Country Critters

As I lay in my bunk in the tiny cabin I built, cradling my blow torch, I can hear the four-footed neighborhood alarm system going off for the fourth time this evening. The barking sounds like it’s coming from someone’s property up the hill – where the dog doesn’t live.

The patrol is free-range (completely unsupervised), and is collectively known as Crust and Willie. They are a large breed of dog apparently good for keeping predators away from farm animals. Indeed, a cougar attacked the owner’s goats a couple of years ago: Cougar.

Strangely enough, Willie is the female. Add in their four puppies and another two neighborhood dogs and the “If It Moves – Bark” security package is pretty much fail-safe.

Our cats handle pest control although the dogs are still here. We see more of their victims than them during the summer months. If I don’t almost step on the morning rodent on the kitchen floor, I might have to rescue a live one. Walk in any one direction outside and you’ll  run into a small animal in varying states of, well – wholeness – before you reach your destination.

These discoveries break my heart yet it is how things are. If I find a still-alive catch, I relocate it if it looks like the creature has a chance. When necessary, my empathetic husband will put a quick end to them although he is not without a morbid sense of humor.

A couple of years ago he came at me, brandishing the head of a squirrel he’d found. Holding it so close to my face I had to do the cross-eyed thingy to see it, he mused about the “gruesomely cartoonish look of surprise” on its face then mumbled something about a “finger puppet”. I forgave him.

The cats stop by from time to time for food that doesn’t move and a petting before setting off to wherever it is that they go although for cheap entertainment I trained one of our security cameras on their cabin: Building A Cabin For The Cats.

Lest I forget the ridiculous collection of birds who live at the house down the road. When we drive by, they act like we’re there to bust them as all manner of water and land fowl and their friends explode in a feather bomb from the yard with the two plastic wading pools.

But here, tonight, I settle into my bunk in the tranquil cabin, my husband trailing an hour or two behind. I pull my sleeping bag up around my ears and as soon as I hear the unmistakable high-pitched whine of the first fool mosquito, I grab the torch, turn the dial to “on”, and pull the trigger. If fires are allowed and it’s cold, I finish the thought by lighting the fireplace.

Goodnight (sound of dog baying …. again…).

Graduation Day

I wake up at 5:30a.m. in the meowing…uh, morning to meowing.

One of our cats – the one who wears black- is pacing the bed on my side, sorrowfully trilling. Either the cat dish is empty or he wants to be petted while he eats, as per protocol The List .

For his sake, I find myself hoping the former is the case.

I slide out of bed and shrug on my robe to find the dish and water are full with him waiting at the door. I  open it and he gazes out and doesn’t move so I gently “usher” him out and down the steps so he can go and do – whatever.

Since I’m up, I shuffle the three feet from the front door to the kitchen to make a chicken sandwich. The rotisserie bird is encased in the world’s loudest resealable cellophane bag which is also impenetrable until I’m done with it. The bag will no longer be resealable.

After struggling to put the sandwich together in the faint super-early morning light, I sit down to eat. I open my mouth…

“Meow????” – now from his perch directly outside my husband’s “office” window near my spot.

Did I mention the cats have their own way in and out of the house?

I put the sandwich down, open the front door of the RV and call him. He calls back – from his perch outside the window and doesn’t move. Two more tries and he’s found his way back inside where I dutifully pet him while he eats.

The sandwich sits, untouched.

For those who mock me, go ahead. I lost my dignity long ago when it comes to cats. Have at it.

Did I mention this is our child’s graduation day? I hear my husband sneezing in the bedroom and I have a runny nose. We have three Covid tests left in the medicine cabinet and three people.

Twenty minutes later: negative all around. Time to get dressed.

Good job kid!

Note: Just got back from graduation…pictures to go through…will post later.

Once again: good job kid!!!!!

 

Building A Cabin For The Cats

As the summer lags on and the clock seems to almost stop, a little project can break up the monotony.

The Cat Cabin sounded like just the thing to keep me occupied for a couple of hours. Three weeks later, I’m finally satisfied and now it sits, in all its feline glory, behind our shed.

I wanted to keep it simple with a few rows of “logs” for a frame with some plywood for the roof. I broke down the Toilet Teepee (don’t ask), and cleaned up and sawed the logs to size. Cutting the slots was by far, the worst part. How does one build a full-size cabin for God’s sake?

I used The Patriot (our electric chainsaw), to cut the grooves and began to stack. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would. Now it was time for the upper deck. I made a floor out of boards screwed onto a pallet which my husband helped me place on top of the logs. Next was the roof.

