and all that is left is an ache and the desire to hold him again, cradling him against my right side with my arm, his feet resting against my hip and his head at shoulder height so that all I needed to do was turn my head to be able to kiss the soft, white fur on his forehead. His departure has left a hole in my life and the rest of the animals on the Unfarm have noticed his vacancy as well.

In a somewhat cruel coincidence, Dora, my sister's hamster, also died yesterday and while Dora was not technically a member of the Unfarm, it is a loss all the same, and deserves to be mentioned to honor her memory.

And now that this loss has been reported, I am signing off. I will try to resume reporting the news from the Unfarm again shortly but I have to be in the right mood and it is not the one I am currently in. Goodnight, all. Love you forever, TJ.