Chickens and Unschooling

Yesterday I washed goats.

Today we're flood irrigating. This might seem counterproductive, but the goats are actively avoiding stepping in the water.

Our electricity came back on in about 2 hours. I guess when they have an easily recognizable problem, such as car hit transformer, they can do their jobs in a timely fashion.

One of our cats loves the dog. No really, even more than you are imagining. Kneeding, arching his back in cuddle language, loves the dog. If the dog is outside, the cat finds us, chirps at us, leads us to the back door, to get us to let the dog in so he can cuddle with him. The dog is as confused as the rest of us by the situation.

It rained last night. Finally, a open up the sky, downpour, that lasted several hours. About damn time. We had just flooded that morning, so parts of our backyard are still very much under water. The ducks are over the moon.

Going forward I should get a nice break, at least for a little bit.

In the past month I had to get 2 kittens fixed; this included the extra complication of Magic Missile and his heart murmur. Both are doing splendidly now, thank goodness.

The girls and I got to see a production of Dear Evan Hansen. Fabulous. It likely puts it in my top five of stage musicals.

The family did our annual trek to Ren Faire. This was complicated by S's car breaking down on the way to our house. M and C rescued her, towed her car to our favorite mechanic, and got back in time for us to only lose out on about 2 hours of our fair going experience.

S's car, Dori, was declared deceased. So we went to clean in our tonight. Perhaps break was too optimistic, as there will be car shopping in our future.

It's 9:30 am.

Only 10 million hours* to go till I find out if the kitten with the heart murmur survives his surgery.

My brain will be goo till then.


*Otherwise known as after 2:30pm.

I was supposed to get 2 kittens fixed today. I accomplished 50% of my goal. Fireball is currently drugged out of his mind, required to stay in his cat carrier for the next few hours, and letting the world know of his displeasure. He is, at least, ball-less.

Magic Missile, on the other hand, still retains his testicles. This will likely be remedied in a couple of weeks, after he goes to the expensive vet, with the extra gadgets to help him survive surgery. For, as it turns out, Magic Missile has a heart murmur. It's classified III out of VI by the vet who looked at him today. She was even willing to risk doing his surgery today, if we wanted, but highly recommend the vet with the expensive anesthesias and monitors.

He'll get examined by the new Vet next week.

It's been a week. But right now, while I'm lying under the covers, the kittens are play on me, using my knee as a lauch pad for their shenanigans. It doesn't get much better than this.

We lost our big, fluffy, grey cat, Ghost a few months back. I was wrecked.

He was one of the 2 kittens we got in the summer of 2020. We often say he and his brother were the only good things to come out of 2020. He loved his brushies, and would sometimes wait till I got up to eagerly lead me to the box with his brushes. He had the loudest purr as a kitten, and it seemed like he grew into it as he got bigger. He always purred enthusiastically during brushies.

He was a quarter Maine Coon on his father's side, with gorgeous eyes he got from his mother. We decided they must be from his mother, because his brother, Shadow, a short haired black cat, has the exact same eyes.

We got the kittens from my daughter's ex-roomate's brother's ex-roomate. That always amuses me to say.

We called him our proximity cat, because he often preferred to hang out a foot or two away from the humans. But, he was almost always in the room with us, unless he was sacked out on the bed or guarding the hallway.

I was his favorite, though, so he'd often sit near enough to me to get vigorous scritchies. One time, I was laying in bed, and while M was in the shower, Ghost climbed onto me and settled down for pets and purrs. He stayed for the length of the shower. As soon as the water turned off he got down, as if he didn't want any witnesses to his unusual display of affection.

A couple of weeks after Ghost died, we got two new kittens. They were the other daughter's co-worker's porch kittens.

I never thought anything could fill the void left by Ghost, and there is likely to always be a sadness there for the decade of time we never had together, but Magic Missile and Fireball are doing a damn good job.

For some unknown reason, we are overrun with pillbugs this season. As pests go, they rank fairly high in my book, just below crickets really. Much better than any variety of pincer bugs or, especially, what I call flat bugs to keep me from declaring my house invaded by cockroaches. I would still prefer to have a less vigorous population of pillbugs in my yard/house.

The ducklings enjoy outside time, as long as a human joins them, it's in the shade, and there is water.

Shade is easy to come by, since we have several varieties of citrus planted close to the house in our backyard. Water is provided by a hose nearby. Much to my delight, and to that of the ducklings, I discovered a new game the other day.

Put the hose on near the wall (conveniently watering one of our citrus in the process), and watch the pillbugs scatter trying to escape the water.

Food, water, and entertainment all in one.

Documented through Twitter, since I can't get photos to work any other way

And yes, they've gotten huge.

I used to be one of those people who wasn't a dog person or a cat person. I unequivocally loved them both.

Somewhere in the intervening years, I've shifted.

The thing is, I have never had a cat that has done things that made me not want more cats.

I have indeed had dogs, that have done things, that have made me not want more dogs.

Possibly more significantly, I have had very bad interactions with other people's dogs that have cemented my ani-dog stance.

Now, I don't hate dogs. They are more like tropical fish tanks to me now. I can happily enjoy them (the good ones) in other people's houses, foregoing the work associated with them, then go home.

We have a gorgeous, friendly, black cat. Out of an abundance of caution, we keep him (and the other cats) in on Halloween. As a result, my morning was filled with plaintive cries as he tried to convince this dumb human to just let him out already.

This is harder on me than him, trust me.