Archive for April 2014
Contemplating Possibilities
We now have an appointment for Friday to bring Mozyr back to the rescue center from which he was adopted. It is a tough call, but our decision to schedule an appointment has been helped by the discovery that, in addition to trashing our mattress and bedding, he has also cost us a leather couch and chair in our basement.
When we started the construction project to add that storage room in the basement, the guys covered everything in plastic. Earlier, Cyndie and I had been suspicious about residue we found on the couch, but now that there was plastic over it, we could clearly see how much, and how often he was using the couch to pee.
Mozyr and Pequenita sharing sunshine prior to his banishment from our bedroom
I placed some things on the couch to interfere with him, and he simply moved over to the chair and ottoman. The storage room of shelves is now complete, and all the plastic has been removed from the basement. Since Mozyr has lost his master bedroom privileges, he seems to have resorted to using the recently exposed couch. Now we have to get rid of it.
One of the most troublesome aspects of this situation for me is that I don’t see how we could ever trust him again. If he recovers from whatever urinary distress he has been suffering, how would we know if his behavior has returned to normal? I am not interested in having our bed put at risk for some unknown period (how long would be long enough?) of testing his ability to confine his peeing to the litter boxes. And I definitely cannot afford the sleep disruptions that his shenanigans on our bed have been causing.
While writing this, I had the thought that we could put the soiled couch out in the barn. A little cat pee would be nothing in that environment. That thought led to this: maybe Mozyr could become a barn cat. He still has all his claws. We’ll see what the rescue center thinks of that idea.
Look out, mice.
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Not Funny
I wish I could laugh about it, but we are suddenly prisoners of our cat Mozyr. Whatever the heck his urinary tract problem is, the solution he seems to have selected is to pee on our bed. More specifically, Cyndie’s side of our bed. Could he be sending her a message? I don’t know.
Poor guy. We know he is not well. After a vet visit on Monday, we have special food to give him, and he was given fluids, and also something for pain. His response is to turn his nose up at the food, and to pee on our bed. Seriously, three times Monday night. The second time, while Cyndie was sleeping. That chased her out to the couch in the middle of the night. In the morning, while I was still in bed, sitting up with my computer, I suddenly realized he was sitting on the bed next to me. That can’t be good. Sure enough, he had peed, soaking through to the mattress. I guess the hydration at the vet worked.
It gave us a great excuse to do some serious spring cleaning. Too bad that we had already just done this over the previous weekend, due to the same problem.
I waited all day before putting the mattress back down, because I just didn’t want to give him another opportunity. When Cyndie got home, she pulled out a clean mattress pad and tossed it on the box springs that I had laid back into position.
I walked into the room to lay the mattress back on the box springs, and picked up the pad to move it. Mozyr had just peed on it. That pad hadn’t been there more than a few minutes. I’ve spoken to two people who told me that a cat would be out the door so darn fast if it had peed on their bed. I’m finding that I wish I had some of that in me.
On the bright side, it got me to dig out the clothesline for the first time this year.
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Up Late
Stayed up late. Watched men’s college basketball championship. Result: I’m tired. Tired just watching them play. But, also tired of Mozyr being sick and peeing on our bed. Tired of mud in the paddocks. Tired of dirt from Delilah covering our floor. Tired of sawdust covering everything in the garage, and dust from sanded drywall covering everything in the basement.
At the same time, Mozyr has been more forward and friendly lately than any other time since the day we brought him home from the rescue shelter. The horses are coping well with our muddy mess. Delilah has been a total charmer of late. We have a fantastic new storage room in our basement.
It’s not all bad, even when it sometimes feels that way when you stay up late.
Speaking of our little charmer, here’s a picture for you… We noticed that Delilah had laid down for a nap with her head against the “chew toy” deer antler she brought home from the woods. She looks a bit like the cute little doggie from the cartoon of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Mozyr earned an expensive visit to the Vet yesterday. We have prescription food for him now. He turned it down. I sure could use some enhanced skills in communicating with our animals. I’d like to hear what he has to say about his situation lately.
I wouldn’t mind hearing a little of what Delilah and the horses think, either.
I tried a new trick with one of the newer, small hay bales last night. We usually roll a wheelbarrow of hay to the feeders in the paddock, but with the ground so incredibly muddy, that hasn’t been working so well for us. In the hay shed, I was looking at a net and a hanging bag that we have used to move hay on occasion. I noticed the net is almost the size of a small bale, so I put one in and then tied the net tight with some bale twine. I tossed the netted bale into their feeder and let them go to town on it.
I think they were thrilled to have an entire bale of the good hay. I’m guessing it didn’t occur to them that they could only munch on small bites at a time, through the netting. It slows them down just enough that the bale lasts longer and there is less hay wasted.
I’m tired of seeing how much hay they are able to waste.
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Doggone Excitement
Sunday was a refreshing day of warmth and sunshine, which melted enough snow to bring us almost back to where things were before last week’s storm. As I expected, much of my day yesterday involved shoveling channels in the muddy ground to facilitate drainage of the melt water. Luckily, we got help from Elysa and her friend, Anne, who stopped by for a dose of country sun and to commune with all our animals.
