Thursday

Did I tell you the story of my professor (from student days) who came into class one day looking disheveled and discombobulated, as if he hadn't slept all night and said -- heed my advice: the more kids you have, the more problems you'll have. One day this one is in trouble, the next day it's the other one. It never stops.

I thought about this every now and then. At the time, I did not agree: I have a friend who has three siblings. Each sibling has at least four kids, as does my friend. Though they surely had their rough days, I have never heard of any great drama filtering through the lives of any of them. So isn't it really a matter of luck?

On the other hand, if you have 8 cats who consider your garage their home (well, seven of them do, plus the newborns up in the rafters), it's going to lead to chaos alternating with relief. Or indifference, if you don't like cats. 

This morning, my favorite little girl, Dark Blue (guess who named her), showed signs of distress. She's not well. There is not a hope in hell that we can catch her and get her to the vet. Not even food will lure her -- she's not eating.

On the up side, the two guys who flew out the bathroom and disappeared for two days into the wilderness found their way back and are having a hell of a good time in the garage with their sibs!

(five kittens plus Dance, the one with a shaved side)






And, the kitten who had bitten Ed in his utter terror, and who was under observation in the sheep shed (doctor's orders), had Ed in there with him for the better part of the night. By noon today, they were like this:






And like this:






Ed let him loose after that. Observation completed.

(reuniting with sister in garage...)






Do remind me if you wish that we have too many cats here! Don't I know it! But, it is what it is. We are grateful that most of them seem to be doing well and no one is spooked by the capture and trauma of surgery.

I worked in the garden just a little. Yeah, still lovely...
















(Waiting for Ed...)





And then I had a wonderfully long visit with my sweet friend who is briefly in Madison.





I just saw her two months ago and yet, for both of us, but especially for her this has not been an eventful set of weeks. So much to process! So many worries, so many smiles!


And in the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop.

Today, she discovered that I grow lavender. This thrilled her no end as she has smelled the fragrance in a tiny bottle of "calming oil" in her home. "It's the same smell!" I let her snip a stem. (And no, that's not a lavender plant before her; that's a salvia. She's clutching her little lavender piece in her hand.)





The evening is a bit of a whirlwind. Phone calls, emails, cats, and very very late, a dinner of reheated red lentil soup with Ed, on the porch. Just because it's August.

Wednesday

I am a little reminded of the deep winter, when a hawk attacked our chickens, plunging us into a period of farm animal obsession. How to protect the cheepers. How to protect the kittens (among them Dance, born in January). How to keep a predator out and keep the farmette animals in. It was a never ending discussion.

This week feels the same, only the focus is on something else: how to get all cats living here spayed and vaccinated, even as most have now been treated (Stop Sign herself is the exception), at the same time that the cheepers are crazily after any cat food and traps seem to terrify some cats but not others (one of the little boys went right in today, even though he had been caught in it just two days ago).

It's been a week of cat work and the end is not yet in sight. Stop Sign is avoiding all cages and we still have one kitten wrapped in a shower curtain in Ed's sheep shed, refusing to come out. Ed tried hard and got a terrified kitty biting at his thumb, which in turn required a trip to the doc's office and a tetnus booster. And presumably a new litter somewhere up there in the garage rafters will need our attention in a few months.

Still, I suppose we are making progress. And the summer sun keeps on shining and the flowers are in their late summer (yes late summer) blooming phase. Lovely, but different.
























In the afternoon, I pick the little girl up a school. She shows me a story she drew. She tells me it's without words. "You can use your imagination to make up the story."






Marathon book reading time...







This is the last Story Book ballet class of the summer session and as always, family is invited to watch.


















Since both my daughters were musically and dramatically inclined, playing instruments and performing in vocal ensembles and choirs, symphonies, ballets, musicals and dramas throughout all their school years, I must have in my life sat through a thousand recitals and performances big and small. They always thrill me. And it's not just seeing my kids (and now grandkids) show off their accomplishments. It's the joy of seeing all the youngsters so engaged in the arts. In this, I always see hope for a more just society and a better future for us all going forward. A bit too mawkish for you? Ah well, it's what I feel.


I come home late. Ed is out biking. I'm greeted by a deer, munching the apples in the old orchard.
What, you have a problem too? Should I worry? Do you need to be neutered? Vaccinated?







Dance and three kittens run up, asking for food. I feed them, put away a few groceries, cook up some lentils for a very late supper. 

Tuesday

If you have been reading Ocean for the past several days, you'll know Ed and I are in the middle of capturing the feral cat family that lives at the farmette, so that each kitty can be spayed and vaccinated. For several weeks we have been feeding the kitties inside a cage and in a large animal carrying case. Last Wednesday, we tried to close the doors on them, but they got out. Yesterday, having learnt our lesson, we had stronger systems in place and we managed to trap Dance, the young mama cat, and her three younger siblings. In the evening, we trapped one more little one, leaving us with the challenge of capturing the remaining two young kittens. Kittens that are wiser to the loud bang of a closing trap door.