I originally used a couple of pieces of insulation board but it looked tacky. It was around that point that I became obsessed with the details. I decided looks were imperative and I wanted rustic. I replaced the fake roof with real wood and installed decorative support beams.I hit the town woodpile again looking for matching pieces because now I had a color scheme: Lincoln Log green and brown. Six cans of paint later (with red added because the brown was out), the cabin was starting to look like – a cabin.

I added a back deck with all-natural railings and a cat toy. The entrance now sported a driftwood figurehead of nothing in particular – it just looked cool. Painted pine cones were the finishing touch.

Now I needed some cats.

Tuna juice and the addition of an extra door finally got them in but by golly – they now have a Cat Cabin. Even the skunk likes it. Oh – I didn’t tell you about the skunk that’s moved into our shed?

One More Makes Three

What weighs about one pound, has no manners, is spring loaded like a moray eel, has no attention span, leaves a path of destruction wherever it goes, is currently trying to eat my husband’s headphones but is too cute to be mad at?

A kitten, of course. Cat number three.

We’ve tried really hard not to have another cat for two years now but this one was an emergency. My husband was driving to town when he saw a small animal in the road. He got out and it ran into some nearby bushes. He continued on then turned around.

Now we have the world’s cutest nightmare.

His name is Lucky (and some others if you know what I mean) because of the circumstances in which he was found. Lucky had obviously been abandoned or somehow separated from his mom and litter as he was all bones at first.

He was almost certainly feral and very hungry at first. We got him started on kitten formula right away but it quickly became obvious he was older than I first thought. He started eating our cat’s solid food on day two although we went to great lengths to adjust his diet slowly. We got him a bag of kitten chow.

It’s been about a week and a half and he seems to have doubled in size and the bones are giving way to kitty fat – and lots of kitten energy. Usually a kitten has litter mates to play with but Lucky here only has us. Lucky us.

From sun up to sun down it’s skittle here and skittle there at full speed and the claws – razor sharp. We’ve made approximately fifty paper balls for him to chase, all of which have disappeared and the one cat toy I bought went missing on day one. We’ll probably find them all during spring cleaning.

I made him the ugliest cat tower ever out of plywood, rug and a couple of tree branches. Cats don’t care how pretty their toys look. Example: the half of a squirrel one of them left behind for us last week. A head was all that was left over from the next.

So here we are with cat number three. He has moved on from the headphones and is now playing behind me on my chair. I woke up with him standing on my forehead yesterday morning.

Despite the hell that has become our lives since this little being arrived, I’m glad my husband turned around.

Yard Carp, Gobblers, Cats, Skunks, One Brown Bear And One White Rabbit

“Tell Dale to make sure the door is shut because wild animals are getting into the house”.

This was my response when our son left the trailer door open on accident the last two nights and we had one feral cat and a skunk pay us a visit. We got rid of the cat door for a reason.

Learning to live with the “locals” has consisted mainly of putting up fences and keeping doors shut because we don’t necessarily want them in for dinner (unless it’s a gobbler).

My husband loves the “hordes” of turkeys that cross the property daily. The adults have a crop of youngsters that make peeping sounds and are currently cute. I wonder at what point does a turkey stop peeping and start gobbling? Is the transition from cute to ridiculous slow or overnight?

Deer are called yard carp around here and they have finally made it into our garden. The fence is almost seven feet tall but apparently not high enough. They still prefer tomatoes and squash leaves. I put a motion sensor light near the garden after passing on making the fence higher to hopefully scare them away.

We have seen a white rabbit a couple of times which we consider lucky, unlike the bear that has been hanging around the area.

A very large muscular feral cat or bobcat has been terrorizing our cats so we trapped and relocated it farther out into the hills last week. Hope it doesn’t find it’s way back Homeward Bound style.

A passerby.

We spend all of this time and energy keeping the animals at bay then go and bring more home. That would be our cats.

The Small Small Trailer

When I bought our twenty foot Jayco Lite travel trailer before our house closed in the spring of 2017, I figured we’d be living in it for a few months while we looked for a new home.

I was wrong.

We lived within the confines of it’s half-inch walls for almost two years.

When I spotted it in an ad, I was sucked in by the extra amenities and the price. Plenty of room for the job as I saw it at the time. It came with a TV, radio, an air conditioner, central heating and something else so appealing I’ve forgotten what it was.

It also came with a badly rotted floor which I didn’t know about at the time. The rest was standard.