Anne captured this beautiful picture of Legacy and Cayenne giving Elysa some love for her efforts.
In the morning, while Cyndie and I were working in the paddock, we spotted a local coyote hunter’s truck that had stopped on our road. Then I heard the baying sound of his hunting dogs and quickly became concerned about where Delilah was. We discovered her a little ways out in one of our fields, oblivious to the world as she buried her nose in the ground in pursuit of some enticing scent. We called her back to our vicinity.
A short while after that, the sound of the hunting dogs erupted again, this time closer, from the woods beyond our house. Delilah took off after the sound, despite my calls for her to stay. Uneasy about what the hunting dogs might do to the sudden appearance of our dog, I dropped my shovel and hustled after her. Before I got very far, I heard the hunter’s truck coming up behind me in our driveway.
He has been up to our house a couple other times, to ask permission to track coyotes across our property, so I was familiar with him. He assured me that Delilah was not at any risk from his dogs. Just then, she came sprinting back, now interested in this stranger standing with me. We visited briefly and then he checked his electronic tracker and found his pack of hounds had moved on, so he headed off down the road after them.
You’d think by this point we might have considered putting Delilah on a leash, but we went on about our activity as if that whole hunting dog concern was over. That’s not the way tracking necessarily works. After enough time passed to lull me into forgetting about it, I happened to glance up and spot an animal running along our southern property border. Initially, I wondered if it might be a coyote on the run from the pursuit, but it became clear it was one of the hunting dogs. By the time I located Delilah, it was obvious that she had seen it, too, and was already on the opposite side of that same field.
Despite both Cyndie’s and my protests, Delilah excitedly ran down to check on the new dogs visiting her turf. True to the hunter’s word, there were no threatening gestures from his pack, as the number of arriving dogs increased. What did end up happening was plenty of barking and eventually, confusion. With Delilah anxiously, but cautiously, trying to engage all these strange dogs, the pack seemed to lose track of their primary mission, and decided to focus all their attention on her. Delilah decided to retreat back toward us.
Soon there were hounds around and in the paddocks and a fair amount of chaos as Cyndie and I hollered, waffling between trying to collar our dog or the hunting dog that was now in proximity of our horses. In a flash the hunter’s truck was rushing up our driveway, and he apologized three different times as he hoisted each of his dogs up into their compartments on the back of his truck.
Happily, there were no problems that occurred from the close encounter between our dog and the hunting dogs. In fact, it turned out to be a great opportunity to increase awareness of Delilah to our surrounding community. The hunter happens to be a cousin of our neighbor whose property abuts ours on two sides. He approved of the orange vest we make her wear outside. He said he noticed her out in the field right away the first time he pulled over, and would make sure his cousin knows about her now, too.
I appreciate that, because we’ve been meaning to introduce her since we brought her home last July, and just never got around to making it happen.
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Inspiring Flow
Well, the threatened blast of a winter storm did deliver as predicted overnight Thursday and into Friday morning. We awoke to a white scene-scape with clouds continuing to unleash serious amounts of new snow. I cleared off the front steps first thing, so I could tell how much more we were getting during the daylight hours. Another inch fell in the morning, bringing our total accumulation to 10 inches. As soon as falling snow started to let up, I headed out to plow.
With temperatures following the storm predicted to rise well above freezing, all I needed to do was clear a path down the middle of the driveway. The sun would take care of the rest. Unfortunately, that simple task was made more complicated by how heavy and sticky the snow was.
Another unfortunate thing about the snow is how exponentially more muddy it has made the paddocks. It’s getting to be quicksand-like mud out there. I expect to be working on re-forming and re-opening a lot of drain channels today.
I opened the one on the back side of the barn yesterday, which involves shoveling out the slushy snow that causes the melt water to stand in place. Once the water has an open channel, it really starts flowing. In a major coup of drainage improvement, the water was not only traveling past the paddock, but even beyond the round pen before heading down toward the main drainage path. That is a great sign that my hopes for minimizing the water from above which previously drained into areas we don’t want it, can be realized. I didn’t think that was possible without more significant re-landscaping.
As good as that was, it wasn’t the highlight of my day. We have rigged one other trick to manage water runoff, and yesterday was the first time it was truly put to the test. We have placed one of our 100 gallon oval watering troughs beneath the downspout of the new gutter on the paddock side of the barn, and attached a garden hose to drain the tub. The hose is long enough to reach about three-quarters of the length of the paddock, where I have placed it into that flow channel from behind the barn.
It is working as well as I wished it could. Maybe even better. Now all the water from the barn roof that used to end up passing through the paddocks is going to be diverted around. That is a huge amount of water and will really help improve the condition of our paddocks. It’s inspiring!
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Living
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in case
you missed
what happened next
the moral
of the story
take a breath
no, really
take that breath
pausing
just one moment
to catch yourself
living
your adventure
yeah, no lie
it helps to laugh
right through the tears
hanging your hat on
what grinds your gears
look back a bit
at some past lesson
from time gone by
when ships came in
or the other time
you missed that boat
and ask yourself
is there a question
you could ask
that would tell yourself
you already know
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Last Blast?
