Walking with Mama Kitty

Remember when I took the cat family in how I wasn't going to pet them?  Well, Mama Cat has finally earned my trust.  She doesn't make a nuisance of herself hanging around on my porch like the two youngsters do, so I occasionally pet her now.  For a couple of days, all three cats walked with us.  Now the youngsters have dropped out, but Mama stays with us for the whole forty minute walk, every single day.  Here's a slide show.

Wash day (and a knee update)

Or "worsh day", as some of my aunts used to say.  It's cloudy and around forty degrees, heading for a high in the mid-forties.  I'm doing laundry and hanging clothes on the line.  My fingers got a little nippy, but otherwise it isn't too bad a day for handling wet clothes.  Google tells me it costs thirty to forty cents to dry one load of clothes in an electric dryer, so at most, I will save $1.50.  Oh well, it's something.  A penny saved is still a penny earned.  
I am down to thirty bucks in my grocery envelope with nine days until Cliff's payday.  I have a list that will probably use $20 of that, but I still think I'll manage without robbing other envelopes.  I'm also making a list of things I'm getting low on that I will buy after we've gotten our funds again.  These are things I would buy this week if I had an unlimited amount of money, but they can wait a few days:  Toilet paper, facial tissues, and so forth.  I think four rolls of toilet paper will last us nine days.  I buy that thin, cheap stuff, you know, but it lasts a long time.
   
I hate to throw food scraps away, and back when I had chickens or hogs, I didn't have to; those critters would eat almost any sort of table scraps except potato peelings.  It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that the barn cats would probably eat most of our garbage.  We don't have that much.  Well, I've found out they'll eat anything a pig would eat.  This morning I took out a couple of bread heels and two left-over biscuits, and the three cats actually fought over them!  
We've lost two of our feline stalkers; the young cats now stay at the barn when we take our morning walks.  Leave it to the younger generation to fizzle out and let the older folks carry on.  Only Mama Kitty still accompanies us on our walk, when she's at home.  She was gone for three days last week; I can only hope she wasn't out tomcatting.  Of course, that's going to happen some time or other.  You should have seen her devouring her food the morning of her return!  


Here's an update on my knee, for those of you contemplating a knee replacement:  I feel pretty much normal now; the knee no longer swells, even when I'm on my feet a lot, and I haven't needed so much as an aspirin for quite a while.  Cliff says he forgets I ever had surgery, since I'm very much back to my old routine and actually, I sometimes out-walk him.  The only time my knee gets stiff is when we ride for long distances, but all it takes is a few steps to get the stiffness out, once I'm out of the car.  At this point I have no problems and no complaints.  I'm supposed to see the orthopedist in February, but I'm going to cancel, since all she ever does is have a couple of x-rays taken, have me stretch out my leg, tell me to continue my exercises, and ask if there are any problems.  Then I end up with a bill for $50 because Medicare Plus doesn't pay for all of it, and I'm left thinking, "Why am I going back?"  
My right knee, which used to give me as much trouble as my left one, is obviously afraid it's going to be replaced, because it doesn't give me the slightest twinge of pain these days.  One of my home therapists told me this sometimes happens:  You get one knee replacement and the other knee gets better!  Doesn't make sense to me, but so far, so good.  

Stalkers!

When Cliff and I head out on our daily walk and look over our shoulders, we have stalkers following us.  Iris, our dog, loves it when we go for a walk, but once we're through the gate, she disappears.  (Click on any picture to make it larger.)

Not these stalker cats!

Oh no, never.  Here they are coming up our most difficult hill.  They go all the way to the bottom with us, then turn around and follow us up.

Wouldn't you think they'd get tired?  Our walk usually lasts thirty-five or forty minutes.

They're still with us, even as we start the final leg of our journey.  After the pond, there isn't far to go.

Right to the last hill, they stalk us.  And when we get back to the house?

They stalk us still.

Later on as I head down the driveway to the mailbox, I look over my shoulder to see unashamed stalkers.

They even stalk Iris.  Oh, the indignity!  Her face tells the tale.

Barn cats

We had been catless for a year or two; it wasn't really our choice, because we like to have cats in the barn that will kill the mice and rats, as well as the pesky sparrows that poop on Cliff's tractors.  However, the last few cats who came here to live either decided the barn was their personal litter box or wandered off into the night, never to be seen again.   
I've seen ads on Craigslist, people who had free barn cats that were spayed and neutered.  But when you bring adult cats to a new place, they often leave as quickly as they came, so I remained catless.  I even had a Facebook friend offer me some cats, but I was afraid they would be too tame.  The trouble with cats who have been pets is that they don't stay in the barn; they come to the house and make nuisances of themselves by sneaking through the door every time it opens, or climbing on the window screens and leaving holes for the flies to get through.   
After the neighbors to the west abandoned their house, I started seeing some cats lurking around what used to be my cabin; it appeared to be a mother cat and three kittens.  I started giving them milk every time I milked the cow, and later bought some cheap cat food to supplement the milk.  The mother cat was obviously a pet, but if she came too near the house to suit me, I could hiss and she'd run away.  I refrained from petting her because I didn't want her at the house; but I could tell she would have enjoyed being petted.  
Little by little, the cat family moved to a wing of the barn, so I began feeding them there instead of at the old cabin.  However, there were now only two kittens, one a calico about half the size of the other.   
A couple of days ago the cats disappeared.  When I'd call "Kitty-kitty-kitty", they didn't come running as was their custom.  For thirty-six hours I didn't see any cats, although I faithfully left milk and cat food for them.  
I decided perhaps the little girl whose pets they once were had come and gotten them, although as wild as the kittens were, I couldn't see how she would have loaded them up.  
This morning I went to milk and there the cats were... minus the calico runt.  So now I have two cats, a mother and a daughter.  I'm hoping neither of them disappears.  Perhaps the coyotes I heard yesterday morning ate the runt.  These things happen.

That's the mother in the background at the milk pan.  

It's really hard to get both cats in the picture.  They can be posing prettily, but when I approach, they jump down and head their separate ways.  The kitten is on the pile of boards. 

Mother Cat, begging me to please pet her.  I think I'll call her Lucky, because she reminds me of a good old mouser by that name that I used to have.

Miss Lucky, Jr., posing prettily.   
So, here's hoping neither of these disappear.  I'm getting a little attached to them.  Lucky is behaving so well, I think I'll let my granddaughters pet her next time they visit... but only if they pet her in the close vicinity of the barn.