Storms passed over the farmette last night and heavy rains soaked our gardens and grasses. But by early morning, the clouds receded and there was that promise of another pretty summer day. Ed and I are up early once more.

The three spayed and vaccinated kittens are in the sheep shed bathroom recovering, as per vet instructions, but Dance was released last night into the garage. We are fairly confident that she is still nursing babies somewhere high in the rafters of the building. She needed to be with them.

This morning, I was much relieved to see her come to our door when I was doing my usual food preparations in the mud room. She meowed her usual meow and rubbed against me as always the whole walk to the picnic table. And she ate like a little piglet.







Once she was fed, Ed set up the cage and the carrier for the remaining kittens. This was a challenge. They tiptoed around the contraptions, sniffed the food through the openings, but they would not go in. And then we learned something: they associated terror not with the cages, but with Ed.






When he got up and moved out of eye range, they cautiously meandered into the traps. At that point it was easy for him to simply add length to the string he was pulling. Within a few minutes, both kitties were trapped. And so we now have three more young ones at the vet.

I snipped flowers during the entire ordeal. This is what the cats are used to: me snipping flowers. I was feigning normality.

















Once the two little ones were caged, we opened the sheep shed bathroom window to let yesterday's batch out. Two scampered out immediately and ran to the wild grasses and bushes at the far northern end of the farmette. I haven't seen them since. Ed is sure they'll find their way back. I'm a little more skeptical. They have lived all their young lives within a few feet of the garage. And do they even want to come back? We'll see.

The third kitten held back. She sat on the window sill, not daring to move. I say "she," because we were told that of the three, two were boys, one was a girl. The one left behind had that less bold demeanor that I associated also with Dance. Too, she was likely hurting more as her surgery was more invasive. And so it was not hard to pick her up and carry her to the garage.






She meowed in bewilderment, likely suffering the sudden loss of all her siblings, but, she is safely in the garage, resting on a pillow there and presumably Dance is in the rafters. The cheepers are now out and about and the cats really do like their presence.

We are not complaining! Things went well, though we're already talking about the next batch of kitties -- those in the rafters. If they survive, they will be our next challenge. And, too, there is the ever elusive Stop Sign, the grand mama of them all!

Ed tells me that when he dropped off today's kittens at the vet's, he met a guy with two Have-a-Heart traps, each with a feral cat inside. He said he lived on a farm near Platville (that's 70 miles away). People routinely dropped off abandoned or feral cats at his place. He goes to the trouble of bringing them to the clinic in Madison, because it's the least expensive one in south central Wisconsin (they charge $40 for spaying and giving a rabies shot for each cat plus $10 if you add a distemper vaccine). The cats he brought in today are number 56 and 57. And so when we groan about trapping seven cats and driving only four miles to the Spay Me clinic and dishing out $350 for these kittens, let's remind ourselves of the good farmer who drives 90 minutes each way twice a day and has now paid as much as $2850 in an effort to do well by the cats that show up at his barn. There are really good people out there on this planet.


Breakfast.






Always with a view.






And in the afternoon, I play with Snowdrop.






She is in a phase where she loves to play pretend games and recently, they have involved pretending, often through lego characters, to be horribly naughty. I pushed her on this today and she told me that all the boys in her class misbehaved. I don't know most of them in her summer program, but even so, it didn't take me long to come up with at least one whom she admitted was not horribly behaved. Still, it's the ones who move fast and aren't (yet) aware of their physical boundaries that have her worried.

So we play. And talk.






And eventually do art.






In the evening, two things of note happen: first, Ed brings back the remaining three kittens from the vet. We put them in the sheep shed bathroom, but in lingering with them for a while, I notice that two are immediately all over the place and one is hesitant. I'd called the Clinic to ask for a more accurate specification of their gender. In total, we have four boys and two girls. Sure enough, this one more subdued kitten, the only one who doesn't look at all like the rest, is a girl. In the past months, I had pegged her as such. She just seemed.... girlish.

And now, in the bathroom, Blue (name given by Snowdrop) is acting like her sister (Pink) earlier in the morning: probably in pain, definitely frightened, easy to pick up. I decide to take her to the garage, where she could reconnect with her sister. (The other two kittens will be released tomorrow.)






The other thing that happened tonight? Stop Sign came knocking on the farmhouse door again, wanting food. It was tempting to trap her right then and there. But I hesitated. I thought we had spooked all the cats enough for one set of days. Too, Pink and Blue probably liked seeing their mother again.

Still, as Ed and I looked on, we thought that maybe we made the wrong call. She... really looks kind of thick around her middle...

How many kittens can a mama cat have? On the average, three litters a year, with four kittens per litter and ten years of reproducing. Stop Sign has already beat the averages. She is next in line for the trap!