We spent a summer living in the thing expecting to find a property with a house. We didn’t, and ended up crammed in for much longer than we expected. The single table inside was only big enough for my son and his computer so I spent a lot of time in our bunk at the rear or outside in our half-built shed. My husband even moved his TV and Xbox outside during the summer. It was too cramped in the tiny house on wheels.

The sink was too small, the bathroom was too small and the hot water heater was glitchy. It became an art form to take a shower. We had to set the timer for twelve minutes exactly from the time we turned the hot water heater on. Whoever was taking a shower had to be ready to jump in at the mark or the water would boil out of the tank outside within a couple of minutes.

We managed to break not one but two windows and had to tape them up and when the freezing temperatures hit, we had a major problem on our hands with the canvas walls of the pullouts.

We ended up putting rigid sheet insulation and plywood around the walls and over the roofs of the pullouts but zero degrees doesn’t care. The rain had a tendency of finding a way through the tarps we put over them too. Wet mattress pads, sheets and pillows were the order of the day. I don’t know how we survived but we did.

Some time during the summer the rotten floor made itself apparent and we crawled under the contraption to shore up the floor with two by fours to prevent a “yard sale” while driving down the freeway at sixty-five miles an hour.

There wasn’t much between the outdoors and us in a canvas pullout.

One night shortly after we’d set up camp on our new property, we heard a distinct scraping sound against a trash barrel outside just feet from our heads. We’ll never know what was out there. I took the outside position only one time and ended up on the inner side within minutes.

Last fall we got a fifth wheel, not knowing for sure when we’d be able to build a real house but our fifteen year old insisted that he didn’t want to see the Jayco go to waste. He’s a teenager and he still lives in it.

We were quite happy to say goodbye and move next door forty feet away. At least we no longer have to worry about Mr. Foot reaching his hand under the canvas wall and making away with my husband.

 

December In March

I wake up at three in the morning, open the door to the RV and what am I greeted by? Spring crocuses? Nope. The sound of songbirds (although not likely at this hour?) Nope.

Try a foot of new snow on the doorstep. It’s March, for Gods sake.

Did spring lose it’s way and accidentally pass our driveway? Nope. I can see that the city down the hill is coated in fresh white. The county too. As a matter of fact, large sections of the country are experiencing an identity crisis of seasons.

I don’t know if it’s global warming or the natural long-term patterns of the planet but the thermometer reads zero-degrees and our pipes are frozen again. No water for coffee until we thaw them.

We managed to stay above twenty degrees for most of the winter until March – and more snow is forecast for Monday through Wednesday coming up.

The cats and I went to scrounge for some catnip in the garden this morning but it’s buried under four feet of snow. I dug a trench to the last remembered location of the wilted heap and began to dig. This should be easier this time of year.

I scooped out a bit of the magical kitty herb and excavated my way back to the driveway, cats in trance behind me. For a half a second, I considered shoveling the whole garden then wondered “what was I thinking?”

The wilted mass that is catnip.

Water’s been mission-impossible for the last week in the below-normal temperatures. Needing to refill out water tank, we’d drag the frozen hoses inside, filling up our RV with loop after loop of frozen rubber to melt the ice, then drag the thousand-feet of tangled, anaconda-like mess outside only to have them freeze up again by the time we had them strung out and ready to siphon water.

The water pump is freezing at night again and no water means no coffee unless we go outside and dip the coffee pot directly into the water tank.

We got the car stuck in the snow trying to back out of the driveway. I made things worse when I jumped into the driver’s seat and confidently backed into a tree. Our tires are really worn so it’s off to Walmart to have new ones put on or we won’t be able to get back home.

At least they have coffee.

Tidbit

All I see are the tips of two ears angled sharply backward; below them are two intense eyes barely visible above the snow line. Retinas contracted into black slits in the brilliant sunlight, they bore a hole right through me – it’s prey.

I stare back.

I didn’t see it until I was almost on top of it. Most of it’s body was hidden in the snow, the predator having found a depression within which to lay in wait. Too late, I see the butt wiggle in preparation for the attack then – it launches at me.

Tidbit, our cat, connects with a brilliant catfu double-time cuffing at my legs before ricocheting off at a ninety degree angle, ears still laid back. Recovering, he swaggers away, satisfied he has made the kill. Time to go summon the pride for the feast.

I just stand there giggling. I continue on my way and cat falls in behind, para-scope up (what my husband and I call the tail when straight up in cat greeting).