With any luck, this will be winter’s last blast of snow. Most of the day yesterday, we received freezing rain and sleet. After their breakfast, we put blankets on the horses to give them a little extra shelter against the freezing moisture. Unfortunately, with our temperatures holding close to the freezing point, the ground stayed soft and those spirited Arabians were running all over the paddocks for some reason.
While feeding them dinner, we decided to bring them into the barn for the night, to give them a break from the mud and precipitation. When we opened the door, Legacy and Cayenne were standing right there, anxious to get in. Legacy had so much mud on his legs that it looked like he was wearing brown knee-highs. Poor Cayenne had a face full of mud from following too close behind another horse that was kicking up a mess when running.
I tried taking pictures with my phone, but couldn’t hold it steady and they were constantly in motion, so all of the images turned out blurry. It’s a shame because they were quite a sight.
I did get one picture before yesterday’s precipitation started to fall. I mentioned in a previous post that the labyrinth was a negative image now that the snow had melted off the rocks, yet still remained where it had been packed for the trail. Here is what it looked like a couple of days ago…
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Threatening Weather
I was just getting ready to whine about the threatening winter storm headed our way, and then I noticed that they had moved our county from “storm warning” to “storm watch.” It isn’t a big difference, but it offers that glimmer of hope to me if forecasters think the highest snow totals might stay north of our location and spare us the worst. The storm they are predicting sounds a lot like the nasty blast we received last May, which did so much damage to our trees from the weight of the wet snow. This one appears to hold a similar threat.
This late-season big snow event is frustrating for us because we were getting very close to turning the corner of having the paddocks start to dry out. While snow accumulations are melting, it is a sure thing that the ground in the paddocks is getting wetter every day. Eventually, when the majority of snow has melted, it gets to a point where there is more water going out than coming in, and then the long, slow process of drying can begin. I’d say yesterday just might have been that point, which is moot now, with new accumulations on the way.
Happily, the project in our basement to build a storage room will go on regardless the conditions outdoors. Yesterday, they installed a ceiling in the room and started building the shelves. Our builder wasn’t able to find trim that would match what already exists in the basement, so we were brainstorming options. He told me it would be possible to steal some of the existing baseboard to use around the door so it will match the other doors downstairs, and then buy new baseboard trim to replace what we stole.
His comments about stealing trim got me thinking about what was on that angled wall of the entertainment center I tore out. They had used the same trim around the cutouts for the television and speakers. Good thing I saved everything. I had forgotten all about it due to having stashed it in the shop garage so long ago. I retrieved enough that he will be able to make it work.
Contemplating both the stormy weather and our new storage room together got me thinking, this room will turn out to be a pretty good storm shelter when it’s done. That’s something that is good to have, but which you don’t ever want to need.
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Sinking
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sinking
and swimming
are the same
when inevitability sails by
to prove
for better and worse
happen at the same time
framed
in the every day
breathing
without thought
chasing imagined realities
that glow invisibly
at no extra cost
begging every question
no one can ask
when desperation demands
an answer
for something
that doesn’t exist
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No Foolin’
I think we just might have gotten past the messiest part of the spring snow melt season yesterday. At least, that’s what the optimist in me is hanging his hopes on. It is hard to shake the memory of that 18 inch snowfall that buried us last May and significantly prolonged the drying out of our property last year, but something is telling me that won’t be our plight this year.
A remarkable amount of ground made its first appearance of 2014 during yesterday’s dose of warmth and wind. We were blessed with two separate periods of relatively light rainfall which is always a big help in melting the snow pack. I was able to make my way along a good portion of our southern property line and was thrilled to find that the new culvert we installed, along with the preliminary improvements to open up the drainage ditch, are functioning brilliantly. It is easy to see where we should continue, and I have renewed inspiration and confidence about what I want to do next to maximize the benefits possible in helping our land drain in a controlled way.
The channel I made on Sunday is still in place at the edge of the southern ditch. Looking back up toward where all the water is coming from, you can see how much it wants to spread out now. One of my goals this summer will be to dig out a more defined creek bed across this field with our tractor, and then soften the edges to a gentle slope, and seed it with grass. Most of the year it will simply be a dry depression, only filling with water during the snow melt or a significant rainfall.
Our water-loving dog, Delilah, is mad about helping me get the water to flow. She runs up and down the channels and tries to bite the water wherever it ripples or gurgles. I like it when she helps down here because the ground isn’t muddy and the water is clean, so she just gets wet. The running back and forth does wonders to burn off her otherwise endless energy. When we came in, I toweled her off as she lay on her back, and then she curled up with the towel and took a nap.
On my way back to the house, I plodded past the labyrinth and discovered an interesting phenomenon. The melting snow is creating an inverse image as compared to the way it looked when I was shoveling the route in winter. It takes longer for packed snow to melt, so the path that I repeatedly trekked with snow shoes is now taller than the border areas of stones. They appear as depressions between the paths now.
It’s true. I’m not just saying that because it’s April 1st. Seriously.
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Relative Something 