Still, right now, I do have a sense of satisfaction. Peace even (if you can block news stories). Six kittens plus Dance spayed and vaccinated.

And the garden -- doing just fine in the late evening light.

Monday

Neither of us wanted to get up and get going today. But, you can't always do what you want and so early in the day, before the cheepers are let loose, Ed and I are outside, setting up the Have-a-Heart trap and, too, a pet carrier, baiting it with the cats' morning meal, and waiting at the sidelines to pull a string. We want to get those barn cats (or more accurately, garage cats) to the vet.

Well, let me not glorify my role in this: Ed set up the mechanisms, and he did the string pulling. I just shouted "now!" when a couple of the kitties entered the wired cage.

It wasn't a fun project.

After closing the door on the cage (with Dance and two kittens screaming inside), we weren't sure we could get anyone into the pet carrier, but one did enter it and so now we have a total of three kittens and one Dance ready to be taken to the vet.

Again, Ed does the drive and delivery. I stay behind and try to talk calmly to the remaining three kittens (they are more used to me than they are to Ed), but honestly, they're not dumb: they smell danger. They're keeping to the sidelines for now.

Did I snip flowers? Oh, a little bit. Here and there.






(so pretty ...)






The garden is still lovely, but honestly, our preoccupation today is with getting these cats clipped, snipped and vaccinated.

Still, just a few flowers...






I set up our breakfast on the porch...






But by the time Ed is back from delivering the cats to the vet, I have only a few minutes left (I have morning appointments) and so we eat a very hurried meal.

Our challenge now is to catch the three kittens without getting the soon-to-be fixed kittens into the mix. We try this evening to set up their food inside borrowed pet carriers. But all this happens later, much later. After a quick trip to the disc golf fields to take our minds off of cats...

(sandhills... so stately, so serene...)


 


... and after I have my lovely play time with Snowdrop.

(school flowers...)






(farmette flowers...)






(she asks if she can nibble on a petal... I tell her she can try an edible plant, like the nasturtium; she tastes it. Verdict? Too spicy!)






And what result with the remaining three kitties? Well, the pet carrier was set up with food inside. But only one kitten went in at a time and so Ed closed the door on her/him and gave up on the remaining two, at least for today. There was some urgency in getting this one kitten to the vet because the clinic was soon to close and, too, s/he managed to wrap string around her neck in the struggle to get out.

What's the bottom line? Dance and three kittens are spayed and vaccinated, one more kitten is waiting for treatment tomorrow, two are still running around chasing each other, and of course there's the grand mama of them all -- Stop Sign, who hasn't been around for a while and so is not currently in our reach.

(the two kittens left behind, wondering where everyone went...)






(The three little ones that returned were promptly placed for the night in the sheep shed bathroom.)

We let Dance out by the garage, just in case she is still nursing her babes (the vet couldn't be sure). She immediately came to me and rubbed her cheek against my legs. I was touched.

It's been quite a day.

Sunday

It is tough to think small thoughts about pretty flowers when the news turns your stomach, but one must try. This is the time to remind yourself of some of your imperatives (to lead a kind, compassionate life that builds on all the beauty that this planet has to offer, to remain calm and positive, because if you are, then others around you are likely to remain that way too). And so once more, this morning, I turn my attention to the farmette's fields of flowers.

I snip off only 490 lily heads. That's less than half than a week or so ago. And so it is time now to stop counting and to look at the garden in a new way. I demand less of it and still, I am richly rewarded, because the fact is that with age, it all looks so very sweet and gentle.






It doesn't fire you up like, say at its peak. It soothes your soul and reminds you that the passage of time doesn't have to be your foe.


















Breakfast. Late, because after I work outside for about an hour, I go back to bed and drift in and out of sleep for a good while longer. I never do that! But today, it seemed like a fine idea.







Afterwards, Ed nudges me to get on my bike. Since we have an errand to run -- picking up corn at Stoneman's farms -- we bike over there. It's a 14 minute ride each way, for the best, freshly harvested that morning, sweet corn.

Perhaps you recall from previous posts -- they keep goats there in the summer. For the children who come here... Or, for any goat loving people. Like us, the goatless duo.

Here's a reason to be happy about not having goats: they do eat... everything. My dress, for example.






Here's a reason to be wistful: they are affectionate.






Evening: the young family comes for dinner. They'd spent the afternoon swimming, so both kids are tired...






... and hungry.






Nothing that a rest, a pitchfork, and good snuggle couldn't cure!











Dinner sillies: is it okay to show feet for the photo?






Snowdrop, on her third ear of corn!






Out with Ed to feed the chickens and cats...






Much later, Ed and I walk the farmette lands. The sky is exquisite. You can see the faint blur of a bat against the very pink clouds.






A summer day. Like it should be. For everyone.