As I walk along, kitty darts up the hill behind me, climbing the occasional tree and pouncing on imaginary prey. He leaves a sprinkling of paw-prints behind him in the snow.

Our entire property is crisscrossed with cat trails. They reveal their wanderings in search of birds, sounds, snowballs, sticks, mice, or whatever else draws their attention.

Cats are narcissistic. A cat can’t just walk with a human. They have to pretend they just happened along and they don’t walk – they skulk. Tidbit has a habit of running straight for the space between your legs. When he makes contact, you are faced with either stepping on him or falling. I can’t tell you how many times he has “noodled” me.

Tidbit acquired us a few months ago when he showed up at a friend’s house hungry. Apparently, he waltzed right past their four Corgies on “guard duty”,  and found the cat dish inside the house. He was still munching when I got there.

A search for his owner failed to turn anyone up so when I was ready to leave, my husband and I took him home with us.

He made himself welcome immediately and we had him fixed a couple of weeks later. Asshole was annoyed at first but soon warmed up to the idea that he now had something to play with.

Tidbit craves attention and we wonder if he was taken away from his mother too early. Our answer to this is “regression” therapy. He loves to be wrapped up tightly then goes into kitten mode. This causes us to regress also.

Tidbit is boneless. He goes limp when petted and he is more like a dog than a cat. When he sees us coming he throws himself on the ground and rolls onto his back. He has no dignity. He doesn’t care

Tidbit is also the devil in a fur coat. He rattles around the house all night, gets into Asshole’s face constantly, and steals our seats as soon as we get up but his cuteness keeps our annoyance at bay.

This cat is unique and he fits right in with the eccentric theme of our family.

We’re glad he adopted us.

Nine Lives Before Christmas

Nine lives before Christmas and in the RV, two felines were climbing up my Christmas tree

The lights and the baubles I’d hung up with care, strewn wall to wall not a single one spared

Shredded remains of my prized Christmas cactus, total destruction they’ve had lots of practice

They found the pine cones left a trail of debris, nothing was spared in the wake of their spree

Forget wrapping presents dispense with the bows, the effort is useless the gifts they’ll expose

I tried hanging garland, Oh what was I thinking, my light strings are broken they’re no longer blinking

I chased them outside tried to clear out my head, they came back in soaking wet jumped on my bed

What if St. Nick dares to come bearing gifts, they’ll ambush his sleigh from behind the snow drifts

Busting cat Kung Fu they’ll knock him out cold, one tailbone broken a fright to behold

Flat on his back splayed out under the trees, cookies and milk won’t fix his injuries

Journey cut short by two renegade cats, no toys for the children no balls and no bats

Packages strewn from his sleigh to the house, next year he’s packing a catnip stuffed mouse

Cats, Dogs, And Politician Control

My heart breaks when I look at the picture above of the feral cat we caught on our property night before last. Our goal was to take it in to animal control to have it fixed and/or relocated to a better place such as a barn cat type of situation. Here, it is just hungry, cold and gets into fights with our fixed house cats.

We should have done our homework before we trapped it as we discovered there are no animal control services in Stevens County – for cats, at least. They have limited services for dogs but cats – forget it. Thank God there are some non-profits in the area that are filling the vacuum.

What is wrong with the local officials that they are ignoring this problem? Could it be money? The culture? Whatever it is, it’s bullshit and it pisses me off badly. There is a problem because there are no services. Ignore it and it will get worse!

I looked up animal control in the Revised Code Washington and in black and white there it was; there is no requirement for a jurisdiction to have services set up for animal control. Wow.

Once we had kitty, we made some calls and got the runaround. Animal control referred us to the sanctuary but they are closed for a few days (bad timing for us), and the Stevens County Sheriff who told us they don’t offer any services referred us to Spokane County’s SCRAPS program. We drove eighty miles only to find they didn’t accept out-of-county cats.

That’s when I posted on Facebook.

There I learned a little about the local attitude: dump ’em in another town or take care of things the – you know – old fashioned way.  I’m not going to give that disgusting option any words on this page.  One person mentioned that they’d heard cats taste like chicken. What kind of human being could say something like that? Answer: it wasn’t a human – it was a pig.

After the SCRAPS program turned us away, we drove home with kitty and let it go for the time being. Luckily, there are people here who have evolved past the Crow-Magnon stage of evolution and with their help, there is a plan in place to re-capture kitty and find a good home for it.

I’d like to re-home a few politicians while we’re at it – oh – and take care of couple of assholes on Facebook – you know – the old fashioned way.

I’m joking, of course.